mary's festival of F-U-D

the reason that we haven't been writing as much this week is because we're still digesting all the food we ate during mary's visit. in an effort to increase her limited palate, mary decided to make a goal of eating titally different kinds of meals every single night. maybe we spent a ton of money on being foodies, but it was worth the expense to eat that well. french, thai, russian, ethiopian, japanese... the list just kept on going! we had a well-rounded adventure of culinary delights that finished in a translucent sack of grease at dick's drive in.

mary got somewhat overwhelmed when i took her to the world of spice over by the public market. it was my special trip plan for her; knowing that she's on the way to becoming a fabulous chef, i thought she'd go nuts. well, she did go nuts, but in a way that left her drooling on the couch from sensory overload. i think the thing that did it was when the staff started roasting spices while we were having tea with leslie.

oh, and she made me a new friend! leslie is one of mary's online friends that she'd never met in person. we decided to take a ferry over to bremerton to meet up with her and had a terrific day. leslie and i chatted on forever while mary was trying to recover from the spice shop and then we met up with her husband for irish food and drinks. she doesn't even think i'm that abrasive! she even called the next day! we are supposed to get together for lunch downtown one day next week and i can bring her the gift mary bought in canada.

did i mention we got a wild hair and drove up to vancouver? list of things done: sushi, shoes, soap, smokes, souvenirs. if it's starts with an s, we nabbed it. funny how the border peeps look at you funny when you tell them you drove to canada for lunch. don't they ever hear that? they did sound a little impressed with the plates on the car being all the way from oklahoma, though. (no i still haven't changed them and i don't want to if i can get away with it.) mary almost got smuggled over the border until they finally noticed her sitting in the backseat waving her passport around. here is my question... why do all the buildings in downtown vancouver look exactly the same? on our way out we almost got blinded by the way the sun was bouncing off the super shiny rectangular monoliths. seriously, they're like building clones. how odd.

while mary was here she also got to meet some of my new peeps. milana and linda and bonnie all think she's just adorable. i suppose they can see some of the rest of our personalities coming out when mary is around me and derek. having someone around who has a few inside jokes and old stories with you can really make you feel more like yourself. i hadn't even realized how long it had been since we'd been together! since the last time we saw one another, several people have seen each of us, just not together. i suppose it's kind of like when you're around food all day and your brain tricks you into thinking you've been eating. you can't figure out why you're still hungry and faint. you're sure you must have had something for a nibble, but you've really just been tasting and smelling and watching other people dine. well now we've been eating well for a week, both metaphorically and literally.

more posting to come! see? we really did get out a do a lot while she was here. and who cares if the glass museum was about to close when we got there? our wandering around and having fun doing sort of nothing abilities are epic. keep an eye on mary's blog over the weekend for the photos of fun and frolic. maybe i can get derek to put a little something up about his birthday and how we forced him to take a day off work, even though he brought his laptop with him on the road trip.


the last thing we did before taking mary to the airport:
sang along to the movie josie and the pussycats!