My Seattle Spring Fling

Dashing Off

Thursday dawned with me majorly excited. It was finally time for my annual Seattle Spring Fling. Seattle is my sister city. I love it there and my dear dear Mellie is there not to mention Icon Grill, Joey's, and the Supes. I woke up stressed because I still had grown things to do before I caught the plane. It was time for the BEA Committee Meeting which starts at 8:30 in the morning and meant I had to pack my bags, load up the car and head to the meeting so I could make my plane out of Long Beach. It was cool I wasn't stressed. What did disturb me is that 1). Everyone at the meeting knows I'm a professional but since I was getting on a plane I had to attend in my Bebe Warmup Suit with the rhinestones down the sides and my retro patent leather J's and 2). The woman who chairs the committee and is older than my mother had on jeans that had rhinestones down the sides too. Sigh. Meeting adjourned. I dash out and hit the airport. Long Beach is a teeny tiny airport so security is never an issue and I'm assured that they will take care of my Luggage and that all of the Louis clan will arrive intact. However, I have to acknowledge a member of the family on retirement. The lovely vintage train case that has travelled around the world several times and was finally done in by Alaska Airlines did not accompany her sister and brother on this outing. I successfully packed my toiletries in the super secret compartment of Roller Louis without sacrificing my fashionista gear! Yaaay me! What I managed to forget due to overcrowding is the famous Airline Facial Kit which meant I was going to get off the plane looking like the mayor from Roger Rabbit after he had been revealed as a Toon. Oh well. I got through most of the flight due to a good book "I Know this much is True" by Wally Lamb. Its emotional and I've read it a ton of times but its one of the most touching stories ever written. I also had my trusty Zune and its 5000 tunes to keep me rocking while I read and slept off and on. Two women who were sisters sat behind me on the plane and they were in their 80s. One lived in LA and one in Seattle. They prattled on about days gone by and how much fun they had. It made me smile a bit as I thought that one day that would be me and Mel! Just not in polyester pants and orthopedic shoes. The plane touched down finally and I sprinted to the baggage claim because natch my stomach was all up in knots about whether my baggage would be there. Roller Louis came down but duffle Louis was a no show AGAIN as the carousel stopped. Lights started flashing and I immediately whipped out the mobile to tell Mel of my plight. As I was weaving my tale of woe about my shoes, a guy who was in down for the opening of Razor Clam Season (seriously) and who had greasy hair and one tooth said "Relax they're just shoes". I would expect that from someone who's baggage included a shovel and rubber boots. I tried to ignore him but he kept leering/smiling at me. I? Do not look like a Razor Clam so I'm not sure why. Finally, Duffle Louis made her appearance and all was right with the world as she not only housed my shoes but my workout clothes, purses, and other acoutrements. Mellie whipped around and scooped me up and the giggles began. We headed over to get our toes and nails done (polish change for me; mani pedi for Mel) and began plotting what to eat first.

Not Starting Off Well

While I love Mellie dearly, I'm also partial to the food choices here in the Emerald City. I live off of Icon Grill's Mac n Cheese. They have a sister restaurant which serves the same menu called Zephyr Grill. Since we were in Kent we decided to have our Crack N Cheese there. I ordered Bruschetta and Crack along with the famous Orange Drop. The Orange Drop didn't disappoint, however the bruschetta tasted like sewage and then woe of all woes, my Crack N Cheese came out with my favorite extra tomato snow but something was wrong with the tomatoes too. I immediately began to worry about the tomato crop in the United States which made me worry about me because I love tomatoes and my life would definitely be empty without them. We sadly plowed through our food but couldn't finish she took the food off of the bill so we drank more. We then headed over to the cutest little salon for our nails and toes. Its called Peridot and its adorable. I had one of the best polish changes ever and we met two girls who looked like they were seniors in high school but were actually on their third tour going to Iraq. They had gotten "Stop Lossed" which was crazy because I had just seen that movie and am still outraged. We had a very frank discussion and wished them well. Those girls will be in my prayers. They were so adorable and full of life and I'm saddened that they have to go back....God Speed!

At this point I was starting to feel the effects of my 5:30 am wake up call and Mellie needed a nap too. We had planned to see this R&B singer she knew about who is awesome so we headed to Bellevue to nap. I woke up not feeling so well but we pushed on. I really wish I would have been feeling better because Michael is an amazing musician and I now will always include a Thursday night in my itinerary because i want to see him ALL of the time. AMAZING. By the end of the night I was wheezing pretty heavily and starting to feel a bit of the familiar pains and I needed to get to bed. Plane rides are hard for Fibromyalgia sufferers. By 2 AM I was dying; we called my physician who prescribed an inhaler over th ephone but Walgreen's was not cooperating. Mellie rushed me to the hospital where I could barely stand. They took me right away and my breathing was down to 60 normal is above 300. I got some breathing treatments and some prescriptions and all was right with the world again. I forget how for granted we take a simple thing like breathing until you can't do it. We headed back to the house and slept off the worry. Friday dawned and I was still a little shaky but way better, thank god.

