Enjablog

Ian and I tried Pizza Hut’s Panormous pizza tonight… only to discover that our pizza was made out of breadsticks!

Thanks to the internets, we discovered there are a bunch of people who feel strongly about Pizza Hut pizzas. The pizza is supposed to be made out of the breadstick dough, but they weren’t supposed to pre-cut it like breadsticks for us…

Ian and I went to Cap City this morning for brunch and it was awesome. There were the usual omelet and waffle bars. For breakfast-y foods there was sausage, bacon, bagels and lox, french toast, eggs Benedict, and more that I’m probably not remembering. On the lunch side of things there was salmon with a pineapple and mango salsa, chicken Marsala, roast beef, ham, mac & cheese (fantastic!), rice and green beans, and more. Then there was the dessert table with the chocolate fountain. It was all so good. Plus, the head chef was out carving meat, so he was telling us what everything was and what was in it. That way we could make an informed decision on which items we wanted to offer precious stomach space to. It didn’t hurt that he was a Red Sox fan too. ;)

Just got back from dinner with Ian at The Melting Pot. I think I ate something like 3000 calories tonight. So much good food, and I absolutely could not resist the brownies in the cookies ‘n’ cream chocolate fondue. Mmmmm!

The onset of food coma is coming quickly. I just wanted to say that I finally made it out for Restaurant Week. I’ve meant to go the past few years and kept missing it for one reason or another. Definitely marking my calendar to check out some new places next year. One of my coworkers had reservations at 4 different restaurants. That’s way too much for me.

Off to dream about chocolate…

QOTD: “That joke was scientifically based and therefore not insulting.”

Ian and I checked out Floyd’s Grill and Bar a couple weeks ago. We went over for Sunday brunch after their grand opening, so they were still pretty new. For the most part it was pretty entertaining.

It started out with us reporting to the hostess that we noticed a car outside with the headlights on. She was very apologetic, as though this car had inconvenienced us and her only recourse was to apologize and hope that we would forgive her enough to eat there.

They were still training up servers, so our server had an apprentice buddy following him around. He would explain to her what he was going to do before he actually did it, i.e. “I’m going to introduce myself; Hi, my name is [Bob].” “Now I’ll ask them if they want something to drink; Would you like something to drink?”

The rest of the meal was relatively uneventful. We ordered, they brought our food out. They needed to work out kinks with delivering both our food at the same time. And then they weren’t that busy, so our server moved around the dining area hovering over us.

At the end of the meal, after Ian had given the server his credit card, the busboy came over and made polite conversation with us as he cleared our plates. He asked if we were through with our drinks as well and took our glasses. He had cleared everything except my napkin before a manager passed by and politely pulled him aside. We assumed the manager was just explaining that he was supposed to wait until patrons had left before clearing their table. To make up for it, the busboy returned a few minutes later with new glasses of water. Except, these weren’t just regular glasses of water; they were fancier than what we originally had. They were the Sam Adams Ultimate Beer Glass… with water in them.

It was just awkward after that. Fortunately, we paid almost immediately after that and then had everyone say goodbye to us on our way out.

Oh, and P.S. The headlights on the car were still on when we got outside.

Today’s advice: After you move, delete the phone numbers of restaurants who deliver to your old residence from your phone.

Right, so of course there’s a story.

Ian and I decided to order some Chinese food and watch a movie last night. It’s my responsibility to order Chinese food because I’m Chinese-y or something. And that means I’m somehow better qualified to make a phone call. I called, confirmed my phone number, confirmed delivery to my address on file, gave the order and began my 35 minute wait.

Earlier in the evening I played a prank on someone and had scrolled past Maple House in my phone book. So, as I was looking at the Oriental Star menu, I chose to call the restaurant I had on the brain. Unfortunately, Maple House only delivers to a small area in Centreville. I think 20 miles might be out of their delivery area.

I only figured out my mistake half an hour later when the driver called me asking where I was. I told him I’d come downstairs and let him in. Go downstairs to the front of my building and find that there is no chinese food. There is no one trying to get in. Confusion ensues.

