August 25, 2003

Saturday was my birthday. I turned 32.
Which, come to think of it, was in actuality a pleasant surprise for me - for I had been living all last year with the notion that I was already 32, when I was really only 31. What can I say? I sometimes get ahead of myself.

I love birthdays though. They always bear such pleasant surprises. The first one was my gift - a PlayStation 2! Woohoo! Now I can go kick some evil-monster-ass as Jen or Dante any time I want.

The second surprise was getting email from a long-lost friend who for some reason suddendly remembered that I'm still alive too, although we reside in totally different parts of the world. I hadn't spoken or emailed with him for something like 3 years, so the mere fact that he found my email address (and it worked) was a miracle. Not that I hadn't thought of him recently - he's the spitting image of Arnold Schwarzenegger - minus a foot in height and minus the muscles though. And with Arni flashing his gap-toothed grin pretty much non-stop these days for his gubernatorial election race, there is just no getting away from him.

The third pleasant surprise then was of the culinary kind. On Saturday, I went to my favorite restaurant here in Central Oregon - a Sushi bar called Sushimotos. Their sushi is truly wonderful - not just for the exquisite freshness of the fish, but also for their creativity in inventing constantly new ways to pleasure the palate of sushi lovers. Amongst many other delightful little morsels, I had a salmon roll, consisting of roasted and chopped cashew nuts, rolled in salmon, dipped in tempura, fried, and then wrapped in rice and nori (seaweed). The tempura crunch and the nutty flavor in combination with the fish was simply divine. Thanks, Sushimotos, for making my tastebuds do the tango! And I urge anybody getting even within 50 miles of Sunriver, Oregon, to take the trip and have a meal there.

In my humble opinion, they are one of the top Sushi restaurants on the West Coast - and I know sushi ...