| "Learning" to kayak |
[Aug. 21st, 2008|01:07 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | meetup | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  exhausted | ] |
So, its been forever and a day since I last posted anything. I actually started to type up several posts in the last couple of weeks, but I have just been too busy at work to get them done and they just became out dated and pointless over time. But this is something I just really feel like writing about….
Last night Tanja and I went to another meetup. This one is for an "adventures" group which is planning activities such rock climbing, kayaking, skydiving, etc. Last night's meetup was a beginners kayaking class at the UT Med Pool. Sounds interesting right?
Well is totally sucked ass! This guy instructing the class didn't even proscribe to the "sink or swim" method of learning new skills he was of the "force you to sink then try to swim why keeping your legs immobile in the kayak" method. Let's just put it this way, Tanja ended up having to sit out of most of the class because of the way he was acting and his lack of any compassion and I only kept going because I am stubborn even when I wasn't learning a damn thing.
I'm jumping the gun. Lets start from the beginning. First off, the meetup wasn't very well planned. Originally it was supposed to be last Wednesday, but too many people said they wanted to go. So, the organizer broke it up into two groups and Tanja and I volunteered to wait until this week to do it. Also in the class this week was the meetup organizer and another member (I think her name was Linda). There was no contact information and the only description of the location was "near the corner of Madison Ave. and Mannasis".
So, Tanja and I drove there and after driving around there for a few minutes not seeing anything that said "UT Med Pool" or anything like it, we finally asked somebody and they showed us where it was. When we got there, Linda and Jeff (the organizer for this event) were already there. The instructor was picking out a kayak for Linda to use and then adjusting it for her.
They weren't very organized and so it took a while to get things straightened out and get out kayaks for all of us and then pick out skirts (a rubberized skirt that you put around your waste and then attach to the kayaks opening to keep water from getting inside). Then the instructor took several minutes to adjust Lindas kayak for her height, a minute or so to tell Tanja how to sit in her kayak with no adjusting (which later caused problems because it was too loose for her), and no time on show me anything.
With that the instructions started…with no demonstration and only a little bit of description he got right into flipping my kayak over and having me pull myself out of it. It wasn't that complicated, but a demonstration or a simple reminder not to come straight up might have prevented the bruise on my head as I came up and immediately hit my head on the kayak. It also didn't help that he took obvious pleasure in telling everybody that I "panicked". I shrugged it off, but that is beside the point. It's just bad form to insult your students when they are completely new to it.
Linda was next up and she learned from my example and didn't come straight up (see a damn demonstration does help). Then came Tanja…now Tanja has had a bad experience with canoeing in the past and expressed trepidation about if we were rolling the kayaks in this class. I serious would have thought they would give us some instruction on maintaining balance in the kayak and paddling around since we were all beginners. But no, they had us jumping right into flipping us over, who would have guessed?
Well, I was worried about Tanja because of this and I tried making sure she was ok with doing it, but she seemed determined to try it even if she was nervous about it. Anyway, the instructor flipped her over and she came out quickly and easily, but the instructor still said that she "panicked" for some reason. For which she really took offense and I could tell that she was getting upset by the way she got quiet and wasn't talking at all anymore.
After that we weren't given the chance to practice getting out of the kayak at all like you would normally think you'd do after learning something new, but oh well. Once again I got to be the guinea pig when we jumped right into learning to roll out of the water if we flip. He gave us a little bit more description this time around, but he was facing away from Tanja at the time and not talking all that loudly. So, she had to ask him to please repeat what he said, to which he rolled his eyes and gave a very brief description.
Once again I was the guinea pig, first he told me to demonstrate the "hip snap" that he had described to us. I gave it a try and was rewarded with him saying "well I'm not sure that he's a guy, but that was ok" (supposedly it's easier for guys to do, but its damn difficult to do something right the first time when you've only heard it described to you). At the time, I took that as a bit of a joke, but with everything else I'm now thinking he really was just being an ass!
Then he spent a few minutes demonstrating to Linda and Tanja how to roll by flipping me over in the water repeated and hoping I would somehow magically figure out what to do even though he wasn't giving me any hints as to what I was doing wrong each time he pulled me back up. Then he moved on to giving Linda personal instruction and ignoring Tanja and I. Eventually, Jeff started trying to show Tanja what to do when it became apparent that the instructor was going to be busy with Linda for a while. He has been kayaking before, but he's not an instructor. Still he tried his best.
This is when they realized that the kayak was not adjusted properly for Tanja. Her legs were moving around too much in the kayak and it was making things difficult for her. Jeff mentioned this to the instructor who responding by telling Tanja to adjust it herself. Which was finally the point that she'd had enough. The whole point in taking lessons for this was for the instructor to show us how to do things, but he kept wanting to just have us do it on our own which is overwhelmingly frustrating. Jeff did start to describe to her how to make the adjustments, but that wasn't the point. He wasn't the instructor and that is who should have been doing the adjustments, particularly because we don't even know that a properly adjusted kayak would feel like.
Tanja decided to forget the rest of the "lesson", but not wanting to ruin it for me she just went and changed in the locker room and then sat and watched the rest of the lesson. Honestly, I was getting really worried about her because she was gone a long time in that locker room and I thought she was upset. I was ready to go if she said she wanted to just get out of there when she came back, but she was smiling and told me to just keep going with the lesson.
