forget what we're told, before we get too old

The last twenty-four hours have been more eventful than any day in recent memory. It was full of ups, downs, triumph, tragedy, shrimp families and misery. It's a good thing that I'm used to wild oscillations of fortune, or else I might be suffering whiplash right now. In case you want the brief rundown, the lows were that my car was broken into, I got completely soaked from walking around in the city, and I got absolutely nothing done today; the highs were celebrating Vidya's birthday, hanging out with Tom and Julie, and having dim sum with Claudia. Read on for more details...

Last night was dinner for Vidya's birthday, even though her birthday isn't for another ten days (on my mother's birthday, actually). Dinner was of course in the city, since it was planned by Vidya and Adit, and they both live in the city. So, I girded my loins (figuratively--I just like that phrase, and I'm not sure how one goes about girding one's loins anyway) and made ready to trek to the city. Claudia decided to go as well, so we rode up together. You all know how much I despise and loathe the city, so please keep this in mind as I recount the rest of the evening in detail.

It was raining steadily last night, but traffic ended up being relatively light, and so we made it to the restaurant a good ten minutes before we were supposed to be there. Adit and Vidya also showed up at the proper time, and then Adit told us that he had actually made the reservation for half an hour later. Smart, with that group, but annoying for me since I'm typically no more than five minutes late. However, the group consisted of almost 20 people, half of whom are v. flaky, and so a bunch of people were actually late for nine o'clock as well. I don't understand how you can possibly be forty minutes late for dinner, especially since the people who were late live in the city, but whatever.

We didn't actually get seated until 9:20 because a group of idiots refused to leave the table that we were waiting for--they had been finished when Claude and I showed up at 8:25, and by 9:15 they were still sitting there, ignoring the patently obvious signs of waiters taking away their water glasses and all of us glaring at them. But, things improved; I sat at the 'kids' table' with Tom, Julie, Claude, T&J's roommate, and Justin, which was a great deal of fun. We also realized that we were essentially the 'other' table, since the main table of 12 was almost entirely Indian, while we were a mixture of white, Mexican, and Asian.

Anyway, to make a long dinner short, Tom and Julie convinced me to stay the night with them, so that I would go to the karaoke bar that the party was supposed to move to after dinner. I had not intended to spend the night in the city, but allowed myself to be convinced, and so we got the party started w/a couple of bottles of wine at dinner. Then, we walked the two blocks to the karaoke bar, where Adit flipped out when he discovered that there was a $7 cover charge, and so rallied the troops to go to a different place and dispersed the group into a couple of cabs, while a third group started walking back to their car. However, as we were in the cab, Vidya called us all back because it turned out that some of her friends were already inside the bar. The result was that we paid ~$10 for a cab to drive us in a big circle around the karaoke bar, which was probably better than the result for the group who walked several blocks and then turned around and walked back in the rain.

The bar was fun; we sang several songs rather poorly, to the dismay of the other people there, who seemed to be some weird subsection of heavily-made-up punks who like to karaoke. Better yet, the drinks were both cheap and stiff, so I had several cosmopolitans (my biggest weakness) and was quite happy by the time we left around one.

The party decided to decamp to Tom and Julie's apartment, and so Claude and I went with some people who were capable of driving. On the way back to their car, we stopped at my car so that Claude could get her bag--only to discover that someone had broken into the trunk and taken her bag, my empty purse, and the lamp that I had purchased at Bed Bath and Beyond but had not yet taken into my apartment. It's a complete mystery to us how this happened; we remember me shutting the trunk, and nothing looks damaged, but they didn't break any of the windows. They also didn't take several other choice items in the trunk--namely, my jumper cables, some cds, a supersoaker, and a book of 'Jerry Springer's Wildest TV Moments'--so it was all very odd and mysterious. Also annoying, of course--I liked that lamp, and I loved that purse, and now they're both gone, and doubtlessly tossed in a dumpster, since it's not like they'll do anyone much good. It was somewhat worse for Claude; luckily she had taken her ATM and driver's license with her, but she had to cancel a couple of credit cards (one of which had already been used), and she lost a pair of shoes, a jacket, her car/house keys, her Stanford ID, and the book she was reading. So I ended up picturing some thief sitting someplace reading 'Freakonomics' by the light of my lovely brand-new lamp--granted, he would have to steal a lightbulb as well, but this shouldn't be too hard for someone with his prowess.

