Neurotic Fishbowl: Playing Catch Up

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Playing Catch Up

I seem to be doing this a lot lately - not blogging for a while and then making a super long post to catch everyone up with what's been going on. I guess I ought to reward you if you make it the whole way through, so I'll put a download up for grabs in the "Read More" section. Don't say I never gave you anything.

So, two Fridays ago, Katie IMs me. We had talked about going to see Molly and The Ringwalds that night at The Continental Club (The El Orbits are playing there again Monday and I've invited quite a few people to join the Monday Core Group, consisting of Katie, Irfan, Gil, and I, so if you want to come out, send me an e-mail and I'll get you the details), but she suggested dinner at Pei Wei and going to see Sideways instead.

I haven't been to the movies since last May (I much prefer movies at home to theaters filled with screaming babes and cell phones), so I readily agreed, especially since I adore eating at Pei Wei's.

I met her and her husband Chris over at their place and we headed out to eat. The food was delicious (Mongolian beef for me with crab wontons and lettuce wraps as appetizers) but after we got done eating, we found ourselves with over an hour to kill before the movie. Since Kimberly and Kevin (friends of Katie and Chris) don't live too far away, we headed over there to kill some time.

After chatting and having some black cherry Effen vodka (it's really called Effen vodka; isn't that great?) with cranberry juice, we left for the theater on River Oaks. It's an older theater without the super huge screens and stadium seating and it reminded me so much of all the times I'd gone to the movies in high school with a group of friends. Funny how things can make you nostalgic out of nowhere, huh?

Back to the movie - Sideways was great. It was funny, witty, interesting, and I just loved it. It started off a little slow, but quickly picked up. It had some absolutely hysterical scenes along with touching, heart-felt moments. It's great and I highly recommend checking it out.

The next day I headed back out to Katie and Chris's. Their friend Fred was having his fortieth birthday at Farrago, a restaurant I'd never been to before. It was a lovely place with food to die for. I had the pepperoni pizza and shared Kevin's old fashion dark chocolate cake with creamy chocolate frosting, raspberry sauce and fresh raspberries. They also make a pink lemonade martini that I have simply got to get the receipe for. The drink menu said it had pink lemonade, vodka, and grenadine, but I have no idea how many parts of each to use. Guess I'll be schmoozing the bartender next time I'm there.

It was then back to Kimberly and Kevin's for lots more alcohol (more Effen vodka and cranberry juice in my case; wine and champagne for everyone else) and lots more conversation. I remember Katie and I towards the end of the evening drunkenly making plans to build our own computer and moding it out so it would be the coolest computer ever. Ah, when geeks drink. ;-) I also remember all of us singing to Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" off of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack in the car on the way home. Good times, I tell you.

The next morning, just slightly hung over, we met everyone at Mission Burritos for breakfast. I'd never been there before either (I swear, after living in Houston all my life, I'm just now going venturing out. Better late than never, I guess!) but the food was delicious. They've got the best fajita beef tacos I've ever had, especially considering two tacos and a coke only cost me about $5. I swear, betwen Pei Wei, Farrago, and Mission Burritos, it was the best food weekend I've ever had.

After breakfast, I left Katie's and went back to my house. I'd been thinking about getting a new desk since I'd been using a incredibly tiny one only really big enough for my monitor and a few books. Now that I'm working from home, it was just not conducive to getting anything done. There was just simply not enough room. My mom had mentioned that Sam's Warehouse had a nice U-shaped workstation so she and I headed over there to check it out.

I feel in love with the desk right away, so after getting some more office supplies (paper clips, a desk calendar, highlighters, etc.) and checking Office Depot in case there was anything I liked better, we went home, got my uncle's huge ass truck, and went back and bought the thing (a steal at $376 in my opinion).

The next two days were spent hauling the desk (The World's Biggest Desk is what I christened it) upstairs and putting it together. I was so stiff this entire week. We got it together pretty quickly considering it was just my mom and I working on it and you can see the pictures here. I also bought a beta fish (and named him Spike since all my betas are named Spike or, if they're red, Flame; I just think they're great fish names).

