"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot
Showing posts with label brewer's advent calendar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brewer's advent calendar. Show all posts
Today we visited a restaurant I've walked past many a time and have been very curious about: Fogo de Chão.
First I had to drink one of my Advent calendar beers. The season may technically be over but it lives on in our hearts.
So Fogo is a buffet type joint where you get the salad bar and servers bring around a parade of delicious steaks for you to eat. There was some fun stuff on the salad bar that I hadn't had before. Those white things are heart of palm.
Sweety drop peppers were amusingly shaped.
When you can't eat any more delicious steaks you flip the little circle on your table from green to red so they know to stop pushing their wares.
Lydia has been on my case to get a new couch probably for years at this point. I figure our current couch is doing its job quite nicely despite its saggy cushions with a hole here and there. I told her she could get a new couch if she paid for it, assuming that would deter her. It did not.
We ended up getting a Lovesac partially because they have a store front at Bellevue Square so we could check it out in person. It's actually kind of cool because it's modular, so if we moved or wanted the couch in a different room we can change up the configuration to fit whatever space. It has some storage space under the cushions too which is pretty cool. There was a lot of assembly required which was much less cool.
Also I don't think I could come up with a worse name for a consumer product than "lovesac".
Lydia was having some buyer's remorse about the couch assembly so I played her some motivational music.
After all that hard work and a lot of getting yelled at by someone who will remain nameless I earned myself another German brewsky from my advent calendar. Praise be.
We popped into Boehm's Candies in Issaquah, Washington. They've been making candies by hand for 80 years.
I was immediately excited when I saw the store's Swiss chalet exterior. You don't build a place like this and then sell crap chocolates.
There were a ton of different choices in the case and I was overwhelmed. I asked the nice girl behind the counter what the weirdest/best options were and she pointed out a few.
The Mozart Kugeln was good and decently weird, I'll give it that. I was fooled, however, when I looked up "filbert paste" and saw that filbert is just the local word for hazelnut.
I'm pretty proud of myself but another way that I avoided making the tough decision of what chocolates to buy was to grab a couple bags of assorted discount broken chocolates.
I don't think I realized exactly how much beer a tallboy advent calendar was going to contain. I'm still happy with my purchase though, as all of the beers are from small German brewers. It's rare that I'm confronted with this many beers that I haven't tried before. I will be brave and venture forth.
Today we visited Seattle's National Nordic Museum to explore the 45th Annual Julefest.
There was a good number of people inside chowing down next to a virtual yule log in the fireplace.
Hattie's Hat is an amazing divey diner that was opened in 1904. Everything about the place is one big "they don't make em like this anymore". The decor is weird and awesome and retro. The food is diner fare that I didn't realize how much I've missed from the Midwest.
How many places are so confident in their menu that they'll just paint a friggin' mural of it permanently on the wall?
I've had my eye on this amazing Restoration Hardware lamp for a little while. The lighting in our apartment currently is probably a hand me down from someone's dorm room. It doesn't look great but it's doing its job. Fine. But what if instead of that we had an OTTIMO TORCHIERE FLOOR LAMP that some might say is
"A study in proportion and balance, our reproduction of an Italian lamp celebrates the bold minimalist spirit of the 1950s. Subtly patterned at the base with rhythmic fluting, the elongated conical body extends dramatically upwards, culminating in a simple round reflector shade."
Now, I'm not saying that a ton of lives have been changed by a lamp. But if that was ever going to happen for me, it would be by this $3,600 lamp that looks like something the Statue of Liberty might hold up.
I wanted to see this work of friggin art in its natural habitat at the gigantic Restoration Hardware store in University Village. The place is like 5 stories tall. They didn't have a single one in stock. The things must be flying of the shelves. If only we'd gotten here sooner.
Things are beginning to get festive back at the apartment.