Anyway, at some point while she was in there, the instructor finally decided to move on from giving Linda one-on-one instructions and show me what he had been showing her (it was another 10 or 15 minutes before he even realized Tanja had left…great instructor, eh? I wonder if he'd even have noticed if she were still in the water and flipped her boat and couldn't get out). Basically, he was trying to teach me how to do the roll with a paddle in my hand. Unfortunately he can't teach worth crap. Repeatedly, I would do what he described only to get my hand pinned against the side of the kayak and the paddle in my hand as he kept pressing the paddle down against the kayak. Yeah, I understand that the paddle is supposed to be against the kayak for proper positioning, but dammit when you are pressing it there forcefully watch out for my damn hand and don't dismissively say "everybody complains about it hurting their hand" in an insulting tone when I mention it. And again, he wasn't really giving me any hints as to what I was doing wrong each time. So I was learning jack shit. He was just becoming more short with me and forcing me to try it over and over again.
Eventually though, he ended up just telling me "well, we only have 5 more minutes. So I'm going to go play." What the hell!?! I thought this was supposed to be a lesson, not fun time for asshat to insult people and then ignore them. What the hell ever.
I just got out and quickly changed in the lockerroom. When I came out, I was greeted with more proof that the meetup was ill planned as the instructor got bitchy about the money. We were told it would be $10 each, which I thought was pretty reasonable considering it was supposed to be a basic lesson for beginners (though having experienced the “lesson” I’d say it was too much). Anyway, the guy wanted us to pay $25 each. Apparently there is a $10 fee per person to use the pool for an hour plus there was an additional $15 per person for the lesson. If I had known that beforehand I would have skipped it as we are trying to budget our money better and $50 is just too much to try out something that we will likely never actually use, especially with this crappy instructor.
Once we straightened that shit out (and no, I did not pay $25 for each of us for this shitty experience) we started to leave. But the instructor wasn’t finished insulting us just yet. He just had to tell Tanja “sorry you FAILED so quickly!”
That is total bullshit. I don’t care who or what you are teaching, but you should never tell somebody they are a failure because you aren’t good enough to actually teach anything. He didn’t once try to help her with anything he was having us do. He didn’t once give her a word of encouragement. He didn’t once even try talking her into getting back in the kayak. Hell he didn’t even notice she had gotten out of the water until over half and hour had passed. And then he had the audacity to insult her for it!?! That is just fucking wrong.
Jeff tried to invite us to go out and have some drinks with the others, but we’d had enough and there was just no way we were going to spend any more time around that instructor.
I guess all of the meetups can be good, but this was a seriously bad one and I am definitely sorry we tried it out, because all I really got out of it was a bruised head and an even worse bruised hand.
Happy Things:
Sushi. It wasn’t that long ago that Jerm, Krissi, John, and Maddie introduced me to sushi, but I really love it now. Tanja and I have gone out for it several times and enjoyed it each time. This morning I had to stop at Krogers to get something to eat (I didn’t even have the energy to eat something for breakfast this morning) and I just happened to notice their fresh sushi. Now, I am not going to claim it was amazing sushi, but it did taste good and it really satisfied me when I ate it. Hmmm, hmmm, good. |
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| Macaroni Grill |
[Jun. 5th, 2008|12:33 pm] |
So, last night was another great meetup for the Dining Out group. In fact, it was our biggest meetup yet. We had 15 people show up. Far fewer than the 24 that had RSVP'd Yes plus 3 that said Maybe, but that is typical and it was a good turn out. About half the people were people from previous meetups and half were new. Let's see how many people I can remember the names of...there was of course Tanja and me, Dana, Caroline (sick yet again, but she still came), Kenise (had to apologize her for missing the cooking demonstration at the Italian fest - she was the organizer for that meetup), Gina (she was at the first meetup I went to, but this was her first time back), Ganelle (she's been to one or two of the other meetups, but haven't really talked to her much), Lance (quiet as usual), William (he's been to at least one meetup before), oh and Larry was there (he was looking pretty rough - his car got stolen earlier this week)...that rounds out the old people. Hmm..I guess that was more than half the group after all. Oh well, we still had 5 new people. Heather and her fiancee were there for the first time (sorry, I'm still tired and can't remember his name), they were a lot of fun and i look forward to seeing them at future meetups. Jay was another new guy, didn't actually talk to him at all except to get his name. Then there were the two other new people. It's really bad that I can't remember their names because I was talking to them quite a bit to try to get them chatting with the group. The one woman (Brandy? and maybe her friend was Liz?) was the member and had brought her friend with her because she was too nervous to come by herself. Her friend seemed even more nervous, at least she was just very quiet at first.
Us regulars were all catching up with each other when I noticed the two of them were really just talking to each other quietly and not even doing much of that. So, I tried to bring them while the others chatted away. I got them both to talk a bit more (they even got me to talk more when they brought up the angry posting about me by one woman after we cancelled the meetup for the sunset symphony - have I talked about that at all? I'll have to check), but I think it was Tanja's winning personality that finally got them to feel comfortable with the group. She's just really good at that. They even got comfortable enough that they invited people to go do karioke with them after the dinner. I don't believe anybody took them up on the offer, but it was still cool that they did it.
