Opera, Eating, and Hiking

On Thursday I had happy hour plans with my gay bff.  I guess I should probably start referring to him by his name now, huh?  It's Jeff.  So, Jeff and I had made general plans to go out, but nothing specific.  Well, that afternoon he texted me and invited me to a cocktail party at a country club on the water.  I don't normally attend a lot of cocktail parties, but why not?  I made sure to ask him if it was a "fancy" party and he said no, but when we arrived, all the other girls were wearing cocktail dresses and I had on jeans and a sweater.  Ooooops!  Oh, well.  By the end of the night when it was cold outside I think the other girls were jealous of me.

Once we arrived, I found out the party was for the Seattle Opera appreciation club, which Jeff is a member of, despite having only seen one opera in his life.  He explained, "I just like coming to the parties, but I skip the opera".  That seems totally reasonable to me :)  I did get a lot of questions throughout the night about my love of Seattle Opera, which I tried to gracefully dodge by explaining that I was just there because of Jeff.  Well, then everyone started asking questions about how I knew Jeff and I think they all assumed we were dating.  Awkward!  It's not like there were any cute single guys there, so I guess it doesn't particularly matter what they thought.  Overall the evening was really nice; I listened to some live opera performances, I watched the sunset over the water, I ate a little free food, and I met some nice people.  I even exchanged info with a girl who's also originally from Virginia and we might hang out this weekend.

Saturday was the "Bite of Seattle" festival which had been hyped up all over town for months.  I was expecting something like Richmond's Broad Appétit festival where lots of the nice restaurants in town sell small bites of food.  Unfortunately, it was just lots more of the same old carnival food they usually have (funnel cake, french fries, things on a stick).  There was one "restaurant alley" section where you could get a sampling of some local places so I did that and then I succumbed to the fried food temptation and ordered some beignet and then... since it was such a nice day out I had to top it all off with a salted caramel cashew sundae!  Even though the food wasn't quite what I was hoping for, it was still a fun afternoon and I scored a few free product samples.  (Dad, they were giving away whole containers of Brown Cow yogurt!  Does that make you want to move here?)

On Sunday, Jeff invited me to go hiking with a group from his work (Boeing).  I really felt like sleeping in and when I woke up and saw the weather forecast (85% chance of rain) I almost bailed and went back to sleep.  I didn't want another repeat of the Poo-poo point hiking disaster.  Also, when I signed up for the hike on facebook, you'll never guess who was listed as one of the attendees?!?  Hadi!!!  That creepy dude that wanted to have babies with me.  Jeff vowed to protect me from Hadi and I would've felt bad about bailing at the last minute, so I sucked it up and went and I'm so glad I did.

I guess Hadi got scared off by the forecast so he didn't even show up, but about 24 other people were there and I was the only non-Boeing employee.  Oooops again.  I need to start getting more details about events from Jeff before I agree to them.  Even though I was a "rando" (aka random person) as one guy called me, the group was totally welcoming and great.  Since Boeing is such a huge company, many of the people there didn't know each other anyhow, so they were all happy to meet some one new and be inclusive.  Although I was prepared for the worst and I'd brought my heavy raincoat, it stayed in my pack the entire time.  The weather turned out to be perfect!  We saw two different waterfalls, beautiful streams, wild raspberries, and finally the lake at the top.

 

Jeff and I at Bridal Veil Falls



Despite the fact the 80% of the lake was still frozen, people were actually jumping in it.  Even with peer pressure, there was no way I was jumping in.  I'm sure if it had been 90 degrees outside it would've felt nice for a second, but the high for Sunday was only 63 degrees.  Also, along the trail, on our way up, we ran across a young guy; barefoot, shirtless, and carrying skis.  Although there is a bit of snow, it's certainly not enough to ski on and his feet were bleeding from hiking.  He seemed completely happy and content and I really wished I could've gotten a picture of him.  (Jennifer, I think he must've been training his mitochondria.)

After a long day of hiking (8.5 miles) I was more than willing to overcome my objection to fast food and stop at Zeke's Drive-In for a burger and shake.  I'm feeling a little sore today and sad that another weekend has come and gone so quickly, but there's always the next weekend to look forward to.

It looks kind of gross now, but at the time it was delicious