dr4b: (yawn)
So, I had a stuffy head and sore throat on Thursday night and couldn't get to sleep, so I took some NyQuil. Next thing I know, my room is hot and stuffy and wakes me up in the sunlight... at noon on Friday. And the throat's still sore. Ugh.

So I stayed home for the day, tried to do some work on my laptop but both the laptop and my head weren't cooperating. I drank an entire half gallon of orange juice and ate a bologna sandwich and laid down for a while, reading books and stuff.

As a side note about the sandwich -- I've been eating very little other than bologna sandwiches for the past week, since on Monday when I went grocery shopping, they had bologna on sale buy-one-get-one-free, and buttermilk bread cheap too, so I bought a whole loaf of bread and two packs of bologna. Thing is, that's 32 slices of bologna and not significantly less slices of bread, and I didn't want either to go bad. The frightening thing is, they won't, because I've literally been averaging 3 slices of bread per day and 5 slices of bologna. I've eaten salads for lunch at work, and that's about it. I can't decide if this has been a good thing or a bad thing -- on the one hand I haven't spent much at all for food this week. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'll want another sandwich for quite a while.

Anyway, I had to go sing in the Messiah concert last night, so I doped myself up pretty good on DayQuil and headed over. It actually went fairly well, although I didn't sing particularly loudly at all the entire night, except for, of course, "Their Sound Has Gone Out", "Let All The Angels of God Worship Him", and "Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder", because GODDAMNIT NOBODY ELSE IN THE SECTION CAN SING THOSE still. You know it's bad when the REST of the section also starts calling some of those lines "Deanna's solos".

Of course, nobody I knew showed up for last night's concert, and they left my name out of the program this year, too. Sigh.

I guess if you manage to read this in the next three hours and feel like heading to Woodinville, you can hear my "solos". Or something.

As it is, I got about 11 hours of sleep last night, waking up at noon today, and my throat actually feels worlds better than it did yesterday, although I'm still going to Quil up before heading to tonight's concert. I've just basically been goofing off for the afternoon -- writing checks to pay the bills, cleaning up a little bit around my apartment, and hanging out on PP for a little while, and relaxing. Hopefully tonight's concert will go well too. Whee.
dr4b: (puzzle pirates McCarp)
Yay! Every day in Pittsburgh is more fun than the last, it seems. I always hate to leave here. On the other hand, I also know that if I wasn't just here for a week, people wouldn't bother making time to hang out with me quite the same.

Anyway, I ended up going to lunch with the gang anyway, as it turned out. Met up with Django and Matt and Isaac and Konstantin at the Union Grill. Whee! That was really fun, except that everyone spent most of lunch talking about Warcraft :) It was kind of funny when Django and I would try to change the subject to no avail. No, actually, it really WAS funny, I'm not being sarcastic. Afterwards, I walked back to campus with people, talked to Django for a bit (and forced him to sign my copy of Memories of Empire), and then I went looking for Mark Stehlik, who was out at a meeting, unfortunately.

So I went to PNC Park! Whee, I dunno. I had looked at the schedules for the 500 and 501 buses and then decided to just ignore them and hop on the first bus headed downtown on Forbes. Whee. So I got to walk across downtown Pittsburgh a bit in the rain, which was nice and nostalgic. I walked to PNC Park, and the gates were actually open, so I got to walk in and go around the outfield area and take some pictures of the field and stuff... well, except it was grey and rainy. Ah, well. I went to the Pirates Team Store looking for some stuff but most of the stuff I wanted, they didn't have. You know, like a Jason Bay number shirt that wasn't in 2XL. I debated getting a Zach Duke number shirt, but in the end decided to just not get any Pirates shirt and I'll just wear the ones I have at the pirate party. I did get a few other things, though.

Then I came back to campus and talked to Mark Stehlik for almost two hours. That rocked. Mark is super-awesome. (For the non-CMU folks, Mark is/was the undergraduate computer science advisor, but to a lot of us he's more like just this awesome friend who is great to talk to but is always super-busy and used to have some say over what classes we took.) So, Mark is proud of me for being a programmer AND we talked about baseball for a while. Also, he told me he's going to Qatar next semester for 8 weeks. Craziness, but maybe he can hang out with Roman sometimes.

