A Good Day
Friday was a good day.
I spent the morning listening to music (including the Best of Chicago....does anybody really know what time it is? lol) and drinking coffee while surfing the web. Then I ran to Circuit City to get paper and a ten foot USB cable for my new printer and ended up picking up a new pair of stereo headphones as well since my last pair broke some time around the summer, which will make it a lot easier to listen to music louder once my roommate has gone to sleep. Then I went over to my parents' house and visited with my dad for a while. I also picked up my copies of Firefly and Serenity that he had been borrowing and a box of family photos to sort through and scan onto my computer (also with my new printer). The other thing I grabbed was a stack of vinyls. I went through part of his collection, though not all - I figured a foot and a half stack borrowed was enough without going through the rest quite yet, and pulled out a bunch of albums to bring home with me to transfer onto my computer with the USB turntable they gave me as my birthday/Christmas present. There were a bunch of albums I used to listen to a lot as a kid, some great jazz and folk albums, some classical sets, and even some Christmas albums that I borrowed (so that I have them for next year).
Then I went out to dinner with a college friend and a fellow food service professional here in Portland. We were going to go to Toro Bravo, but when she mentioned she was going out to dinner to one of the chefs at the three restaurants (owned by same management group) when she dropped off their dessert prep for the night, he suggested checking out Biwa, a Japanese restaurant at 9th and Ash (http://www.biwarestaurant.com/). Humorously, even though she was coming from downtown and I was coming from the opposite direction from my house near the airport and with the change in plans when I was almost to Toro Bravo, we ended up pulling in front of the restaurant to park at the same time. We got lucky in that we didn't have to wait, as they do not take reservations unless it is for six or more and apparently they sometimes have waits up to an hour and a half on busy nights (and there was definitely a wait by the time we finally vacated our table as it looked like people were waiting for us to get up in order to be able to sit down).
We ended up ordering several different items to share between both of us, instead of just one or two things each, which was nice, especially as some of the items on the menu (http://www.biwarestaurant.com/menu.pdf) are really cheap, which makes it easy to do that.
We got the complimentary small starter of some sort of seaweed that had a noodle-like texture with crimini mushrooms and pickled shallots that was quite tasty and then ended up ordering:
gyoza: very tasty handmade pork dumplings
ochazuke: toasted rice w/ seaweed (similar to nori in flavor) and other condiments that you pour tea over and mix into a porridge/soup like dish
yakionigiri: grilled rice ball
tsukune: ground savory chicken grilled on a skewer and served with spicy mustard
and a nice flask of sake to share.
The gyoza and tsukune were both really tasty. The ochazuke was all right, but that type of seaweed doesn't match my palate nearly as well as the one in the starter they gave us. The food was good, the atmosphere was nice, and I really enjoyed being able to spend time with my friend again, since it can be difficult to get together as our work schedules do not make social activities entirely easy to schedule.
I then came home and spent some time listening to/recording vinyls onto my computer (including Bobby McFerrin, Robin Williams, and the Gypsy Rovers) while sipping Jameson and sorting through all of the family photos I borrowed. There were a few laughs at the goofiness of my and my siblings and several "I'm glad I don't look like that/have that outfit anymore" type moments, and a few times where I couldn't actually tell if it was me or my brother in the picture when there was only one of us in it (in the baby/toddler years - once we got into school age we looked a bit different at our respective ages).
I then spent the rest of the evening watching the last three episodes of the West Wing series. I had thought I had finished the series last week, since I thought the sixth disc had only special features, but I was happy to discover that I was mistaken, as it was a very nice way to finish the evening: sipping tea and watching an incredibly well written series.
I also received many well wishes from friends throughout the entire day, which was also very nice.
All in all: a good day. The fact that I happened to have it off from work without asking for it off just made it that much nicer.