The Adventures of a Naughty Nurse and an 80s Coke Whore

Friday was the day of the Supes game against the Houston Rockets. We also had a Black and White Party to go to with very confusing instructions. Apparently in email invite #1 it was black and white attire with special vip entrance to invited guests who wore red. I was very nervous about this while I was still in LA because I have no red dresses that are party attire. I have red dresses that are cocktail party attire but not get your boogie on appropriate. Email invite #2 goes out and the red dress plans were squashed and we're back to black and white which was perfect because I had a sexy white dress. Mellie, who's been plotting to wear her 80s coke whore red dress since her trip to LA a few months ago, was still planning on red.

MAC introduced a new makeup line and it being a party night, Mellie had made arrangements for our makeup to be professional which is cool I'm always up for a Mac Makeover. My favorite Seattle artist was busy and I got stuck with the one with pimples on her chin which worried me. I mean you're in the beauty industry and you want to smear things on my face but your face is looking a little suspect. I sucked it up and she did a good job and even made some good recommendations, I still want to recommend Epicuren to her. We did some LIGHT shopping and had a quick snack then headed to the house to change for the game.

Prior to the game we decide to hit up Mainstage which is a bar across the street from the Supes Arena for some drinks. I have no idea what to order so we end up with Mai Tais with extra thimbles of rum.......so its going to be THIS kind of weekend! Flashes of Mel's BDay Week come swimming in my Percocet affected head and I start to giggle. While we are enjoying our drinks, a guy who looks like Anthony Edwards from "ER" starts chatting with Mellie. Now Mellie is a season ticket holder and she frequents this place so I figure she knows him.....Nope! He was a random guy. He starts talking about patients so naturally I ask if he's a doctor he says yes I'm a chiropractor and starts prattling on about how he's a real doctor and has a house in Magnolia and an ex wife who costed him a bundle but he's a real doctor. He buys us drinks which we were leary of but free drinks are free drinks. Apparently he's a regular the bartender knew him and the owners are "patients". I think some girl ended up in his freezer in that house in Magnolia but that's just me. We headed over to the game by halftime and I'm not quite sure who won. We left prior to the finish because we had to get tarted up for the evening. Our usual hotel change plan was not an option as our clothes were a little too hooker to change into in a hotel bathroom. We stopped over at the house to change into: The 80s Coke Whore and The Naughty Nurse:

When I first bought the dress it didn't dawn on me that I would look qualified to give a hot sponge bath but it worked and I looked hot. We were definitely stunners and dressed for all of the shenenigans that ensued..mostly caused by us. After scoring rock star parking in front of the club we head in and Mellie is told she gets a VIP band because she has on red. I'm like but the rules changed and the lady was like I know it was confusing you can have a wrist band too which was good because my lip was way poked out. We check our coats and head for the bar upstairs in the VIP. The alcohol for the night was rum since we had started out with Mai Tais and neither of us wanted to be sick. I got Mango Rum with Cherry Coke...yummmm and we were off. We posted up on the balcony to watch the ridiculousness slowly unfolding on the dancefloor.

