Good evening to you all! I'm finally getting around to telling you all about my super secret trip to Seattle to visit Julianne. It was only a secret because I had schemed with one of my best friends Rachel's husband, Peter, to surprise her when I was coming down to Sacramento for my holiday visit. It totally worked too. :) Ok let's cut to the chase here. I left on a Sunday morning, I had a 1pm flight outta JFK to Seattle. And it was raining. It's nice coming back to the west coast and gaining back that three hours. The flight was great, and when I landed, Julianne swooped me up from the airport and took me straight to eat some delicious seafood. And it was also raining. Which is all I wanted to do while in Seattle. :) She took me to a well known seafood spot looking over the water called Salty's on Alki. The hostess told us she put us in the nicest table in the restaurant, it was right in the corner with big windows, sadly it was dark, but oh well. We had oysters to start, then a crab louie, and then for the main course I had lobster stuffed halibut. YES. God my mouth is watering again just thinking about it. And for some stupid reason I have no pictures of my food. Im sorry I failed you guys. After dinner, Julianne took me to her apartment in West Seattle. I dropped off my crap and we walked down the street to where she works, Zeeks Pizza.

When people say New York has the best pizza, I really have to disagree on this one. Ive had far better pizza in California, and Zeeks was some of the best pizza I've had in some time. New York is all about the thin crust, so you really can't pile on the toppings like you can with these pizzas. One half of the pizza was veggie, and the other was greek, my favorite. And yes, we ate this after we had dinner. I just had to try. I met a few of Julianne's co workers and had a few beers and relaxed. Afterwards we went next door to the bar called Feedback. I really enjoyed it, was a rock and roll bar with artisan cocktails and homemade syrups, and framed photos of Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, the prince of seattle? Im making that one up. We called it an early night, I only had one full day in Seattle and I didn't want to spend it being hungover...

The next morning we got up early and Julianne said there was a bus we could catch that would take us downtown to the space needle, and if we happened to have a few cocktails along the way, then no one would have to worry about getting behind the wheel of a car. Plus spending the last nine months in NYC, I've definitely become accustomed to using public transportation. Our adventure to find the correct bus was pretty hilarious. Google maps was wrong, all the bus stops were wrong, so we ended walking to about 7 different bus stops to find the right one. But, we did get on a bus. The buses we huge and new and kinda fancy. Perfect way to see a lot of the city. Everything looked very industrial, lots of ships being loaded and unloaded. It was again cold and dreary. But I think we all know that's the norm in Seattle.

The bus dropped us off about 5 blocks from the space needle. This thing is huge!

The bottom of the space needle was a gift shop, and you had to make a reservation to take the uber-fast elevator to the top. Julianne had made reservations for us to have lunch at Sky City, the rotating restaurant at the top of the needle.

These are shots from the lookout deck at the top. Cloudy and foggy, but still so pretty.

Julianne and myself. :)

The Sky City restaurant was very nice, and verrrry pricey. The whole restaurant floor rotates, but subtlely enough where you wouldn't get sick or nauseous. I think I heard one of the servers there say it takes about 45 minutes for it to make a complete rotation. Also, our server who was waiting on us was also from Sacramento. It's a small world wherever we go...haha.

I went for the halibut fish and chips with truffle french fries, keeping with my seafood theme for the 36 hours I was in Seattle. Julianne had a big ass bloody cheeseburger with duck confit fries. (AMAZING.) No diet food here. Accompanied with champagne of course. (SO what, I'm on vacation...) ;-)

After lunch we took a walk down to the famous Pike Place Market. Pike's Place is a public marketplace that only sells local produce, meat, olive oils, homemade jams, seafood, and homemade crafts and everything else you can possibly think of. I was in seafood heaven. Everyone was so eager for you to sample all their foods. Lots of hippies, which was awesome. You don't get to see too many out here in NYC.

We walked into Beecher's, a cheese shop, and watch them make cheese, another one of my favorite things to eat. Nothing like getting cheese that fresh.

This is the flagship Starbucks. The very first one ever. Pretty cool, but since I don't care for coffee, we took a picture and kept walking. The guy playing banjo outside was pretty good.

The awesome thing about Pike's Market was they had a lot of vendors selling fresh seafood, and nothing smelled fishy. It was all so tremendously fresh. I wish I could of somehow brought some back with me...

At the very end of Pike's Market, Julianne asked me if I wanted to check out the gum wall. Not really knowing what she meant by this, I was surprised. Kinda gross, kinda awesome. There was gum EVERYWHERE.

