Barb drove over to Seattle a week ago Friday, flew to Sacramento on Saturday to help her sister celebrate her birthday, then flew back to Seattle on Thursday night to spend the weekend with me.
Friday was my last day as a contractor, Monday I start my full time employee position, so my officemates insisted we needed to go out for lunch. I was just going to go to the cafeteria with Barb but Chandrika insisted we needed to go someplace "far away". I suggested Sankt Gertruds Kloster (some say it is one of top restaurants in the world, it is very good). It's far away and the type of restaurant you would go to for special occasions. But the frown I got when I told my officemates where it was told me that wasn't what they had in mind. We settled for Todai in Redmond. It's not Sankt Gertruds Kloster but it is very good and several thousand miles closer. It is one of Barb's favorite restaurants and my (former) officemates, Chandrika and Eric, both gave it high marks.
Yesterday Barb and I stayed in bed most of the morning before go to meet some friends to go hiking at 2:00. By then it had started raining and we needed an alternative activity. We ended up getting tours through the Red Hook brewery and just across the street from it the Chateau Ste Michelle winery. The difference in the "culture" between the two was probably the most interesting to me. I drank more beer yesterday than in the previous 20 years combined (I haven't even had a sip of beer in the last 20 years until yesterday). At the winery they gave us a sample of a wine we just had to have, Muscat Canelli. "Good news, bad news" they told us after several people commented on how good it tasted (in my book there is no such thing as something too sweet). "The good news is we make this wine right here. The bad news is you can only buy it here. We have such limited runs of it that we don't sell it to our distributors." Barb bought a bottle in the gift shop as we were leaving.
After the tours we went back to our friends home for grilled burgers and stayed until about 10:30 before coming back to my place. Barb left about 10:00 this morning for the long drive back to Moscow. It was sad to see her go. It was so nice to spend three consecutive night with her. And it was especially nice not to have drive the ten hours round trip this weekend.