Had a great day of work-stuff in NYC today, and then headed out for fun/reunions with old friends. After work, stopped at Bryant Park Cafe and caught up with Kim, a friend from college who’s now a muckety muck at ESPN (you go, girl!) — was great to see her — deep thoughts, I know, but we were both amazed about how 15 years can disappear. Our parting comment was, “see you when we’re 50!”. As an aside, Bryant Park was packed with people as the weather was ideal — everyone seemed almost starved for sun.

Then off to meet high school friend Peter and his wife Lori at Bar Pitti in Greenwich Village (delicious Italian food) — and then they showed me some New York history (the courtyard over which the original Rear Window was shot, and for a special capper event, took me to Chumley’s — I had always wanted to visit, as I had a friend in college with the nickname Chumley, and I know it was related to the bar — what a fantastic pub — you enter through a pretty much unmarked side door, and then descend into a throwback cozy environs — I could see a person easily losing track of a day/week/year in there. Spent the rest of the evening discussing tsunami, g w bush, iraq, red vs blue, and more… was really wonderful.

Today, we took advantage of a wonderful Christmas present we received this year — a gift certificate for massages and dinner at Salish Lodge, near Snoqualmie Falls. I always forget how close Snoqualmie Falls really is… maybe took us 35-40 minutes to get there, and the day was fantastic (hot, even!). We had ‘River Rock’ massages, with both of us in the same room, and then enjoyed a dip in the whirlpool before changing for dinner.

Now, for the review. I want to be careful here, because the gift was a fantastic idea. But, to be honest, I wasn’t very impressed with Salish Lodge. It has all the potential in the world, but for a premiere locatioon (as it bills itself), they really dropped the ball in many of the little things. At dinner, our wine came out too warm. Then, the room was warm, so they plugged in a room fan (straight out of all of our childhoods) right next to us and cranked it on its highest setting. All of the people in our section (4 tables) were complaining about one thing or another (in fact, the first two tables left, the next two parties were quickly not happy either!). Finally, when we were waiting for dessert to arrive, one of the waiters brought us our check and asked “so you don’t have room for dessert?”… we responded, “actually we ordered it awhile ago and haven’t seen anyone lately…”

The food was actually nice… but, the little things were missed, which I feel is what you’re really paying for when you splurge. All in all, I wouldn’t recommend Salish Lodge — I think you can do much better with other choices.

Karen enlisted me to go on my first tree-tagging expedition today (tree-tagging is something that landscape architects do… basically, they go to nurseries and hand-select trees that they will later install at jobs they are working on) — I admit that I wasn’t very excited about it, but a walk in the woods sounded like a good enough reason to tag along (bad pun intended). We drove north of Seattle for approximately 40 minutes and arrived at a nursery owned and operated by a landscape architecture legend, Rich Haag. Rich’s most famous projects are probably Gas Works Park, in Seattle, and the Bloedel Reserve, on Bainbridge Island.

He was a fantastic host — we quickly got our of our car and hopped into his Subaru Outback, and for good reason — the property is more of a passion/hobby than what you’d think of as a for-profit nursery. Basically, the property is in a flood plain and at certain times of the year will be well submerged (5-10 feet of water?!?), but on this day, it was merely ‘moist’ throughout — we crisscrossed the property to find trees that fit Karen’s needs, along the way discussing the lives of slugs (which I’m particularly interested in, actually), the histories of the different plants, and the fact that he’s owned the ~70 acres for more than 40 years.

All in all, a fantastic day — it was really great meeting Rich. Also reminded us both that we’d really like to invest in some property — the idea of heading out of the city each weekend to ‘play’ in the woods, is enchanting, no?