Thanksgiving Weekend: I Get Engaged, Eat A Lot, Go To Seattle And See The Supersuckers (Twice).

You heard right.

Strap the ball and chain to my ankle, I'm taking the plunge. Joy and I got engaged on Wednesday night, after a semi-awkward proposal that involved light stammering and heavy sweating on my part. About what I expected from myself. This whole "being an adult" thing is hard work. Sometimes you have to pause the Wii long enough to take care of business. (Preview of our engagement photos above.)

We saw different sides of my family on Thursday and Friday, told them the news, and then drowned our anticipation and fright in heaping plates of butter-slathered mashed potatoes, and stuffing that we confirmed had not actually been inside the turkey. (Laugh it up, you savages.) My family took the news well, tossing out well wishes between hysterical fits of elated bawling. Apparently getting hitched ranks you pretty high on the admiration and respect charts. Should have thought of this sooner...

Friday night we headed up to Seattle for a planned trip to see the Supersuckers 20th Anniversary show on Saturday night, but at this point it also felt quite celebratory, so we ran with it. Our glee was dampened but not completely crushed when we arrived at our hotel to find they had fucked up our reservations. Our king bed quickly turned to a queen, our balcony to a sidewalk that could only be accessed by leaving the room, walking down the hall, and exiting the building. Romance was a-brewin'!

We made up for the weakness of the room by having what turned out to be the best meal I'd eaten in a year. While walking around looking for a restaurant, we stumbled upon the Palace Kitchen, a darkly lit building on a corner that looked cozy and calm. The prices on the menu let us know that, for this moment, we were high class. I carefully removed my windbreaker and assumed the posture of a man who might just know what bresaola is.

If you've never had goat cheese and lavender fondue with apples and grilled bread, you are not really living, friends. We followed that with entrees. Joy had the root vegetable pot pie, and I went for the golden beet ravioli with sugar encrusted walnuts. My novice palate was outclassed by this food. We finished the meal with a cake that involved pomegranate and something else that shouldn't have complemented it but did, and now I can't remember what that was.

We spent Saturday kicking around Market St. in Ballard, which it turns out is a pretty sweet place to waste some time. Highlight of the day: lucking into Sugartown Vintage, a store that had way too much cool shit to handle. Made me realize again how bad Portland's Red Light sucks. Anyway, I bought Joy an awesome glittery baseball-style Toyota Celica shirt, and she bought me this gem:
I'll pause so you can drink in the sheer splendor of this piece of clothing. Yeah, it's a winner. And it was "one size fits all," so I was good to go.

We took in a Supersuckers in-store performance (intricate details of all that here) and then headed downtown, where we went on the Seattle Underground Tour, which was only fun because our guide was out of her mind. After that we went to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and had the best candied apples in the history of society.

The rest of the evening was spent, again, with the Supersuckers, which again, is all explained right here.

So that's what's been going on with me.