Today, Katie and I actually had lunch at noon, as normal people do! Unlike normal people, however, we had lunch with Sri, Adit, and Katrina, where Katie expressed displeasure at how frequently Adit drops articles from his speech (as in 'I like sandwich'). Also unlike normal people, we had an absolutely free, absolutely delicious lunch at my place of work - Katrina works there as well, and we went to my favorite cafe, which serves made-to-order sandwiches. I had a fantastic sandwich, heated a la Quiznos, made with dutch crunch bread, mayo, pesto, turkey, bacon, avocado, sprouts, and pepperjack cheese. I also had a side of vegan chili (better than it sounds!), and finished with homemade vanilla ice cream and hot fudge. This is a meal I would quite happily pay $15 for at a normal establishment, but instead it was absolutely free. The only cost was to my pride, since I ran into my boss and he saw me looking completely relaxed with several lunch guests, but it was good to see him anyway.
So, hanging out with Adit and Sri was as lovely as usual, and I'm glad that Katie's had the chance to get to know all of them on this voyage. This will make it easier for her to help me find appropriate places for them to stay if I get married in Iowa - I'm thinking that my city friends could benefit from doing homestays like students often do on study-abroad programs, although my vegetarian friends may starve to death.
After lunch, Katie and I went to Menlo Park, where we indulged in manicures and pedicures (or 'mani-pedis', as they are known). I like the salon, even though I'd only been there once before - they have massage chairs to sit in while the women work on your feet, and the women who work there are quite friendly. We had a gay old time sitting back and discussing all manner of things about home that we hadn't gotten around to gossiping about yet, while getting our toes and fingers painted with some luscious pink and red colors. We followed this up by going to Cafe Borrone and having coffee drinks and tiramisu, where we continued to chat until late afternoon. Then, we went back to my place of employment and had dinner with Laura - Laura lives in Dallas, so I thought it would be good for her and Katie to get to know each other so that Laura can drag Katie in the dark world of scrapbooking. It was good to see Laura, and I think she and Katie hit it off, so that was nice.
Now I'm sitting in my living room, biting my nicely-manicured nails because Katie is reading the first half-draft of my romance novel. I'd taken the first couple chapters off of my blog long ago, and no one has read any of it since, and I was planning to wait until I had a full draft before soliciting feedback...but Katie is my oldest friend, has similar taste in books as me, and will throw down if she doesn't like something, so it was a good way to test the waters.
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It's about three hours after I originally started writing this, and now it's 1:47am - Katie and I have been talking for the past couple of hours about my novel, and also about her experiences with criminal prosecution, which has been v. entertaining. I'm heartened by her reaction to my book, and much of her feedback mirrored how I was feeling about it, without some of the extremely negative self-deprecation that I had been engaged in, so I'm excited about going back to work on it in the v. near future.
Also, I had the extreme good fortune of discovering that one of my all-time favorite authors (Robin McKinley) has a blog that she actually updates multiple times per week, and is also coming out with a new book in September! Yay! This is v. welcome news, since she just released a book last September, but before that, there had been a four-year drought. So, I spent a couple of hours reading her blog while Katie read my book, and it was quite a cozy and delightful evening.
Now, though, I should wrap this up and contemplate bed - Katie leaves tomorrow morning, and then I will have to get cracking on the whole pack-up-everything-and-drive-cross-country thing. Goodnight!
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