And you better believe I contributed.

After the gum wall, we decided to take a pit stop and have a beer. The Pike Pub was big restaurant/brewery with all local stuff. We were full from eating lunch and several samples, and I guess the gum wall really isn't the most appetizing experience. Haha.

Our next adventure was the Seattle Great Wheel, which is a fairly new addition to Pike's Market. It's huge.

We bought our tickets, which were about 10-15 dollars each. There was hardly anyone there and we had no wait. The little pods they put you in aren't like your old school ferris wheels. You couldn't escape this thing if you tried.

But you got some sick views of the city.

Cruise ships

Looking back down on the marketplace.

After our four rounds on the ferris wheel, Julianne and I had worked up and appetite. At this point it was around 4pm, so we wandered back towards Pike's Market to find a cool spot to grab some oysters and some wine.

We were going to stop at the Crab Pot, but the locals told us it wasn't good, a really gimmicky. So we took an awesome picture instead.

Some gift shop employees recommended we check out this place Iver's, which they said had a great happy hour. And they did. We got a ton of west coast oysters (that were actually very delicious, Im kind of an east coast oyster snob) and a bottle of chardonnay for half price.

After talking to the bartender for some time, he asked us if we wanted to try some osyer shooters. I have never had one before, and you can either have them with booze or without. He told us he had infused vodka with fresh jalapenos, cilantro and lime juice, and it was perfectly complementary with the oyster shooters. So, I think you can figure out what we chose. For those who don't know, and oyster shooter is an oyster, cocktail sauce, and lemon juice. All I have to say is that it was a very interesting experience. Im not big on spicy stuff, and the jalapeno vodka was crazy spicy, and the oysters weren't fresh schucked (we figured they were out of a jar or something) and they were massive. I think Im going to stick to oysters on the half shell...

After oyster happy hour we walked down to another restaurant called Cutters, for some more wine and more seafood. We had a few appetizers and shared a creme brulee, and called a cab to take us back to Julianne's apartment. Julianne at this point was hell bent on getting me to watch an episode of Honey Boo Boo.

Julianne had some cans of Ranier Beer in her fridge, a Pacific Northwest staple. Pretty much PBR quality for those who have never tried it. I tried to watch Honey Boo Boo and I couldn't. It was just terrible... We ended up making some homemade kale chips and some stove top popcorn and listening to music the rest of the evening. So in my 36 hour trip to Seattle, it was great. I saw a lot, drank a lil, and ate a TON of seafood. Early the next morning Julianne dropped me off at the airport and I was on my way to California to spend the week in Sacramento to see my friends and family.

It was nice to be home and see everyone but I was very excited to get back to New York. After nine months here on the east coast, it truely is beginning to feel like home. :-)

So, unless you don't talk to me on a regular basis, or don't know me at all, lemme fill you in on something. I LOVE CLASSIC ROCK. But I don't just love it, Im simply obsessed with it. There was one person in particular that I have ALWAYS wanted to see. And lets just say, I saw him on the grandest stage of them all, TEN FEET FROM THE STAGE. Who is it you ask? Allman Brothers? Nope, but I have seen them in 4 different states now. CSN? Good guess, but I did just seem them again at the Beacon Theatre in NYC where they played their entire debut album from 1969 in its entirety, which they have never done before. It was amazing in case you were wondering. Hmm, who else, Fleetwood Mac? Seen em, but they are coming to NYC in April, and I'm pretty sure I will be going. Simon and Garfunkel? Nope, seen em. Joni Mitchell? God I wish, a girl can dream. Rod Stewart? Seen em. Moody Blues? LOVE me some moody blues, but nope, seen em. Paul McCartney? AGH I WISH. Ok I'm starting to run away with myself. But I'm sure by now you've either grown bored of my incessant talk of the oldies or just simply scrolled down to see who it is. AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN IT'S NONE OTHER THAN NEIL YOUNG!!!!!!!!! NEIL YOUNG!!!!!!!!!! NEEEEEEEEIIIIILLL FREAKIN' YOUNG!!!!!!!