Wednesday was a H-Town Happy Hour at Onion Creek. I met Kimberly at 7:00 so I could sell her my 20 GB iPod. She's delighted with it which makes me happy. Nice doing business with you, Kimberly! ;-)

While initially, it didn't look like too many people were going to show, we ended up with a pretty big turn out. As far as I can remember, here's all the bloggers that showed: Robert, Elaine, Kathy, Jon, Sketkar, Katie, Laurence, Ted (and his fiance Leslie), Gary, and Jason (but I can't remember their URLs. Next time, I'm brining a sign in sheet!). If I left anyone out, sorry!

We also had a special guest, Dwight Silverman. He's online news editor of the Houston Chronicle, who also writes the computing column that appears every Tuesday.

Dwight was going around asking us what our blogs were about (and I should have brought up BiblioBlog, my book review site in hindsight. Of course I'm currently five books behind over there. Must do those soon!). I started with the "random stuff from my life, whatever I feel like, blah blah blah" spiel when Elaine mentioned all the free stuff that I've gotten (at current count, I've gotten the iPod, the iPod photo, the Sony Wega 27" television and placed my orders for the iPod shuffle and the Coach handbag. I'm also pretty close to getting some cash from the various 4Free.com sites - the DS4Free.com one in particular - so feel free to sign up for any of them). He was really interested in the story and suggested that it would make a great feature to the news guys, so hopefully I'll hear from them. It would be pretty cool if that made it into the paper.

Friday, Kathy invited several of us over for pizza, conversation, and to watch Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (the Unrated Extended Edition). While I totally could have lived without the "Battleshits" scene, I thought the rest of the movie was great and just really funny. The special features, though, sucked. What's up with that?

I didn't get home until after 3:00 in the morning, didn't actually go to bed until almost 6:00 AM, and since I got up around 11:00, I was pretty well exhausted this afternoon (been going to bed way too late during the week and haven't slept more than six hours on any given night). I caught up on some stuff on the TiVo and crashed hard around 6:30. I woke up a little after 10:00 (and panicked because I thought it was a work day and I'd overslept) and I'm going to read for a little bit and then go back to bed.

So, there's everything that's been going on with me for the past week. I've been really busy, work's going pretty well, and I've been having the greatest time hanging out with my friends.

Thanks for reading this far. Don't forget the free music in the extended entry.

Ulrich Schnauss - On My Own. (Right click and "Save As" please.)

This is part of this month's music mix at Nike Women. Click on Workout and Get Music to get the rest of the tracks. They're updated monthly, so check back every month for more cool tunes.

.: Posted January 23, 2005 03:12 AM in Fish Tales, ";print substr($entry_cats, 0, -2); ?> :.


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Comments

whoo! That wore me out! Sounds like you had a blast, sorry I couldn't make the happy hour, I'll make the next one.

.: syd said on January 23, 2005 01:15 PM :: link it :.

wow sounds like you had a fun week! :) that nikewomen thing is cool, i think i will go back every month to see whats up! :)

.: becca said on January 23, 2005 03:09 PM :: link it :.

Wow! That was a lot! Did you get your cat, yet? Should be coming soon, if not!

.: Alex. said on January 23, 2005 04:00 PM :: link it :.

I just saw White Castle tonight. Who made you king of the forest?

.: nastybastard said on January 23, 2005 11:53 PM :: link it :.

Now, I'm multi-tasking so I don't remember if i hit post on my comment or not. i'm confused.

.: supergirlwonder@gmail.com said on January 25, 2005 03:59 PM :: link it :.

Now, I'm multi-tasking so I don't remember if i hit post on my comment or not. i'm confused.

.: supergirlwonder@gmail.com said on January 25, 2005 04:00 PM :: link it :.

okay i didn't - so what i was intending to say before i double commented (sorry about that) was i need that fishbowl. now, i don't have a fish just yet, but that's arbitrary.

that really is the mother of all desks, but it looks like such an efficient workspace.

.: girlwonder said on January 26, 2005 09:49 AM :: link it :.

You're too early! Come back at January 23, 2005 03:12 AM to see this post.

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