Friday, December 30, 2011

Simple Pleasures

Sometimes, the best things aren't the big expensive things. This afternoon, we took a walk along a trail that was new to us, at the High Point exit off I-90 on the North side, opposite where I usually go.  It's a wide trail that runs parallel with the interstate, so it isn't exactly quiet. A the stream also runs parallel with the path and that camouflages the sound just a bit.  My mind kept interpreting the white noise as water running until I moved away from the stream a bit.  Years ago, a landscape architect bidding on some work at our house told me that a small fountain in the front yard would be all I needed to cover the highway noise.  I didn't tell him that sometimes I like that sound, that I listen for the Doppler effect, that I wonder where the people in that car are going.  So I didn't exactly mind the noise from the interstate. 

There were sword ferns everywhere on either side of this trail.  It was drippy and green.  Trees along the stream had interesting roots, as if nurse logs had rotted out from under them and they'd had to learn to stand up on their own.  It made for interesting nooks and crannies, so I asked Mike if there were any geocaches here.  There were, he said.  I have a free geocache app for my iPhone, but I let Mike do the tracking.  I just like exploring off the trail. 

Teddy loved it too.  At one point, I poked a stick between two rocks and there was a small gap.  "Get it, Teddy," I said and he stuck his head in.  Cool!  Then he disappeared completely.  Not so cool.

"Come here, Teddy!" I said, alarmed.

"I see him," Mike said.  "He's on this side.  Teddy had crawled all the way through the small gap between the stones.  He went under roots, around brush.  He seemed to like the hunt though he didn't quite know what we were hunting for.  Nothing, really.  There was a geocache tracking tag in the box and some other small toys when Mike finally found it.  Nick didn't want anything.  I almost took the tracking tag, but figured we weren't going anywhere far away for a while and didn't want the thing to get hung up.  If I had a geocache tag, it would be fun to see where it went, the further the better. 

Nick fought with sword ferns, threw sticks for the dog, and disappeared in the brush wearing his digital camo jacket.  That boy has an imagination and I like that our walks are feeding it. 

After our walk, we were all hungry, so we dreamed up our menu for New Years eve (nachos, pizza rolls, and mozzarella sticks) and headed over to iSushi in Issaquah.  iSushi isn't cheap when you're eating with a growing boy, but I think my salad plates were more expensive than his egg rolls and pot stickers.  I love watching the plates of food slide past on the little conveyor belt, trying new things, and watching the Mexican cooks roll sushi.  We got to laughing about the same pudding that kept coming around and for some reason never stopped wobbling on the plate.  And Nick complained because the fruit plate I picked had a pink umbrella instead of the yellow one.  I had to ask more than once what I was eating.  Turns out that I really like black cod.  I liked salmon wrapped around some crab salad with roe.  I liked the spicy California rolls that were deep fried in tempura batter.  I liked the Ahi salad with roasted garlic, cucumber, and mustard greens.  This one was very similar to what I ate at the Space Needle but I liked how the flavors combined a whole lot better today at iSushi.  And I ordered yellow tail sashimi, my favorite.  My only problem was that I didn't put enough wasabi in my soy sauce, so I never got that satisfying clean burn.  Ah well, there's always next time.

Since we couldn't find a babysitter, we decided to invite Adrian over for a sleepover and make a party here for New Year's eve.  We're going to have a fire in our fire pit, then come in, munch on junk food, and play games until it's time to pop the cork.  Well, okay, we're having Martinelli's sparkling apple cider.  Plus, we still have some fire works left over from the Fourth of July, so we're going to pop them off as well.  Now that's my kind of New Year's eve party. 

Thank you for listening, jb

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