STILL Can't. Focus.

But can breathe. My sinus infection thing is mostly gone, just a bit of a lingering cough. The lack of focus has more to do with my (self-diagnosed) ADD than a stuffy nose or associated medicines.

As usual, my illness struck at the most inopportune time: busy week at work and out-of-town guest. So I had to drug up and power through. Which I did and now I'm fine. Yay.

Despite my stuffy nose and cold meds, Maid Marian and I had a lovely visit. She got in on a Wednesday night and spent the next couple of days exploring the city, hitting the Market, the flagship Nordstrom, other lovely city spots. We ate at such fabulous places as Collins Pub and Pesos, visited the Space Needle (at sunset, ftw!) and loitered about.

Maid Marian got to meet Pie and Fritha and Conan and partake of Conan's delicious kabobs. She also got to meet The Tad, FrankieWayne, PattyCake, Pickle and others (about whom she had heard many stories).

This was all fun, but probably the highlight of the trip was the lovely hike we took...by accident.

Seattle has ferryboats. Ferryboats are cool. We thought it'd be fun to ride one. So we looked up the ferry schedule and prices and figured out where the ferry terminals were and decided that we'd take the ferry to Vashon Island. I'd heard it was fun.

So we purchase passenger fares and walk on to the ferry. We have a lovely ride, see some great views and land on Vashon, where we start walking toward downtown. We walk (at approximately a 6% grade) for 30 minutes or so and come upon the Vashon Island Realty Office, which advertises maps and ferry schedules. We stop in to pick up maps and schedules and the guy says "You girls walkin' to town?" And we say "Yes sir." (we're good Southern girls...of course we said Yes sir).
To which he replied "You thought it was close to the ferry terminal, didn't you?"
Uh...blink blink. "We didnt really know...we're just adventurin'."
"Yeah, town's about 4 more miles from here."
Uh...blink blink.

By this point, we figure we've walked that far, we might as well keep walking. Plus, it was nice weather and we didnt have anything else we had to do. So we kept walking.

We passed 3 houses, a retirement center, a cat store (where you could buy cats, not stuff for cats), lots of trees, some fields and a couple of horses. We're pretty sure the horses were laughing at us. Much like the drivers of the cars who kept passing us.

Something like 55 minutes passes and we walk upon an Episcopal Church that is also a bus stop. I remember someone (JazzHands I think) telling me that town was "a little ways" from the ferry terminal and thinking I should have asked "Whatchu mean 'a little ways'?"

By this point, we are hot, thirsty, in need of "facilities" and just plain over it. We hop the bus back to the ferry terminal and realize that there's this dumpy looking Mexican resturant on the water, so we head in to wait for the ferry. We found a nice little table on the deck, ordered (delicious) nachos and margaritas and spent the next couple of hours reminiscing about our accidental hike.

I really should send her this as a reminder of our outing.

Old, Older, Oldest

Last week was my birthday. I turned another year older.

I loved my birthday this year. It was on Friday the 13th (which is awesome) and I got to go to work! (I love going to work on my birthday...everyone has to be nice to me!)

PattyCake wrangled a fun crew (Pickle and G-Funk and Shanks) for a birthday lunch, because she said "no one should have to eat Lean Cuisine on her birthday." We headed to Collins Pub, where my steak sandwich was fantastic, both glasses of wine were delicious and the waitress brought us a birthday dessert.

Back at the office, my Big Purple Cup was returned to me, I was toasted at our "staff meeting" and after a couple glasses of wine, PattyCake and I headed out. We got on a bus to go to my birthday party, missed our stop but managed to find our way home from wherever we got off the bus.

After changing into a Sparkly Sweater Dress, I headed to the Nabob, where Rosie, Frannie, Bullwinkle, Fritha, Conan and Pie were all waiting with gifts. I got a tape measure, a flask, a Big Fat Llama and cupcakes. Yay!

Over the course of the evening, we had a great time just mingling with each other and the other fantastic friends who joined us: Jazz Hands, Sigma, Traskinator, FrankieWayne, Pickle and Skater among others.

And since we're not spring chickens anymore, we headed home around 11:30pm and got a good night's sleep.

2009 birthday cupcake count: 9 (major improvement over 2008)

All in all, an EXCELLENT birthday.