Moving On and The Wild Sage in Spokane

Choosing your attitude or approach to how to handle situations is a belief I give high regard. It's something I work to to model for my staff and students daily..."You can choose to whine about only 38% of your class meeting standard or you can figure out what to do differently based on that data." or "You can choose to cry about dropping your lunch on the floor or you can get back in line and get a new lunch."

It's also how I choose to live my life. Closing my father's estate is consuming a big chunk of our life right now. Its not fun, sometimes its sad and some times its even slightly maddening. We inherited a storage unit that sits 500 miles across the state that my father has been renting for @ least 15 years ( we figured out he'd spent over $20,000 on that unit...he should of owned that 8x12 foot space wouldn't you think?) . He'd talked about getting over there to deal with it for years and it just never happened.

So we, along with my sister & Mike, decided we were done paying that rent and made a trek over the mountains to Spokane to get it done. It definitely was not a weekend any of us were really looking forward to but we choose to make the most of it, get the job done, try to enjoy;a cocktail or two, maybe a good meal and each others company ...so that's what we did. We left Friday after work and didn't get checked into the hotel in Spokane until after midnight.

Saturday morning after a diner breakfast, that stated ," we have the world's best hash browns" we made it out to the storage unit. We really had no idea what we would find or want but we knew it had to be done. After the kind helper sawed the lock open for us we found a storage unit covered in 15 years of dust. I don't know if I've ever truly seen 15 years of dust before this experience. It was a long day of, "Oh, remember this" , "My goodness he really had all of those" and "Wow, what are we going to do with this." We all worked hard and after renting a UHau trailer and a trip to the dump we got it done, for my dad and for us.

After accomplishing this daunting task we were all parched and hungry. We decided after getting back to our hotel and getting cleaned up that we'd take a cab downtown and figure out where to go once we got there.

We had the cabbie drop us off by the mall and from there we went to O'Doherty's Irish Grille that G and I have visited on several different Spokane trips. Just a great place for beer, pub food and trying to figure out "how did they get those dollar bills on the ceiling?"

While there we met a friendly couple from Trail, Canada who recommended that we have dinner at the Wild Sage. They said it was the best food in Spokane. We went with it. We were lucky enough to snag an eight thirty reservation. Which we all thought was perfect because it allowed us sometime to check out somewhere else on the way.

And we stumbled across, Bistango Martini Lounge. And we are glad we did. G is convinced he had one of his top 5 cocktails there. Tracy & I each had our own version of a swanky drink.

Something with jalapeno for me.

And something with cucumber for Tracy.

But we all agreed the boys chose best. They had the bartender make them a special spicy Serrano Chile drink with cilantro that was by far the most yummy of our 3 choices.

Next we were off to Wild Sage. We finally found it after having our smartphone maps lead  us a stray a bit. And we are happy to have found it.

We started off with the tapas sampler dish that our friendly Canadians also recommended and another round of tasty drinks. This time something called the Robjito that was like a citrus flavored mojito and really very tasty.

The ambiance was great, the energy level was alive and the service was fantastic.

Tracy had the breast of duckling that she really enjoyed.

Both Mike & G had the wild prawn pasta.

And I had the "from the water" dish of the night that was Parmesan crusted halibut over polenta.

We also decided to splurge on a bottle of Abeja Merlot.

We ended our night full and exhausted. The next morning we headed back home with our uhaul trailer full of dad's stuff.

We ended our trip visiting Mike & Tracy's wedding venue Swiftwater Cellars at Suncadia.

It was a beautiful afternoon to take in the views and

 enjoy some winetasting before getting back home.

This task accomplished is just one step closer to moving on in accepting our father's passing and work towards just remembering and missing him!