July – 2008 – dsz123

I had a great, if quick, trip to the East Coast and got back on Thursday night. I was in Boston, northwest Connecticut, New Haven, Manhattan, and Boston again, all in the span of 7 days, and saw tons of people (in large part, because of Tova & Pete’s wedding) along the way. I’d say look for pictures soon, but I seem to be pretty bad at putting up photos these days, so don’t hold your breath.

I was a little jealous of all my frisbee friends heading off to Against the Grain this weekend in Oregon, but I probably would have been unhappy to travel again so soon, and it’s been a great weekend in Seattle so far. I installed a new light fixture in my kitchen, played some frisbee, spent some quality time with friends, and made it to the farmers’ market this morning on Capitol Hill.

While at the farmers’ market, I finally got to sample some Half Pint Ice Cream, which was great. The proprietress comes from Jamaica Plain (home of JP Licks), and she knows her ice cream. The chocolate-orange this morning was as good as Berthillon in Paris, previous holder of the “best chocolate-orange ice cream” title. Half Pint takes it away ’cause it’s significantly closer.

With the arrival of Molly Moon’s, Half Pint, and now Full Tilt Ice Cream in White Center, I’m declaring the ice cream drought in Seattle officially over. Since I first arrived three years ago (really, three years?!), it’s been my biggest complaint about Seattle. Guess I need a new complaint!

I had an amazing 4th of July weekend, starting out with a trip to Safeco Field for a Mariner’s game, followed by three fantastic days at Potlatch, and capped by a stellar dinner at The Dahlia Lounge Sunday night.

Potlatch was spectacular, in many ways. Our team, DarkHorse, was pretty high profile – we had great jerseys (nice work, Drew), won some big games (one against the Canadian champs, who’d just beaten Shazam, the current US champs), and partied hard. We ended up coming in ninth out of about a hundred teams, and were pretty satisfied with that outcome.

I was amused to see this article in the NY Times yesterday. Matt (the subject of the article) came to a company lunch a year and a half ago, and we all chatted about his travels & dancing. In fact, there’s a pretty great video somewhere of my whole company up on our newly constructed skateboard halfpipe in our new office space doing the “Matt Harding” dance and looking foolish – I’ll have to dig that up. His story is a great one as far as I’m concerned – he’s made a great life for himself, and taken a very unconventional route to get there.

And in ice cream news, I made some fantastic rhubarb-strawberry ice cream for some friends’ birthdays over the weekend. Not hard at all (just cook the rhubarb down with some sugar, and then mix with cream, a little more sugar, and chopped strawberries), and very tasty. The extra sugar helps the ice cream stay soft, but it isn’t too sweet in the end ’cause of the rhubarb. And it looks like Seattle has another homemade ice cream source: Half Pint sells cones at the Capitol Hill Farmers’ Market on Sundays from 11-3. I’ll be checking them out next weekend since I’m headed out of town tonight for a week.

My good friend Tova is getting married this weekend, and I’m headed back to the East Coast for a whirlwind week-long vist. I’m looking forward to seeing friends & family, a trip to my family’s place in Connecticut, pizza at the Village Oven, plenty of ice cream, the not-that-new-anymore ICA, and of course, the wedding.