Thursday, January 26, 2012

Fun Weekend with Lloyd

Last weekend was non stop fun!  My friend Lloyd flew down from Portland to hang out - it had been entirely too long since he'd been here.

The back story on my friendship with Lloyd is pretty cool, I think.  Many of you know that I used to be a consultant for Lawson Software.  Shortly after I started with them I flew up to the Seattle (Bellevue, actually) office to "back up" another consultant teaching a Procurement class.  It was a private class for a client that had just purchased the software.  Lloyd was a student in that class.  That's how we first met.  Not too long after that class I started consulting at his company.  That gig continued off and on for the entire time I worked for Lawson.  We became great friends and at one point Ken even flew up to Portland while I was consulting and we spent the weekend with Lloyd.  When I left Lawson to work at Sutter Health the friendship didn't end and we've had numerous adventures together since then.  Camping on the Klamath River, multiple trips to the Wine and Seafood Festival in Astoria, visits at our house (including traveling down for one of our big summer pool parties).

So our history is a long one (hard to believe I've known Lloyd now for almost 15 years) and a good one.  And this weekend continues in that same vein.

Friday night we went to Mikuni Sushi in Roseville and absolutely feasted!  (yep - I dropped off the Weight Watcher bandwagon for the weekend - but I'm back on now)

When I asked for more Wasabi the waiter said I must be a big fan of Wasabi so he brought me some fresh Wasabi and some Wasabi relish.  The dish on the right has both, and the one on the left is "plain old Wasabi."  OMG it was delish!

When we got home we made cocktails but had a bit of a mix up.  Somehow one glass got both Rum and Vodka (instead of into two separate glasses) so I thought I'd see if I could make a yummy drink - I added Ginger Ale and a cute stir stick.  It didn't work.  Down the drain it went!

Wouldn't this look great in our bar?

Saturday we had a yummy egg sandwich breakfast with bacon, sausage and the all important Tater Tots!  We needed to work off the food so we took a drive out to Amador and Sutter Creek and walked all over both towns.  We window shopped, Antique shopped, and I even managed to shop for Western "bling" clothes at Romancin-the-range a great shop full of bling!  

There is even a cheese shop in Sutter Creek called Sutter Creek Cheese Shoppe and it was having a cheese tasting.  Of course we went in!  What fun.  I tried multiple varieties and Ken even tried two Blue (Bleu? Blu!) Cheese samples and actually LIKED one of them (and he HATES Blue Cheese).  We ended up purchasing four varieties of cheese, a fresh baked baguette and some pepper salami. 

Rather than going straight out to dinner after our day we stopped at home to sample the cheeses and Lloyd made Kick-butt Manhattans (we'd picked up a bottle of Willett Bourbon (smooth) and Lillet Vermouth (dark) as well as Maraschino cherries for this express purpose).   Both Ken's and my grandparents were represented, too.  The shaker that the Manhattan's were made in was Ken's Grandmother's and the glasses we used were my Grandparent's.


 I decided to take a timed photo so I could be in the picture and forgot that it took three pictures in a row.  The first one we're all posed but this one is the second one where none of us knew it was going to take another picture.  By the third picture we were laughing.


Here's a close up of  our plate with Brie, the hard cheese is Ewephoria (a goat cheese - get it!) and the salami and baguette.  Yumm!

Sunday Lloyd and I went to Old Sac to walk around the shops (in the rain).  We made sure we got home in time to head to a bar so we could watch the 49er National Championship game.  We ended up at the bar in Lucille's - the bartender was a 49er fan and the food was (of course) fantastic.

I'm sure you can see the theme for the weekend - food and fun!  By Monday morning I think we all needed to go to work to rest and shrink our stomachs back to normal size!

We're looking forward to Lloyd's next visit.  Whether it's a trip up to Portland to visit him there, or back down at our house.  We're sure to have fun!


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