This is what I do on my day off

In a stroke of pure fate The Boy and I both had Thursday off this last week. Since we never ever leave our house until work most days we decided to take advantage of the daylight and head downtown.

We took the Max into Portland proper with several goal in mind. Our first objective was feeding ourselves, and since it's been a while, we wanted sushi. I knew SushiLand was somewhere near Powell's aka the best place on earth so we got off the Max ans started walking.

In the two or three blocks between our stop and Powell's there were about six hobos asking for change, which seemed a little extreme for that part of town during the week. The Boy never carries change (we have a bucket for that shit; it's called a beer fund) and I was mysteriously out, but even if we would have had some we would have run out after a block. There were several more people begging around Powell's, including a juggler and a man with a violin but we averted our eyes and hurried past, intent on sushi.

SushiLand ended up being one of those places where the little plates go past you on a conveyor belt. The Boy loves these restaurants because he can get a little* of everything, but I always have to order things to be brought to me because I'm allergic to half the things in there. No shrimp, no crab, mussel, clam, oyster, lobster, squid, octopi...

The hostess was a little scared to serve me at all because there may have been contact between one of those things and my food, but I assured her I wouldn't die. No, this is not going where you think it is. I did not die.

After sushi we went to Powell's and bought entirely too many books, and then we swung by Spartacus because... well, why not? Something you may not have known about me: I enjoy going to porn stores just to laugh at how awkward half the things in there are.

We Maxed back home and hit the mall, where I bought myself a used copy of Guitar Hero 2! I've been looking for a cheapish copy ever since October when I came home from a weekend visiting The Boy to find that my selfish inconsiderate roommate had played it in my xBox and then left it on all weekend, burning a ring into the disc and rendering it unplayable. And then she refused to replace it.

Bitch owes me twenty dollars.

Then we had friends over for beer, including one of The Boy's best friends who was in town from Seattle for a job interview. He had to leave early to get some sleep before said interview, and the rest of us decided to watch Pirates 2.

And I don't mean Pirates of the Carribean.

It was odd, but very amusing.


*Actually a lot. The Boy puts away enough sushi for three people. It's both disgusting and fascinating.

Death by Cheese

Although it's a little late for breakfast, The Boy is currently frying bacon and cooking a frozen pizza in the oven; one for breakfast, one for lunch, although it seems as if we might have them simultaneously.

Wait, did I say cooking a frozen pizza? I'm sorry, that's incorrect. He was cooking a frozen pizza.

He had made another one two nights ago, but when he oh-so-cavalierly tossed it into the oven cheese fell every which way, including on the bottom of the oven. Do you see where this is going yet?

That pizza came out fine and without incident, which is good because we were a couple beers in at that point. This time though, the scattered cheese that he must have forgotten about caught fire. From my spot on the couch I looked up to see The Boy pulling open the oven where there was one foot-tall column of flame and toss a glass full of water on it.

I went to put clothes on so I could look cute for when the firemen get here to put out our house, because I obviously need a man who is a little better with the oven.

I had no idea how The Boy remained so calm about the whole affair, so I asked him. His response? "I just didn't want you to find out the oven was on fire."

And then he scraped the cooled down oven free of cheese with an ice scraper made for car windows. I love this man.

...

Oh lord, he's about to try again. Wish us luck!

Adventure Two or Cole's Parents Come to Town

The Boy's parents came from out of state for their birthdays and camped near us at Champoeg. The Boy took that half of the week off to stay with them, but because of Adventure One I had to drive him down after I got off work on the first day that they camped, and we didn't get there until 1:30 AM. Even though I had to work the next day I stayed: it would have been insane not to. The Boy set up our tent while I held my mini flashlight (re: shined it in his eyes) and then we went over near the bathrooms (I love state parks) to blow up our air mattress so as not to wake up his parents and their friends with the noisy pump.

As The Boy held the nozzle to the spigot or whatever I stood there uselessly. A cricket jumped at me and I shrieked (just a little. Okay, that's a lie). Then I looked closer and realized that it was a tiny green frog. And there were a bunch of them! They were so cute, hopping around and bumping into the wall of the bathroom/shower building.

I wandered around the corner, following a fat frog until I got distracted and went back to The Boy. Next to him was this dirt clod kind of shaped like a frog so I crouched down to look at it. It was a squashed frog! The Boy had killed the cute little thing! And then it moved. I made him put it out of its misery but I cried the whole time. I told the adult-type people in the morning and no one let him live it down for the rest of the trip.

We all came back into town the next morning and The Boy and I took everyone to lunch at Cheesecake Factory, mainly to share the most amazing food in the world: their avocado egg rolls.


Oh my god. I can't even believe I've gone almost 23 years without tasting these. Seriously, I don't care if you hate egg rolls AND avocado, get up right now and go get some. No really; I'll wait.

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Oh hey, you're back. Weren't those amazing?! Here, someone else has provided the recipe for you.

Where was I? Oh yeah, lunch. We had lunch and then I had to head to work. The Boy went back to the camp site with his family and I drove down after work again. Thankfully I had the next three (!) days off and got to hang out the whole next day in the wilderwild.

Actually we went to the local museum and leaned a lot about the local Indians and Oregon becoming a state. There was this old fashioned kitchen garden there, and we wandered around looking at the little hand-labeled signs and figuring out what spices and stuff look like when they're growing. It was pretty damn cool. So was the ice cream we had afterward. That day was a hot one.

The Boy and I even found something to buy in the museum gift shop: a fundana. As far as I can tell, they're these bandanas printed with games that all have to do with nature: trees, bugs, birds. The one we bought was a constellation map, and when we took it out into the middle of a field that night we discovered two things: 1)the stars and text on our fundana glows in the dark, which is sweet! and 2)it worked a lot better than we expected.

We found a lot of constellations whose location and/or existence we didn't know, including draco and the summer triangle. It was one of the coolest things I've done in a long time, and damn romantic* to boot.

The next day we came home and showed The Boy's parents our house (re: apartment) and his mom borrowed a spare bikini (he may have been just a tad bit horrified) and we went swimming because it was effing hot. I can't remember if it was before or after the pool, but she and I definitely discussed shaving of the bikini area and our experiences with it. I literally saw The Boy's skin crawl a little.

We watched movies and had ice cream and The Boy's parents went to bed in our library. We then went and did quiet naughty things and fell asleep early. Not at all a bad visit.


*Not so much the stars themselves as the level of nerdery involved.