It ain't easy being green

Today there was much driving. Driving in the morning with Barbara, then driving in the afternoon with Eli. I drove him to Shadyside. We had lunch at the crepe place, which was crowded as heck. Then we went to an appointment we had with the jeweler that Ralph recommended a while ago. He was really nice and had a lot of funny stuff to say. The most important things I learned from the encounter is that my ring size is 5.5, and that I shake hands like a girl. Well, and that jewelry is expensive. Um. Anyway, we stopped in some places - I wanted to find cool St. Patrick's day stuff to wear tonight, but had no luck. I did get some black ribbon at the variety store though, and so I'm about finished on my megatokyo miho costume, all I have to do is cut the hair on that burgundy wig.

I drove us to Supa-Tokyo after that. They have, incase any of you care, boxes of HUGE STRAWBERRY POCKY there. It's $10 per box though, and has 20 big-ass individual pocky sticks. (They're like a foot long or so.) I didn't buy any - just small normal pocky, and some Hello Kitty candies (the vitamin C kind that Takahashi used to bring to class sometimes). Then I drove us home. Exciting. I cleaned part of my room in the afternoon and lounged around. Played some SSX, too. Whee.

Made tonkatsu for dinner. It was very exciting. This time rather than pan-frying the stuff, I filled the pan up with oil and deep-fried it. The second two cutlets came out much better than the first, very close to what you get served in a restaurant. I was pretty happy with it. Served it just on rice, rather than full katsudon style, but whatever. I had specifically bought katsu sauce at supa-tokyo, and I used up a LOT of it. Heh. (Oren and Carl might remember me emptying out restaurants of katsu sauce when we were in Japan... whee.)

Nick showed up just as we were finishing dinner, and Carl a little later, and then I grabbed my guitar and some sheet music and some recorders and flutes and crap and we went to ralphmelton and lorimelton's house for a St. Patrick's day party. It was a lot of fun. I saw a lot of my ex-coworkers from Claritech, and other random friends of mine. Many LJ-type people were there. (cellio, elletweedy, mg4h, sethcohen, ksnell, um...) Lori's sister Heather was there with her boyfriend and her guitar and a copy of Rise Up Singing and we played a lot of stuff. (I got to sing/play Morning Morgantown, Big Yellow Taxi, and The Circle Game, by Joni Mitchell. That was really awesome. I actually for a while there really thought I sounded good singing, which I don't usually think.) I fiddled around on guitar making up songs a bit, and strumming random chord patterns. Carl and I also played some SCA dance stuff on the soprano/sopranino/alto recorder. We weren't particularly wonderful, but Monica didn't kill us, so we couldn't have sucked too much (most of the stuff we played was arranged by her). I talked to a lot of people, and drank some stuff (dude, a really cool drink is 1/4 Kahlua mudslide, 1/4 Bailey's, and 1/2 milk. Best chocolate milk ever...) but didn't really get particularly drunk.

Hmm, the thing is it'd be hard to really talk about the party without going into a shitload of detail, which I don't want to subject you all to. Suffice it to say I had a good time, and it was hard to tell people that I might leave Pittsburgh in a few months, and that this might be the last time I see some of them. Sad sad.

I really, really, really love my khaki safari pants. They are so awesome. I also love my class of '98 shirt. I also, as usual, love my friends, each and every one of you.