I was having a little anxiety coming up to this concert, because as I said, it was on the grandest stage of them all, Madison Square Garden. One can only dream of seeing a concert here. I was late to the game on buying tickets, and ticketmaster seats for lower level were well over $300. I was beginning to think this dream was not going to become a reality. But I always have stupid good luck buying concert tickets, especially last minute. I went on stubhub and found a floor general admission ticket, just one, for an above modest price, but what I was willing to pay to see my freakin' hero! (I enjoy saying "freakin" a lot now cause it's a big NY word, ha) I had it Fedex'ed to me overnight. Being that it was a general admission ticket I knew I would have to get there very early to get in line, otherwise my chances of being close to the front would diminish every minute I was late. So I packed a book, and got there two hours early. I was surprised because there were only about 30 people in front of me. Once they let us in we had to stand in another line, and let small groups of people in at a time. Needless to say, I was one of the first groups to be let in. And you better believe I RAN to the front. And guess what. I was front row.

You're now probably wondering who is in the pictures above. No, Neil Young has not become a haggard looking old woman, that is Patti Smith, who was opening for Neil. And let me tell you something, she might be a haggard looking woman, but she can still rock. Her and her band were incredible. During songs she would preach about peace and love and kindness, which in San Francisco, where I'm used to seeing shows, it would be well received. People in New York really didn't seem to go for it, and were screaming at her to shut the fuck up. But I thought it was awesome.

After Patti Smith's set, this group of maniacal looking mad scientists came running out to the stage to set up for Neil Young. I think the title of his new album "Psychodelic Pill" had something to do with it...

And finally, the moment you've been waiting for.........NEIL YOUNG AND CRAZY HORSE! They came ready to rock. It was Jimi Hendrix's birthday that day, so Crazyhorse was wearing a Jimi t-shirt. It was an extremely rock heavy psychadelic set.

Being that I was ten feet away from these guys, I can tell you for sure that these guys prove that age means NOTHING. They still sound amazing. Incredible. Incendiary.

Another thing I also noticed at this concert was how respectful the audience was. No one was talking, no one was recording the entire concert on their iphone, no one was pushing and shoving or trying to get in front of me. And those things never happen...

In the middle of his set, one of the crazy looking mad scientist guys came out with a stack full of newspapers and started wadding them up and throwing them in front of this giant fan, and blowing them across the stage. I later realized why. Neil came out solo and did a few acoustic songs like "Needle and the Damage Done", which is one of my favorites.

In between some of the songs Crazyhorse was throwing out what we thought were guitar pics, but they turned out to be cheez-its...

I left with my ears ringing a smile on my face. Id hate to say it, but I think I might of just seen the best concert ever. :-) Oh and funny thing: the day after the concert, Neil Young was on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, wearing the exact same outfit. Awesome.

Thanksgiving!!!! My sincerest apologies for the lack of posts this past month. The holiday season has been quite hectic. Finally getting around to telling you guys all the fun we had on thanksgiving. And here it goes......... My work is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. So, I figured I'd be working on thanksgiving. But by some grace of god I had the day off! Except one thing...I had to work until 430am Thanksgiving morning. Talk about rough. Especially cause Bryan, Jeannine and Mike were meeting me at my apartment at 6am to go to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. So yea, the picture above is Jeannine and I, and me being on about 45 minutes of sleep. Those bags under my eyes are not so sexy.

Getting there was madness. There were people everywhere, who had even gotten there hours before we did to get a spot up front. The parade itself went along for miles, and took about two full hours.

It's so much different seeing the parade in person because the balloons are absolutely huge. I don't remember if they show it on tv or not, but it takes upwards to 50 people to hold these balloons from blowing away. Some of them we thought were GOING to blow away. In person you can also see all the patches and flaws in them, but some of them are years and years old.

Bryan and I

It was acutally kinda cute hearing the anticipation of the kids on which balloon was going to come up next. "OH MY GOD MOM IT'S BUZZ LIGHTYEAR!!!"

After the parade was over, we said goodbye to Jeannine and Mike who were going to Mike's parents house for dinner in Nutley, NJ. Bryan and I had done a ton of grocery shopping the prior days and had a few hours of dinner preparation ahead of us. (Keep in mind I'm still running on 45 minutes of sleep...) We take the train up to his apartment in Queens, pour ourselves a glass of much deserved champagne, and snack on some cheese and crackers. My friend Tasha and her boyfriend Leo sent me a late text telling me they were joining us for Thanksgiving dinner so Bryan and I went in the kitchen and starting cooking up a freakin' storm. I took a 20 minute power nap and they arrived.

We kept a pretty tradional thanksgiving menu, with the exception of our two tofurkeys.... :) We made a green bean casserole, homemade cranberry juice with fresh orange zest, potatoes, carrots, rice, homemade mash potatoes, stuffing and gravy.

Tasha and Leo joined us and it was very nice. It was different not being home with my family but I think we did a great job with dinner, and I had amazing company to share it with. :-)