Author Archives: Bevin

I haven’t yet updated the blog on how my birthday went with Josh, or the subsequent birthday lunch with Lisa and Allison.

When my birthday rolled around, as I’ve mentioned before I went out to have breakfast with my parents and came back to watch Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC. Since Josh had to work that day we just planned on having dinner somewhere and that was about it. The only hard part of the day was seeing my b-day gifts in the apartment and wondering what they were.

We went to dinner at Maggiano’s at Lincoln Square… it was actually quite good. I had kind of dressed up for the occasion wearing one of my skirts and some of my Chanel Chance perfume, and Josh was wearing his kilt and a dress shirt. For the appetizer we picked one off of the Make-A-Wish menu, which was toasted garlic bread baguette with goat cheese, sun dried tomatoes, basil, and a balsamic vinaigrette all over it. Mmm.

For dinner Josh had a seafood linguine type thing which was excellent, while I had a lobster ravioli with lobster cream sauce. You heard that right, and oh boy was it delicious. Dessert was even more exciting… the featured dessert on the Make-A-Wish menu was a berry tiramisu. Now, I love tiramisu in general, but it’s particularly rich, so seeing a berry version was quite intriguing to say the least. The portion turned out to be gigantic (which was great since we were sharing), and had blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries inside it. It really made the whole dessert much more light. Of course on the side was a light berry sauce and a pile of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. Yum!

After we finished dinner Josh asked me if there was anything else that I wanted to do, and since there weren’t any good movies playing at Lincoln Square I suggested that we head over to the mall and wander around. I kind of wanted to look at dresses, just because it’s fun and because it’ll be officially summer soon. Of course, after a bit of wandering around I find something that I really liked and showed it to Josh… he thought it was really cute as well! And since it was my birthday… Josh was a sweetheart and bought it for me. -grin-

Once we’d finished dress shopping Josh asked if we could go and look at the men’s section to check out some button-up shirts. He’d always been interested in wearing them with his kilt, but never really thought that they would look right; consequently I spent a good 20mins convincing him to even try one on, and that they’d look fine. Once he did though, he actually started to like them a bit more and realize that the length of the shirts wouldn’t look that bad. Then of course we found two shirts on sale that are a dark grey-blue. Very nice. I even convinced him to buy a size that fit him! He’s so used to buying the XL size because he doesn’t want a tight shirt, but I was of the opinion that they looked a bit too “baggy”, so we’ll see how he likes the smaller size in the long run.

Once we’d picked out the shirts we just headed back to the apartment to open my gifts. Here’s what I got:

• Nintendo DS Lite (White)
• Wolfenstein (GBA game playable on the DS)
• Our already-owned copy of Mario Kart

Josh went to all the Game Stop stores in the area and couldn’t find a used or new copy of Mario Kart, so he figured that the next best thing would be to give our copy to me so that I could wipe it and start from the beginning again, entering my name in the card and all that. I did end up asking him if he’d checked Toys ‘R’ Us, since they often have a surplus of that kind of thing (gamers don’t usually think to check there), and he admitted that he hadn’t thought of that. So when an hour later he says to me, “I’ll be right back” and leaves the apartment, I could already imagine what he was doing.

Turns out I was right, and he shows up a few minutes later with Mario Kart in hand. We’ve been playing together ever since… thanks honey! (It’s so much more fun when you each have a copy of the game since you’re not restricted to playing on certain courses).

So all in all I had a really nice birthday. Since we’d (Lisa, Josh and I) had taken Allison out for dinner on her birthday, we’d kind of agreed that we’d all go out to lunch/dinner again since my birthday was coming up. We ended up waiting until the end of the week so that Lisa could be there, and went to Pickles deli on the island in Clinton. It’s a new joint at Ken’s Korner that my sister said was really good. It was.

Josh and I were already on the island that day helping my parents clean out the basement a bit and sort through all the massive piles of junk that are down there. I had a few personal goals, or reasons for helping out. For one, I didn’t want anything of mine to be thrown away that I didn’t already want tossed, and for two I wanted to find some of the stuff that I didn’t want tossed… it’s a huge mess down there. We managed to go through all the clothing and I ended up with a big black garbage bag full of clothes that we’d stuffed downstairs during the remodel that I hadn’t been able to find again. The only problem with this is that I have now effectively doubled the clothing that I have at the apartment and I’m already bursting at the seams… it’s still sitting in its black garbage bag.

My mom also managed to find the big fishbowl she kept Hank her betta fish in, something I’ve had my eye on for awhile. Since our apartment is so small, I figured that it’d be fun to have a betta fish but didn’t want to buy all the “equipment” over again when I knew it was sitting somewhere in that basement.

