Yesterday one of A's friends invited him and Q join him for his overnight birthday party at the Embassy Suites down near the airport. That idea still bemuses me to some extent but I dropped off Q late (after his soccer game finished) and the kids were clearly having a blast. I joined the festivities long enough to enjoy a margarita at the free happy hour then hustled home for an evening alone w/ DH. We went to One Market Street for dinner. This pretty much is my fine dining birthday dinner. I made the reservation a week ago or so when I realized we had a free evening. Open Table had just sent me an email with the Michelin star winners listed. So I decided to go with a starred restaurant. I'd actually eaten there for lunch before - which I forgot. But this was the one restaurant I could get the reservation time I wanted that had a menu that appealed to me. It was GREAT! You know how often there is at least one item that falls a bit short? Well we ordered an app and entree each and they were all excellent and we enjoyed a little dessert at the end - also very good (although it was creme brulee which isn't too hard to make really tasty). They started us out with an amuse buche that was a little piece of tombo tuna - so yummy! I had heirloom tomatoes with pork belly, tamarind sauce and a few leaves of greens - a "BLT" of sorts (no crouton due to my gluten allergy - which the server knew about and was helpful with). Dinner was a roast duck breast - 3 thin slices - and a leg confit on the other side of the plate and there was pickled fig and other stuff - kale as I recall. It was all so good. DH had the shrimp and tomato crostini started and bacon wrapped pork loins. I fully supported their Michelin star designation.

I keep thinking that I am getting better at my photos (and I AM) but I get links to other peoples work and today got a link to a sports photographer's blog - WOW. If you were interested and scrolled down in the comments you would see his explanations about how he lit the shots - a lot of these people are just so generous with sharing their knowledge. I follow this guy who does a flash lit photo a day - and he also posts a photo and schematic of how he lit the shot. So kind. Also a flickr friend Sheila got an invite by Getty Images to submit some of her pics. Pretty great honor that speaks to the quality of her work. Anyway - seeing the work of so many others is just so humbling.

Next stop was Victoria on Vancouver Island. We had a rental home on the Gorge waterway - this was our view from our spacious deck as we enjoyed out take-out dinner in the warm eves of the heat wave.

DH & I loved The Bug Zoo even more than the kids did! Our tour guide Robin was fantastic and how often do you get to hold a scorpion?

The Craigdarroch Castle was better than I expected and I do recommend it.

We spent a couple of hours kayaking on the Gorge. A was a good kayak partner and we made it upstream and also downstream to the edge of the harbour so we had a nice view of The Empress and Parliament.

This was our view after we pulled our kayaks out of the water. Not a bad way to end a day.

Not a stunning image but Q was always on C if he could help it. I thought it was pretty sweet (and felt a bit sorry for C at times having Q hanging off him always!).
For links to the photos in the short album or long album click away :-)

Very much enjoyed the movie Julie & Julia - which I saw with cousin Julia while the kids were at school.

We left Portland right after another excellent breakfast at HPP with Nanma and drove as quickly as we could for the ferry at Anacortez. We didn't quite know where Anacortez was and we didn't really understand why Seattle traffic was so bad mid-day. Never the less we made the (very large) ferry in time. (There were bets to the contrary). This is a view from our ferry leaving Orcas Island heading to Vancouver I realize when thinking about it - but was worth mentioning. Our huge ferry stopped dead and lowered a zodiac to "rescue" this eagle. This (female?) was swimming away as fast as she could go but she had a long way to go. However by the time the ferry managed to halt and zodiac get lowered she had made it to shore. The boat folks thought she was hurt and called the wildlife people but I think it turned out she just had a huge fish in her mouth and couldn't fly. She hopped up the hill where she was met by her mate. It was quite interesting watching an eagle swim using their wings.

This fuzzy lady was in one of the fields on the farm we stayed at on Orcas Island in the San Juans.
A and I walked down to the beach at the farm shortly after 7 a.m. It was amazing to see how glass smooth the water is - after all this is ocean water.

It was low tide and there were plenty of orange and purple sea stars to be seen. I love tidepooling and especially the showy stars - perhaps because I never had the opportunity until I was an adult. It will be interesting to see if my kids seek them out when they grow up.

Before we left we grabbed some lunch and headed to the highest point on the mountain - our group is at the picnic table below. It was a hazy day but you could still see a classic cone volcano in the distance (Mt Baker?). Orcas was only one night but a lovely island worth a longer visit some day. For more photos see long or short.

Last night we had a few clouds moving through - which is relatively unusual for this city - usually blue skys or fog but not that many good cloud days. I headed to the beach after dinner when the guys headed down to playground for a little ball throwing. I didn't make it to the beach quite quickly enough and there was some awesome clouds in the sky above me as I drove but I did get some shots. Pretty sunsets are always nice. I like this one as you have the couple off the the right and you get a sense of the vastness of the place. It is pretty cool that this is on the edge of a very populous city. No surfers in sight - was kind of hoping for a few. But quite a few other people down enjoying the warm evening and pretty setting sun.


A couple of nights ago I decided to grab the camera and get shooting again. Q was in the tub playing and I added my flash and manually dialed it down and bounced it off the left wall. I posted these that eve to flickr. The next day was my highest viewing ever at 1182 views of my photos and/or site. Not sure why. I generally run more like 150-200 views in a day altho there is a lot of swing depending on whether or not I've been posting. Who views the photos and why? I had 3 bubble photos and they got around 50 views each so they didn't make up the total by a long shot. I just find it curious. I have a contact Sheila from Manilla who takes marvelous photos - all the more amazing since she didn't get going until Dec '08. She has a ton of people who follow her and post comments with big images and then real comments by real friends of hers get lost in the dross. I know it annoys her at times. That's flickr for you. I have made some flickr friends I enjoy very much and I always enjoy hearing from them.

geez - just checked out my fotki account. Turns out on 8/15 I had 8 visitors - and somehow they managed to view 20,151 photos! That somehow just seems like 1 person viewed hours worth of photos or something. Too weird.

Last night was checking out how to make Spam Musubi. A tried it first (he is the most food adventurous person in the family - at age 9). I bought it next. He fought me for it. It is seriously yummy. Now I need to figure out where to buy spam. And maybe get a mold. Got everything else. Spam better not have gluten in it.