Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

I recently finished reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. And by “reading” I mean listening to the audio book, mostly while in the car. Actually, it was done entirely in my car. I really suck at writing reviews, so I’m not going to attempt to. But it was really good. I enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed the narrator. I think going the audio book route for this series was a good choice because I’m not sure I’d be able to pronounce any of the Swedish locations correctly in my head.

I watched the Swedish version of the movie today with BRK. Although I didn’t think they did the greatest job with the book to screen adaptation, I enjoyed it. Okay, I kind of fell asleep toward the end, but in my defense (or the movie’s defense) I was pretty tired going into it. And reading subtitles is kind of like reading a book before bed. It makes me all sleepy.

And speaking of reading, I’m going to have to kick it in high gear if I want to make my reading goal of six paper books this year. Even though my GoodReads widget says I’ve read four of my six book goal, two of those were audio books, and stupidly I said that audio books weren’t going to count. *sigh* I did manage to actually read Mockingjay and Water for Elephants, both of which I enjoyed.

Hopefully I can make the most of the next three months. It will be interesting to see what I actually read compared to what my predictions were.

2011 MN State Fair, Trip 1

This year, Nick, Blog Reader Kristen, and I kicked off the fair festivities on day one! It was a beautiful day; the temp held steady at 80° and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. We arrived around 2 PM and headed in to get some grub.

The first item on the agenda was to get Nick the traditional About a Foot Long Hot Dog. After that, Corn Dogs (not Pronto Pups cuz they suck) were enjoyed all around. Kristen and I hit up French Meadow Bakery and Cafe, where I got a cup of delicious Black Currant Iced Tea. We also splitsied a Butcher Boy Steak Sandwich with yummy toppings such as banana and bell peppers. Much other food was enjoyed.

On the way out, BRK was distracted by a jewelry stand in Heritage Square. While she was making a purchase, I spotted this really super cute owl necklace and made Nick buy it for me.

Seattle – Monday 5/30

We decided to go back to Specialty’s Cafe and Bakery for breakfast because they served steel cut oatmeal until 10 AM. It was good, but not great. Definitely not up to par with the Blog Cabin oats that BRK makes. I got another Denver egg sandwich. It did not disappoint. They were out of dark roast coffee, which did disappoint, but that’s okay. I just filled up before we left and took it back to the room.

After the busy day yesterday, none of us had any issues with chilling in the room after breakfast. Oh, and poor Curtis had a nasty cold. :(

It was cloudy and kind of cold outside, so what better thing to do than Ride the Ducks? There’s nothing quite like going down the freeway in an open-air vehicle when it’s 57° and cloudy! The land tour section was all right, but my favorite part was being on the water. The view of the city was spectacular, and getting a closeup view of the boats the planes and watching the seaplanes land was pretty neat. We even saw the house from Sleepless in Seattle. Not that I remember much of the movie. I was probably 12 at the time I saw it, and I always confuse it with You’ve Got Mail.

During the end of the tour, the sun came out, which made things much more comfortable. Once we got off the duck, we decided it was time for lunch. We ended up eating at McCormick & Schmick’s. I had seafood and roasted corn chowder and Mongolian beef on jasmine rice.

All the fresh air tuckered us out, so we headed back to the room for naps. At around 5ish, we went to the Fisherman’s Terminal because the Duck tour guide mentioned that some of the ships from Deadliest Catch, like the Northwestern, were docked there. The only one we saw was the Rollo, which apparently was only on for a couple of seasons. I wouldn’t know—I’ve only seen a handful of shows. I think BRK was kind of disappointed, though. :(

After relaxing and computing in the room, we went to dinner at Shuckers. The clam chowder was good (and expensive, holy crap! $9 for a cup??!?). I ordered the wild seared scallops for the main course. They came with asparagus, mushrooms, and crab mashed potatoes. Yum!

We were pretty full, so we ordered dessert, sans ice cream, to take back to the room. I got the chocolate fudge cake. BRK got the blueberry blackberry pie.

Tomorrow is the Blackfield concert, yay!

Seattle – Sunday 5/29

We waited for Pam and Bryan to meet us at our hotel room so we could go to breakfast. And waited. And waited. Finally we decided to eat without them because it was well past lunchtime our time, and we were starving. Kristen was smart enough to leave a note.

We ate at Specialty’s Cafe across from the hotel. Best. Egg sandwich. Ever. Coffee was delicious too, as it should be because we’re in Seattle.

