happy new year!

yesterday morning maria and i drove to santa monica for a much-needed change of pace. we climbed the famous (infamous?) santa monica steps and walked for almost an hour down the coast and back. we hit the promenade for lunch (bloody marys, homemade chicken sausage, almond-crusted french toast) and at REI i bought some under armour for the snowshoeing trip in february. we spent the rest of the day watching movies and trying not to fall asleep after all that walking and stair-climbing.

juicy

last night will had a party at his apartment and it was an excellent time. he fried up homemade mozzarella sticks (fresh cheese! panko!) and his special recipe chicken wings. these were the good kind of wings, the kind that force your sinuses open right before you take a bite – they were sooooo good.

will also made delicious mojitos and a variation on a white russian (no kahlua – had to use the godiva chocolate liqueur instead) that tasted like chocolate milk and jack dubbed ‘the nabokov’. steve brought a pumpkin pie, i brought scotch, cameron brought two kinds of fudge and jack brought drinko.

wanted: dead or alive

after we watched will mix the wing sauce (he has a special jar, purchased specifically for wing-sauce mixing) we played rock band (ed, an actual drummer was pretty awesome on the drum set) and celebrity. for celebrity we had to make new rules: no physicists (jack is an astrophysicist) and no cinematographers (a lot of afi cinematographers in attendance). one round, steve and i put in the same celebrity – starbuck – and it goes without saying that we both meant kara thrace and not frank.

the apparatus

at around 3am half of the partygoers had left, and a second round showed up. the deep-fryer was fired up again and more mojitos were muddled. i held out for another half an hour then i left and drove jack back to pasadena before i could fall asleep on will’s couch. it was a really fun new year’s eve and totally TOTALLY nerdy which made it even better.