Portland Pen Show bound

Bright and early (by my Saturday snooze 'til 9 (okay, 11) standards), I headed to the Amtrak King Street station to board the Cascades train for Portland and the Portland Pen Show. It's one of the smaller shows across the U.S., but it it draws a nice turnout of pen enthusiasts over its three days. I am hoping to pick up some nice stationery, but no pens: I already have a hard time rotating through my favorites.

I was startled initially by all the people lined up to board the train to Portland on a weekend morning, until I saw several in Lance Armstrong-esque regalia: it's STP weekend - the big Seattle to Portland bike race. I'm not sure if they were headed down to meet other racers midway or just following a misguided belief that "riding" in the event includes trains as well as bikes. But there were quite a few of them, plus the rest us.

Back in the saddle

A view from the treadmill in downtown Seattle. I've started working out semi-consistently after years of getting by on a high metabolism and decent eating habits.

But with summer weather here, some body parts looking and feeling a bit more jiggly than I'd like, and a general feeling of being out of shape and out of breath with moderate exertion, I had to hit the gym.

I've never loved working out so it helps that I found a gym close by with decent rates and a discount for my employer. Thanks to the new regimen and some unexpected life stress, I've dropped eight pounds in the past three weeks. Now that the stress is reduced, I've leveled off at five pounds less.

I didn't NEED to lose weight, but it's a nice side effect, along with the firmer muscles and general feeling of wellness that comes from exercising more than you thought possible just a couple months ago. I hate to admit it, but I think I've actually started to enjoy working out. And I don't beat myself up if I miss a day. I just get back on the treadmill at the next opportunity. Who'd a thunk it? Only a mile and a half to go. :-)

End of the (monorail) line

It's the official end of the dream in my world. I paid my final Monorail car tab tax and replaced my monorail tab with the plain old 2007 tab. Sigh. And so it goes.

Actually, as the agency predicted, the property bought for the line is selling for more than it cost to buy, so the tax will end for everyone after the June license tab notifications go out and all bills are paid.

Do not back up...

We saw this as we returned our rental car in Dallas. Whenever I see this sign, it cracks me up because if you have made some major error by driving into the area where it's posted, by the time you see it, you're screwed.

If we're out and about and my husband pulls into a driveway to make a 3-point turn, I always act as if I'm reading a sign like this out my window. He's really good at making the sound of two tires puncturing. Guaranteed yucks all around. :-D

We found one of the bustling shopping areas in East Dallas that the fashionable store clerk told us about. True to her word, there were lots of shops, restaurants and folks wandering the seemingly freshly-laid sidewalks of Dallas' West Village shopping area.

It's one of those developments known as 'mixed use' in the Northwest: retail on the bottom, apartments, townhouses, condos, etc., up top, with the occasional boutique hotel and upscale supermarket thrown in for good measure.

After a couple hours of window and actual shopping, we'd worked up enough of an appetite to hit one of the many restaurants in the area. We chose Tom Tom, an asian grill and sushi bar that was pretty average.

No matter where you travel, shrimp salad rolls are pretty hard to screw up: rice noodles, lettuce, sometimes cucumbers, and shrimp all neatly wrapped up in a rice paper wrapper with peanut or some sweet dipping sauce. Pretty basic, right? Well, I had to send the shrimp rolls back twice because they'd apparently rolled them up using a paper towel, leaving quarter-sized patches of white fiber on the underside of each roll. The replacements weren't much better. This time they apparently used a lint-covered cotton towel to roll them.

Having skipped breakfast, I was willing to ignore this second gaffe and just pick the lint off (hey, cotton counts as fiber in your diet, right?). But, I discovered the small, white lint balls were actually rolled up in the rice wrappers. Apparently their kitchen staff hasn't heard about using bamboo mats to make sushi rolls. We were really hungry, so that was a big let down. But at least they took them off our bill. It was still a nice area and outing and we'd head back for dinner later that night, but the experience would turn out to be much better.