Beautiful Summer Weekends

This past weekend was filled with great food and time with friends.

It began with attending an art show and drinking some sparkling pinot noir with LJ. The space for the art was fabulous. The food was fabulous. The sparkling pinot noir - must find for future imbibing. But the art itself...

There are two things that inspire me. Great art and poor art. The great art reminds me that there is always something new to create. It sparks a fire deep within. The poor art (by one's own definition) reminds me that even I could create something worth seeing. There is room in this world for all art.

What I'm trying to say, without being too cruel, is it was just big blocks of color. And they all looked the same - the same two colors joined together. We found one piece we liked. It was one of the few that had some texture, some pattern, something to actually look at. The art felt suburban. And safe. More for use as decor than something inspired.

I'm not saying that big blocks of color can't be beautiful. Done well, even the simplest of creations can be filled with nuance. But there's nuance, and then there's bad.

We followed this up with a quick beer at Satellite. Their kitchen appeared to be defunct (although then we saw other people getting nachos... and all we wanted was something to soak up our drinks). So we moseyed over to Rosebud. I'd been there once before and I appreciate its quaint ambience. I had a delectable salad and the mac 'n' cheese. It was delightful - I'm excited to go back with SW for a proper critique of it.

Friday morning, I got my hair cut - at the always fabulous Gary Manuel Institute. I haven't paid more than $15 or so for a haircut in a long time, and I'm always impressed with the entire experience there. I followed up with a quick stop at the Piroshky place on Broadway. This has become a little ritual for me. I often forget to grab breakfast before getting my hair did [sic], so my tumy starts to growl towards the end of my appointment. I had that hankering for some delicious piroshky. I love that place.

I took a long nap on Friday, after running around and getting **it done. Then JP and I decided to get some dinner. Juan had to work, so it would be just the two of us. And we were craving flavor. Mmmm... flavor.

After bouncing ideas off eachother and each of us getting our workouts in - we decided to go to Bizzarro in Wallingford. We got there around 8:30. There was about a 20 minute wait, so the hostess had us leave our phone number so we could get drinks next door at Blue Star. My number had been transcribed wrong (noisy restaurants, it happens) - so when she tried to call, it didn't go through. She came over to the Blue Star to grab us and let us know our table was ready. Amazing gesture - I was blown away by that level of customer service.

Once we were seated, we split a carafe of their house red and started munching on the bread. Amazing bread - with a very good herby dipping oil. Yum.
We split the appetizer of clams. Also delicious. Then we each had a different pasta dish. I had the "Forrest Floor Frenzy" and she had the Putanesca. Both were wonderful. The putanesca was definitely spicy - great for spice lovers, although my friend found herself drinking a ton of water to help her get through it. The FFF was amazing. A little sweet, without actually being sweet.

The pasta in both dishes made the meal. You could just tell it was fresh pasta - the texture of my "penne" was al dente - to perfection!

Our waitress was amazing as well. She took that level of ownership that I really appreciate in a dining experience. When we asked her "what's good" - she offered two of her favorite dishes, as well as the house favorite. She checked on us just enough to make sure everything was fine.

Anyway, enough raving. When we were wrapping up our meal, we still had a lot of wine at the table. I had driven, but we decided not to waste the goodness of the vino - we were downing it like shots of tequilla. Needless to say, I wasn't going to be ready to drive for awhile - so we walked over to the Casa Cincuenta, used their facilities, chilled out awhile, made fun of Emma's tongue, and walked back to my car.

Saturday I went in to work for a little bit, and then met CH, her sister, and CM at Daniel's. Had a glass of wine and some fried calamari. Yummers. Then we walked around the Wooden Boat Festival before deciding to head over to the sculpture park. I've been meaning to go since it opened, but something always comes up. We spent a good hour or two - moseying around, taking in the view, the people, taking silly pictures - and just basking in the sun as it slowly made its way towards the Olympics.

I could wax on for some time about each of the sculptures, but I think that's for another time.

We made it to the 8:45 showing of Knocked Up at the Big Picture. Two of us had seen it before, but even upon second viewing - it is a very funny movie.

I'm excited to have a very casual 4th this year. My plan is to have a few friends over, drink a little, walk to a dead end near the house, watch the firework show over lake union, walk back. Maybe play Apples to Apples or Bocce Ball or something. Chill. Comfortable. No driving or fighting the big crowds.