drwex | Update and updated (Reply)

I've unlocked the previous entry, which describes our trip down to PA. As bad as Friday was, Saturday was good. My mother coped with excessive amounts of chaos without freaking out or upsetting anyone. We took much more stuff than I had planned and yet it all fit in the truck AND the weather cooperated (after an iffy set of showers early in the morning) AND we were done with the primary load by noon-thirty so we could take Mom to lunch and not be rushed. We therefore had time to go back to the hotel, nap, shower and get out to Morimoto's for dinner.

One of the things Pygment and I used to do every weekend while dating was watch Iron Chef. The classic one. Nowadays you've got a whole food channel and lots of entertaining cooking shows, but back then let me tell you we had to watch crap uphill in the snow! Both ways! Erm... where was I?

OK, so right these were reruns of stuff that had aired in Japan years before and Morimoto was hands-down our favorite. So when we heard he was opening a place in (of all cities) Philadelphia we decided we'd go. One thing then another kept getting in the way - money, being in Philly only for family visits that didn't leave us free dinenr times. Blah blah. I confess I'd forgotten about it, but when Pygment noted we'd have Saturday night free and did I mind if she made a plan I said sure. Not half an hour later she said she'd gotten us reservations.

We ended up sitting at the sushi bar, which I actually liked better than the tables. It was less noisy, we had the same menu options, and we could watch the chefs - some amazing knife work there! Plus we were on the corner of the bar so ended up sitting closer together than if we'd been across a table from each other and could feed each other bits of food and sake more often.

We talked about getting the omakase but I'm really not a fan of sushi and Pygment wanted only sushi, so she got the mid-sized chef's choice sushi platter and I got the house special lobster. We split an order of the wasabi fried rice (which was both a brilliant concept and delicious) and the steamed scallops, which were really amazing. I'll leave it to her to describe the sushi - I tasted a few bits of this and that and it was OK, but really not my thing. My lobster (8-spice) was possibly the best I've ever had - certainly in the top 3.

The waiter was gregarious and fun - watching some of the other servers helping others at the sushi bar I think we lucked out on this guy. Pygment wanted some warm sake and got a bottle that ended up being three good-sized glasses. I tried the flight, which let me sample all three of the Morimoto-brand sakes. The flavor and composition are essentially the same - they differ in how the filtration is done. To my surprise I ended up liking the least-filtered one best. Usually I like my sake very refined and sharp and am not a fan of the heavy-flavored milky varieties.

We spent about two and a half hours at dinner and really enjoyed ourselves. It made me glad that we had pushed to get the whole moving thing done early.

Sunday we got up early (earlier than I'd wanted, despite sleeping a whole 7.5 hours) and got on the road. Given the disaster that was the Friday drive we had planned on extra time to get home. Despite unexpected diversions (like finding out at the Last Possible Minute no you can't take a moving truck on the Garden State Parkway*) and the like we made it back in good order and even earlier than planned.

Many people came over and picked up Stuff What We Had Rescued, and

ringrose did a lot of heavy lifting to help get things into the house. There's more space in the garage and I expect that'll be used for some of the items my mom decided to keep.

(*) I sort of suspected that was the case, but they don't post the "no trucks" signs very prominently. I even went online the night before and searched their Web site to see what the restrictions might be and found no info. It wasn't until I was AT the offramp tollbooth from the NJTpk that I finally saw signs for "no trucks" and got told no, the moving van was too big. Feh.