Mmm fishy goodness

Tonight, spazzkat, solarbird, and I had what was possibly the best sushi dinner we've ever had the pleasure to eat. I Love Sushi absolutely excelled themselves with the Spanish mackerel (aji), toro, kanpachi with sea salt, and Japanese scallops.

Most notable were the kanpachi and the scallops. The scallops were served to us with one piece plain and the other flame-seared and slathered with a tasty sauce that neither Dara nor I recognized--but whatever it was, it was very, very tasty. Still, it didn't top the kanpachi, which was also served with a plain piece and one fancied up. In this case, the fancy piece had sea salt and a touch of lemon on it. And dear GODS, it was SO. SO. GOOD.

Old favorites like hamachi and albacore were also incredibly good. And we finished off with a tropical roll for 'dessert'--though the chef surprised us with little dishes of satsuma orange pieces to finish off, and that was the final chord of what was a symphony of a meal. That last little burst of flavor cleared the palette so beautifully that to have tried to follow it up with ice cream, as we had been considering, would have been totally anticlimactic.

Two very satisfied thumbs up. We tipped the chefs by forty percent, and ambled out content indeed.

Cross-city journey

Today, I ventured out of the house on my own for the first time since we moved in, and for the first time since my surgery. My quest: to go to the shopping center just down the road and go to the bank, the Rite Aid, and Third Place Books.

It's a nice, leisurely walk from our house, and the good part is that there is a route to the shopping center along residential streets so I don't have to go down to Bothell Way at all--which is good, since the traffic is very heavy along that road. The route I followed took me along some prettily shaded streets that lazily curved and turned their way down towards my destination, and I enjoyed glancing at the various attractive houses I passed. Sure, it's a suburb, but it's a very tree-heavy, rustic suburb, and I'm good with that.

The funny part of the walk, though, was when I reached the boundary between Kenmore and Lake Forest Park. Even on the residential street I was on, there was a bit of a roadblock that spanned about halfway across the road and sported a sign that stated LOCAL ACCESS ONLY and STRICTLY ENFORCED. A few feet in either direction along the street were the signs that said "Welcome to Lake Forest Park" and "Welcome to Kenmore By The Lake".

That is, apparently, the official name of my new town: Kenmore By The Lake. It's on all the official signs. Heh. And it's such a tiny community, too. So's Lake Forest Park, for that matter. Yet, when I went past that little roadblock, I had such an odd feeling as I realized that I was technically going from one city to another to go to a shopping center that's only a few scant blocks away from my house.

But the roadblock really underscored the feel of crossing a border, as though I should have had out my passport, or declared the books I'd bought to a customs guard or something.