I receive another call from the delivery guy and he reads my address to me to confirm that’s where I am. *gasp* I haven’t lived there in almost a year! What did I do? What am I going to do? It’s not like I can have them deliver it to me. It’s not like I’m going to drive all the way out there to pick up food. Hmmm…

Sonny still lives in the area. He likes GTC… Call Sonny up to find out if he’s home and tell him he’s going to get some free chinese food from me. Call the restaurant back and give them his new address and ask if they’ll deliver it over there. Thank them profusely for being accommodating. Call Sonny back a little while later to make sure he got the food. Fortunately, he and his friends were over there and they were planning to go out and watch the game, but I caught them before they left. So, they just stayed in and watched the game.

Everything all worked out and we lived happily ever after. The end.

Ian took me out Friday night for a birthday dinner. So good! We went to Rustico in Old Town. They’re relatively new. They have great pizza and an extensive beer menu. I wasn’t so interested in the beer, but they did also have some tasty sangria. And when I was done with that, I had my choice of root beer and cream soda, which was fine by me. :)

After that, we came home and retrieved the awesome package BFF sent me. A delivery from Burdick’s that the mean lady at the front desk was actually nice enough to store in the fridge for me. So exciting! There was a cake inside and a traditional Burdick’s hot chocolate mug with a package of the chocolate concoction. Mmm… chocolate overload.

Decided to just stay in the for the rest of the evening since we had a big day planned on Saturday and watched A History of Violence. Surprisingly rated R for things other than violence. But also pretty violent. Good movie, though I probably wouldn’t recommend it to my parents.

Went out to Reston and watched Pirates with SPJ and Ian. Throughout the movie, I kept picturing how they would turn certain scenes into amusement park rides. I don’t know if that was on purpose, but I’m guessing it wasn’t completely accidental. Cool movie. I don’t want to give anything away, so if you liked the first one, you’ll probably like this one too.

An interesting part of the movie-going experience was the person sitting next to me in the theater. (No, I don’t mean Ian.) There was a guy sitting next to me eating an entire Chinese take-out meal with chopsticks. He made one slurping noise, but shut up after my first dirty look. I gave the kid behind me a dirty look, too, after he kicked my seat. Only happened once. My dirty look must be getting good. ;)

Anyway, halfway through the movie the guy next to me pulled out his cellphone to text message someone. I assume his date, because he was looking at the phone and typing stuff while looking down the row at her. Oh yeah. She was sitting on the other side of the row because they came into the movie late and couldn’t find seats together. Too bad… I think he had her dinner too. And this is why I hate going to movie theaters. At least her phone was silenced, I guess.

Before the movie, Ian and I made a trip out to Taco Bell to try their new Spicy Chicken Crunchwrap Supreme. (Yes, advertising works on us. Shut up.) It was quite tasty. Smaller than they looked on TV, in my opinion, but still filling. While we were there, we discussed how beef tacos are to Taco Bell as french fries are to other fast food places. This seemed strange to me because they have nachos and other things that would work as more comparable sides. But all the meal combos seemed to have a side of taco.

Alright, back to The Crossing. It’s turnip day! :)

I don’t think I ever blogged about last weekend. Mostly because I don’t remember writing about bowling. Yeah, the awesomeness that is my life knows no bounds! Got together with a bunch of people for happy hour Friday night. A mix of former coworkers, current coworkers, and TJ people. Hung out for a bit at Cap City and then the group broke off and 4 of us went bowling.

This is the first time I’ve gone bowling in a long time. I think the last time I went was 1999. It was the week after a friend passed away and I spent a day at the student center with JL2 and my sis bowling and playing pool. They were the most half-hearted attempts at these games and we ended playing pool for something like 2 hours because no one could win. It was a really bad game.

Anyway, something has happened since the last time I went bowling (average ~80-90) because I scored over 140. Twice. Then, my last game, I got a spare left-handed. It was like bizarro world or something. Although, I am now less impressed with Sonny’s left-handed bowling scores.

Saturday, I went over to Jackee’s and made floral arrangements for her. She had way more flowers than I expected. I ended up spending the better part of the day over there and put together 5 arrangements and stopped in the middle of a 6th. A couple of them need a little more filler green, but aside from that, I thought they turned out alright.

