rat a tat tat

Why why why do I always stay up the latest on nights before I have to get up and go to Palo Alto? Why? I don't know why; sometimes it just works out that way. But today was overall quite wonderful. I spent some quality time this morning cleaning out the pump filter on the washer/dryer (ugh - wamp devils are bad, but wet wamp devils tangled with a variety of lint and other detritus is worse), then showering and taking care of other business. I took a break late in the morning to take a walk; during my walk, I enjoyed the stiff ocean/bay breeze along the marina while talking to my mother about my covers (which are looking awesome, if I do say so myself - I'll have something to share publicly in a few days).

When I got home, I decided to relocate south - not all the way to the glorious south bay, but in a more southern part of the city than my Marina abode. Adit was at Coffee Bar and invited me to join him (or rather, I correctly interpreted an email with the subject line "wampturd" and the body "I am working at Coffee Bar" to be an invite). So I went. The benefit of Coffee Bar is that while the clientele is a little ridiculous, there is a lot of space, the baristas are excellent (albeit also ridiculous), and one can park all day on the street with relative ease and no metering. So I hung out there from approximately 1:30pm to 7pm, and got almost all the way through my copyedits for Madeleine and Ferguson's story. Adit left at six, but I was participating in a group chat w/some other romance novelists, so I hung out and waited for that to wrap up before shutting down the laptop and leaving Coffee Bar to its pretentious twilight crowd (where twilight = dusk, not vampires).

However, I wasn't done with Adit; he invited me to have dinner at his place, and promised that Priyanka would cook. I went over and found them in the midst of dinner preparations, but we ate shortly thereafter. She made an eggplant and potato dish, rice, daal (aka lentils), and had yogurt and mango pickle on the side, and it was all quite good. I mean, it's no Kraft Mac and Cheese, but it will suffice. She also made me two cups of masala chai, using a variety of spices that are different than Samovar's masala chai, but still quite good (which is wonderful, since I'll have to formulate a new mix if I continue my Samovar boycott). Then we settled in to work, but I ended up not getting any work done; instead, I wrote a limerick-style poem for my friend Rat's birthday.

Rat is one of my former frosh, and those kids party like they're not old yet - his small, informal birthday party started at ten p.m. the night before his birthday so that they could have cake and candles precisely at midnight, when it became his actual birthday. In the meantime, there was drinking, Beirut/beer pong playing, and all sorts of other jhokes. I stayed for the candles, but left shortly thereafter; since I don't drink beer, let alone beer from a four-day-old keg, I felt woefully out of place. But I saw Greg, whom I hadn't seen in ages and ages, and I also got to hang out with Tom and Shari, so it was all wonderful.

And now that I've made it safely back to my apartment, I should really sleep; Alyssa is going to happen far too early for my liking. Goodnight!