The DJ at the club was EXCELLENT and I even walked away with a free mix CD which was so hot I had to send him a text message of how good a job they did. He and his posse were totally taken with us and bought us drinks for most of the night which was cool because they were drinks with NO STRINGS!!! We made many song requests one of which sadly could not be filled but will make it to the next party! As the club filled, so did the dance floor. It was interesting to see everyone's play on Black and White. On party posse decided to go "Sporty Spice" and dress alike complete with White trimmed black shades...not a good look. Then wonders of wonder a rather large fellow sporting black and white stripes begins a scary dance on the floor reminiscent of the "got to get away" guy on the southwest commercial who knocks over the DJ booth. By this time Mel and I have put away a significant number of drinks so we start throwing dollars down from the balcony...why I don't know it seemed the natural thing to do. The guy is so into his dancing he doesn't see the slight snow flurry and so the dollars kind of fall to the way side. One of the Black and White posse sees the dollar and she tries to play off picking it up by doing the "how low can you go" dance but when she gets as far as her flexibility will take her she still to far away from the dollar to pick it up inconspicuously so she dances away and we giggle. Then a guy shamelessly picks up the dollar and slides it into his pocket. Well now I'm indignant it wasn't meant for him. I hand Mellie my purse and strut downstairs. I walk up to the guy noticing the smile spreading across his face as this hot girl approaches him and I ask him "Did you just pick up a dollar?" His smile fades and he looks embarassed I was like, "it came from up there, it was for that guy, put it back.". He smiles and agrees. He asks if he can buy me a drink and I say no just put the dollar back on the floor please and prance back upstairs. By time I get there he still has not replaced the dollar so Mellie goes down to have a little tet a tet with him. He finally gives her the dollar. These two guys who had been upstairs with us watching this unfold are in hysterics by this time and are like that guy will never pick money up off the floor again. I agree. We got lots of laughs but the night was far from over. One thing about Seattle is that the luminaries of the town are fairly accessible, its like LA used to be before Paria and Lindsay hit the town. Its not uncommon for sports stars to mingle with the regular crowd and its not a super red velvet rope kind of place which is cools and makes it less stressful to be at a party. However, for us its still usually kind of hectic because of the sheer nature of who we are and the fact that our social circle tends to run in the same direction as the luminaries. There is one basketball player and his entourage who are always where we are. I just want to take these boys shopping because I'm only here 4 times out of the year and they tend to wear the same clothes to the parties and games everytime I'm here. There is always the question of whether they would be recognized or not because they made sure to wear red to ensure they would get into VIP....LOL! Anyway, we watched them flit from groupie to groupie for an hour or so laughing at the desperation and then laughing harder when the actual basketball player tried to go into the "little vip" and was asked where his wristband was while trying to explain to the bouncer who he was. He eventually had to pull out his id while little tiny guys freely bounced in and out of that little room unfettered....ha ha lol!

Back at the balcony, I began to smell something vaguely familiar. A cloyingly sweet yet annoying smell I recognized from yesteryear. It was coming from my right side so I turned in that direction and found myself face to face with a Jheri Curl. Wow! It was glistening and juicy. I didn't even know they still made products to keep that look tight! I tried to convince Mellie to take a picture but she wouldn't cooperate. Obviously we needed more drinks which we did. For some reason a guy in a sweater vest aka "youngblood" from Dead Presidents kept taking hunks out of Mellie's butt when he walked by and eventually she told him off. He stared glazed eyes at her and told me that my friend was scared I was like not quite just turned off! He didn't understand. We took a lap around the club saw that no one was fit for dancing and headed back up to VIP and reposted at the balcony. Low and behold there was a guy in a QBert Jacket with Gold Grillz that were so spectacular we had to get a picture:

He thought? We liked him and his teeth. We are so sending these pics to http://www.hotghettomess.com/. Everytime we passed him in the club he felt the need to grin. Shortly after that a guy who was 5'8 both horizontally and vertically decided he was brave enough to try to take me home. He reached up and tapped me on his shoulder and when I looked down I saw this portly fellow making hand gestures at me. There was a lot of shaking of his heavy gold jewelry and touting of his money making prowess. He then upped the ante by rubbing his belly and telling me that all of that could be my playground but my position is no one needs that much recess. Except maybe him. He needs some recess to run some laps. After my run in with the porker I noticed my girl needed some savin she had her mobile phone out and a rather scary looking guy had his out as well, I was like don't give him your number but her happy juice had taken over and she was taking no nonsense from me. Now she can't answer her phone if a number starting with 253 is calling which is problematic because that's Tacoma and she has actual friends in Tacoma. We're still crossing our fingers that she didn't actually give him her number and that he was just showing her pictures of his kid on his mobile phone...we hope and pray and cross our fingers.

After a brief appearance by Mellie's alter ego, the Kissing Bandit, we decided it was time to take our hot and tired asses back to Bellevue. We swung to Jack in the Box because I was in need of some grease to cut the alcohol and steady my stomach. Jack in the Box was crowded with Bellevue Trust Fund Babies and Sorority Girls and the line was ridiculous. Apparently we're celebrities because several people (all boys) recognized us from the Sonics game and we tried to get them to order our food for us but they had already paid. I decided to call the restaurant. The guy who answered the phone was like are you going to show up and I was like we're actually in the line we're the two girls in the really tiny dresses. Surprisingly, that didn't tip the hand in our favor as he did not believe that two hot girls would be in jack in the box so he hung up! We eventually placed our order and the waiter decided to express his love by giving us three scooping hands of hot sauce. Mellie will not have to buy hot sauce at all this year. Additionally, I was tempted to call Child Protective Services because it was 2:30 in the morning and a family was out with their children at Jack in the Box, I'm still disturbed by that. We grabbed our food and grubbed and then went to sleep. Surprisingly I bounded out of bed the next morning feeling GREAT! I did my Pilates workout and took a walk to 7 11 for coffee and water. Mel? was not doing as well we chilled the rest of the day planning to attend a charity party hosted by the Supes and the Denver Nuggets.......after a dinner at Joey's

