Eating out in Vancouver

This weekend, Dean and I took a trip up to Vancouver (our first time seeing Canada on the West Coast!). The thing I most look forward to on vacation is eating out and Vancouver did not disappoint. I recently broke up with two of my greatest loves, meat and cheese, and thankfully this was no trouble at all- the city has an insane amount of options and every place we went was delicious. :)

We met our friend Trudi for an early breakfast at The Templeton on Granville. Massive mugs of hot coffee and tea, speedy service, and awesome food! I loved the diner nostalgia: comfy booths, jukeboxes, and bubble gum with the check.

Trudi’s breakfast sundae: a pretty arrangement of granolas, yogurt, and fruit. PS: I think Trudi has the BEST tattoos ever.

Cinnamon raisin French toast and fruit salad. Nice, thick slices of toast, fried up to perfection, mmmmm.

Baked grapefruit with brown sugar and pecans- must try to re-create this at home. Dean’s nibblings of sourdough toast. Haha, I wake up starving for breakfast, Dean wakes up without an appetite at all. Our tabletop was a collage of Elvis Presley which I thought was fantastic.

Late lunch at Sunset Burgers:

Dean and I have seen a lot of burger joints- bright and trendy, simple and homey. We love them all but I have to admit being a total sucker for neon lights. And the walls of Sunset are maybe the coolest neon lighted walls I’ve ever seen. Trippy, drippy, pickle slice!

In fact, even the non-neon walls made me smile. On the food: I ordered a veggie burger in a lettuce wrap. I know, I know. I once rolled my eyes at people who did this but it was awesome. Large, well-seasoned bean patty with all the garden fixins, crisp wrap! Dean was a little less impressed because he has a severe tomato allergy and had a hard time getting a tomato-free bacon cheeseburger. We hate making a fuss so after they gave him the same burger with the ketchup just wiped off, he decided to just skip the burger and fill up on fries (which came with vinegar and were very tasty).

It’s gotta be hard to look this sultry while indulging in fast food…

Afternoon coffees:

We were super lucky to have Trudi as our guide; I don’t think we would’ve stumbled upon half the things we did without her. We sipped lattes in the loft area of Buzz Coffee. Lots of sofas and the walls are covered with paintings (I guess they change the art regularly). I got the maple latte with soy- a sweet, rich, treat before our long day of walking.


Dean and Trudi are old friends who grew up together in North London. I think it’s really neat that they both landed in the Pacific Northwest. When we got out, we found a ladybug sunning on Trudi’s bike. :)

Treats to take away:

Dean went nutso here. He has quite the sweet tooth to begin with but after spotting the British snack section, he decided to seriously load up. Twiglets, Hoola Hoops crisps, Caramac, and Cadbury Flake! FYI: Twiglets are my all-time favorite snack!

The Candy Aisle’s sweet window display of fake candies: Jawbreakers the size of beach balls, peppermint patties you’d have to hold with both hands. I think this is the closest we’ll get to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Yummy end-notes: pricey but decadent peanut butter cups at Gorilla food, a refreshing can of Irn-Bru from a hilariously grouchy Scottish woman, Dean looking all over and finally finding bacon flavored crisps, honey blonde ales and Jack ‘n’ gingers at the Two Parrots sports bar. 24 HOUR COFFEE EVERYWHERE!

Blue Monday

Seattle’s indigo trees:

Last month, over a dozen honey locusts were painted a vivid shade of blue for an exhibit by Konstantin Dimopoulos to raise awareness about deforestation (Kimopoulos has described trees as ‘the lungs of the world’ which I think is a crazy cool metaphor). I walk by this spot all the time but yesterday they looked straight-up magical so I snapped some photos in the rain. Hope the rain lets up a little so the blues aren’t washed away too soon…

The Wedding Thing: Invitations

Hooray! We’ve finished making our sweet, simple invitations. Printed, cut out, and popped in the mail (err, most of ‘em!):

Dean and I are getting married in three months… twice! Our first wedding is in Upstate New York, our second is a couple days later in London. Most of our Seattle friends won’t be able to make it and while that’s definitely a bummer, we’re looking forward to seeing our far-away families. In the end, it made the most sense to bring the party to them- especially our Grandmas who don’t travel.


Apart from the ceremony at the beginning, our weddings are going to be open ended and no fuss (we aren’t even doing a gift registry). When you open the card, it’s plainly: dates, addresses, start time. Nice ‘n’ easy!


