Culinary & West Texas Adventures

To end the week, Friday we had a "team" lunch at a sushi restaurant nearby. Now, I've never had sushi, mainly because Asian food is not my favorite and I am always afraid of fishy fish.
So, I was stretching my culinary palate from the gitgo. Because of my lack of experience in the sushi realm, I relied on others to help me choose. First, I looked up the different types of rolls and then relayed them to my boss for ordering. She and another coworker are sushi pros and were ordering all kinds of things. We started with edamame - which were very good! (Stef and I will need to eat those at home) And thinking I was off to a good start, we anxiously awaited for our sushi... totally unprepared for this (see pic). I'm sorry its a little blurry - thats ALOT of sushi. I've never seen so many rolls in my life.lol Needless to say, 3 of us couldn't eat all of that (especially since I stuck mainly to the vegetarian rolls). I can't say sushi my favorite but I ate it and didn't hate it. =)

Then it was a mad dash home to get ready for our trip to West Texas. I cannot stress this point hard enough... but Texas is BIG. It is so big that if you drive 6+ hours in most directions (except of course north/northeast) you will simply find yourself in another part of the state. And so, leaving an hour later than anticipated, we hit the road for our 6 hr adventure...which actually took 7+ hours.lol Road work sucks.

Though much of our trip was in the dark, I must say that between the flat area I call home, and the desert our friends call home - the landscape is really nice. Lots of fall color (dark=no pics) - kind of a cross between southwest mesas and the texas hill country. It was our friend D.'s 40th birthday on Saturday and we had a really nice visit. His wife and I gave him a hard time all weekend for being sooo old - since we are "so young". ok so not so young, but not 40! We spent the weekend siteseeing and laughing (and had some good margaritas too!). I didn't take alot of landscape pics because honestly, its just flat land full of dirt and tumbleweeds (real ones!).

A couple of new things I learned about West Texas:

1. It has sand dunes. Those suckers are tall and the sand is soft as silk.
2. It has its own Stonehenge (who knew?!)
3. It has alot of oil - ok, so I knew that one, but I learned alot about the pumping of it, equipment used to get it, and the "manufacturing" of it; all of which I had no clue about before.
4. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT, just wander into the "grass"(grass=dirt) as it is FULL of barb-wiry sticker things that HURT like hell and don't detach themselves easily. ahem... or so I've heard.
5. 40 candles on a cake, when blown out, make ALOT of smoke. hehe




Monahans Sandhills; Stonehenge replica; oil pump thingys; the elusive Jackalope (this is an urban legend, not real, but we had stef going for bit); cacti; candle smoke (hehe)

And these pictures, I just like - they say "TEXAS" to me.



It was a short trip but well worth the drive. Thanks to K & D for a lovely time, of hanging out with good friends and lots of laughs. We were happy to share that landmark birthday with you two.

More later...