So, how was the actual dining experience? Well, it was Macorroni Grill. They do have fairly good food, but it is nothing compared to the other places we have been eating out at. Service was, well, it was satisfactory. Nothing to complain about, but also nothing to really compliment. No orders were messed up that I noticed. Drinks took a little bit longer to come than I would normally expect, but that could have been the bar. The waitress did a good job of keeping up everybody's water and the non-alcoholic drinks. She also did a good job at keeping fresh bread at the table, though we did have to ask for the fresh ground herbs to have in the olive oil for dipping. The real deficiencies I saw in the place were the things they were lacking. For one, they were completely out of eggplant, out of veal, and out of something else that I can't remember. Oh and another thing was that she never offered to grate parmessian cheese on anybody's meal like they normally do. I had to call out to her to get her to bring it over for Tanja's meal (she does love the cheese). And then she just handed it to us to do ourselves. Because of the table setup, I understand it was a bit hard to reach everybody, but come on. Besides, that's why they typically ask people if they want cheese on their meal before handing it over to you.
I ended up having the chicken parmesian because they didn't have the eggplant for the eggplant parmesian I actually wanted. It was ok, but it seemed quite bland compared to the chicken dish Tanja and I had made the night before. The calamari appetizer was good though, and so was Tanja's Vodka Rustica.
We actually ended up staying there pretty late. I have no clue what time they close, long before we left it seemed like we were the only people left in the restaurant (though as we were leaving one couple was just being seated I noticed). What was really bad though is that as usual when we are leaving, a bunch of us are lingering around, standing by the tables chatting. Normally that is no big deal, but they started cleaning up all around us as if to try to get us to get the heck out of there. It was rather annoying.
After most everybody had left Larry invited Tanja and I to go get drinks with him and a few others. It actually made me a bit sad to say no, because he just really looked like he could use a drink after the week he's had with his car being stolen. But Tanja and I have been doing a lot of late nights this week and were trying to be good about not staying up to all hours. We will definitely have to do something with him later on. I hope Dana and anybody else that went with him for drinks were able to cheer him up.
Happy Things: I just heard from my friend from high school and she thinks that she and her husband will be able to come down for the party I am having this Saturday! That's pretty exciting since I haven't seen her in over 10 years. And I've been wanting to meet her husband. |
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| The weekend (i seem to use that title a lot) |
[May. 25th, 2008|11:27 pm] |
Well, let's see. Friday wasn't too bad a day I guess. They let everybody at my office go home an hour and a half early to start the long weekend right. Unfortunately, Before I could shut down my computer upon hearing the news, I got an email that I had been waiting on all day. If it had come 5 minutes later, I wouldn't have felt guilty at all about the work not getting done, but it didn't come 5 minutes later. And I knew it was already something that was seriously behind schedule and needed to be done that day. So, I ended up staying for another hour to do a clean build of this software and get it sent out to the factory immediately.
After work, I had made plans to go out to eat with my parents. Normally, I would do quite a bit to avoid that, but my father has been having some medical problems lately and Friday morning he had gone in for a stress test. Seeing as how his mother died of a stroke younger than he is now, his father had multiple heart attacks and died of one, his younger brother just had a massive heart attack a couple years ago, and he has such high blood pressure paired with being completely and totally out of shape, it has me worried somewhat. Of course, the doctor doesn't tell you how the test goes right then. But I still wanted to have the chance to talk to him about it.
I just really wish he would listen to advice sometimes. He's quit going to the gym; he's quit riding the exercise bike i left with them so that he could get some exercise at home occasionally; he piles on the cheese, butter, salt, and whatever else you can imagine on anything and everything he eats; and in general he just doesn't stop eating either. After dinner he will just grab a huge container of salty snack mix and shovel away as he sprawls out in front of the tv all night. And the doctor repeatedly telling him that he needs to make changes doesn't seem to have any effect at all.
Anyway, he says that the stress test went well as far as he could tell, but its kind of hard to believe that when he has a history of glossing over what the doctors tell him.
Oh but before I met them for dinner, I had to call Tanja. The night before she made a very big point about giving me her number and I wasn't about to disappoint her. I talked with her for a quite a while about various topics. I probably would have asked her out for something that night if I didn't know Dana was already treating her to the Red Birds game that night. As it turned out, Dana had an extra ticket because her guy friend stood her up. But they didn't call me or because I had mentioned to Tanja that I was going to spend the evening with my parents they didn't think i could make it.
Eventually though, she had to get off the phone and get ready for going out and I had to meet my parents for dinner. Dinner was, well it was like any other dinner with my family of late. It was mostly about my sister and her divorce despite my best efforts to steer away from that. It lasted far longer than I would have liked, but I am still glad I did it. Just because I wanted to make sure my father knows how important the stress test was and that I'm really concerned for his health.
After that, I guess I headed home and did a little cleaning and watched some anime.
Saturday morning, I woke up early despite not having slept well at all. I spent a bit of time getting stuff ready for the picnic we had planned for the meetup at the Sunset Symphony, made my favorite dip, Baba Ghanoush, cut up some carrots, put some fresh grapes in a container to easily carry them, and put some alcohol in non-glass containers to take with me and share with Dana and Tanja.
