I N T H E N I G H T K I T C H E N 11.8.2001
Happy Birthday to T. I've been trying and trying to write here about T.'s birthday because I don't want to forget. Invariably, a year goes by and we start going: "What did we do last year?"This year, for his 27th (last Saturday), we played it pretty low-key. For whatever reason, I could barely get my act together to celebrate a birthday and T. seemed to have little idea of how he would like to celebrate or even what he wanted. He ended up with two outdoors books: Hiking Oregon's Geology and Snowshoe Routes of Oregon. The Geology book is pretty cool if you're in to that. It's fairly detailed so that if you're not a total novice you'll still get plenty out of it. There's a primer at the beginning that seemed good enough for getting us through. T. is planning on doing a lot more snowshoeing this winter and wasn't even aware that such a handy book existed so that was a bonus. He got a few other, bigger ticket items that he had specifically asked for. We went and got one on the day since I didn't know exactly what he wanted and didn't want to guess. After we got back from downtown we changed into nice clothes and went to 3 Doors Down Cafe for dinner. 3 Doors Down is this tiny restaurant right off of Hawthorne. There's no reserving a table so we had to wait. We sat outside and looked at the menu and sipped wine. It was chilly out but they had these nice overhead heaters that kept us warm enough. We got a table after not too long and we had already decided that we were going to have grilled skewers of shrimp and mozzarella to start. They were really tasty. For dinner, T. got the pork chop and I got the penne, butternut squash and garlic. Unfortunately, neither one was as good as it could have been. I think that Pasta Veloce's (fast food pasta) penne ala zucca is better and T. thought his chop was overdone. What really kind of killed it though were what appeared to be artichoke hearts on T.'s plate. They were really bitter and peppery and left a taste in my mouth through the rest of the meal. The most interesting thing about the restaurant was how many people they managed to pack in there without it feeling like others were invading your space. Something about the lighting which just worked. The service was really nice, too. After dinner we went home for birthday cake. Actually, it was birthday cheesecake that I made on Saturday. I went looking for some dense chocolate brownie cake to make but then came across this recipe for an autumn cheesecake with cinnamoned apples on top and cinnamon and pecans in the crust. For my first time making a cheesecake, it turned out really well. Mmmmm... I'm drooling just thinking about it. + + + In other news, I'm about completely out of my fucking mind. I've been so depressed lately. I think a lot of it has to do with the weather. It's getting so dark outside so early and its pretty chilly and I feel like I'm always cold. I feel completely listless and unmotivated and pathetic. And, my mind keeps reeling through all the things that I should be doing or could be doing but nothing seems to stick. I have decided one thing, though, the only thing I need to be doing is arranging my office and workspace here at home so that it's fun to be in and it works. It still looks like we barely moved in because I'm a queen procrastinator. I decided this at about 2 a.m. last night when I couldn't sleep and was reduced to watching Craig Kilborn on the Late, Late Show. That's one bad show. So, screw career. Screw school and the utter draining reality of it. Screw getting to the gym and working out. Screw thinking about it all. I'm reworking this office if it kills me. I feel like I should add a harrumph here. HARRUMPH! 
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