Sunday, Ian and I went over to visit my parents and stop by Costco afterward before heading home. It turns out Costco isn’t open on Easter. So, we turned around in the parking lot and headed back out. As I was waiting for my turn to turn into traffic, about 6 more cars all turned into the Costco parking lot. Asians, all. Chinese, Indian… I don’t know for sure all the ethnicities, but all with a plausible excuse for showing up at Costco expecting it to be open on Easter.

Yesterday was a food-packed day.  It started out with omelettes at work.  My company just renewed our lease with our current building and, as a thank you, our realtor brought in an omelette chef for the morning.  My boss was craving chips and queso, so he went around on Thursday handing out Chipotle fax forms.  Friday lunch, he ran over to pick up office burritos and made queso to go with the chips he brought in.  Mmm!  So cheesey!

For date night last week, Ian and I went out for dinner without a plan.  We headed down to Old Town and wandered around until we found a nice little Irish pub for dinner: Pat Troy’s.  On our way there, though, we saw a sign for Dancing Peppers Cantina and decided to try it some other time (there’s a pepper wearing a Mexican hat and it looks like he’s *dancing*).  That other time was last night and it was excellent.  We got quesadillas, tacos, and enchiladas.  All good and the raspberry margarita was fantastic.  :)

At the end of dinner, I tried out something I learned from WaiterRant.  In the past, I have been peeved when the waiter/tress automatically puts the check next to the guy.  But he makes a good point that the check should be brought to the person who asked for it.  Granted, in the past I have asked for it and it still gets put next to Ian.  Last night was worse than usual.  Started out well;  I asked for the check and she brought it to the table, placing it close to the center.  I put my credit card in, handed her the booklet thingy, and asked if they took Discover.  She said yes and would be right back after running it through the computer.  Then she returned and placed the booklet right in front of Ian.

<Rant>
I am a member of a professional society relating to my job.  I volunteer as their webmaster and do things like update the meeting schedule, post related papers, events, announcements, etc., and just generally keep people up-to-date on the goings-on.  I took this position mostly because they didn’t have anyone to do it and I didn’t want to be meetings chair anymore.  But I also thought this would be a good opportunity for me since I wanted to learn more about web design and this would give me a good excuse to learn/implement new things.

The site that was handed over to me was essentially a relic from the mid-90s with tables for everything, broken links, inconsistent fonts/colors, and  a menu that changed width depending on what page you were on.  That one, I still can’t explain; I never could fix it.  I have since organized *folders*, started using index files instead of naming everything home.html or home2.html, and converted their old look into pretty css.  These were relatively benign changes, since the look of the site didn’t change much.  It was just cleaner; the content was the same.

The first comment I got on it was from the Chairman, asking me how I learned to do that and informing me that it’s ok that I made those changes, but the website no longer printed out correctly.  Well, that’s because it’s a website and most people don’t have reason to print out entire websites.  Anyway, I addressed that issue and all was well.

And then Google Calendars came out.  I thought it was awesome!  (Still think it’s awesome too.)  I’m sure you all knew that already.  But I thought it would be incredibly cool if people could subscribe to our society calendar and be able to add it to their personal calendar.  It would keep people posted on when our technical sessions were, they could set up personal reminders, and they could conveniently find out what the presentations were about without needing to check our website regularly.  It would be us going to them without spamming their email the week before each meeting.

I will include you on the agenda (Wednesday) to explain what is meant by xml button you have now placed on the web pages.

Even I don’t know what these are - which is a bit embarrassing for me as the EMC chair, as well as the chair of this Section.

Henceforth you will consult me on these kinds of revisions to the web pages, please.

EMC = Electronics Media Committee.  They do like using the word electronics to sound cool.  Anyway, that was an email referring to the new XML and ICAL buttons I had posted up on the site.  I really should have known that our self-proclaimed techno guru didn’t know about RSS feeds and should have gotten his permission to post a link to information that is already available on the website.  I am to assume the section chairman has less knowledge of the internet than a 12-year-old blogger and not make any changes to the website.  He’s right.  That is embarrassing.

He, however, can post whatever he wants, whenever he wants, without letting me know.  This is awesome because, for some reason, I don’t download the entire website every time I make updates.  This means that when he goes in and re-orders the list of executive members the way he likes it and posts captioned pictures, it’s my fault that I over-wrote his files with content updates and he has no copy on his harddrive.