Just as i was finishing that up, it was time to head over to Shelby Farms for the hiking group meetup. Unfortunately, Tanja wasn't going to be at this one. She needed to go take care of her horse and visit with the family where she keeps her (they were having a wedding today that Tanja was invited to and had a ton of people in from out of town for it). That meetup was still good though. For the first meeting, I'd say the 8 people we had was a pretty good turn out. After the other meetups, it seemed a bit odd that this one mostly consisted of people in their 40's. Dana and I were the youngest by a number of years. But that's ok, they were all interesting people and we enjoyed chatting as we walked a few miles of trail (pretty much the same trail as the Trot for Spot walk). We were supposed to plan out a bigger hiking trip, but it didn't really work out that way. We did make plans to meet again June 8.
After that, most of us headed to McAllister's to have lunch. We ended up staying there quite a while, though I was actually feeling rather ill after what I ate. It wasn't anything unusual either, but I was on the verge of throwing up a couple of times for no apparent reason. Then Tanja called and I forgot about being sick.;)
She was just calling to say that she was running late and would call Dana and I about when we'd meet for the Sunset Symphoney. We had originally planned to get there early, like around 3, but it wasn't looking like any of us would be ready in time for that. In fact, the hiking group didn't even leave McAllister's until almost 3. Dana I think ended up heading off somewhere else entirely to meet some other friend that had been calling/texting her all afternoon (which reminds me that sometime I need to mention the crazy guy that joined one of the meetup groups and she was forced to ban before he'd even come to one meetup), while I headed home for a quick shower.
Before I got there though, Dana called me concerned about the heavy rain she had run into and how it migh effect our plans for the Sunset Symphony. When I got home, I checked the meetup page and saw that other than Dana, Tanja, and I, there was only one other person that had RSVPd 'Yes' to the event. Everybody else was either a 'No' or just didn't RSVP. So, we decided to cancel it. Tanja sent out an email trying to explain it to people just incase they didn't RSVP but were still considering going and I called one person that had expressed interest and left their phone number (Dana was busy with her friend and wouldn't be near a computer for a while).
Lol. I just have to laugh at one thing though. Dana seems to be looking out for Tanja and I. When I was talking to her on the phone about cancelling the event, she did mention that the three of us could get together to do something else, but she made a point of telling me that Tanja thinks i'm cute and strongly hinted that I should maybe ask her to do something just the two of us. In fact, I was already planning to do just that as soon as the idea of cancelling the Sunset Symphony meetup was mentioned. It just seems too funny the way Dana was trying to be a matchmaker for us even though the two of us had already started down that way Thursday night.
Anyway, I got off the phone with Dana and called Tanja up and went right into asking her out for a real date. It came as no surprise that she was thinking along the exact same lines too. So, we made plans to go eat some sushi and then see Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. She had already mentioned wanting to see the movie several times. So, i knew exactly what she wanted to see before she said it (we already had a movie fan meetup planned for Indiana Jones for Monday, so we couldn't see that).
We first met to get the tickets at the Cordova Malco theater because she lives out that way. Then walked over to Wasabi next door to it for the sushi. I have to say, that I enjoyed the sushi there even more than where I tried it for the first time the other week, though that could be partially because of the company. That's not a slight against my friends at all. I was just really enjoying this particular companionship. We were also drinking some mango sake that was quite good, though I think the green dragon at the other place was a bit better. Altogether it was an excellent meal with some great conversation. There wasn't even a single awkward silence or break in the conversation either. It was great.
Then we headed back to the theater to see the movie. We were still a few minutes early just to make sure we got the seats we wanted. But we hardly noticed that...
Anyway, the movie was quite good. It was longer than I expected, but not in a bad way at all. The storyline was strong (of course) and seemed fairly faithful to the original book as far as my faulty memory can recall. The special effects were amazing in that they weren't over the top. They were quite understated in fact. But the thing is that they were so perfectly, seemlessly blended with the live film that you could almost believe that there were no special effects at all. That they really found centaurs and minotaurs and etc. to play those parts. It was that good. Oh and we both absolutely loved the mouse and his little feather, too cute.
We actually ended up staying in our seats not only through the credits but into the theater employees trying to clean the place up for the next showing. Eventually though we headed out to our cars. Not wanting to part just yet, we ended up talking by her truck for another hour or so. We did have a bit of entertainment out there too as there was a group of like 8 people standing around this one car that was halfway out of a parking spot, with the two security guards coming over there and the theater manager getting called. And then the cops came. And we had absolutely no clue what was going on. We could see nothing wrong with the car from where we were. We overheard things like "the car was in park but the emergency break wasn't on" (which implies that the car moved while they were in the theater), "there's no visible damage, but its serious" (which begs the question what they hell is the problem that would show no damage but need the police?), and of course the cops saying "well somebody is going to jail tonight" shortly after they arrived. It was just really weird.
Eventaully though, we had to part ways. We had both been quite busy of late with meetup groups and other things so we were both rather tired. If that hadn't been the case, I'm sure we would have found something else to do. But she had the wedding to go to this morning (its a sign of how well things are going that she seemed disappointed that she had RSVPd the invitation without a guest, hehe). We had a nice long goodbye and then I headed home.
I ended up chatting online for a while after I got back, mostly because I was still kind of wired after such a good evening and I felt like talking to somebody about it, hehe. I finally got to sleep a bit after midnight.