The pastel scraps of a hundred cut out hearts. Makes me hungry for conversation hearts and jordan almonds. Mmmmm..


We got our design for the RSVPs professionally printed and opted to do our invites at the local copy shop (old school xerox!). Then we stayed up reeeeally late cutting, folding, and silver lining. It was kind of like making a zine, but the type you can’t trade… :)

The Wolf by Tom Neely

One of the first things I picked up at Stumptown:

After hearing nothing but good things, I finally checked out some of Tom Neely’s work. The Wolf is officially described as a “painted novel” and “simple love story,” which is the perfect way of putting it. Essentially, it’s a wordless story about a couple in love. But the style of it sort of knocks you off your feet. Pink demons with Mickey Mouse gloves crawl out of the gut, the colors of orgasm fill several pages, and the ghostly beauty of the woman stays constant amidst the chaos. I’m too goofy to carry any goth sensibilities of my own and I still found myself wrapped up in the darkness of this book.


I don’t think it’d do the book justice to post many panels but you can see more here.

Portland!

Our little jaunt in Portland was fantastic. We drove down with friends and stayed at the sweetest waterfront apartment (airbnb!). Dean and I bought too many books, ate too much junk food, and enjoyed the sunny weekend with our friends.


Here’s what we picked up at Stumptown Comics Fest. It was mini comic heaven. I blew my (admittedly modest) budget straight away and could have easily dropped another $50+. I got to see almost everything i wanted to- my only regret is missing the Heavy Ink panel with Tom Neely, Ed Luce, and Benjamin Marra- which was at the same time as the Stan Sakai panel. Bummer!


Familiar faces and blue shirts: Jason Miles, Jason Thompson, Peter Bagge. Peter Bagge is mid-sentence here saying, ‘You know I could sign this in Seattle, right?’


Janice and Mike at the Fanta booth- my favorite booth at any con. :)


‘Pie have a dream…’ No disrespect to MLK but whoever donated their leftover pizza to this statue is a genius. When we went back the next day, the girl was holding a busted VHS labeled ‘Little Bear’


We didn’t eat any pizza ourselves but we did get a sick amount of Voodoo Doughnuts. We went three times in two days! Lemon chiffon cruellers, devil’s food cake, grape ade with lavender sprinkles, captain my captain!, some standard goodies, and, yes, that’s a bacon maple bar lurking in the shadows.


We’d heard a lot of good things about fast food chain Burgerville and somehow it managed to live up to the hype. I got the Northwest cherry chocolate shake and white bean basil burger (killer aoili dressing on there). Dean and I split the shoestring fries with rosemary. Everything was tasty as heck.


A trio of partially drunk and spilled drinking chocolates at Cacao (haha, cacao!): milk chocolate with cinnamon, dark chocolate, and spicy dark chocolate. Our wonderful friends Mel and Boris brought us here and the four of us had a hard time finishing these tiny cups. The chocolate was exquisitely rich.


No Portland vacation would be complete without a stop at Powell’s Books. If you aren’t familiar, it’s a bookstore that encompasses an entire city block “…with more than a million new and used books. Nine color coded rooms house over 3,500 different sections.” Even with a map, you can get a little lost.


We followed the sweet sounds of a cappella into a store called Under U4 Men where half of the choir was in nothing but designer briefs. After remarking that this was a pretty surreal thing to stumble upon, an employee told me, ‘I guess if you’ve never been to a men’s underwear store before. We do this a couple times a month! Stay and have some wine.’ So we did.


I wasn’t sure if we’d get a chance to meet up with Tony (our friend and erstwhile trivia team member) but we found him at work, right before we had to leave, yay! I also met up with someone I went to school with in Upstate New York which was cool- what a small world… The photo on the right is at the 24 Hour Church of Elvis where Nate peered into his future.


My fiance and his smoldering good looks.


Good bye, Portland. It’s a shame we can’t visit more often!

M is for MacReady, N is for Nancy

What can I say about The Thing? It’s awesome in just about every way a horror movie can be and I really love Kurt Russell. There are some neat fan tributes in the style of Pingu and Pingu-esque Cats (spoilers!).

The Craft is still one of my favorite teen movies. It’s super fun and I have fond memories of slumber party seances with my fifth grade BFFs.

(You can check out the other alphabet cards here.)