After that, I walked back from campus so I'd have an hour or two here to do some work. Bayani called me and we figured out a plan, kinda -- Carl would bus here, and then Bayani and Kate would come here and we'd all get dinner at Del's. Whee! So, that is exactly what happened, modulo a few things like Carl's bus being a little late, and Benoit debating whether to go, and inviting his girlfriend Kami, but then deciding neither of them would go after all. So just the four of us went to Del's, and Del's was fantastic and we ate a ton of food and hung out for a while. I'm trying to convince Bayani and Kate to come visit Seattle sometime, of course! (And I'm trying to convince Carl to come with me to Japan next summer :)

We came back to Squill with this idea of maybe playing a board game, and instead ended up hanging out and talking for an hour or two. I swear this is a pattern. Carl and I swore we'd play a board game tomorrow night. Time will show whether we actually do. Whee. After Bayani and Kate and Carl left, I got out the laptop and started catching up on work and email and stuff. Then Charlie got back and forced me to play Set with him. Again.

I am not sure my plan for tomorrow either, of course :) I am going to do work in the morning, then take pictures of Squirrel Hill for Megan, maybe, and then go to campus in the late afternoon to stop by the University Shoppe since I forgot to so far, and I'm meeting up with a friend for coffee at 3, and in theory in the evening Carl and I will plan to play board games again, and fail. But anyone who wants to be part of our abortive gaming attempt is welcome to try to make it succeed :)

You know, there's something strangely comforting about sitting in the living room of a geek apartment with three geeks around, drinking birch beer, looking at Perl code on a laptop, while Benoit is working on his paper, Rafael is reading something, and Charlie is being Charlie. Maybe I *should* be looking for roomates or housemates in Seattle. I dunno.

Oh, um, also, I need to get to the airport for an 8am flight on Thursday morning. I'll probly just 28X it unless someone is crazy enough to feel like driving me there, which I would love, but also feel so insanely guilty about that it's not even funny, so eh.
dr4b: (baritone)
Okay, so, it was a really nice day in Pittsburgh today... which figures, since it's snowing in Seattle. So I did work for a few hours in the morning, and Carl came over sometime between 1 and 2pm or so, having gotten back from NY. We went down to campus and got lunch from Lulus, and after that ended up going to the LTI and hanging out in [profile] ketsugami's office for an hour or so, chatting and stuff -- and by the end of that time, [profile] garzahd and [profile] arct1cfox had joined us too, to geek out about WoW and D&D and whatnot. Wheee!

They all left to go watch Buffy or something, and Carl went home to drop off food, and I wandered campus for an hour. I stopped by Catherine Copetas's office and said hi for a bit, and I ran into acm in the 5400 hallway, and I got to the UC around 5:20, so I missed KGB, but I got to the Connan Room in time to catch Mr. Gerlach standing outside greeting incoming Kiltie Band members, so I chatted with him for a while and he invited me to come in and sit down and listen to rehearsal. (It turns out the concert is THIS THURSDAY, which sucks because I leave this Thursday morning, but oh well). I saw [profile] cdinwood, but I didn't recognize anyone else in the band at all, although Dan Fernandez came in about 20 minutes late and that was pretty funny. Anyway, I sat through a half an hour of rehearsal or so, and heard them play all the songs I remember playing for holiday concerts. It was fun and nostalgic.

I left at 6pm to meet up with [profile] rmitz and [profile] dvarin in the Airport Lounge. For lack of anything better to do, and because Carl needed food, we went to the Giant Eagle up at Center and Negley, which is huge and scary. I got birch beer and hamantashen! (and passed up Tastykakes) Django called me while we were there and said they were all done watching Buffy, so... we ended up heading over to his place, where we found him and Matt, and [personal profile] harinezumi, who said hi for a bit and then sat down to bury himself in WoW, since his clan was running Molten Core yet again. What a bunch of dorks :)

Django, Matt, Roman, Carl and I went to the Church Brew Works for dinner, where we shared a bunch of pizzas and got things like soup and chips and later on, cinnamon ice cream. Mmmmmm. Then we went back to Django's, ostensibly to play some board game, but actually ended up just sitting there chatting for an hour or two, which was fine with me as well. Django gave us all rides home after -- and so I ended up going into the Shady House for a little while when we dropped off Matt. That was pretty nostalgic. I got to see my old cat, Hendrix aka Sobriety aka Black aka whatever. She looks good, and still sounds the same as ever. We saw Isaac playing WoW (it was hilarious to me, since I had just seen him on Konstantin's screen a bit before it). We watched Lu play Soul Calibur for a bit, and then Django drove me back here. Whee.

Rafael had a whole bunch of people over here watching the Steelers game... and when I walked in, they were trying to clean some spilled red wine off the couch. It was really pretty funny, seeing them try salt and boiling water and club soda and soap and... well, anyway, it looks reasonably clean now, but at the time it kind of looked like they'd killed someone and splattered the blood all over. Pretty funny. Fortunately, it forced me to go hang out in the dining room for a while, and so I actually did REAL WORK again for an hour or two.

