quick recap:

• thursday was elaine’s birthday, so maria, elaine, april and i went to dinner at the great greek. the food was really good, and the live band and dancing was so much fun!

• jodi had her holiday party friday night, and i met some really nice people! …and i bookended the party with about 5 hours of bioshock. pat and i were up until 4am and i’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that when i was trying to get to sleep, every time i closed my eyes i could see the game. i had dreams about it, even. it was kind of awesome. and then? the puppet episode of ‘angel’. WHICH WAS AMAZING. puppet angel is ADORABLE.
• today i met elaine and maria at the crepe place in the farmer’s market for lunch. the crepes were delicious. watching the guys make the crepes was even better.
• i came home and tried to start packing (i fly to chicago tomorrow) but had a terrible headache, so instead passed out for 2+ hours. woke up with the headache and overall feeling like crap. (do i regret the 4am bioshock marathon? NO.) i took some tylenol and ate, and now i’m feeling fine, am dressed up, and ready to go dancing with maria and elaine for birthday celebration part 2! let’s hope i can balance having a good time with making sure i’m in good enough shape tomorrow to get ready to fly home.

last week mark sent me this mushroom soup recipe and i decided to give it a go. the first time i made it, it came out weird. the recipe says to use 1/4 cup sherry, but that is WAY too much sherry. i added a lot of milk to mellow it, and that made it palatable, but i was not pleased.

so, today i made the soup again and it is great! i used only 2 tablespoons of sherry and used 16oz of mushrooms (2 whole packages). i added probably 1 1/2 cups of milk at the end – just enough to balance the sherry so the soup is creamy and umami but has a little bit of tang around the edges. i added a couple shakes of salt and a lot of pepper (i love pepper)…and the soup is delicious! i would like to try it again, maybe with yogurt instead of milk to see what happens, and also try out some different kinds of mushrooms.

today i purchased my tickets for the holidays and OH MY GOD am i glad that’s over. so many variables. so complicated. but – i’ll be home for a week around christmas, fly to NYC on the 30th to hang out with travis for new year’s, then i fly back to LA on the night of the 1st. whew!

yesterday i knocked out another item from my Big List Of Things to Get Done, and now i just have smaller less terrifying things left to do.

oh! the weekend! i drove up to san francisco (well, oakland) friday night and came back sunday night. i ate tacos or burritos (or quesadilla with mole) for every meal except my last one there (because i was kind of mexican-ed out) and it was fantastic. i went to the new california academy of sciences museum and saw some neat fish and cockroaches and an albino alligator. i saw ‘repo! the genetic opera’ which was good, but not as campy as i thought it would be, and thus not as great as i thought it would be. ian drove up and i had lunch with mike and met his girlfriend. all around, a good trip. also i got to see zump. and was introduced to ‘world of goo’ for the wii. and got to fiddle with eric’s awesome a/v setup. and petted cats in eric’s courtyard. and saw adorable kittens in berkeley. so yeah. i’ll be back.