cocaine nosejob

Well kids, I'm back. I must say that being drunk is tres fun, but being sober is also a good time. I am currently exploring sobriety with a new, more appreciative attitude. After drinking to the point of either tipsyness or smashedness six night out of seven (and the only night I didn't drink was the night I spent four hours driving back from the Loro ski trip), my liver deserves a long, nutritious vacation.

So, to feed it, I went to dim sum on Saturday with the opium lounge club, and we played Shrimp or Feet. It was Shedletsky's turn, and he quite unfortunately picked tripe with chilies and ginger. That's right, tripe, as in "The rubbery lining of the stomach of cattle or other ruminants, used as food" (definition courtesy dictionary.com). Shedletsky, true to his selfish roots, refused to even try it; this failure, combined with his refusal to try duck tongues a few weeks ago, means that he is at -1 points after his second turn. Tammy, Claudia and I all tried it, and Tammy and I went the distance, splitting the dish equally for half a point each. It was pretty gross; the tripe pieces were about two inches long, the main piece was very rubbery/chewy, and each piece had four or five little wavy 'appendages' attached to one side. The appendages were more flexible than the main pieces, thinner, very bumpy in texture, and altogether quite strange.

Verdict: I'm not a fan of tripe. I am also more scared of the game than I was before, since the tripe came off of what I had previously viewed as a moderately safe cart that contains various types of dumplings. I also know for a fact that they serve some sort of tripe soup that one of us will get eventually, much to our continuing dismay. Also, no one has had feet yet, which is too bad. So, standings after 1.5 turns are:

Tammy: 2.5pts (baked bbq pork bun, deep fried shrimp dumpling, 1/2 tripe)
Claudia: 2pts (marinated duck tongue)
Sara: 1.5pts (pan fried rice noodle, 1/2 tripe)
Shedletsky: -1pts (shrimp/pork dumpling, refused to try tongue, picked and then refused to try tripe)

Right now it seems to be about 50/50 as far as the difference between good and bad; or, if you prefer, 2/2/2 for great/mediocre/hideous. Not particularly great odds, eh? Anyway, it's my turn next! And Claudia gets another turn before the end of the second round as well, so she should be solidly in first unless disaster (in the form of gelatin w/blood and sea creatures) befalls her. We also need to come up with some sort of suitable, awful punishment for Shedletsky, since he refuses to even try foods and clearly doesn't care if he loses right now.

In other news, I moved some stuff to Menlo Park this weekend, but I have so much stuff that it seems like I haven't made any progress at all. For most people, moving ten boxes of books, six tubs of clothing, several board games, a coffee maker, forty or fifty hangers, two pillows, and three boxes of souvenirs/keepsakes would be great progress; but for me, that's just the beginning. Ah, fun times. I can't wait to be settled in, though--our new place is lovely, and is such a step up from the car-repairing neighbors. So, if you need to get your car pimped, you only have another week to visit me and get my neighbors to do it; after that, I'll be in Menlo Park, where pimping is frowned upon. But that means that I'll be so much closer to campus! And campus = friends, and friends, as you know, I love (almost as much as I love the letter 's'). The one bad thing about my new apartment is that the fastest way to get to work is to cut across campus via Arboretum...and that means driving past Crate and Barrel every day. Please rescue me from myself! [Editor's note: it's too late for that; I ordered bedding from Crate and Barrel yesterday. yay.]