So anyway, both of us were too inebriated to do much more than stare in shocked dismay at the half-empty trunk, then close it and go to Julie's place anyway. On the way the to the car, I virtually ruined my wasabi green Uggs--they'll be fine once they dry out, but they'll never be quite as supple again, alas. Once we got there, we played Taboo for awhile, which was fun, and then everyone left. I slept with Julie (hot) and we shared thoughts and secrets before falling asleep, just like all good sleepovers. However, I do not want to make a habit of staying over in the city; this is the second weekend in a row that I've spent Friday night in someone else's apartment, and the result is that I don't get a lot done the next day.

Today was particularly non-productive; Claude and I didn't leave the city until 11:30ish, 'cause we had to take a cab back to my car [I had been having lovely visions of a bunch of vagrants setting fire to my tires and dancing around the charred ruins of my car, but it wasn't damaged]. Then we stopped in Millbrae for dim sum at our favorite place; the staff still recognizes us (or at least me), even though I've only been there once in the last eight months. I suppose a white girl with a hot-pink fur-trimmed bomber jacket is pretty noticeable in a crowd of Chinese regulars, especially since I used to show up every weekend with my loudest friends in tow and eat the most random things on the menu. So we had steamed bean curd w/pork, har gar (aka shrimp dumplings aka shrimp families), bbq pork buns, deep fried shrimp in bean curd, and egg custard pastries. Tammy and Shedletsky would be sad to know that they weren't serving the egg custard buns today; I couldn't understand Wendy (the crazy waitress) completely, but it seemed that they might be gone for good :( The sadness I felt about that was compounded by complete nausea when I caught a whiff of the sickeningly-familiar pigs' feet with petrified egg in black vinegar sauce; the black vinegar sauce smell is enough to make me want to retch. We also were treated to what I called a 'parade of horrors', since the tripe cart, the pigs'-feet-and-vinegar cart, and the cart of sadness all went by at once, then got stuck in a traffic jam by our table and remained there for far far too long. The cart of sadness still has all the same old sad things--several varieties of chicken feet, the 'ocean jello' (whatever it is is a bunch of lesser-known sea creatures in clear gelatin), the marinated duck tongues, and the oddly jiggly mango jello that should not be there and so therefore must be terrible.

Okay, so we had dim sum, then I took Claude to San Jose so that she could get the spare key for her car. I took her back to campus, where we discovered that her car is too stupid to recognize that she had the key for the car; without her keyless entry device, the car thought she was breaking into it when she unlocked it with the key, and wouldn't even let her start the car. We sat there for ten minutes looking like we were trying to steal it before giving it up; I suggested that we tow it to the city and leave it sitting at the corner of 3rd and Folsom, since our thief from the night before might be able to help us out, but we decided against it. So I brought Claude back to my place, where we sat until her mom came to pick her up.

I watched Food Network for a couple of hours and had a sudden urge to cook; so I ran to the grocery store and picked up some stuff, then made a truly amazing dinner. I taught myself how to poach eggs and did it perfectly on the very first try. So, I made sort of a hash of cubed potatoes, onions, peppers, andouille sausage, and cayenne pepper, and placed two poached eggs on top. It was incredibly delicious, and pretty easy since I already had the onion/pepper mixture chopped up and waiting in the freezer.

I would fix this for myself for brunch tomorrow, but I'm already committed to going to brunch with Terry. I was supposed to go back up to the city tonight for Brendan's party, but after my experience in the city last night, I wasn't in the mood to drive back up. Now I should go to bed so that I can recover from today's events--and I hope tomorrow brings more of the same, since last night was a blast. I'm always happiest in the midst of chaos, so this weekend has been perfect so far.