Archives for the month of: January, 2008

i went to the dentist this morning and it was awesome. i’ll never understand why people don’t want to go there and get nice clean teeth and see cool x-rays and photos of their insides. i have lots of theories about why most people hate the dentist – guilt about not taking care of their teeth, genetically bad teeth and thus a lot of dental work needed on a consistent basis (or at least at a young age when phobias are easily formed), low oral pain tolerance and/or never had orthodontic work and don’t understand the heights oral pain can reach. then again, maybe i just had an awesome pediatric dentist. we got to pick a toy from the treasure chest at the end of every exam, the ceiling was plastered with awesome posters and the x-ray machine had a cover that made it look like a giraffe.

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.

I spent a few days in Chicago before I went back to the Quad Cities for Christmas. I took a cab from Midway to Cecile’s, where she, Jon and Matt we waiting with delicious BBQ brisket sandwiches from Fat Willy’s.

Friday Cecile took the day off work and we ate at Hot Doug’s and saw "Juno" at River East. That night we had dinner at Irazu with Ian, his brother and his girlfriend, Kate, Andy, Lindsay, Conrad, Katie and her boyfriend Pat. After Irazu, Ian, Lindsay and I went back to Lindsay’s apartment. We played some Guitar Hero while we waited for Ian’s friends, then we went to The Violet Hour. Bizarrely, this was the same bar that Kate had set off to find after dinner and it was amazing. It’s a speakeasy with a very understated storefront, sleek decor and delcious old-fashioned drinks. We closed the bar, then Ian, Dan and I walked to the Continental and closed that bar too.

Ian crashed at Cecile’s too, since the trains weren’t running to Evanston anymore, and he and I met Mark for brunch at Earwax where Lindsay was hostessing. Post-Earwax I met my parents at the Nau store and we made the trip back home.