 Enter: yesterday’s nasty-gram.

These pages in my view are far nicer than pages created with your software, especially since I add captions and think hard about the layout and order of the photos.  In the last year I have installed by photos page as index.html,
so a member can easily clink to the nice page from the gallery page.  Therefore, where in the past I had created nice pages I want them on the website. If neither of us can find my old pages above I will recreate the html - as best I can recall the text I used - using the files in original, of course.

Essentially, “Your work sucks.  My work is superior, even though it has never been linked to and no one has ever seen it.”  He later called me to explain in “as small words” as he could, “in english.”  Yeah, it’s hard work.  He actually referred to the pages I put up as crap. He has essentially peed all over our photo gallery claiming that as his area of the website that will not follow the same menu/look as the rest of the site. He does not want it to have anything next to or above the pictures and i am to pass any new changes by him and the entire executive committee because that is the way any webmaster for an organization would do it. This is a society site and, just as the treasurer can not just go off and do whatever he wants, I can not just make changes to the site.

So, he’s turning this into a power struggle when it’s just a website.  And, yes, I know I’m just playing into it by even caring about the quality of work I produce.  But let’s get down to it.  His real problem?  I started using something he did not understand.  I posted meeting pictures without his  permission.  He thought that was a great idea.  I started linking presentations, abstracts, and bios for technical sessions without permission.  He was excited that all this information was getting posted!  I changed the front page to show links to all our events, with a second page detailing each event, also with relevent links.  This, also, is great!

I realize now that he was showing apprehensions toward changes when we switched to CSS and made things look more consistent overall.  He did not understand this.  That means it is inherently bad.  Technology is bad.  Adding links to yet another thing he did not understand.  That is crossing the line.  I should not only get permission from him, but also from the entire executive committee.  Which means wasting 10 people’s time in an already lengthy meeting, but also waiting 1-2 months on any updates.

 Yeah, so I’m incredibly riled up about this.  This pisses me off.  A lot.  I volunteered for this position.  I did it to learn and have fun.  He would like me to do neither.  That is ok with me.  I have plenty of other things to spend my time doing.

</Rant> 

I bought new dress shoes for work a few weeks ago and they are working out splendidly!  They were Aerosoles and are incredibly comfortable walking to and from Ian’s office parking garage or the metro.  Depending on my mood I can either wear these shoes or sneakers and change into my backup shoes at work.  I never thought I’d get excited about shoes, but just thought I’d share the info.

Update on my illness.  I was sick for about 18 hours Monday-Tuesday.  I think it might have been due to eating too much candy, but I eat too much candy and too many cookies all the time.  I don’t know why this time was so different.  I bought some reduced price Easter candy on Monday morning and was eating it throughout the day.  Now, when I say “throughout the day” I really mean that I had like 5 or 6 mini-chocolate eggs spaced out during the day.  I have had way more chocolate than that before.  Another factor that may have played a role is that I hadn’t had anything else to eat during the day.

Around 4pm, I started feeling funny.  Then, over the next 30-60 minutes, I started feeling very warm and nauseated.  I asked Ian if he could head out early, he said yes, and off we went.  I made it about 3/4 of the way home before my streak was broken.  Then, again after a 2-hour nap.  I felt a little better after that, so I had some dinner and sat around until I felt unwell again.  And slept for 11 hours.  I got up, sent a couple emails and IMed for about half an hour.  This was enough work for one day, so I decided to take a 6-hour nap.  And when I woke up, I was perfectly healthy again.  The End.

Ian picked me up after work last night and we ventured over to get tickets to see Inside Man. From there, we walked over to Hops Restaurant/Bar for dinner. I tried their rootbeer, which was good, but reminded me of a less sweet A&W. It might have lost some of the flavor due to the amount of ice in the glass though. I don’t know. In any case, food was good.

When the waitress came at the end of our meal to clear off plates, she dropped Ian’s fork… which none of us could then find on the ground. It was bizarre. After about a minute of us all looking around, she decided it would turn up later, probably when someone stepped on it, and left to get our check. And then she found that the fork had landed in her pocket. Strange.

