Sashimi and Saki and Eggs, oh, my!

Karen, Eggs and I went out to celebrate my birthday dinner at our favorite Japanese restaurant, Shogun. We gorged on a small order of shrimp and vegetable tempura to start, followed by a large platter of mixed sashimi, followed by a softshell crab (Karen's first) and an order of unagi (smoked eel sushi, also a first for Karen). This was leisurely washed down with several large cups of green tea and several carafes of hot saki.
















Here are Eggs in front of the sashimi platter containing white (albacore), red (ahi) and yellow (yellowtail) tuna, sea bass, and red snapper, along with (my favorite garnishes) mounds of daikon threads and ginger.

Eggs wore their new hats, and also got to show off their some of their sweaters (the blue with the scarf, and the bright light green and purple) to the very nice server.

Everything was great, other than the fact that Karen kept referring to Sist as the "terrorist egg" because of the proclivity of some of that ilk cravenly hiding their identity behind balaclavas.

After dinner (and did I mention lots of saki?), we let Sidney out of the car, where, alas, he had to stay, burrowed under my Sidney blankets, while we ate dinner. He decided it was way too cold to read the news around the parking lot, so he quickly got back into the car, and off we went to Baskin Robbins for some ice cream for us and to take home to Karen's hubby.

Karen's waffle cone was sort of disintegrating while we were still in the store, so the nice fellow who was handling our order gave Karen a cup to put her scoops in should the cone give way before we got home. It did give way, so Karen managed to invert the cone over the cup without running into the center median. Sidney, the lucky boy, got to eat the waffle cone. He then decided that I must not want my waffle cone, either, and so poked his snout repeatedly in my cheek to make it as easy as possible for me to hand over the cone. Which, seeing as how my cone was still filled with Mississippi Mud ice cream, I did not.

When we got to Karen's, I dished out some Truffles in Paradise ice cream for Jim, topped my own cone with a dab (well, I had to make sure TiP tasted good!), and we hung out for a while, 'we' meaning Karen, Jim, Eggs, Sid, Jack the cat, and I. Sid, while waiting for me to get tired of my cone, cleaned up and shredded Karen's cup. Once he at the last inch of my cone, he grabbed his large (faintly obscene) Nylabone Double Action Chew toy, and began teasing me with it, offering it to me, then pulling it out of my hands. We played for a while, watching a movie, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Jack observing us from his place, stretched out in front of the fire.

Karen then drove me home (did I mention lots of saki?) where, still warm from the saki, I eventually went to bed and slept well. Well, until 4 AM when The Thing returned to its place Under The Tub.

Thank you, Karen and Jim and Sidney and Eggs (and Shogun), for a very yummy birthday!