Then I was up bright and early again for no apparent reason this morning. I didn't let it go to waste though. I cooked up some fresh cheese danish from scratch (damn were they tasty), I had been planning to take them to my sister's house for a bbq she was having, but that didn't mean i couldn't have one or two for my breakfast first. I also decided to make some honey rolls to take as well (though I substituted agave nectar for the honey). And while I was at it, i threw together another loaf of banana bread. Yeah, I was in another great baking mood. Oh and I decided to take the baba ghanoush too since i didn't take it to the Symphony.
I got to my sister's house around 1 (damn do i hate the freaking hour long drive from my house all the way out to Arlington where she lives). It was kind of strange because it was pretty much just her in-laws sitting in the living room watching Nascar while Danielle was in the back with her new baby and her husband was out back cooking, and my brother was upstairs playing Wii Fit. It just wasn't like there was any group meeting for a bbq. Eventually people did come together to eat, but even then we were broken up in like three separate groups (one outside, one upstairs, and one in the living room with the nascar).
At least, the divorce my other sister, Laura, is trying to have wasn't mentioned as much. It wasn't completely terrible, though I could certainly think of a few better ways to spend my day. Such as hanging out with my friends.
Jerm had sent out an invitation to everybody to see Indiana Jones this afternoon. Obviously, I couldn't make that because he planned it right when I had already promised to be at Danielle's house. But he also had mentioned wanting people to hang out afterwards which I was really wanting to make it to. I even made sure to call him this morning to ask him to call me after the movie was over with so i could cut out from my family obligations to hang out with them.
It just seems like I haven't been able to really hang out with them for quite a while. Well, there are some reasons for that I know, but that isn't what I am talking about. I've been so busy with doing the meetups that I can't even remember the last time that I just hung out with people. Yeah, just the other weekend I was helping them paint their house and trying sushi for the first time with them. That was a ton of fun, but that really isn't the same thing as relaxing/having fun with each others' company. Regardless of anything else, I still consider all of them to be the best friends i've ever had and I would like to do stuff with them occasionally.
Unfortunately, today wasn't going to be that day. Not sure who all went to see the movie with them, but for whatever reason they decided not to do much afterwards tonight. Jerm and Krissi seemed to want to spend a quite evening together and I can't fault them for that at all, especially after Jerm told me that they decided to skip the Sunset Symphony too. Krissi had seemed to be really looking forward to the two of them doing that together this weekend. Also, with having worked through painting their house last weekend, we could probably all use a bit of extra quiet time/rest.
Still, I would like to do something with them sometime soon. I've thought about asking them if they wanted to try checking out one of the meetups i've been doing, but we are all still working with our budgets and I am reluctant to ask them to do anything that I know they haven't budgetted for. I'd prefer just inviting them over to watch a movie or something so it wouldn't cost more than the gas it takes them to drive over here.
Eh, it will be ok I'm sure. Its just that Tanja and I are already planning to do more stuff together and we're still doing meetups. I don't want to let myself neglect the friends that I have known for so long and I can kind of see that happening if I don't work at making the time for it.
Tomorrow, I've got another meetup planned. As I mentioned, we're going to see Indiana Jones. The meetup isn't until around 4 (i believe the plan is to meet around 3:45 for the 4:15 showing at the Paradiso). Hopefully that will be enough for us to find each other and get seats together (no clue how busy it will be at that time on a holiday). We'll see. I just hope we don't have another problem like last time where people were upset because they couldn't find us (despite the fact that we were exactle where Dana said we would be when she first posted the event). Tanja's planning to wear the blinking star necklace we got her at the BBQ fest to help catch people's attention, hehe. It should be a ton of fun whatever the case.
Happy Things: Slowly being hand fed food. Yeah, that can be a lot of fun if it comes from the right person. ;) |
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| Peabody Rooftop Party |
[May. 23rd, 2008|12:22 pm] |
I'm trying to decide just what I want to talk about today, and I just can't decide. I kind of feel like talking about last night, not so much the rooftop party which was pretty lame, but something that happened afterwards. But I just don't think I am comfortable talking about stuff that deals with just how lame i have been in my life and how difficult it is for me to have a close relationship with a woman. I will say that I have actually been more attracted to Tanja than I've been explicitly saying in my posts and apparently the feeling is mutual.
Sorry. I'm pathetic, I know. But I just don't feel comfortable saying more about that just yet.
I guess I can talk about the rest of the evening though. The plan was to meetup at the rooftop at 7:30pm. Before I left the house, I looked online and saw that the only people that were still marked as definites were Dana, Tanja, and me. Which was fine by me. They were both very cool to hang out with at BBQ fest. I got there a little bit before 7:30 and the rooftop was pretty much dead, there may have been two dozen people up there, but definitely no more than that. Dana and Tanja hadn't made it yet. So I just wandered around, took a look as the duck palace around back, and amazed myself by the fact that still surprises me, that I've somehow gotten over my fear of heights.
Right at 7:30 the two of them walked in. We chatted for a little bit and then I showed them the ducks. Dana has been to the rooftop parties before but never been around back to see where they live. Then Dana went to go get some food for herself while Tanja and I basically kicked two guys away from a table so that we could sit. At this point, the band hadn't come out and they were just playing some random music over the speakers. Tanja and I started to get up to dance, but figured we'd lose the table if we did that. So we waited for Dana to get back, by which point the band, Here Come the Mummies, had come out and started their act.