I'm trying to balance getting stuff done with enjoying my time here. Tomorrow's supposed to be rainy, so I expect to spend a decent chunk of time during the day working. I don't have an exact plan for tomorrow night, though Bayani was interested in hanging out, as was Carl, maybe Benoit if he has time, and I'd like to call Jensen, and there may be other people ([profile] georgejas?) around too? I'd like to get to Del's or somewhere Italian-foody, if anyone's interested (or Tessaro's, should call jcreed), or I could also be talked into ToI or other stuff I'm sure, maybe the s&e thing even. I have no idea. Really, I just want to hang out with people, of course, and can kind of go with whatever plan works for people. I think it'll probly be too wet/warm for ice skating, sadly, though... maybe cards or games could happen or just hanging out. I dunno. Arr.

(note to self to try to call folks -- oh, Django, I might have to put off lunch with you guys until Wednesday, although I will know for sure by 11am)

Whee!

Nov. 18th, 2005 12:08 am
dr4b: (mariners)
I wanted to get sushi for dinner tonight, but I was too tired when I got home. So I had pitas and hummus instead... and by the time I was done, I felt awake and alert enough that I wanted to go get sushi. Except, I was full. Dammit.

A week or two ago I reviewed a book on Marinerds, Ninety Feet From Fame by Mike Robbins -- quite glowingly, as it was a phenomenally entertaining and informative book -- and today I got an email from the author, who had read my blog and was actually thanking me for the positive review. ("You'd be surprised, but most of the comments I get about this book are because (sad but true) I accidentally put the wrong name for the 1960 Pirates manager on page 8.") Very bizarre but cool -- now I just have to hope that the guy whose book I slammed the other week doesn't write me an angry email :)
dr4b: (abstract)
Hmmmm.. today was okay, I guess. After some confusion about what I was actually going to do tonight, I called Brian G on my way home from work to see if he still wanted to get dinner. He did, and since he knows a lot more restaurants than I do, he called up and made a reservation at a place called Eva, down in that little nook of yuppie restaurants east of the south end of Greenlake. The place is apparently a wine bar / restaurant, and they are part of the "25 for $25" thing going on, so we both decided to try the prix fixe; he had prawn-and-lentil salad (which is exactly what it sounds like; a pile of prawns and lentils) and roast chicken, and lemon tart. I had a fairly standard endive-and-goat-cheese salad, and seared tuna, and pumpkin cheesecake. The tuna was absolutely perfect; the rest was pretty good as well. Brian decided to make me try some wine; he got a white wine, Reisling or something like that, and it was okay, I guess, but I just don't really like the taste of wine. This one wasn't awful, but I had one glass and that was it.

After dinner we went over to this guy Mike's place where people were playing games; we showed up and there were four people playing Bang! so we joined them for a six player game. I usually hate Bang, but this was a group who was just learning to play so it wasn't so bad. Infact, I was the renegade and it came down to me and the sherriff, and I got him down to one bullet before he took me out. I don't think I've ever seen the renegade come so close to winning.

Came home after that since it was pushing 11:30, and here I am. Hanging out with Brian is fun since I don't have that many friends out here who I've known since pretty much my first week at CMU in the fall of '94, and we always have a lot of fun catching up on stuff, plus he actually seems to be going through the same sort of "why is my life not going anywhere?" phase I am. Stupid lake.
dr4b: (confused)
I was braindead all day today. It was very frustrating.

They are always playing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" whenever I'm grocery shopping at Safeway. What gives?

I need some new icons.

I played volleyball tonight. I had fun, but I didn't feel focused enough. They're starting a separate women's volleyball night, apparently. I may go to it sometime when I want to feel tall.

Wow, holy shit, LJ tells me that yesterday-Today was the birthday of [profile] tobinrss (which I knew, but forgot), [profile] the2belo (which I somehow didn't notice his post of "I got this awesome birthday present" because I'm braindead), and [profile] attesmythe, who is Notorious. Today-Today is [profile] nykkel's birthday -- happy birthday, old man! and tomorrow-Today is [profile] zqfmbg, who I haven't seen in a year, and [personal profile] ubiquity, who I haven't seen in even longer. Sheesh. I suck.

Public Service Announcement: Phabulous Phinney Pig Out October 6th

Several Phinney Ridge restaurants will be donating part of their proceeds today to the area soup kitchens.

I won't be able to go, but if anyone's in my neighborhood around mealtimes, stop by one of the participating restaurants -- they're all great, really. Mae's has fabulous breakfasts, Red Mill has the best burgers and milkshakes in Seattle, Pig'n'Whistle is a nice little pub with a menu of nice variety, the 74th St. Ale House has excellent pub food and lousy service. I haven't been to most of the others. Stubborn Goat has a very eclectic but tasty-sounding menu.

February 2019

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