It must be Monday.
The day has not improved noticeably since, so I'm pretty sure that was a sign.
Patrick's performances this last Friday and Saturday at Benaroya with the Seattle Symphony were stupendous. He played the solo perfectly every time, and was told that he must have ice in his veins by a fellow brass player for being so cool under pressure. His part sounded pretty great in our living room while he was practicing, but it was so much better in a real auditorium with good sound and some decent reverb. I am so proud of him! This can only be good for his career, which brings us to the gig he was offered immediately afterward:
His next project will be playing principle trombone for Idina Menzel's Seattle and Portland stops on her US tour. She played the original Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway and has been on Glee, so she is evidently a big shot. We're going back and forth about whether I should go too. I don't like the idea of him driving home so late at night by himself, in case he gets sleepy, but I'm also not that terribly keen on actually going to the show (listening to her other live stuff makes me think of Sears clothing department music), and that means we'd need to find something to do with me for two and a half hours or so in the evening. Sigh.
We had a scrumptious dinner before Patrick's Friday show. We went to The Brooklyn, which is a restaurant just across the street from Benaroya, and it was amazing. Anyone who lives around here should absolutely go to this place. We had the following items, all of which are worth ordering:
- Artisanal bakery bread with fleur de sel and aromatic oils (lots of herbs in the dipping sauce)
- Half a dozen Kumamoto oysters with various mignonettes
- Day boat scallop with foie gras, served with a vanilla bean-scented carrot puree and mascarpone-filled mission figs, finished with a port wine demi-glace (I always feel really guilty whenever I have foie gras, but it is delicious)
- Yukon gold potato-crusted wild Alaskan halibut served with English peas, spring carrots and roasted red chieftain potatoes with yellowroot chanterelles in koroneiki olive oil (I'm sure this is really special or something, but I can't tell the difference between this and any other olive oil), finished with a caviar-studded lobster bisque (if there was caviar, it was the really tiny kind like they use in sushi, not the creepy big kind that pops in your mouth)
- Steak Oscar: prime sirloin, dungeness crab and asparagus, with sauce bearnaise, served with a cheese potato tower (this was interesting, also involving chives and two strips of what appeared to be toasted plantain)
- Warm poached pears: vanilla-scented bosc pears with fresh mascarpone and cabernet sauvignon caramel sauce
- Warm Valrhona chocolate cake served with orange cajeta (this must mean either sauce or candied orange peel, since we had both), crème anglaise and Valrhona ganache
I was wearing my amazing friend-making hat that night (to make Patrick finding me in the audience that much easier), and it proceeded to make a bunch more friends. 7 or 8 people had to tell me how cool it was or how much they loved it, and one group of women grabbed my hands and told me over and over again how beautiful I looked (they may have been drunk). It is utterly bizarre to me how that hat is infinitely better at making friends than I've ever been. It'd probably be even better without me there to be freaked out by the attention. I'm sure if I let it loose into the wilds it'd be supplanting Ryan Seacrest on American Idol or some such in no time. Or making a cameo on Glee. Whatever. That hat knows no bounds.
P.S. 606 cranes. I've been slack this weekend due to Diablo III coming out and me becoming addicted. Patrick and I are having an absolute ball with it. Thanks for finally remembering how servers work, Blizz!
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