All weekend I’ve been planning to edit and post photos from our trip to Toronto (almost wrote “trip to vacation”) but the weekend has been so busy that suddenly it’s nearly bedtime on Sunday evening and the farthest I’ve managed to get is opening Photoshop.
Jet lag seems to be pretty much gone…just the dregs of it left, but that could be regular afternoon fatigue. I can’t believe I have to work 5-day weeks from now until eternity. We had all these short weeks in spring; it was crazy! Like 6 in a row or something and now? Nothing until CHRISTMAS. Suck. It’s inhumane, that’s what.
Thursday was book group and it was really fun. We read a book I recommended, and which I bought nearly a year ago and had to sit on until just before book group for fear of reading it too early and forgetting everything before the actual discussion. Instead, I started reading it a week before and nearly didn’t get it done in time thanks to traveling and jet lag and playing with my new iPad, that I got for my birthday. I actually read the last 2 chapters 20 minutes before I had to leave to get to book group. Anyway, it was good and the discussion was fun and it was great to see everyone again. Felt like I’d been gone forever!
Then Friday, the Wonders took my out for my birthday. I think that is the last of my birthday celebrations, since I decline to throw a big birthday party for myself. It’s too late for that. I’ll have to wait until my 60th. (now THERE’S a scary thought: 60. Sheesh!) We started with a canal boat tour in Malmö, which up until a year ago I had never done. It was chilly but fun. Debbie had bought kanelbullar and hot chocolate for us to carry along. Then we walked through Malmö to a sushi place that I’ve been wanting to try since it opened a couple of years ago. Everyone who has been there swears it’s the best sushi on the planet and it’s won piles of awards.
I tried to book it once for an AWC sushi night and they were rude as hell to me and refused because they said 10 people would “fill the whole place”…whatever. They have plenty of room so whoever I talked to was full of shit. Anyway, they have what they call a “taste menu” which provides a little bit of everything from the various parts of the menu, but it’s all basically chef’s choice, and it cost 500 kronor per person PLUS the waitress told us everyone at the table had to order it because it takes 2 hours. They wouldn’t let just me order it. So we all chose a la carte instead.
They have “japas” (japanese tapas) but nothing on the menu really tells you what’s involved and they have no list of sushi pieces or rolls. Just “10 pieces”, “15 pieces”, etc. We all ordered an appetizer and 2 of us ordered one that just said “calf/chicken w/noodles”. It turned out to be a bowl of chicken broth with noodles and snow peas sliced longways and 2 HUGE slices of fried beef tongue.
URK.
Debbie said it was delicious, and I should try it, but I couldn’t get past the look of it. It LOOKED like a slice of tongue. I couldn’t bring myself to eat it, though I managed the noodles and veggies. Wimp!
Then we got our sushi, and mine was a california roll with shrimp and something I don’t remember on top, and a salmon roll with sausage chips in/on it. It was really good, but I was super glad that I specified because the chef’s choice that the others got turned out to be picked herring rolls, and baby squid. Yuck. Mine was tasty but I didn’t think the place was that great, frankly. Still, I was really glad to finally get there!
We all had a laugh at the bathroom in the restaurant, though. It was quite a big room, decorated in a woodland theme, with photo wallpaper of tall dark trees and mossy ground all around. And then logs and antlers and such around the floor with candles and right by the toilet was a taxidermied fox. It was so dark in the room that he looked very alive and we all expected him to move. But the most startling thing was that as you sat down on the toilet, facing the door, you saw up in the corner (behind the door, so you didn’t see it when you came in) a big plush stuff moose head glaring down on you.
After dinner, we headed back down through Malmöfestivalen to Lillatorg and ended up at Pronto, a cheesecake dessert cafe on the square. It started pouring rain again just after we arrived so we went inside to the second floor. I had a delicious New York Classic cheesecake piled with strawberries and white chocolate. Yum! We hung out there and talked for a couple of hours, partly because 2 of us were waiting for our kids who were at the big last-day concert on Stortorget. My gift from the Wonders, in addition to the lovely evening, was a gift certifcate to the opera house! I get to pick between Doctor Zhivago, Aida, American Idiot and a couple of others! SQUEE!
Tomorrow is the first AWC meeting of the season and we have some serious recruiting to do for the board, since elections are in one month and we still have 4 positions to fill…including, hopefully, mine, so I can step down for awhile. I’ve been on the board, with one 1-year break, for 16 years. I think it’s time someone else stepped up, don’t you?
Goodness knows, I could use the time to edit photos.