clever girl

Day one of my last day at work was lovely. I didn't sleep well last night, but managed to drag myself in by ten a.m., which was utterly respectable since I stayed until after six-thirty (and since they can't exactly fire me -- and if they wanted to fire me for coming in at ten, they should have fired me at least once a week for the past seven years). I slogged fairly effectively for most of the day, although I wasn't completely effective while working from Slice Cafe, since I was mildly distracted by John and later Katrina. However, since I had told them I was going to Slice, perhaps I was asking for it.

I vacated Slice for a doctor's appointment, then went back to my building and slogged for another couple of hours. I nearly forgot to leave in time for dinner, but I made it to dinner just in time...to discover that the restaurant was closed. Damn these restaurants that close on Mondays! John, Jessica, and Vidya all arrived within a few minutes, and v. strangely, the owner of the restaurant arrived as well, bearing the golf clubs that he had been using on his day off. Because this restaurant was Indian, we agreed to limit our choices to other Indian restaurants in Sunnyvale (which isn't really a limit, since there are at least twenty Indian restaurants in Sunnyvale, capital of the west coast Indians) -- which I knew was going to lead to my doom.

My doom, of course, was Chaat Paradise, my self-proclaimed least favorite Indian restaurant ever (even thought it's technically in Mountain View, not Sunnyvale). It's Vidya's go-to choice in the area, and John and Jess were happy to agree, and so we went. I kind of didn't want to go because I prophesied exactly what would happen -- as with just about everything I have ever claimed to hate, I ended up really liking it. I am cursed. We had pani poori, a couple of paneer dishes, and some eggplant, served with a generous portion of complete insanity. I don't know if the reason that I didn't like it before is because Adit always orders the driest items on the menu or if it's because I'm always embarrassed when I go there, but tonight was no exception on the embarrassment scale; we were the loudest group in the restaurant, inducing a whooping cough fit in John right as the server came to clear our table, which I'm sure made that man v. concerned.

So anyway, it was quite the evening, full of nonsensical jhokes about HP Pavilion and quotes from "Jurassic Park". We also made a pact that one decade from now, we will go to all the places photographed in the restaurant -- but as I've already forgotten the names of all of them, I guess we'll have to go back to Chaat Paradise at least once more. On that note, we parted ways, and I came back to Palo Alto, where I decided to throw in the towel on work for the night and watch last night's "60 Minutes". It's not quite the same as sitting with Adit while watching a few minutes with Andy Rooney, but it was quite a good episode; the Nelson Mandela piece was good, and the Eminem segment only increased my awe of Eminem's vocabulary and insane talent.

Now, I'm going to go to bed early so that I can get up at a reasonable hour and blowdry my hair before work -- doesn't that sound productive? Goodnight!