The boys are back in town

And not a moment too soon. I was getting awful twitchy without them.

Tonight we returned to our regular routine. Jeopardy!, Simpsons, dinner. Except usually I make dinner while they're watching Simpsons but tonight it was the one where the family goes to the Frying Dutchman restaurant and tells tales of nautical adventure while they're waiting for their food to materialize. So I had to hang out and watch that one, 'cause it's freakin' hilarious.

Anyway, two things of note. Well, three.

1. We had all-Oregon pasta for dinner tonight. Cherry tomatoes and zucchini from our garden; hazelnuts from some local grove. All sauteed in butter, tomatoes slightly squashed so they'd lose their structural integrity and thicken the sauce thereby; hazelnuts roughly chopped and stirred in at the last moment; the whole mass served over capellini with plenty of grated Parmesan. (As Fisher helpfully pointed out, neither the pasta nor the Parmesan was technically from Oregon, thereby spoiling the all-local conceit somewhat. Thaaaaanks, Fisher.)

2. Fisher soliloquized during dinner tonight about his favorite bands. "I like Mastodon, and Black Sabbath, and Dethklok, and the White Stripes, and Metallica…" Me: "So you mostly like hard rock and heavy metal." Fisher: "Yeah, except for Of Montreal. Oh, and Abba. Money, money, money/ Always sunny/ In the rich man's world."

3. Speaking of music: we saw Radiohead night before last at the White River Amphitheatre located on Muckleshoot tribal land in beautiful Auburn, Washington. If you're thinking of seeing a show there for any reason: don't. A Citysearch reviewer summed it up perfectly: "I'm not sure if this is the Native Americans' way of getting back at
the general public for past wrongs, but if it is, it's ingenious." There was no tailgating allowed in the parking lots, and this policy was enforced by uniformed cops patrolling the aisles; the "beer garden" offered the opportunity to pay $8 for a can of Budweiser and drink it while standing around in a doubly-fenced-off cattleyard-style environment; the post-concert crowd management consisted of packing hundreds of people into a narrow concrete alley and not letting us move–of course, no explanation was offered for why we were being forced to stand there and when we would be allowed to go; the hordes of local cops who were unavailable for crowd management proceeded to direct us into a random detour that resulted in us inching along in bumper-to-bumper traffic for 45 minutes before rejoining the same traffic-clogged two-lane road we'd been on originally. Fortunately, Radiohead themselves were freakin' awesome and put on a super-swell show; that said, I'd tear out my own toenails with pliers before I'd go to another show at White River. And I made a set list, which I'll post tomorrow along with photos. Maybe.