My brother was here last week for his birthday. To celebrate, thanks to a very generous gift from my parents, we went to dinner at the Herbfarm. This is a foodie's heaven, where all ingredients are local, most of them grown right on the farm. This restaurant's claim to fame is their 9 course menu that changes every 2 weeks depending on what is in season. Yes, I said 9 courses. But first there is the tour of the garden:






And the recycling bin:



The dining set up is something incredible too. It also allows a fun view of the very busy but very organized kitchen.








I was going to post every single course, but that might be really boring for most of you. So I'm only going post a few. The theme of the dinner was basil. So everything had basil in it somewhere:

There is a very special concert venue 2.5 hours from Seattle that I've been wanting to experience since I moved here. When I heard that Phish was going to play there, I decided it was time to pull the trigger and go. This way I'd be crossing off two things on my list at once - going to the Gorge Amphitheater and seeing a Phish show. Saweet.

You may ask what is so special about seeing Phish? Well, for those of you who do not know, my brother Mark has been obsessed with this band for as long as I can remember. I've always wondered what all the fuss was about. As for what is so special about the Gorge Amphitheater, well, you'll see.

So when you go to the "Gorge," you don't just go for a concert, generally. Camping at least the night after the concert is considered compulsory. This is also the norm when going to Phish shows. Essentially, a tent city of thousands and thousands of people is constructed for 3 days.



It is car camping at its worst. No showers, no privacy, no official "sites" for each vehicle, just plenty of porto pottys. But having said that, people have figured out a way to make it work and be comfortable - even with families. I have to be honest, I had no idea that going to Phish was a family affair.



The campground is a short walk to the concert venue. I knew the amphitheater was gorgeous (no pun intended), but i really wasn't expecting it to be this great.






As the sun goes down, the music starts:






As it gets darker, the scene just becomes that much more awesome:



Also, apparently, Phish fans like to throw things during the concert. Not having been to one before, I was wondering if this was a "Phish" thing, and it is, but I don't know yet if they always throw glow sticks. This was the first time I've ever seen fans throw stuff in approval. Throwing glow sticks at night was actually very cool - it kinda looked like hundreds of shooting stars. I wish i had video, but my batteries died.

On Wednesday I went to my first ever Sounders game. The Seattle Sounders are the city's soccer team. This year has been their inaugural season, and they have drummed up quite a following in very short order. People here have literally gone Sounders crazy.



When the team enters the field for the first time, all sorts of shiny confetti is shot in the air, making the field "sparkly" for the whole game. I never new sparkles were part of soccer, but it was pretty.




I went with the Swedish Cultural Center, who were supporting the new Swede on the team. I can't believe that I lived in NJ for most of my life and the first time paint my face in support of a sports team, I'm on the west coast.

Went on a "do over" hike this weekend. I had done this hike May of last year. I blogged about it, but I'm posting about it again because this experience was totally different due to the fact that there was no SNOW at the end of the hike and there was an actual lake, rather than something frozen over.

On Friday I volunteered as a "beer wench" at the Seafair Beer Garden to raise money for the leukemia and lymphoma society. I had never served beer my entire life - not even in at my college fraternity - so I was very excited. I had so much fun and I loved the fact that I learned how to pour beer from a tap FOR CHARITY. How awesome is that? And based on the "freshman beer" pictured below, I clearly needed this lesson:

Recently it was "Pirate Night" at my weekly sail race. It was a beautiful night and pretty entertaining. No pictures of me as a pirate. No need to have photographic evidence of being a pretty pathetic pirate.

As some of you may have heard, last week was a very hot week in Seattle. In an effort to find some relief from my un-ACed apartment, I went to one of the many city beaches. Having never been to any of Seattle's beaches, I had no idea what to expect. At this one, anyway, there is no real *beach*. Just stone steps leading to Lake Washington. No sand. Just rocks. I ended up sitting on the steps and letting the water lap me. As you can see, the fact that there isn't a beach per se didn't deter lots of people from coming here. The highlight of my beach experience was when the entire beach cheered a young girl as she drummed up the nerve to jump off the high dive.




This beach goer made me look twice. It would never occur to me to wear makeup while swimming..

It has been a while since i've made a self portrait.

So I have a new "big fancy camera" that has a bit of a learning curve. I also don't have my usual filters that i like to use to help me get my skies right. As a result, these pictures from Mt. Rainier and the wildflowers around it are pretty good. No worries, i'll be up to par soon enough, if not better.

Seattle's biggest "traditional" parade (i.e. not one of those where there are naked bicyclists) is the Torchlight Parade, which was this weekend. This parade has all the regular stuff - bands, floats, balloons - what makes it unusual is that it starts just before dusk and continues well after it gets dark. Even though the idea is to have the participants "torch lit" and most didn't really understand that, I still loved the parade. It was so distinctly Seattle - complete with a little rain.





The most Seattle aspect of the parade was the finishers of the parade. Here, we end our parade with pirates. Complete with real canons that they fire (no balls, just blast). It totally feels like they are coming to pillage the city. I wish I had photos of them, but by the time they made it through to where I was watching from, it was totally dark. Grrrr.... argh!

Everybody knows that Seattle has a Space Needle. Not everybody knows that Seattle also has a monorail. This is known for being totally touristy and relatively useless to the locals. Hence why I had not taken it thus far. Now having taken it twice, I can verify that it is indeed very touristy, but still somewhat cool.

Seattle has a salmon ladder, which helps spawning salmon get from the ocean to where they need to go to make babies. This ladder has a viewing room where you can see the salmon doing their level best to make it up the ladder. I had never been there when there were actually salmon running. Not to say that ladder was teeming with fish, but there were a few, so this was a first for me.




Around the fish ladder there are some pretty sculptures and gardens which I really had never paid that close attention to before:

Aaaaaaannnnnnnddd we are back. Thank you for your patience. For those of you who were getting antsy... i am flattered, but there is no need to apply pressure. I only *just* got my camera replaced last week - which was the earliest possible it could have been. I'm not even fully replaced yet.

So in honor of being fully functional for the first time in a month, I did a lot of Seattle things this weekend that were totally new to me. Nice.

This weekend was the Seafood Festival, which I thought was going to be all about seafood. Not really. I mean, there *was* seafood there, but I thought there was going to be endless varieties to sample that you might not otherwise have a chance to. Instead, it was a large street fair with a couple of extras thrown in. Like a climbing wall. In the middle of the street.



A huge salmon throwing up children:



A latino Elvis wearing not one, but TWO different vinyl jumpsuits. I was very impressed that in 90 degree heat, he was able to change suits in under 2 mins. I mean, it takes me longer than that to sometimes remove a wet swimsuit....




Oh, and would you look at who was watching latino Elvis... and no, she was NOT part of the act.



And how can we have a fair in Seattle without this guy... you remember him.. from Folklife over Memorial Day Weekend..