Apparently it was a good thing that Josh and I offered to help, because my mom was genuinely overwhelmed with the project. She was kind of like a deer-in-the-headlights about the whole affair, and it took a few minutes to convince her that the “orders” I was giving her should be followed through just so that we could get started somewhere. It all worked out in the end, and now she’s on a cleaning spree down there and I hear she’s cleaned up maybe a 1/5th of it herself already. Woo!

So that was our project for the day… we planned to be there for the day and steal away just to have lunch with Lisa and Allison. Unfortunately that took longer than expected, because it’d been awhile since we’d all been together… so lunch took and hour, then we went to Langley and went to Tricia’s mom’s yard sale so Allison could find some art for her Philly apartment (I found some wax beads to put in bowls with wicks and use as candles, along with a Mardi Gras mask and some lavender oil). Then it was off to Good Cheer to check out the thrift store items, and then to Mike’s Place to get some ice cream.

At Good Cheer it was fun, because I found another sweater to rip out for just $3 (from the gap, pastel green and very soft), and we found some really cute old books for Allison to get. One was Latin For Beginners from the 1909, and the other was a little thin spelling book for 1st-3rd graders, made in 1895-ish. So very cute… I told Allison that she almost had to get it seeing as she was going for an Education degree. She thought it was wonderful.

At Mike’s Place I got some blackberry ice cream and Allison was kind enough to buy mine for me.

The only “bad” thing about the day was that I felt bad for Josh while we were gallivanting around. On the one hand I wanted to give my friends some time just to hang out with me, because I’m always with Josh these days… I kind of got very, very subtle clues sometimes that it’d be nice. On the other hand I always want Josh to be there, and I don’t want him to feel bad because he “can’t come”. It was okay in the end, but he did have to wait around for a very long time for us so I hope to make it up to him this weekend by having a somewhat-impromptu “Josh Day”.

That’s kind of the update for my birthday activities. Fun times all around. I talked to my mom about coming back to the island this Sunday to help out more with the basement, but that would mean we’d be there two weekends in a row (along with not really having a day off on the weekend) so I don’t want to push the issue with Josh. I want to give him a nice day off whenever he wants it, you know?

Right now I’m typing this at Tully’s across the street from the apartment with a grande iced vanilla latté to enjoy, along with a blueberry muffin. Mmm… muffins.

Want to know what I just got in the mail? Moo cards. That’s right, I got my free 10-pack (courtesy of Moo) from their Moo/LiveJournal promotion. I didn’t even have to pay for shipping!

Now, when one already has a 100-pack of Moo cards for herself, what possible use could she have for 10 more? Well, I had a few more pictures that could look nice I suppose, but I had a better idea.

Rejection cards! After the incident at the Seattle’s Best Coffee near Pike Place Market, including the newer incident that I’ll mention later at Panera bread, I thought this was an excellent idea.

Pictures you may ask? Where are the damn pictures? Well, here they are:

I’m happy with them, but I had a slight problem with the wording on the back. Their website interface had some obvious problems… problems that should have been fixed during testing. Basically for each of the 6 lines their interface was telling me I had more characters left to use than I really did, so when I got to the “are you sure things look okay?” phase all my text was cut off. Once I e-mailed them about it they managed to re-create the problem and send it off to their tech team, telling me that once they fixed it they’d send me a coupon to get a new 10-pack. Hopefully they got it fixed.

Let me know what you think of the cards!

Surprising… I’m posting a blog about my birthday, on my birthday.  Ha.

This morning I met my parents at Bellevue Square and we had some breakfast… I came home with a cinnamon roll, which I plan on enjoying later today.  I think Josh and I are going out to dinner tonight, so I should plan on looking at least a little nice, eh?

While at breakfast though my mom kind of surprised me and gave me $50, telling me to go to Sephora or Macy’s and buy a bottle of Chanel perfume, if I could find one in that price range.  Very cool!  She was in Vegas a few weeks ago smelling all the new scents at the mall there, hence the newfound excitement.  I did go, but Sephora didn’t have many Chanel scents and the counter at Macy’s didn’t have anything below $50.  Technically I had $26 of my own money, plus some other b-day money meant for other things, but any one bottle of perfume that I was interested in was $75.  Oof!  It’s hard to stomach, even if it is one’s birthday.

So, rather than spend my mom’s $50 + every last cent I had on me (or signing up for a Macy’s card) I opted to just head home.  The good news though is that I stopped by the counter a second time and the woman gave me two samples of their new Coco Madmouiselle.  It smells nice!  I’m wearing it now, but I’m probably going to take a shower later this afternoon and wash it off, then maybe put my Chance on again.

Speaking of Chanel Chance, they have a new Chance sent called Fresh.  -sigh-  I actually like it a lot, and were it not $75 I might have gone for it.  One day I’ll get some.

