1) I am a happy drunk. Get me boozed up just a little and I become very sociable and giggly and apparently loud . . . but happy so what the hell.

2) If you want an Esspressotini, pass it up unless it has the cocoa rim and was made by an actual bartender. When doing it at home, add a little cream, a little Bailey's to go with the vannilla vodka (or rum) and Kaluha and blend it. A Dirty Frappacino was the name we came up with. Mmm, tasty.

3) If for some reason you don't have a shaker or a measuring cup, travel coffee thermoses and baby bottles work just as well. (No, I wasn't actually drinking the vannilla rum out of the baby bottle, but I used to to measure things out. Of course we found the shaker after we'd already mixed the drinks . . .)

4) By far the best mixer I've ever had was the Diet Dr. Pepper Vannilla Cherry with the vannilla rum. Apparently any type of Dr. Pepper works for great for mixers, so the next on my must try list is Dr. Pepper and Jack Daniels.

5) Coconut cream pie, while extremely tasty, is not the best breakfast food. I should have had it after my cheeseburger and fries, but for some strange reason really got into The 40 Year Old Virgin, which, btw, was a decent movie. It wasn't so good that I'm going to recommend it to everyone, but it was certainly was entertaining (I think I got the biggest kick out of the Racer X magnet on his fridge).

6) The last stretch between the Seattle and the Tri-Cities is really boring, and I do not wish that drive on anyone. I've been a passanger before, but holy cow! Actually driving it was putting me to sleep, and no, dispite all of the drinking I did this weekend, I was not completely wasted or hung over.

Yup, fun weekend. I went up to Seattle to visit my sister, her husband and their kids. We did a lunch/dinner at Lola's (another excellent resturaunt by Tom Douglas, the same guy who owns Etta's where I had my birthday brunch) and I had a lamb burger. It was quite tasty, actually. I may actually prefer lamb burgers to beef now, isn't that strange? I also have officially seen Peir 70, home of Real World: Seattle and saw the exact spot where Stephen slapped Irene. I think there should be a landmark or something there, to make the spot and the occassion. An interesting side note, most Seattle residents did not care for the Real World being shot there, and often wore shirts emblazoned with "F*** you, Real World" and worked their ways into shots so the footage couldn't be used. Seattle-ites at their best, I suppose. (This coming from someone who's local newspaper had a corispondent on location to cover the World Trade Organization conference (aka the Battle for Seattle) back in '99 and saw it reported first hand and not via the Associated Press, which also showed Seattle-ites at their best. No wonder the rest of the country thinks that we Washingtonians are crazy.)

Now I'm home and hoping to settle into Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian once more. But maybe I should find food first . . .