After dinner, we still had about half an hour until the movie started, so Ian and I wandered around a little. I haven’t bought shoes in a while and most of my dress shoes are pretty beat up, so I suggested we go look in the shoe store across the parking lot. I looked at girl shoes and he looked at boy shoes. A lot of brown shoes this season. I don’t really have anything against brown shoes, but I haven’t found any dress pants in brown that I’ve really liked. So all my pants are black or gray… which means I need black shoes. Ian found a pair he liked and came over to help me look. It helped that he could reach the shoes on display about 2 feet above my head, which I couldn’t see in the first place. But he found a nice pair, and they even had my size in stock. So exciting!

We got our shoes (buy one pair, get a second pair half off!) and then headed off to the movie. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody, so I’ll just say I’ve heard it very accurately described as a modern-day The Sting. Well done! :)

Ian and I met up with a few of my former co-workers for happy hour Friday night. Got all caught up on the office gossips. Since I’ve left, what does it matter if I know, right? Hehe… Played some pool and I won a game of cutthroat!! Ok, so I only intentionally hit one ball in (I hit 2 others in that weren’t the ones I was aiming for) and it was the last one on the table that wasn’t mine. But still. My luck came in at the right time. That’s the same as being good at pool.

Went out for date night on Saturday. Ian and I decided to get sushi, so we went and looked on the Washington Post Restaurant guide thingy and found a “new” place in Arlington to try out. About a mile away from home, I was going over the directions in my head and it sounded like it was near a place we had tried before… And when we got there, it turned out to be the place we had tried before. Oh well. It was good. :)

The entertaining/annoying part of the night was the family that got seated next to us. There were 2 adults and 3 kids. The girl sitting at the corner across from me spent about 40% of the evening staring at me and another 35% staring at Ian. She was creepy. Not like naked guy at the backdoor creepy. But like little girl in the Exorcist creepy. Anyway, later in the evening:

Kid1: Is octopus a mammal?
Kid2: No! It’s an arachnid. It has 8 legs.
Mom: No, it’s not a mammal.
Kid1: Yes it is! It lays eggs.
Dad: It’s not a mammal; it doesn’t breathe air.
Kid2: What about whales? They don’t breathe air.
Dad: Yes they do. They have a snout!

So I don’t necessarily expect the kids to have known about cephalopods, but come on… Shouldn’t the parents know that there are other classes besides mammal and arachnid (yes, arachnids are a subphylum, but whatever)? Not what those classes are, but just that there are organisms that don’t fit into either the arachnid or mammal categories.

Anyway, the later discussion between kid3 and the dad pretty much summed up for me the problem with that family. The father asks her whether she liked lemons, she says no, and he says not plain; they’re no good like that… unless it’s with tequilla. Then he proceeds to explain to her the lemon/salt/tequilla thing. Nice.

Went over with Ian to my parents’ on Sunday to meet up with my sis and hang out with the parents. Ended up hanging out with my sis for a while before our parents showed up. We played some Animal Crossing and everyone took naps. Oh! Oh! And in Animal crossing, I got my golden watering can!! Woo!

Did Ian’s family dinner thing after that. His bro got a new tripod for his camera, so they had a little picture night. There was some gossip to catch up on and then Ian’s bro dropped off Ian’s bike.

Oh my goodness. Ian took me out to dinner Tuesday night to Burrito Grill. It’s close to his new job and his Chipotle-loving co-workers introduced him to it. They are outstanding! Burrito Grill, I mean. I know little of his co-workers.

Also on the menu: Tacos, quesadillas, and enchiladas.

So, I can’t make too general a conclusion from eating here once, but it was definitely very good. I had a chicken burrito with Spanish rice, black beans, tomato, corn, lettuce, sour cream, cheese, and mild salsa. This is comparable to my standard Chipotle order, except for the type of rice. I liked the salsa better; it was incredibly flavorful. I liked the Spanish rice, but I still also like the extra lime they put in Chipotle rice. The chicken was not as good as Chipotle, but I took a bite of Ian’s pork carnitas burrito and that was so good. I would say that was even better than Chipotle.

I would definitely go back, but I’d pick a different meat next time. Also, kudos to the woman who wrapped my burrito. I thought she was going to end up making a square burrito like I get at Chipotle sometimes, but it ended up shaped perfectly burrito-like by the time she was done. There also weren’t the obvious stripes of food layers. Amazing.