B&P met us at the cafe not long after we got our food. When we were done eating, we visited the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum. The Nirvana exhibition was pretty awesome. It made me want to don some flannel and rock out to ’90s grunge. There were also exhibits for the history of guitars, Jimi Hendrix, and Battlestar Galactica.

Next we went to the Space Needle. It was . . . exactly what I thought it’d be like, lol. Very awesome. Surprisingly enough, I didn’t get vertigo or woozy or anything like that.

Did I mention we walked past a topiary . . . wall?

We ate supper at The Pike. I didn’t know what I wanted to drink, and the awesome waiter asked me a bunch of questions like what kind of booze I enjoyed (vodka/rum), if I liked sweet drinks (sweet, but not too sweet), and if I liked strong ones (I’m a wimp). Then he disappeared. When he came back, he brought this:

I thought it was very good, so I was quite surprised when he told me it was a cosmopolitan. I’ve tried them before but never enjoyed them. They’ve always been very rubbing alcoholy. Not this one. FYI, I did the fancy effects on my iPhone with the ColorSplash app.

Curtis and I were both adventurous and ordered the Fresh Fish of the Week, which happened to be Monkfish. It was a little on the spicy side, but the fish itself was good. And because it’s so ugly, I’ve included a picture of the fish in whole form as well.

After dinner we wandered around aimlessly for a while. We stumbled upon the first Starbucks.

Eventually we ended up back at Elephant & Castle for drinks and dessert. Kristen ordered bread pudding. Again. She’s on a birthday week bread pudding vacation kick. I could think of a billionty things I’d rather have, like an apple berry crisp a la mode. I almost went with the brownie, but I’m glad I didn’t because Pam ordered it later in the evening and it was huge.

We stayed at the pub until around 11, but it felt more like 4 AM. Fortunately our room was only a couple minutes away. Not having any downtime made for a long day!

Seattle – Saturday 5/28

Curtis, BRK, and I left for Seattle on Saturday morning. Nick was kind enough to drive us to the airport at 7:30 even though he had only gotten an hour of sleep.

The flight left on time and arrived early, which was nice. We upgraded our rental car from a Hyundai Accent to a Jeep Cherokee. It’s very spacious. Our hotel room at Red Lion wasn’t ready for check in when we arrived, so we ate lunch at the British pub attached to it named Elephant & Castle. The three of us got Manhattan chowder and fish and chips. Very delicious.

I decided to do my best to make the blogs for this trip visually dynamic. Good thing my phone has a decent camera because I left mine at home so Nick could document the healing process of his latest softball injury. For some odd reason, my phone’s battery had drained halfway during the flight (???). After firing up the navigator to find the hotel, tweeting, and taking photos, the juice was dangerously low. Hopefully it was just a one-time glitch. Anyway, I digress.

After lunch we walked down Pike Street and found a little grassy area near the market to plop down in for an hour. Naps were had. It was nice. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at The Dragon’s Toy Box. I bought a pack of Suddenly! GIANT fish eggs. They create mounds of clear spheres instantly! Makes 6 full cups! Just add water! Seriously, how could I resist?

Kristen decided she wanted a middle-of-the-day birthday dessert (Happy Birthday, BRK!) , so we found a place that sold individual sized cheesecakes. I got triple berry. Yum! Kristen got Mexican chocolate, which had cayenne pepper in it. Very interesting juxtaposition. I was jonesing for some milk to wash it down, but the best we could find was an iced latte from Starbucks. It was challenging to make it to the room without sucking it all down. Damn strawed beverages.

BRK and I computed while Curtis napped. We got a kick out of how he fell asleep clutching his cell phone while using a decorative pillow to block the sunlight.

For dinner we went to a fun little place in Georgetown called Calamity Jane’s. I ate a delicious burger and had a drink (or three) made with pink lemonade, Stoli Blueberi, and pomegranite. Bryan and Pam, two of cklahr’s friends who live in Spokane, met us at the restaurant.

We hung out there for a while. Kristen decided she needed a proper birthday dessert, so she ordered bread pudding. It wouldn’t have been my first choice of a birthday dessert. Kind of tasted like soggy bread. It was soaked in alcohol too. My first bite was reminiscent of taking a shot. Sometime later in the evening, some dude came in and started ’70s movies on an old school movie projector.

I just want to add, that my drunken navigation skillz are mad. I didn’t like the way Kristen’s phone was telling us to go back to the hotel, and I accidentally touched something that made the directions go away completely, yet I got us back without a hitch.

So far Seattle has been awesome. I can’t wait for day two.

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