I wasn't very impressed with them, and neither was the rest of the crowd it seemed. The beat was something odd that you really couldn't dance to. Well, I could almost see you salsa dancing to a couple of them, but the atmosphere and the lyrics just didn't fit that type of dancing. Dana loves to dance, so she and I did give it a try. However we were absolutely the only ones out there dancing. And there was a huge open space in front of the band where nobody would go. Everybody just kind of hung around the periphery. The band did try something to get more people to dance and get the crowd closer, showing their own stupid little dance. And yeah some people including Dana and I joined in, but most didn't. And although people had moved up closer to the stage, 5 minutes later people had again backed off, at which point Dana and I just gave up and sat back down with Tanja. I tried to get Tanja to get up and dance with me, but she just wouldn't do it because of the odd rhythm. So she bought me a drink instead and who am I to argue with that?
We hung out there for a couple of hours I think, before we decided to go some place we could more easily talk. We had already moved the table and chairs from directly in front of the stage, but it still just wasn't worth it since none of us were enjoying the music that much. Also, I think part of it was that Tanja was noticing a group of three women that were I guess checking me out. I don't know. I've got no clue when it comes to picking up women. They were fairly young and very cute, and one of them did seem to be trying to catch my eye repeatedly (that is what caught Tanja's attention and she even tried to get me to go over to them). But I don't chat up complete strangers even if they are very cute. Besides I was there with Tanja and Dana.
Anyway, we ended up just heading down to the lobby and claiming a couch for ourselves. It was actually rather funny the way the waitress reacted to me with the two beautiful women on either side of me. Both Tanja and Dana had to comment on it. Let's just say she thought something was up with that. All three of us were drinking "Russian Kisses" on Tanja's recommendation (though they were out of the godiva chocolate to swirl the in glasses which was disappointing).
I'm not sure how long we sat their enjoying the drinks and little snacks they put out, but eventually Dana decided she needed to head home. Tanja and I however had a few more drinks than she had and decided to stay for a while longer...
I'm too reserved in everything I do to do anything stupid, but I definitely enjoyed spending the next hour or so with her even when it was awkward and...Yeah, that's enough of that.
So, basically it was a very pleasant evening. Now its time for the weekend. Before that though, I seriously need to be heading back to work from my lunch break. I'll talk about other crap I wanted to mention later.
Happy Things: Trying something for the first time even if you have no clue what you are doing. That just means that you can only get better, right? |
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| An expensive (but totally worth it) weekend |
[May. 19th, 2008|10:17 pm] |
Ok, Friday I actually started to post about my dining out meetup that happened Thursday and my plans for the weekend. But I kept becoming rather rambly (yes, I know that isn't a word) and some of the things I had to say weren't necessarily true any more. And the further along the weekend got, the more I had to talk about and the more tangents were getting thrown into the post. So, I think I will just start fresh, instead of trying to clean up and finish that mess. (warning, this still ends up being one long ass post)
In brief, my weekend pretty much started Thursday. I had plans to meet a friend from high school, Amber, for lunch, but a family emergency forced her to cancel. Thursday night, I did have the dining out meetup group meeting at Automatic Slims which went quite well, though the turn out may have been reduced because of the rain and the downtown traffic. Afterwards, I ended up going to BBQ fest with two of the women and had a lot of fun dancing and getting a few free drinks at a couple of the tents where they knew people.
Friday, I ended up having to stay after work until after 7 to move an application server, which pushed back the plans I had made with Dana and Tonja to meet for more of BBQ fest. But we eventually got together and partied hard well into the night. They had some damn strong moonshine at the Viking tent.
Saturday morning I woke up bright and early at 7am for some strange reason. I lazed around the house for a couple of hours and then headed over to Jerm and Krissi's to help with painting the exterior. Spent the day until around 6 there, helping them caulk and prime the house to be painted. Had to leave to get ready for the movie fan meetup though. Went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall for the meetup (good movie). Then went to El Mezcal with the group. Then headed downtown for the night life meetup at EP.
Sunday morning, I again woke up at 7am because I figured Jerm and Krissi would want to get an early start, which was correct. I booted up my computer only minutes after Jerm emailed me to say they were going to go ahead and start and that I could just come over whenever I was ready. So, spent all day helping to paint the house. Then we all went out to eat sushi (my first time trying it). I went home and played scrabulous on Facebook while chatting with Amber who seemed to have a bit of a rough weekend. Eventually though, I just had to get some sleep and was almost instantly asleep on put my head on the pillow.
Considering how verbose I normally am with my posts, that really is a "brief" description of my weekend. Lol
Now to elaborate...
First off, I called it an expensive weekend because I ended up doing several things that I hadn't really budgeted myself for. BBQ Fest was free to get in thanks to Tonja's wristbands, but parking was anything but free. I hadn't been planning to eat out as much either. Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, and Sunday dinner were all things that I hadn't really planned for. Also, I'm not experienced with the Memphis night life, so I didn't take into account there being a cover fee to get into EP.
But no worries, those were all things that I wanted to do and its not like I couldn't afford to do them. I just won't be picking up Wii Fit when it comes out this week. No big loss there since I wasn't actually excited about it at all. I was just going to buy it for having its sake. Which is no reason at all to spend that much money on it.
