Tuesday eating - oh, and I drove a car today

I need to wake up in something like 2-3 hours to start getting ready to go to the airport to fly to Washington DC! Hooray.

Okay, so this afternoon, Mike came to Ballard to get lunch with me. We tried to go to Hattie's Hat, but it was apparently closed. Oops. Seems a LOT of stuff either was never open for lunch on weekdays, or recently became not open for lunch? I'm not sure. We ended up at Lombardi's, which worked out well as it turns out they let you choose any daily lunch special on Tuesdays, so I had some spicy penne pasta, which was pretty good, though the "lunch portion" still looked GIGANTIC to me. At least the weather was decent and we had a nice walk. It was good to see him, though it's going to be tough waiting 9 days to see him again.

In the later afternoon, since Carl and Oren and I were planning dinner for tonight, and the plan was vaguely contingent on me picking Carl up from work, I stole Carl's keys and headed up to K-Mart at 130th and Aurora, to buy socks. I figured K-mart was a decent enough driving test distance for me, as it'd involve a bunch of weird turns as well as going on a few big roads. Well, I was able to drive there and back without getting myself killed, so I consider that a success :) I'm still not sure how much I'll be driving during this trip, really, but it'll be useful for a few shopping runs towards the end.

And so, I drove down to the ID and picked up Carl from work, and then he drove us down to Oren's place, and then Oren diverted us all to The Keg, which is a steakhouse near where he lives, that I'd never been to before. After I noted that all of the portions there were ALSO ridiculously huge, Oren and I ended up splitting a 16 oz prime rib, which actually turned out to be about the right amount of food. Well, really, it was still too much, but at least it wasn't nearly as gratuitous as it could have been, and the steak was very, very good, which is something I can't really usually have in Japan.

Then I ended up trapped at Oren's house while Oren and Carl watched random shoujo anime for an hour or so, but then we switched to Kohaku, except it turned out Oren had Kohaku 2008-9 instead of 2009-10. I had been thinking the costumes looked weird, and then they introduced the guests and I'm like "where's Hara? Why are Ueno and Tsumabuki there?" On the other hand, we got to see a few interesting acts, before it got to be around 10pm and Carl turned into a pumpkin so we had to go home. It's weird to say goodbye to Oren as he gets ready to move away from Seattle.

Anyway, I'm done packing now, so I'm gonna try to nap for like 2 hours and OH GOD I HOPE I WAKE UP. I even got out my Japanese cellphone and set the alarm on it too. I should sleep pretty well on my flights, though that's going to further mess up my sleep schedule, isn't it...

i'm on the light rail train!!

OMFG!

I'm in DC

in my brother's basement usurping his wireless internet. Hooray.

So, I basically slept through the entire day, after getting 2 hours in Seattle before heading to the bus stop at 5:30am. Yay light rail! I remember about 20 minutes of the Seattle->Philly flight -- at one point I woke up and had just missed the drink cart, so I asked for orange juice. That is literally the only time I was awake of the 5-hour flight or whatever.

I had a 2-hour layover in Philly, which turned out to be the right amount of time to get a cheesesteak and walk across the airport looking for Tastykakes and failing. The cheesesteak was from the "Philly Gyro and Steak" place, which means it was subpar for Philadelphia but excellent compared to what usually passes as a cheesesteak outside the area.

Then I slept through the entire Philly->DC flight too.

Made my way to the Metro station here, and took the train out to Wheaton, and my brother picked me up from the station. There was a tiny bit of confusion, and a delay on the red line, but it worked out fine.

I stayed up talking to my brother and sister-in-law until like 11pm, which is past their bedtimes, really. (My niece was already asleep by the time I got here.)

They did give me some Tastykake artwork as a holiday present, though...

Gonna go try to sleep and get on a vague east coast timeframe, maybe.