Vegan Sushi, Gray Smoker, Walnut Grove

I couldn't sleep at all last night, so I stayed up and read and watched Netflix and made the bits of Dave's lunch that he hadn't made himself. I finally fell asleep just after 5:00 a.m. and slept until 10:30, when I got up to take my meds and then couldn't go back to sleep.

It was a quiet day, mostly. I texted back and forth with LuAnn, ran to the co-op, and then waited around with the kitties for the guy to come to hook up the swamp cooler. (I'm sitting now with the air blowing on me and it is nice and chilly!)

Dave came home a little early and we went out to dinner even though it was quite early for dinner, something like 4:30. We went to Loving Vegan and had vegetable tempura and vegan sushi (ume maki, avocado maki, and two crazy rolls made out of all kinds of things like green chile tempura, and some kind of unidentifiable matter that was probably some form of konnyaku since it tasted vaguely fishy but of course had to be vegan). It was very tasty and full of white rice goodness, which is the best kind of junky carb-based high.

After, we went to a gallery, Stranger Factory, next to the restaurant and I bought a small oil painting by Joe Scarano.

"Gray Smoker"

Isn't it strangely adorable? I couldn't resist that little face.

The place is filled with all kinds of interesting things, lots of art, but also toys and t-shirts and strange little things for sale. I like it.

After we left the gallery, we walked down the street a ways to a couple of nearby shops. It was nice out and we had to move a bit after our big dinner.

In fact, I need to get a move on and get some more aerobic exercise. We're planning a trip next month to Minnesota (where Dave goes from time to time for business, but where I've never been) and I want to do a lot more walking to gear up for that. I'll be tacking a trip on to the end of one of Dave's business trips and we're planning on looking around the Twin Cities and then taking a day trip to Walnut Grove, which you may know from Laura Ingalls Wilder's book, On The Banks of Plum Creek. We'll probably see the museum there and then maybe visit the dugout house site where she and her family lived. (The town was recreated in California for the TV show, but we won't talk about that!) I'm a big Laura Ingalls Wilder fan, so I'm really looking forward to it.

We're home again now. Dave is out watering the garden and I'm inside where it's nice and cool.

Tomorrow we're meeting my mother, aunt, and brother for lunch. Then the rest of the week, it's back to my diet. I did my weigh-in this morning and had zero change after a week of dieting. So it goes some weeks!