Have you been denied being served alcohol even if you are not drunk?

I have never had experience of being denied being served alcohol before. My husband and I went to this home brewery and restaurant bar several times before. The beer was great and bartender was ok.

At this time, things were different.  We ordered our beer.  Another employee talked to the bartender. Then the bartender told us that my husband was too drunk and he cannot serve us alcohol.  I was shocked and told my husband that we will not spend any time or money at this rude place.

Here is what my husband wrote his review of the bar:

‘The place has an extreme issue of bad signage.  The signs on the bar entrance state "use the other door at the restaurant", but after the restaurant is closed the only way into the bar is to ignore the signs on the door.  They need to remove the signs on the door when the restaurant is closed.   

I was confused by the signs, and went to the closed restaurant from the bar, and the manager told me I should not be there, and let me out the restaurant door, and he said he would turn the sign around. When I came back in the bar door, I tried to turn the sign around and it came off the door.   When I was refused service at the bar because the sign was "Part of the Establishment", I decided that  I would never attempt to enter the bar or the  restaurant  ever again, and I will never buy their beer again, nor would I recommend it to anyone again. If for some reason they corrected their signage on the bar door, and gave me an apology, I may change my mind.‘

This is very unusual and upsetting experience for me..

This year’s resolution, be more active

I love cooking and eating.  It is hard to resist cooking tasty food and I eat it a lot. Recently I felt food I consumed stay in my body for a long time. My stomach was still full when it is the meal time.  My body is very energy efficient.  While we like to have an energy efficient car, we don’t want to have energy efficient body.  I felt heavy and get tired easily.

I decided to start exercising more on October. I live in Seattle and it often rainy fall through spring. I found a perfect video on YouTube., “Exercise TV/Start Walking at home with Leslie Sansons”( Video above and also website: http://www.walkathome.com/). 

When I went to 3 miles hike with my husband yesterday, it made difference. It was hard walking up and down the hills before, at this time I walked fast and I was not tired.

I prefer this program to walking outside. The walk with the video is easy and low impact. I move side to side, front to back, and arms up and down. Many muscle of body gets movement. My long time knee pain is gone a while ago.

I like to lose weight to be better shape while I lost 5 pounds since I started. My goal is to be healthy without cutting food intake. ( I know I should eat less) It means more physical activities.   With YouTube, I have no excuse not having time. If I have less than 30 minutes, I walk 1 mile. If I have one hour, I walk 3 miles. I also find Zumba  and stretching videos. Internet and YouTube are great and allow us to do many things without leaving home. Only caution of exercising alone is not to over-exercise.

Lastly I told my son that I like to lose some weight this year. He replied that it may affect my occupation of a cooking instructor. He means that good cooks who make delicious meals are generally overweight. 

Solstice, winter, and warm bath

I was invited to a party to celebrate Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, and all festival of Light. At the party, the host held the ceremony of light.  She talked about festival of light from European country and Africa. The couple of participants read poems. All of us were told to turn off all lights in the house. In dark house, we listened to her quiet speech and appreciated our civilized life. After Yole log was lit in fire place then menorah candle was lit, we turned on all light in the house. Then party ended with eating roasted turkey and delicious food brought by participants.

By the way, Japanese people believe cold winter starts around Solstice. People eat Kabocha and take bath with Yuzu which is Japanese citrus fruit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzu). Kabocha add vitamins to their diet(http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch10.html). Citrus bath keeps body warm. It's interesting to learn seasonal traditional customs is proven to be good and healthy.

Living In Seattle, I bake and eat kabocha pumpkin bread. I remember that when I was chiled in Japan, my family took bath with Mikan (Satsuma orange) peel. It smelled nice. I will try it soon.

In case that you like to try it. Here is how my mother prepared winter bath:

Keep orange peel after you eat fruit.

Dry it couple of days (I am not sure this is necessary, but it may be induce fragrance.)

In Cheese cloth, put the dried orange peel and tie knot.

Drop the orange bag and fill bath tab with warm water.

Enjoy it.

  

Dead Can Dance Concert

If you have never heard Dead Can Dance and are looking for some music which is original and different from American regular sounds like country or rock music, You may like Dead Can Dance (http://www.dead-can-dance.com/info/info.htm, http://www.dead-can-dance.com/index.php) which categorized as world music. My husband loves “Dead Can Dance”.    Last Spring, he found about Dead Can Dance tour in Europe. He bought a ticket for its concert at Berlin in October 2012.

Several days later, he saw Dead Can Dance planned to come to U.S. from their website.  As soon as the tickets were available for a concert near Seattle, he purchased 4 tickets for our sons, himself and me. We went to see Dead Can Dance Concert at Marymoor Park (http://www.kingcounty.gov/recreation/parks/inventory/marymoor.aspx) in Redmond a half hour drive from Seattle.  My husband got 4 T-shirts for us to wear at the concert when he purchased the tickets. Our grown up sons were not familiar with the musician and were bit shy wearing Dead Can Dance T-shirts. Especially several strangers asked us where to get the T-shirts. Our seats were close to the stage to see the performers and hear music very well. We had splendid time listening world class musician performed. My husband is looking forward seeing Dead Can Dance in Berlin soon. Because I didn't bring my camera, I included two Youtube videos by someone who saw a concert there and also another video from California.