The woman said that there’s a boutique inside the downtown Seattle Nordstrom’s that might provide my mom and me with better luck finding some of the other Chanel scents (like No. 15 and No. 22), as well as the Velvet Body Cream or whatever it’s called.  My aunt Carolyn is in love with that Body Cream, and apparently it comes in all the scents.  I was hoping to find some of that at Macy’s but they only had it in the No. 5 scent.  And we all know that No. 5 is a little… old… for some of us.  -grin-

Not much else going on though.  I got back in time to catch the last half of the live-update going on online for the WWDC keynote, so that was fun.  Leopard should have some really neat features when it comes out in October.  I’m looking forward to it.

Personally, I’m still vainly wishing for an iPhone, so as June 29th creeps up expect me to get a tad excitable.

So we went out to eat last night, which was actually quite fun.  I had this seafood cannelloni thing wrapped in a crepé instead of pasta smothered in a cream sauce and ricotta cheese.  It had crab, scallops, salmon, shrimp, and probably more seafood that I can’t remember.  But it sure was good.

For appetizers we had some calamari, some coconut shrimp, and some crab cheese dip.  I had a trio thing for desert that had vanilla cremé flan, chocolate cake-type thing, and a raspberry/white chocolate cake.

I think Josh had a fish ‘n chips style thing, only lots os different types of seafood were fried, rather than just cod.

In other news, apparently my b-day suggestion to my parents awhile ago was taken to heart, because they gave me a card with $200 in it to put in a Trike Fund.  Woo!  Although I’m tempted to put it in an iPhone Fund instead.  We’ll see.  Oh yeah, and my sister contributed $10.  Good times.

Not much else is going on.  No word yet from Allison on whether we’re doing another b-day dinner tonight or next week.

I’ll wrap this up and watch the rest of the episode of House that Josh and I have on the mini.  It’s getting pretty exciting.

I’m off to eat a pre-birthday dinner with Josh and my parents up in Mukilteo tonight, right by the ferry dock.  Ivars is a great place to eat, for me at least, because it’s seafood!  If you haven’t gone I’d probably recommend it.

Not much else going on… Josh and I are ready to go but we still have a few minutes yet before we have to leave.

This afternoon we watched the writer’s commentary for Pirates Of The Caribbean.  That was pretty fun, but not the best commentary I’ve ever seen by any means.

Oh, speaking of things I did, I made some lemon cookies yesterday!  Technically only the glaze on top was lemon because I didn’t have any lemon zest to put in the cookie part, but they were scrumptious.  The recipe called for cake flour… something I haven’t used before, but it made for very light, moist, fluffy cookies.  I gave about 12 of them to my dad to share with his co-workers and kept the rest for Josh and myself.  They’re pretty good and really easy to make (even the glaze!  It’s called mixing melted butter with powdered sugar and lemon juice)… ask me sometime if you want the  recipe.

Just thought I’d update the blog on what I was up to this evening.  I talked to Allison today and we discussed another birthday dinner with the “gang” (a term loosely applied in this context), possibly tomorrow night?  Lisa wouldn’t be able to make it as she’s on her way to Montana at the moment, but if we wanted her to come we’d have to wait a whole week.  She’s going to try and talk to Stephanie and Katrina to see if they’ll be around and want to come.  Woo!

Okay, anything else in this entry is going to be extraneous, since I’ve just decided that I’m out of things to say and bored at the same time.  I’m off!  Yay seafood!

I’ve discovered yet another new artist: Paolo Nutini. This album isn’t his first, but it is his latest, and I’m in love. The title song, “These Streets” is a bit mellow but very pretty. “New Shoes” has to be my favorite song on the album though… very fun for summer.

If you’re going to ask me about his style, that’s hard for me to say. His Wikipedia entry says, “His influences include David Bowie, Damien Rice, Oasis, the Beatles, U2, Van Morrison, Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac.” I can’t comment on that, because I don’t listen to most of those groups (other than Pink Floyd and the Beatles). I will say though that sometimes his vocal and musical style remind me of Adam Levine and Jack Johnson occasionally. Just occasionally though.

Either way, I definitely recommend him if you just want some fun new summer type music to listen to. Drop me an e-mail or something if you can’t find a way to listen for yourself, and we’ll work something out. -wink-

Josh and I finished watching Season 1 of 24 last night.  I can’t say that it is my favorite show, but it was enjoyable enough… especially because Keifer Sutherland is in it.

I’ve heard from a few people that the show went downhill after Season 1, which may or may not be a result of the fact that they didn’t know there would be a second season when they were writing/making it.  I might go and try to see the other seasons somehow, but I doubt Josh and I are going to go out and buy the DVDs.

Dave Barry usually writes “live” blog entries while 24 is on every week, updating the readers on what is happening in the show.  He does so because he thinks that 24 is a silly show, and a good one to make fun of, which is apparently why he does it.  I can see now why 24 would be a good one to live blog.

I don’t have much else to say about the show, other than that there were some moments where I unfortunately guessed the outcome.  I have to endeavor to stop doing that.