More on the different parts to the weekend:
The missed lunch with Amber was a little disappointing, but it is understandable. Family definitely comes before seeing an old friend. It's actually kind of funny, though. In the past three months since she found me on Facebook, we have probably talked to each other more online than we ever did in the entire three years we were in high school together. That doesn't mean we weren't close during high school. I was just too damn shy to talk to anybody back then. In fact, she was probably the person I talk to most because she was one of the only people I "hung out" with outside of school. I say that in quotes because she was really my younger sister's friend and the only time I ever did any hanging out was with them and their friends (mostly as a chaperone since their parents would let them stay out later if I was with them, but that was still the closest I came to doing stuff with "friends" from the time I moved here, pretty fucking sad I know, but whatever). Anyway, we'll just have to try to see each other some other time.
Traffic was a bitch going downtown to Automatic Slims for the meetup thanks to the BBQ fest and construction going on outside of the restaurant made it a little difficult to find. But I had given myself enough time and ended up walking in right at 7 when the meetup was supposed to start. Dana (the organizer), Sherita (who was at the first meetup I went to), Tanja (the german girl with the free wristbands for BBQ fest), Lance (who had been at a previous meeting but hardly talks at all), and Larry (a new guy who's had an interesting life, he's an engineer that has also been teaching ball room dancing for the past 30 years, he also worked on the Ed Sullivan show for a while) were already there. Later, a few more trickled in. Tonya (who has been at previous meetups but that night was annoying all the "computer geeks" with talk of get somebody to build some weird database/email system into her myspace page), Aaron and his friend Dwight also showed up (no wine this time but it was good to see them both again), and some woman that I am sorry to say I don't remember her name (I hate to say something as bad as that she didn't fit in with the group, but it just seemed like she was out of sync with the rest of us; hopefully that's just because it was the first time she had been to any meetup).
The food was quite unusual, but also quite good. I'm not sure that its something I would enjoy eating often, but it was definitely good to experience for the first time. Tanja was even able to talk me into trying the calamari despite my long standing distrust of anything sea food and my reticence at the very thought of calamari. I have to admit that I even enjoyed it, though the larger pieces had a little bit too much of the chewy texture in evidence.
What I really find interesting is how much I seem to have changed. The other day Krissi had mentioned something about me having become such a "social butterfly". At the time, I told her I was trying to be that way, but I wasn't sure that it was actually me, meaning I wasn't sure if it was me trying to force something that doesn't actually fit who I am. But its hard to argue with the evidence. I really have just become quite comfortable with being social. I can talk to complete strangers about anything. Hell, I was even helping to direct conversations that night and went out of my way to rescue Aaron from a conversation he was having with Tonya that was obvious annoying him to no end. If that isn't a sign of a social person, I don't know what is.
As people started heading home, Tanja again offered the wristbands for people wanting to check out BBQ fest, but it ended up just being myself and Dana to take her up on the offer. I was a little bit leery of it just being me and the two woman, though not actually nervous. I just wasn't sure how the dynamic of it would be. I don't know, or I should say I didn't know, what the two of them are looking for out of these meetups. Personally, I am not actually looking to find somebody to be with at these. I'm not going to reject it if it were to happen, but mostly I am just looking to get out of my box (as Maddie keeps mentioning) and try to have a life for once. Even when hanging out with my friends, sometimes maybe I was just leeching off their lives to avoid living on my own. I don't know. But what I do know is that I just can't be that way any more.
So, a question that might come to mind after me saying that is: "am I interested in either of these women for more than just the occasional meetup?" At the time, I would have said no. They are both very attractive women, but that is beside the point. Dana just has a lot of things I don't think I could deal with. She's "close" to finalizing her divorce that has been ongoing for two years despite not having any kids to complicate the process (just seems like a long time to me), she told me she recently broke up with her boyfriend, etc. And that night at BBQ fest, her talking about how she is looking for a serious long term relationship out of the meetups (along with talking at the dinner about how she needed a man that would cook, clean, and just take care of her completely) just seems like too much for me. Tanja, well, Tanja kind of intimidates me a little or she did at the time. We talked a lot more over the weekend as we met Friday for more of BBQ fest and Saturday for a couple of other meetup groups. But that night, she when Dana brought up the subject of what we were all looking for out of the meetups, the way she looked at me after saying what she was looking for...it just really caught me off guard. Driving her around Saturday night (I gave her a lift from the movie theater to save on gas and parking fees downtown), I learned a bit of her past and was feeling closer to her. So, I am less intimidated by it, but still don't think I want to be anything more than her friend.
Anyway, we did have some fun at BBQ Fest. We danced a bit at one of the tent parties (me being a bit stand offish still despite Dana trying to be fairly “friendly” with the dancing) and hung out with a group of Tanja’s co-workers at another tent (though they were out of jello shots and only had bud light to drink, so we didn’t stay long). We ended up heading on back before midnight with Dana and I walking Tanja to her office so she could pick up her laptop that she’d left there. It seemed like Dana wanted to say more when the three of us split up to go to where each of us parked, but we had made plans to meet Friday night for more of BBQ fest and I guess she thought it wasn’t important enough to say (ok, I am acting a little dense there, several times on the walk back she mentioned wanting to go dancing that night, pointedly looking at me, but it was late and we did already have plans for Friday).
