starry-eyed surprise

Apologies for not blogging last night; I inadvertently stayed up until after three a.m. reading a book, and so I didn't have the energy left to blog when I finally finished. However, despite the crushing workload that I should be suffering under, I've had a great couple of days! Yesterday I had several meetings with the big boss, and after all that I feel that things are under control for the summit that I'm planning next week even though I will likely need to work most of tomorrow. Adit came to my office around 4:30, and we carpooled back to the evil city in what was one of the easier Friday night commutes in recent memory. He spent some time packing up for his trip to DC, and then Vidya came over and the three of us went out for dinner.

The restaurant we tried was Lavash, a Persian place over in the Inner Sunset. The place is small, and we were lucky to be seated relatively quickly despite a lack of reservation, but I loved the interior, and the place was family-run, which was nice. We split a couple of great appetizers, and then I had a delicious chicken kebab and rice while Adit and Vidya split some other vegetarian options. We followed up with ice cream, as well as a Turkish coffee for Vidya and a mint tea for me. Then, Vidya and I dropped Adit off at the airport and came back to my place, where I successfully coerced her into watching the Olympics with me.

She escaped sometime around midnight, and I read a romance novel for a few hours before going to bed. That made me sleep late, and so I didn't get out of bed today until noon -- lovely, particularly considering how little sleep I've gotten in the past few days. But, I needed to get ready for my houseguests -- I had invited over some of my old friends to watch the Olympics with me, particularly since I couldn't have Tammy here to enjoy it all with me. Due to my lack of sleep, my unexpected noontime awakening, the amount of work I need to do tomorrow, and my general laziness, I scratched my original plan for dinner (truffle butter pasta for the vegetarians, boeuf bourguignon for the non-veg's) and decided to go with the much simpler plan of providing ingredients for glorious sandwiches. So, I picked up a lot of meats, cheeses, veggies, and spreads at the grocery store around the corner, and made deviled eggs and chocolate chip chewies and cut up the veggies for the enjoyment of my guests.

The sandwich idea seemed to be a hit (it helped that I provided herbed goat cheese, fancy deli-sliced meat, a lot of chips and guacamole, etc.). It was definitely a hit with me -- while it was probably more expensive than making one or two dishes, it was definitely easy to get ready, easy to clean up (plates of sandwiches don't get as nasty as plates of other foods)...and meant that a) I didn't have to cook while everyone was here, and b) if people came late, everything was still good and people could just help themselves. It ended up being a great group and a great time -- Oniel miraculously arrived first, which is very unusual. He brought his girlfriend Kathryn, and the other people who showed up were Vidya, Katrina, Jav, Jav's girlfriend Silvia, Folkman, and Kristin. I hadn't seen Kristin in ages, and Jav's girlfriend usually doesn't come up to the city when he does either, but my lowkey 'eat, drink and watch tv' activity appealed to both of them as much as it appeals to me.

So, we all sat around, ate a lot, and watched the evening's coverage. It was a good set of events to watch with a group (I mean, they all are, but I need to watch figure skating with a slightly smaller group so that I can hear Scotty) -- two-man bobsled, both speed skating and short track, women's super-G, etc. I believe that fun was had by all, and it was certainly had by me. After everyone left around midnight, I did half the dishes, and now I'm wrapping stuff up so that I can go to bed.

Tomorrow I have brunch plans, but then I need to spend the rest of the day slogging my little heart out. I want to find some time to squeeze in some writing, but we shall see. In the meantime, it's time for bed -- goodnight!