I booked a trip to San Francisco on the 21st, where I'll meet with a supplier who is in town for a few days, and start researching the Asian media and gift shop type places that I will try to sell to down there.
Coincidentally, this weekend I discovered a couple of college friends on Orkut, and one of them is now living in San Francisco and practicing law. Today we chatted a bit on the phone about career frustrations (current or previous), food, and so on. We made plans to meet up for lunch and so on. I also have another friend there, Sally, an importer who previously lived in Seattle, and we'll talk shop a little when I'm there. I found out that Sally was in Seattle today heading over to Spokane.
One of my suppliers sent some product samples that are apparently needing more precise descriptions for customs. Hopefully that will all be cleared up tomorrow... I'd like to get them as soon as possible. This is a quantity sufficient for sales demonstrations.
Today I cooked a nice little lunch for a friend using good spring ingredients. She's going out of the country for probably just a few weeks so it's kind of a mini-farewell. I got a few morels and patty pan squashes and shallots and made a cream-based sauce for tortiglioni. I cooked a small dish of asparagus and garlic. I roasted a red bell pepper and stuffed it with a mild cream-cheese-textured chevre from a small cheesemaker in Blaine WA, and adorned with a basil leave, pepper, and meyer lemon zest. And I made my signature yuzu salad dressing with honey and mustard. I actually made small portions of each but it turned out to be a lot of food. Somehow we managed to eat almost everything though...
Afterward I took care of some trivial things and went to pottery class. I didn't feel productive, but I started assembling pieces that I threw on Sunday. I'm trying to build a kind of small sculptural piece in the style of something I saw in Japan a couple of times.
I'm also planning to take a little trip to Chicago this weekend, which I'll commit to in the morning, but I have fewer business justifications for. It turns out that it's just going to be a relatively inexpensive trip overall for various reasons so I think I'll go for it.