Breakfast before Seattle

A few weekends ago, I drove to Seattle for a fashion tradeshow, selling my sustainable clothing line called Emily Katz. (my name too)
I called my friend Jeevan to see what she was up to for the weekend and to tell her a few things that I was thinking about. She said
"come on over here before your drive, and I will make you breakfast!"
So I drove on over, with my little jetta wagon packed snug, and sat on her lovely porch in the late morning sun.

The coffee was from Tiny's in a thermos, but the plums were picked by our friend Seth, and the rest was warm and filling, and so was the talking, that i was definitely late getting on the road. But it was worth it.

Music and Wine Country

It was a grey Sunday in August, I woke up very early, which for me is 9am, and walked over to my friend Bobby's house. He is in a band called "Lusty Leaf" and we were playing an uncommonly early show. Who goes to see music at noon on a Sunday? I usually don't. I set my instruments down in his living room and we headed down Alberta to get coffee and yummy muffins at Random Order. Our friend Kaylee was also playing the show, she in fact had organized it all. And she is responsible for the muffins. She is a little bundle of smiles and her songs (which she sings under the moniker: Talk here, and sometimes : Talk here asshole) are so cute you want to stuff your cheeks with them. Well, anyway she was going to drive us to Music Millennium in NW. That is where the show was. At noon. On a Sunday.
We get there and they made such cute signs for us, so it was hard to feel tired, grumpy, or hungover.

The crowd of maybe 10 or so were unconventionally attentive, and a few random shoppers stopped flicking through jeweled cd cases and watched, and listened, and maybe they were touched somewhere.
After I played, a girl who was there to see Talk Here, came up to me, Her cheeks were smeared with mascara. She told me my songs were beautiful, and I thanked her. And then I thought to myself, this is the only time when I feel really really good about making someone cry.



The next part of the day felt like a dream. My friend Sean had invited me and a guy I was seeing out to wine country. Sean's friend Mitch had rented a limo for the day and a group was headed out to the rolling hills West of Portland for a day of wine and relaxing. My Beau and I broke up the night before, which made my tiredness and desire to head out of the city more pronounced.

So, I am standing outside of Music Millennium with my instruments and my friend Nick (who I have known since the 2nde grade in Waldorf School) calls me, and then I see him drive by.

Sorry I missed the show, he said.
Come to wine country! i replied.

All in all the day was seized. Nick came along. We all got drunk at 4pm. I bought my first bottle of wine that cost $28. a 2004 pinot noir. oh man. i wanted to save it, but then we realized we had a wine opener in the limo so I thought: when is the next time I will drink AMAZING wine in a limo? or be in a limo for that matter? The bottle was from a new and very beautiful winery called Le Nez. The building stood alone on the top of a hill overlooking miles of rolling green and yellow pastures. After our 4th tasting we all spread out in the perfectly manicured grass and watched tiny grasshoppers dance on our heavy limbs. I did a few cartwheels until one of the women who worked there expressed concern for the greenery.
I don't regret it.


Nick and Sean strike a pose on the deck overlooking the vineyard.

Returning to Portland was easy, Mitch cooked everyone dinner, Sean and I played a new duet on our guitars, and then we headed to the end of PDX POP NOW to see some bands I had never heard. It was a very long and fulfilling day, and any grumpiness from the night before was completely washed away by floods of songs and wine and friends.