Mmm...

I just made pumpkin gnocchi. Actually, I substituted some sort of mystery squash from the Farmer's Market for pumpkin but it was still good. I came across the recipe while I was surfing the net at work and had been meaning to try it. I really like doughy things, and that's pretty much all these are. You combine 1 cup mashed squash, 2/3 cup flour (recipe said to use more flour but my squash was dry), 1/4 tsp nutmeg and a little water, and voila: deliciousness. I added a a dab of fake butter, some salt, garlic and thyme. The Cobra just licked the bowl clean, so you know it must be good.

I finished the socks I was knitting for my mom today. Here's what they look like:My monoprinting class also finished last night. We were supposed to have 5 classes, but thanks to a minor typo on the syllabus ("NO CLASS ON THE 13TH") most of us missed last week's class, so we only had 4. I called SCCC today to complain, and they're either going to schedule a 5th class or refund 1/5 of the tuition, so that's cool. Here's the only thing I made that the instructor didn't dislike:

It's kinda like the tattoo that Angelina Jolie has on her arm in that I covered up something ugly with something else. In her case, "Billy Bob"; in my case, a set of "boring neutral colors". I'm looking forward to my next set of classes: Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. Plus, my work is paying for these because I can theoretically use these skills to benefit the firm: sweet!


David and I took the train down to Portland over the weekend. Portland is like mini-Seattle: liberal, crunchy, and western, only on a much smaller scale. I think there was something made with quinoa on every menu I looked at. In one weekend, I more than doubled my lifetime quinoa intake. We stayed at The Benson, a beautiful hotel in the heart of the city that David managed to find a discount for online. We got in around 9 on Friday night, which was just in time to get out and enjoy the nightlife. Turns out, most of the nightlife in downtown Portland involves strippers, so we just got dinner and a beer at the Rogue brewery.

The following morning, after a great night's sleep on a tempurpedic mattress (after I earn my millions I am going to buy one of those) and a breakfast of the free apples in the hotel lobby, we hit the Saturday Market, an open air crafts fair. Fun! I bought a purse made by the skilled hands of underpaid Chinese children, but they had plenty of real artisans there too. I dragged David to a vegan restaurant in a yoga studio for lunch, which was really good and a lot less hippie-dippy than it could have been. We wandered for a bit, went back to the hotel to take a nap, and then walked down to and across the river. There was a haunted house at the Rose Garden, so we thought we would just grab some dinner and find something to do until that opened. Wrong! There was nothing to do over there. We managed to find a restaurant in the mall, which was decent, and killed enough time before the haunted house.

What can I say about the haunted house. It was actually three different haunted scenarios, each of the scariest sh*t I have seen in my life. I don't really remember specifics, mainly because my eyes were closed most of the time and I've repressed the rest. I have a bruise on my leg that I think came from frantically running away from something, but since the entire thing scared the bejeezus out of me, it's hard to pinpoint just what. We went into the scariest one first, which might have been a mistake, because after that I was pretty much done with the horror. We did another, then got a couple of stiff drinks in the hotel bar, watched MIB II, and went to bed.

The following morning we checked out, went to the Portland art museum, wandered around looking for a bookstore, went into a haunted pizza parlor that didn't serve slices on weekends so we left, walked to the train station, and boarded the train home.