SuperEggplant

I have a favor to ask those of you in the vicinity of a Room&Board furniture store. We’re thinking about ordering one of their couches–the Delancy 72″ (apartment size):

Photo stolen from Room&Board web site
The thing is, we don’t live near a Room&Board, so I have no idea how comfy or nice this couch actually is. This is where the favor comes in. If anyone out there is willing to go and sit on one of these couches and report back to me, say, within the week, I would be very grateful, and I will send you a little goodie box (who said bribery is a bad thing?). Please contact me either by posting a comment or sending an e-mail, and I will reply. Also, I would appreciate any feedback or anecdotes about Room&Board and the quality of their furniture. MERCI BUCKETS.

Living in a big city means lots of choices for fun! Saturday I went to the grand opening of Pix Patisserie’s new location with Action Hero Melissa and my friend Wendy and her two girls:

I took a photo of my croissant and two pieces of chocolate, but the photo actually looked kind of obscene, so I decided to just delete the thing. But hey, here’s a great shot of Lillie enjoying her bubble gum-flavored cotton candy outside of Pix:
Her sister Paulina is not so thrilled by the cotton candy:

Then Sunday was the Portland Marathon. Action Hero Melissa was participating in it, so I went to cheer her on. My brother has volunteered at the marathon for years, so I tracked him down at mile 12. Right when I was giving him his coffee and pastry, Melissa and her friend Michelle went by! Poor Melissa trained her butt off but got injured, so she couldn’t really run. I saw her again at about mile 18 on the St. John’s Bridge, the prettiest bridge in Portland. Here’s the view from the bridge and a shot as I was driving over it:

I then somehow ended up going shopping with my brother. We both bought shoes at REI (and yes, Carolyn, my orthotics fit into them). I also briefly saw my parents. My mother is on medication because she had a wacko reaction to either her flu or pneumonia shot, and my father? Well, he tried to pawn off a rack for miniature souvenir spoons on me. When I declined his offer, he muttered something about “this crazy family.” Ummmm, yeah.

Sunday I spent the entire day unpacking the kitchen. The kitchen is, well, funky, so I ended up leaving most items packed and stored in the basement. We still have quite a few boxes to unpack, but at least this house is bigger, so we can just cram boxes into a spare room and forget about them for a bit.
Anyway, you can probably imagine that I have had no time to knit or crochet or sew or do much of anything. I don’t even remember the last time I picked up knitting needles! Isn’t that terrible? I have, however, managed to shop a bit and discovered some quirky little items to share with you.
Exhibit A:

I was at Nordstrom the other day and saw a big rack of tiny tubes of oddly flavored toothpaste. Can you GUESS what country these are from? Yes, they are from my people. I got grapefruit, powdered green tea (cuz they had more than one flavor of green tea, ya know), and Darjeeling tea. They had quite a few flavors, including pumpkin pudding and some curry flavor. That sounds really gross to me, but hey, I guess if you REALLY like curry …