Serene of the Oakland Serenes

It's clear to me that I'm still sick, because our "short walk" (a little over a mile round trip) wore me out a little, and our longer walk (1.6 miles round trip) wiped me the fuck out. Still, I'm having a good day except for being sick. (Unfortunately, my darling stonebender is also sick today, so I'm not sure we're gonna see each other tomorrow, but we'll see how we feel in the morning.)

Highlights of the day:

* The aforementioned walks

* Deliciously bad old vampire movie

* Birthday check from Dad

* My new theme song! (someotherguy wrote it, and it goes like this: "Edible girlfriend! Edible girlfriend!")

* Made pizza dough in the bread machine. Something went oddly and the dough was all gloopy, but it baked up fine and we had pizza with roasted eggplant, homemade pizza sauce, and fresh basil. (Also, fresh mozzarella and westphalian ham or some such on someotherguy's.)

* Ciabatta sandwiches of heirloom tomatoes and fresh basil

* [censored]

Dinner with my mom and lcohen at Cafe Sevilla last night. Their bread is divine (plain and olive) along with either the marinara-type sauce or their peerless aioli. Then I had the wondrous gazpacho, for which I'd been jonesing all day, and mom and lcohen shared the seafood bisque (and then mom gave me the orgasm-inducing rest that she couldn't eat -- it was redolent with lobster broth and cream and just a touch of saffron, oh my). Then we all shared the six-item tapas platter, which the menu describes thusly:

Pinchos Morunos -- marinated pork on skewers [wonderful grilled taste, especially the fresh peppers]
Gambas a la Plancha -- pan seared shrimp [so buttery-garlicky-yummy]
Calamares Fritos -- fried calamari [always my favorite when I lived in Spain -- these could've been lighter in the batter department, but they were still lovely]
Patatas a la Brava -- sautéed potatoes in spicy tomato sauce [my favorite of the evening's tapas -- the sauce was complicated and more bell-peppery than tomatoey, and I loved it]
Empanada Barcelona -- salmon mousse, shrimp, sautéed spinach, rice, raisins and pine nuts in a puff pastry topped with a cranberry port sauce [I ate most of it in layers, because I wanted to taste all of it, and thought it was too busy all together. It was really really delicious, though.]
Croquetas de Pollo -- chicken croquettes [I didn't care for these, nor did the others. They were bready and bland.]

Anyway, the company was lovely, the dinner was lovely, and I ate my weight in aioli. How could that be bad?