Benihana, Benaroya, and Beyond!

So...to continue my story:
Saturday we got up, went to 5 Spot, the home of the WORLD'S (no joke) BEST FRENCH TOAST!!! So good. SOOOO good. Go there if you haven't already...and go there even if you have...my favorite thing to do is to go with someone, get the French Toast and their Salmon Salad and split them...cuz then...you don't get the sweet over-load from the French Toast and the Salmon Salad cleanses the palate. And you know that heavy feeling you get after eating sweet breakfasts like French Toast or Pancakes? You don't get that cuz you have the salad to wash it all down. It's genius.
Afterwards we went back to REI for a BAZILLION years or at least until my eyes were completely glazed over and John had to lead me by the hand out to fresh air because I was in zombie mode (minus the eating human flesh part...) Then we headed to the Ballard Locks BUT...since I hadn't been since I was around 8 years old I wasn't exactly sure what to look for and my dumb map wasn't very helpful. We passed what we THOUGHT was the entrance but we weren't sure so we went further down the street and followed signs to Golden Gardens which I remember my mom saying was connected to the Locks. Once we arrived at Golden Gardens we realized it was not going to be our cup-o-tea because it was PACKED. The day was SO beautiful it was the perfect day to be there...and everyone and their dog in Seattle seemed to agree. So we silently gave each other "the look" and communicated telepathically that we'd rather not and turned around and stopped at a little look-out point to take pictures of the water and some flowers. And then we headed back to downtown to head to John's surprise dinner a.k.a. Benihana's! One of my favorite places ever. We literally did circles around it for a few minutes because the way the one-way streets are set up, if you miss one turn you gotta do a whole loop all over again. But we FINALLY found it (and somehow I still kept it a secret from John...he just knew we were going to a nice dinner...) and got cleaned up a bit and went and had a lovely dinner. The ONLY drawback was our chef was named Jose...and in my experience Asians working in Latino restaurants and Latinos working in Asian restaurants usually mean the restaurant should be avoided...but he did a good job so I can't really complain. After dinner, we had quite awhile before we needed to meet my family to watch the symphony so we decided to walk down to Pike Place Market. I kind of forgot about my blisters until we were half way there and we almost turned back but John said he just wanted to buy me flowers and...I can't turn down flowers so I sucked it up and we got down there. There wasn't much left but what was left was beautiful so he bought me some Calla Lilies and Irises and I bought my mom some Sweet Peas cuz they're her favorites. Then we hiked (somewhat limping) back up to the Benaroya Hall, met the FAM and watched the Symphony which was wonderful. I don't know the names of the pieces we saw but they were great and John loved it too which I was very happy about. Afterwards we limped back to the car garage and did the mistake of following the signs that say "ferry this way" or whatever and ended up BLOCKS and BLOCKS away from the ferry...Seattle's twisted way of controlling Ferry Traffic: confuse them! So we missed the 10:40 ferry. But it was all good. We had a great day. The next day we went to church and then hung out with my cousins. It was nice to get some time with my cousins and aunt and uncle so they could get to know John better. He seems to fit into the family perfectly. So I have no complaints.
The ONLY bad thing about this weekend was on Sunday. We came home and were getting ready to have lunch. John was on the phone with his parents and he got my attention and motioned there was something wrong with our kitten Blue. I went over and thought he had thrown up and sat in it...but then realized he had blood on his hip and what looked like an infection. I won't go into the gross details but it looked like a puncture wound...like a big dog had bitten him and he had gotten away but not without a nice big tooth sinking in. So my parents took him to the emergency vet and got him some meds and got instructions on what to do. They said they could do surgery but it was going to be RIDICULOUSLY expensive. But they said home treatment should be fine and they didn't seem to think it was life threatening. So Blue has half his seat shaved and has just as much energy as if he wasn't wounded. He runs around the house like a maniac cuz he's SO bored and wants to go outside but he can't for awhile until he heals up. He's being really good though and is taking his pills really well without fighting much. I'm just happy he's okay. I wonder if that patch of fur will grow back white when it heals.