Went to Ian’s office Christmas party last night at Utopia. Never been there before, but it seems like a pretty cool place. Good food and lots of boozahol. Hung out for a couple hours before heading home.

Not much going on recently. Getting settled into new life, wrapping Christmas presents, looking for scissors, making lists of things we need (plastic wrap, soap, ketchup, etc.), and being lazy.

Had our first dinner guests last Sunday. Ian’s family came over for their Sunday dinner thing. His brother made lasagna and we made cake. Yeah, so we didn’t actually do the dinner part, but we invited the people. That counts, right?

So the latest gossips: I heard from my mom, who heard from her sister-in-law, who heard from her daughter, who heard from her mother-in-law, who heard from her son that Ian and I are getting married next year! Why am I always the last to find out about stuff? So, I guess… congratulations to us.

QOTD: “So what does your family eat?”
“Oh, normal stuff… white rice, chicken with soy sauce, dragon and broccoli, and on special occasions we’ll have unicorn, usually with tofu (I like to call it tofunicorn).”

Thanksgiving turned out really well this year. We had 16 people, I think. I lost track after a while. My immediate family + gramma, local aunt/uncle/cousins, Ian, and SPJ. It started out with the novelty item of the year: a deep fryer. The plan was to fry up some test items before getting ready for the main event.

So, we started off with some sweet potato fries, which turned out really well. We had no recipe and hadn’t fried anything before, so we just kept looking at it until we thought it was done. Then my uncle sacrificed himself to test if they were done. They were not. He survived.

Next up: Deep fried Oreos and Twinkies. Considering I bought Twinkies on a whim on Thanksgiving eve and then Ian and I picked up some Oreos Thanksgiving morning, these came out surprisingly well. Well, that and thanks to the internet.

After that, I left the frying to the men and went inside to finalize some of my dishes and to get in other people’s way in the kitchen. Ian and I made some cornbread. Sonny and I had spent Thanksgiving eve prepping our main dishes so they would just need to be baked in the morning. (We also ran out of refrigerator space with my cheesecakes, so we ended up putting food in our cars overnight since it was cold.) He made the Washington Post Party Potatoes recipe. Cool because I was eyeing that and now I don’t have to try that recipe out on my own. I made two dishes of ziti. To be fair, I only meant to make one, but I couldn’t remember if I had made one or two boxes in previous years, so I decided to err on the side of safety. And by safety, I mean making way too much food because that’s what Thanksgiving’s about, right? Making too much food, then gorging yourself on it? Right.

My sis was in charge of stuffing, as usual. She also brought 2 pies. Mmm! My mom was busy in the kitchen well before we arrived. She made ham and two kinds of bread — rolls and cran-apple bread. And new to the menu this year was my aunt and uncle’s lo mein as well as Stephanie’s cranberry mold (Lenny said he helped too). Oh and don’t forget the “adult” eggnog. Hehe…

Menu:
Thanksgiving Day Soup
Turkey
Honey Glazed Ham with Pineapple
Ziti
Mashed Potatoes
Stuffing
Fresh Baked Bread
Cornbread
Lo Mein
Miscellaneous vegetables
Deep Fried stuff
Sweet Potato Fries
Cranberry mold
Thanksgiving Pumpkin cheesecake
Thanksgiving Raspberry Pie
Thanksgiving Apple Pie

Scheduled Lunch time: 12pm
Actual Lunch time: 12:30pm

After filling up, we sat around and watched football and played online word games. My family is *awesome*.

About two hours after we finished eating there, Ian, Sean, and I headed over to Ian’s family’s Thanksgiving. They were much less excited about their fryer, but I think I may have sold them on the sweet potato fries. Ian might have to convince them on the oreos.

Menu:
Salad
Turkey
Stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Green bean casserole
Yams
Rolls
Pumpkin cheesecake
Apple Pie
Pecan Pie

Round 2: 4pm
Highlight of dinner conversation: Ian telling his family about my family’s “Oriental-style fried bird,” “Asian Stuffing,” “Chinese-style mashed potatoes,” etc. etc. He got through about a third of the menu before one of his cousins caught on and asked if we just had a regular Thanksgiving. This was, of course, followed by his grandmother asking me for the nth* time where I am from.

