Warning: food porn ahead

Ben just got back from two weeks of teaching in California, plus the Linux Expo tacked onto the end. We had a date last night. It took all my skills at boundary-setting to keep from being sent home with an enormous pile of penguin-themed tchotchkes: stickers, mints, lapel pins, a corkscrew, pens.. I wound up accepting two things: a squeezy penguin (to go with my squeezy cow, although the penguin will need a red velvet cloak to really fit in around here) and a penguin-topped bubble pen (you know, the barrel is filled with bubble fluid and the top comes off to reveal a bubble wand.). It was extremely cute. I've got plenty of drug company tchotchkes (my favorite is the plastic level advertising a mood stabilizer), but most drugs just don't have cute mascots.

We had dinner at Atlantic, an adorably retro-hip restaurant in Canton, because their sushi bar has a happy hour and they have a punch-card deal in which you work your way towards a free dessert (4 visits), appetizer (8 visits), and dinner (12 visits, I think). We've been there a couple of times now, and have never ordered entrees. They have too many entrancing little things to nibble on. Last night we both had gazpacho - served in martini glasses, topped with fresh crab, and an avocado slice perched on the rim of the glass like a lime wedge. The glass rim was "frosted" with minced herbs. The gazpacho itself wasn't great - it was entirely pureed, and had a bit too much raw onion for my taste - but the presentation was just about the cutest thing I'd ever seen. Next came a big bowl of steamed mussels to share, in hot coconut milk, lemongrass, and ginger. I thought that perhaps I might faint with pleasure. The sauce was exquisitely flavorful without overpowering the mussels, and it was good enough on its own that we called for more bread to slurp the last bits of it out of the bowl. And finally, we had four sushi rolls: tuna (maguro), salmon, gingered shrimp, and eel-and-avocado. I wouldn't normally drink wine with sushi, but I took advantage of the fact that we had two additional kinds of food to order a lovely crisp glass of pinot grigio.

As we ate, through the windows we could see dark clouds gathering. Just as we reached the parking lot the lightning really started up and it began to rain - lightly, at first. But out on the harbor you could see the wind blowing up whitecaps. It seemed unwise to take the dinghy out onto that mess, so we were forced back into Atlantic for a leisurely post-dinner drink (Macallan 15, mmmm....) and conversation on the adorably 60s curvy couch in their lounge. The rain stopped before we could decide whether we ought to ask the cute hostess in the tawny suede shirt whether she wanted to come back to the boat with us.

It was a good evening.

Doctor's orders

I went to the doctor today. Misha's doctor, actually, because I can't see my own doctor because I don't have my own insurance because they haven't run my goddamned contract through yet. But I digress.

So it looks like, instead of just having a dodgy complexion and being easily embarrassed, I probably have a mysterious inflammatory condition called rosacea. (Unless I have lupus, which she didn't seem to think was very likely, but which she drew blood to test for anyway. Let's all keep our fingers crossed on that one, shall we?) Basically, rosacea is something that occasionally happens to fair-skinned people (that'd be me), runs in families (my mother has it), and has no known cause. It causes little red bumps and redness on the face, and makes you flush very very easily - as I do when I'm hot, exercised, embarrassed, upset, or whatever. There's no cure, but you can keep it under control and prevent it from getting worse (permanently red face with networks of little red lines, and sometimes WC Fields-like swelling of the nose) with medicated cream, sunscreen, moisturizer, and avoiding things that trigger flushing.

Did you catch that last part? Avoiding things that trigger flushing. That means y'all can never, never, never ever tease me or embarrass me or make fun of me ever again. Or I'll tell my doctor on you. Ha! Boy, this could have its advantages...

...oh, wait. Avoiding things that make me flush would also mean staying out of hot tubs, quitting English Country Dance, and probably moving to Nome, Alaska to avoid these pesky Baltimore summers. This needs work. Perhaps we'll give the medication-and-sunscreen route a try first.

(It would sure be silly to get all worked up worrying about the remote possibility that it's actually lupus instead, wouldn't it? Boy, I can't imagine why a person would get nervous about that sort of thing, just because her doctor drew blood to test for a mysterious and debilitating incurable disease. Can you? I mean, if she didn't have any symptoms other than a little face rash, I'd sure think that she'd be completely calm about the whole possibility. 'Cause that's how I'd feel. Totally calm. Sure.)