Restaurant: Cafe Brasil

2604 Dunlavy St
Houston, TX 77006

This place is great! I hadn't been here for a long time and decided to have lunch there one day. They have great pieces of art on their walls and the food is delicious. The coffee is good and the place features live music on some nights. I had this turkey croissant sandwich and it was PERFECT. Everything was nice and even with nothing spilling out everywhere. Quality control. I was relaying this story to the bf about the last time I was there. Some friends and I were sitting outside in the patio one evening and we heard this loud rustling sound from above. Then all of a sudden, this LARGE rat looking thing fell off the side of the shed covering the patio and landed on the arm of this guy at the table next to us. The rat quickly scrambled off with his equally large rat friend and everyone was left in a state of shock. Then laughter and freak-outs ensued. I'm glad the rat landed on a DUDE because if it were me or some other gal, there would have been MAYHEM! Pure madness! That's nature for ya. As long as the giganto vermin and co. aren't frolicking around inside the place, I shan't be deterred from going there for my picture perfect turkey en croissant. Keep it real ... food over fear. Hah!

Trippin': Seattle - Rachel

Weighing in at 550lbs is Rachel the bronze pig who lives at the Seattle Pike Place Market. She gets fed so much that she produces about 6K-9K a year. The money goes to the Market Foundation which helps low income folks around the area as well as the market farmers in times of need. I greedily didn't put any change in the piggy bank but if you do, remember to give her snout a little rub. Seattle has a Parade of Pigs which is similar to the Cow Parade that we have in Houston. Of course, our cows are way cuter. Thoink you. Thoink you very much!

Trippin': Seattle - ID

This is the last lil bit I have on Seattle's Chinatown. No matter what city I go to, I always make a point to stop by the chinatown specific to that area. In Seattle, chinatown isn't referred to as chinatown but rather the Internation District (ID). I still call it chinatown but I like how Seattle has thrown all foreigners into this one ghetto area. The ID area is similar to the old Houston chinatown near Minute Maid Park. The Bellaire Chinatown has the ID blown away and is definitely no competition but their food is not bad at all!

Placenter: Cutloose

1711 Westheimer
Houston, TX 77098

Every two weeks, I hear the same ole' thing from the bf: I HATE my hair! Unless he wears a cap, he'll spend some good time pomading and waxing it up. On my sink counter are several containers of gunk that are literally 98% full because they were not to his satisfaction. We can now safely conclude that the bf is picky and borderline neurotic about his hair. So the other day the cycle started again and we began researching places that would give him a super awesome haircut. I used to drive by Cutloose in Montrose all the time and thought it looked too cool for us simple folk. So it was perfect! We read reviews and made an appt and got all hyped up and excited about getting our haircut. Oh yeah, the bf decided to treat me to one also. Oh Yeah! My stylist was Tracy and Paul got Michelle who is also the owner of this long standing establishment. Verdict: No difference from any other accredited place. For the money we were paying (which was A LOT), we were expecting to come out looking like rockstars, but it was just your normal looking haircut. I looked normal. I looked so normal that my mama, who always notices when I cut my hair didn't even notice at all! She always works on my hair and when she dyed my hair over the weekend, she went and cut my hair some more because she felt that I needed it (not knowing that I had just had it cut). But the people there were really nice and my stylist spent a lot of time doing her thing and she had the most gentle way of cutting hair that I've ever experienced. It's really not as bad as it seems, but because it was so expensive, I do not think we will be coming back. Also, because of some crazy unforeseen event, we were late to our appt and so I did not get a chance to take any interior shots. I could have done so after the cut but I couldn't work up the courage!