*Where n represents the number of times I have met her. Around half a dozen now, I believe.

Spent Friday morning out at Potomac Mills with Sonny and Ian. We wandered Ikea until Sonny needed to head out for his football game. Ian and I went on to the JCPenney Outlet store to find ExtraTall clothes. Napped through part of the afternoon, then visited my parents for the leftover special.

Saturday, Ian and I attempted some shopping to find furniture for the new place. We ended up just doing a lot of window shopping, but at least we know where to go back once we have dimensions for everything. Stopped in at Arigato Sushi in Fair Lakes for lunch. This was our second time there and for the second time, we had to wait 10-15 minutes before flagging someone down to bring the check, then waited another 10-15 minutes before they actually brought it. All the while, watching other people get their checks. It’s odd. The food is good though, so as long as we’re not in a hurry, I guess it’s not a terribly big deal.

Saturday night, Sonny hosted a tree-trimming party. There were lots of cookies, egg nog, and karaoke. And then when people were just about ready to leave, we decided to put up the tree.

Sunday, I started packing… Took some books off my bookshelf and wrapped up some Christmas presents (so I wouldn’t have to move them). Ran a couple errands, and then was off to Ian’s Sunday family thing.

*Phew*

So, that was my holiday weekend. More moving updates to come.

LOTD: The Washington Post Zombie Chat:

Washington, D.C.: I’m pretty sure there are some people at work I can count on to back me up when a zombie attack occurs. Strong team players. As for others– would it be wrong to use them to create a “diversion”?

Max Brooks: I always say “Organize before they rise!” The reason we, as humans, have risen to dominance over the planet is our ability to cooperate. Try not to face zombies alone. Tell a friend, get a zombie-survival group together. Have regular meetings, delegate responsibilities. Any tight team of 5 humans is more than a match for a thousand unorganized zombies.

Alright, so who’s with me?

I came across this website today: Wage Project (Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the calculator thingy to work in Firefox, so if it gives you trouble, try IE.) And it is giving me that shove that I need to actually look around to see what other companies in this area are paying their engineers. According to their calculator, I’m making 61% of what the average white male marine engineer/naval architect with a BS in this area makes. I knew that I was making about 20% less than most of my co-workers around here, but that’s not with all else equal (different starting times, different educational backgrounds, etc.) So, now that calculator is saying that my coworkers are being paid on the lower end of that average white male spectrum. Also of note: Asian males get paid, on average, twice what I do. That ain’t cool, yo.

Anyway, this weekend, I ate out a little too much. Especially after spending most of the week trying out restaurants in Blacksburg. Went out with Ian to Sweetwater for date night. Then, went shopping for a good portion of the day on Saturday. Found pants for both of us, which was an amazing feat. His inseam is longer than his waist measurement, so yeah… good luck with that. I, on the other hand, went up from a size 5 to a size 2. Let me, again, reiterate how much I hate female clothing sizes. Also, I think the sizes were padded for ego because there are still other brands where I’m just getting back to fitting their size 6.

Met up with SPJ and TLD at The Lost Dog Cafe. I had my first cookies ‘n’ cream milkshake in over 3 years. Mmmm! Yeah, yeah… so it’s a bar/eatery place. I wanted a milkshake. They have delicious food there, by the way, in addition to their ample selection of alcohol. Headed back to my place afterward and watched Transformers: The Movie with two unconscious boys. They totally missed out. Also, it made clear so much that I missed when I only watched the TV episodes growing up. Good thing kids aren’t very smart. (Ok, not really. Some kids are smart. I just don’t remember questioning the TV show and I don’t want it to seem like I was the only dumb one.)

Sunday, got brunch at Blue Water Grille with Ian and SPJ. We spent a good part of the morning trying to find a place nearby to get breakfast and thanks to the internet (local.google.com, actually) we happened upon this place. It turned out to have an excellent brunch (omelet bar and fresh belgian waffles!) and what other way is there to start out the week, but with mamosas?

Went shopping for a little while again and then loafed around the rest of the afternoon before heading over for Ian’s family dinner thing. Had some interesting female bonding time while the boys took the dogs out for walks and watched football.

LOTD (PSA): Google Maps + Sex Offender Registry = Map Sex Offenders