Date Night in North West

Since Eddie and I haven't had much of a routine the past few weeks, we finally decided it was time for our "weekly" date night.  Eddie didn't have any suggestion for dinner so I took it upon myself to plan the evening.  I knew I wanted to go to a sushi restaurant because Eddie has not had proper sushi since we moved up here.  I read through the Yelp reviews and decided on Hiroshi in the North West district of Portland.  Before Eddie got home from work, I saw on my Twitter feed from PearlPortland that there was going to be a free wine tasting at Wine Unwind.  When I realized they were also located in NW, I knew we had to go.

A representative from Sineann, a local winery, was at the wine bar to pour a few of their wines.  It seems like they focus on the warmer varietals which was fine by me because I'm starting to get pinoted-out up here.  After the free tasting we decided we should spend some money in the shop but since we didn't want any bottles of wine, we decided to share a glass of prosecco.  Then we made a very quick three-block walk to the sushi restaurant.  Of course I only ate a bowl of steamed rice, but Eddie seemed to really enjoy the sushi.  We were able to sit at the bar and watch the chef as he prepared all of Eddie's rolls.  The patron sitting next to us made a few suggestions since it was our first time there and they turned out to be excellent suggestions for Eddie.  On our way back to the car we passed Olive Or Twist martini bar.  I think it is such a cute name so even though Eddie had already been here before (without me), I made him take me in for a round of martinis.  I ordered some gin & orange concoction and Eddie had a gin & rose water drink.  Both were very good.  And that was our fun NW Portland date.

Now for today's media mention.  I'll be honest and come right out and tell you that I slacked today.  This is kind of a back-up mention.  I had been wanting to discuss Pretty Little Liars for some time and figured I would just wait until the summer TV series ended.  I didn't realize until just a few days ago that the last episode I saw a few weeks ago was in fact the finale.  I first heard about the PLL TV show on ABC Family so when I saw it on Hulu I gave it a try.  I had a really hard time following the story because all of the girls looked alike to me and I didn't know who was supposed to be the focus.  I read up on the show and realized it was based on a series of books by Sara Shepard so I bought the first book from Amazon.  I read it that very night.  I'm not sure why I powered through when these books are even cheesier than the Twilight series, but I kept with it.  A week later I had read all eight books in the series and was ready to stick with the show.  I'm still undecided about which version of the story I like better.  I think the novels are more interesting with the stories, but I think I like the characters better in their TV forms.