Super Stoked Vodka and Cokes and a New Plan

I have to make at least one meal for Mellie when I'm in town and today I decided to make my chicken ginger fresh'wiches. I headed to Safeway and then to Whole Foods for supplies. Gassed up Mellie's car because we thought the party was in Tacoma and came back to fix a meal. We grubbed on the fresh'wiches and lemongrass Thai noodles which came out delish and continued to rest up. We knew we couldn't go whorish for the charity party so we went a little more upscale and cleaned up into nice looking ladies. We decided to dine at Joey's but opted for the Lake Union location as opposed to the Bellevue one to avoid the crowds. Parking was a challenge. Mellie has AMAZING parallel parking skills but for some reason it wasn't working right. I got out to direct but Mellie drives to fast and crunch! We moved up a little and ran away! We had steak lobster and several Super Stoked Vodka and Cokes. At some point during dinner I had to run to the bathroom. Working in a "green" building I am used to touchless toilets and their super sensitivity. They had not been working too well tonight. A girl got flustered and couldn't find the button to flush it manually. A very snooty lady got majorly upset at her lack of flushing the toilet and we tried to explain but she was determined to be a bia bia. She needed a few super stoked vodka and coke but not too many because she may have wanted to go to the bathroom again and face the horror. During the meal we noticed that the Denver Nuggets were still in Denver so how were they going to host an event plus the flyer was hosting a birthday part for some chick we didn't even recognize so we decided to skip it. We drank more which was not a problem and headed back home to tuck in and watch some VHDumb. But we looked good:

A Real Trip to Icon

Sunday was here and its my last day. Its also the day I came for, everyone who knows me knows I'm a football fan, but Mellie's love for the Supes and the Okie saga have made me a Supes Fan and I've always loved exciting players so Allen Iverson is one of my favorites. I was all excite for the game but a little sad as this is my last Supes game since they're probably moving and I've been hanging tough for two seasons now. :-(. We kicked the night off with a real trip to Icon Grill for REAL Crack n Cheese. My body is seriously craving veggies and salads so I had another wedge salad with my meal. The wedge salad at Icon is literally a work of art. I should have gotten a picture! We ordered Bellinis and our beloved Crack and soon we were all smiles:

On our way over to Icon we were quite concerned we were going to get the Bah Humbug waitress who looks like Misery but we were pleased to get our very attentive favoritie waiter with his super hot partner bartender who made sure we stayed happy. In addition to our Bellinis and Orange Drops, the bartender sent us over two speciality drinks which were delicious and probably not needed but welcome. We tipped both guys well and got another pic to seal the deal

AI Comes to Town

We headed over to the Arena where our good parking karma continued and we dashed in for the game. I found myself again sad and cheering in my heart for the Supes I even risked a run in with the scary Squatch because I was caught up in the moment. At halftime we headed to the bar of course and scored some icky cosmos because that pigheaded bartender seems to think that we need sour drinks not sweet ones and dashed our cosmos with actual lime juice and not rose's lime juice like we asked. We met these two guys and had a philospophical discussion about tattoos working out and pilates. Me and Mellie got a workout partner who will drive our asses when I'm in town and we headed back for the rest of the game. Double overtime and the Supes pulled it off to a standing ovation and I couldn't have been happier for them as bittersweet as it was.

Sweet Chili Wings and Strawberry Lemon Drops and an Amazing Friend
Surprisingly we were hungry again and we headed over to Joey's for appetizers and drinks. This time in Bellevue. We ordered Sweet Chili Wings, Super Stoked Vodka and Cokes, and Strawberry Lemon Drops oh and of course I needed another salad. Over nosh, we had one of the most frank and honest discussions. Our friendship, though comfortable is still new, its as old as my relationship with my husband so every visit is another layer. In the glow of the satisfaction of a good weekend and the comfort of a friend Mellie gave me so much inspiration and such a listening ear and I am so grateful she's there for me and my friend. Of course the emotion had to be evened out with hilarious recaps of the weekend in addition to funny observations of the patrons. There was the asian motorcycle guy who stumbled INTO the bar and ordered even more drinks. At one point the waitress was not moving fast enough (we agree) and he stumbled to the bar for more drinks and surprisingly was served. When we got back home we watched more VHDumb and retired to bed. Good Times. Good Times. Bye Seattle see you in the Summer for SeaFair!!!!!