Japanese bath

My American husband’s Japan visit ended with unfortunate burn to his feet. He drunk  too much and tried to be helpful to get bath tab ready. He put hot water in a bath tab. Without adding cold water he dipped his feet into the bathtub. He did not test the water and assmed hot water is just right warmth as our Seattle home’s hot water. He told me In U.S. most how water temperature is set under 125 °F(51.66 ℃) which is highest to prevents serious risk of burn to children. I heard the right temperature of Japanese bath is 122°F(50.66 ℃).
 I found http://tinyurl.com/7ztcs53 (Japanese)
 which examined temperature settings of electric hot water. Three settings were found on this hot water, low, high and auto. The water was heated to  194 °F(90℃) for high setting and 158°F( 70 ℃) for low and automatic to save energy depending upon usage and current water temperature. I checked temperature setting of my father’s hot water heater. It was set above 194 °F(90℃).
There is reason why hot water is so hot in Japan. One of reasons is the way to take bath in Japan. Entire family members share bath water. It doesn’t mean all take bath at once.  Here how Japanese family members take bath. The bath tab is cleaned and filled with warm enough water every evening. The first person (usually head of the house, father) washes and rinses his/her body (at least dirty parts of the body) outside of the tab and take the bath. After the first person got out of bath, second person takes bath. And so on. The bath water gets cold by the time the third or fourth family takes bath. To make the water warm enough, hot water need to be added.
Here is Japanese bath history　through my own experience. In old days, my family had a metal bath tab. My childhood job was to heat the bathwater by burning woods. Wooden disk was put on the bottom of the bath tab to prevent skin touching directly hot metal. Water was kept warm by remaining fire. When I was a student of university, my apartment had a ceramic tab with outdoor gas burner. I remember my neighbor downstairs sometimes fell asleep when he was heating his bath. After I had heard noise from water boiling in his bath tab, I shut off his gas heat to be safe. We did not have hot water heater in our apartment. In these days, many Japanese houses has convenient hot water heater as my father’s house.

This system is safer than old system for Japanese household but not for my American husband when he drank too much. 

Lastly the Japanese website above was to find out which temperature setting will be cost saving.

Some day I like to have a Japanese style bath room in my Seattle house. I like website of an Alaska company which sells Japanese bath tab: http://www.japanesebath.com/.

Attack to my old Email account

My old email account is compromised. I haven’t been used my old account for a long time. It is my first time since I started using computer many years ago.
My husband told me that he received strange email from me and it seemed that my email account was hacked. If he didn’t tell me about this, probably I would have not known it had happened. Fortunately it was not my current account but I changed my password of all sites. The old password had 11 characters include numbers and symbols. I realized no passwords are safe when cunning smart hackers decided to attack.
I often heard that we needed to change password often. I haven’t changed my password for a long time. There are several website about how often change the password. I like answer from the wiseGEEk:
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-often-should-i-change-my-password.htm
I like to prevent being attacked again. My decision is to change password every 4 month and select strong password. I set my calendar reminder to do so.

Sustainable Seattle tour

I organized a custom tour in Seattle for Yukie who is from Eco Conscious Japan. She writes blogs and gives lecture about sustainability. She asked me to plan the tour of sustainable places in Seattle. Fortunately my husband, Daniel , is a real-estate broker and took LEED class. LEED is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. He suggested to take her Seattle city hall, Olive8, and a house which is advertised as the greenest house in Seattle.
Instead of my describing about buildings, here are pointer to websites regarding to each building and places.
Seattle City Hall
http://www.bcj.com/public/projects/project/7.html (The city hall design described in website of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson)
http://www.seattle.gov/cityarchives/Exhibits/cityHalls/panel8.htm (Quest of the city hall)
Seattle downtown library which is not sustainable but is very interesting design:
http://places.designobserver.com/feature/seattle-central-library-civic-architecture-in-the-age-of-media/813/
Freeway Park
http://www.seattle.gov/parks/park_detail.asp?ID=312
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Freeway_Park.html (This site shows nice photos.)
Olive 8
http://www.olive8.com/
http://www.offbeattravel.com/tji-olive-8-hotel-leed-silver.html (visitor of Olive8 )
City cabin built by Green builder Martha Rose
http://www.citycabins.com (Cabin website)
http://www.martharoseconstruction.com/ (Martha Rose website)
http://www.thehomefunnel.com/(Eco Broker Adrian Willanger’s blog)
http://paper.li/MarthaRose_bldr# Builder Martha Rose’s daily news site
In addition to these buildings, I took Yukie to my neighborhood gardens, Bradner Garden which is organic demonstration garden and Childrens play garden which is created for children with all abilities .
Bradner Garden Information
http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/ppatch/locations/22.htm
http://seattletilth.org/directions/bgardens
Seattle children’s play garden
http://childrensplaygarden.org/index.php
By organizing and accompanying Yukie to this tour, I learned a bit about what make garden and house sustainable.