My Weekend...

Friday evening, fallenpegasus wandered over as he often does and we tried to make fish kebabs. There was a huge raft of vegetables: eggplant, zucchini, sweet onions, bell peppers, parboiled yam, mushrooms, and basil leaves with which to wrap the fish, as well as couscous on the side. It was very yummy, but unless the basil was completely wrapped around a piece of fish it dried out before most of the vegetables were sufficiently roasted.

The wine of the evening was Little Penguin Merlot. The movie of the evening was the MST3K Fire Maidens From Outer Space, an incredibly dull bit of historical tripe with more timefillers than I care to imagine. More on that later.

Saturday, I made pancakes and, experimenting with a recipe that I had tried on the camping trip, I made one cake per small pan, a huge cake for each person. Omaha became frustrated that her ride for a political event wasn't showing, but she eventually got there. I cleaned up for a while.

Kouryou-chan and I headed out, picked up Omaha, and hurtled over to the Carpenter's Hall to pick Omaha up from her Democratic Party rally and then north to the Camp Fire Girl's site to pick up Yamaarashi-chan at 1:00pm from her week at camp.

The bus was late. We received word that they wouldn't be there until two. We drove over to Greenlake and idled in the wading pool, then went back. I found her and was so pleased to see her, whole and happy. She gleefully showed off the knitting, which had apparently been a big part of her camping experience. She talked about swimming and drama and mostly she talked about the people she met, which was good for her. We saw shastaw's son, who looked to be in good health and assured us that his grandmother was there to get him.

After many tearful goodbyes with all of the friends she'd made over the summer we all went to the deli next to Greenlake, let the kids wander around in the wading pool. Around four, we went over to Vivace's to meet up with a few social acquaintances and friends while the girls played in the back area, then went home and had hamburgers for dinner.

Omaha was in a grim mood thanks to having to deal with the demon children from Hell, so we went downstairs and watched the MST3K The Human Duplicators, a very silly attempt at a late-60's made-for-TV movie.

Sunday, we did some gardening, mostly digging up the southeast corner of the property to make a new retaining wall for the garden space there, which is currently out of control. I'm tempted to hire a landscaping service to just tear the hell out of that area and replant it.

There was a birthday party next door, at the feral neighbor's house, and poor Kouryou-chan is enamored of the freedoms that the little boy there seems to have, although she also recognizes that he's very unhappy a lot of the time. More on that later, too.

Eventually, I took Yamaarashi-chan back to her mother's house for her next two weeks until school begins. The rest of us went to bed early.

Little Penguin Merlot

I had previously tried the Little Penguin '03 Shiraz and found it to be pleasant, but unremarkable. Since the price is right, $6.99, I decided to give the '03 Merlot a go. Little Penguin has adopted an emerging industry practice of color-coding the wrappers on their bottles: red, yellow, blue, green and so on. The Shiraz is coded a dark red, the Merlot is a deep blue.

Although it has only a soft smell, talk about your flavor bombs. One sip and this wine erupts across your tongue and up into your sinuses. The flavor is delightfully fruity and very drinkable without any harshness, although it doesn't last long after exposure to the air. Have some friends around to share. It has a nice texture, too. For the price, it makes a good companion wine for something powerful in its own right, like steak or burgers, something it has to stand out with but not compete against.

(How sad is it that in Albertson's the signs for the different varietals include pronounciation guides? If someone needs help pronouncing "merlot", maybe they shouldn't be shopping for one quite yet.)

Riding In

What a beautiful morning it was for riding in today! The weather was clear, the sun was just coming up as I rode into the city, and for once nobody tried to run me over. The opening ride is always cold because it's downhill into the ravine formed by a little stream, then back up into Burien proper, but once I was on the uphill I performed well and made it to the busstop with time to spare.

The ride from the Seattle Art Museum to my office was a little harder. Usually, after cresting the hill at Pike Place Market and 1st, I make a left and head for 3rd, which takes me to the Seattle Center and the Space Needle. But 3rd is under construction, which made for a very bumpy ride.

Under the tarmacadam and cement, most of downtown's roads have a beautiful layer of brick. It's too bad that it's hard to maintain and hard on modern tires, because it looks lovely. I drove over it and received some unwelcome bumps and jumps but nothing too bad. Rode through Seattle Center, which is always completely quiet at that time of the morning.

That ravine's going to be a pain in the ass on the way back home.