I ended up getting home a little after midnight and falling asleep by 1 or so. I felt like being lazy Friday. So I didn’t bother waking up with my alarm clock. I knew I was going to have to stay after work that day and just felt like getting some sleep. Nobody really cares when I come and go at work anyway. Work went by fairly slowly since I was looking forward so much to that evening. When it came time for everybody else to leave though I had to stay and move that damn application. It was a pain in the ass too. I didn’t get out of there until almost 7 which is when I had originally planned to meet Dana and Tanja downtown. But I had called Dana, who apparently stayed out a couple hours longer Thursday night to go to some bars and was trying to take a nap before heading downtown. She actually ended up getting there after I did. Tanja of course was already downtown though and was enjoying some moonshine when we found her.
I have to say that was some damn strong shit he was pouring. When I got there, she had maybe half a shot of the stuff in her cup (he wasn’t letting anybody have that much of it at a time because it was so strong) and I just gulped it down without hesitation despite them repeatedly telling me to just sip it. Yeah, it was strong as hell but it tasted great. It was strawberry flavored moonshine and that half a shot felt like two or three shots straight of tequila.
We hung out there for a while meeting some more of her co-workers (included two that were absolutely fascinated with programming elevators for some reason) and drinking more of the old guy’s moonshine. Somewhere in there Larry showed up and he hung out with us for a few hours. We ended up at the tent where we did so much dancing the previous night. This time Dana was even more friendly and the moonshine and other drinks had loosened me up a bit more. Tanja actually complimented us on how well we were dancing together, though she also seemed…I don’t know, jealous just doesn’t seem to fit her at all, but she did kind of joke around about how close I was suddenly being with Dana and "accused" me of hiding behind Dana. What’s weird is that I actually talked a lot more to Tanja and felt closer to her than Dana who was rubbing up against me.
At some point, Larry finally decided to head on home. He’s a bit older and wasn’t as into getting drunk and dancing to the extremely loud music. But shortly after that, we spotted Tanja’s chiropractor who ended up leaving his friend to come hang out with us for the rest of the night.
He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he gave off a weird vibe. And I know that his excuse of why his fiancée wasn’t with him (menstrual cramps) didn’t sit well with Tonja, especially since he kept chatting up Dana and dismissing the subject of his fiancée the few times Tonja tried bringing it up. That is one thing I definitely know about Tanja after this weekend, she has no tolerance for guys that are so cavalier about chatting up other women. And who can blame her. Still she seemed to be trying to push Dana on him and Dana didn’t seem to mind at all.
Around midnight the tent ran out of booze, and then they finally had to cut the music off. So we started heading home. But first we absolutely had to get Tanja some of the flashing bunny ears. Tanja and I had noticed them the night before and kept joking about how she absolutely had to have a pair of them. She also picked up a little flashing starburst necklace thing and Dana got a pair of flashing glasses. It was just too funny. Then we walked arm in arm out of there all the way back to Tanja’s office again. We ended up parting ways a bit after 1am and I got home around 2.
Then I was back up bright and early Saturday morning. It seems the more fun I have, the less sleep I need (at least that’s how it was in Vegas too). I had a bit of a hangover from that killer moonshine, but a bit of food and a hot shower seemed to take care of it quite easily. Around 10am I headed over to Jerm and Krissi’s to see what I could to do help with the painting project. At that time, they were just doing the pressure washing so it was mostly standing around watching them do the work, but then we all headed to Huey’s for lunch before stopping by Lowes for supplies. There was some debate about what colors to use and we eventually decided to take some swatches back with us before actually buying the paint. They did go ahead and pick up some caulking for any gaps in the wood and for some stuff for fixing the shingles. When we got back, they picked out the colors they were wanting to use and then Krissi and Maddie went to pick up the paint while Jerm worked on the roof, and I worked on the caulking. After they got back we went ahead and starting putting Kilz on any exposed wood to help seal it and I believe they were just starting to paint when I had to leave. Oh yeah, I have to mention the pain in the ass it was to take care of the exceptionally steep eave over there front door. The next day we came up with a better way to handle it thanks to John’s smart thinking, but we seriously tried a lot to get that to work out.
One thing I have to mention is my fear of heights, or rather my seeming lack of it now. As I believe I mention in writing about my hike, I believe I have gotten over my fear of heights. However, I’m not quite sure if that is true or not. I didn’t have any problems at all climbing to the highest points on the ladders, but when I got up on the one ladder to try to do some of the eaves and it started moving out from under me, I could tell I was holding myself back from pushing it too far. Maybe that is just a valid point intelligent concern, rather than fear though, because we were being rather foolish with our L shape to the ladder and trying to sit on it in such a way that we were kind of pushing it away from the roof and relying much on the person steadying the ladder to keep it against the roof. Jerm was a lot better up there than I was, but that could be because I had more faith in me being to hold the ladder in place with his smaller weight than him being able to hold it in place with my bigger weight at the top. Either way, nobody ended up getting hurt and the job did get done. So it’s all good.
Anyway, I actually ended up staying a little bit longer than I originally planned to, just because I wanted to help them out as much as I could. But I still made it to the theater on time. Dana, Caroline, and Stephanie (all people that had been at previous dining out meetups) were already there and Tanja was on her way, though running late.
We apparently need to work on our organization though, because there were supposedly three other people that went to the meetup but couldn’t find us. I find this hard to believe since Dana had specified exactly where she was going to be (the lounge/bar to the left side of the main lobby of Paradiso, where you can buy wine) and we were the only ones there. Dana and I even waited until 7:15 while Tanja was finding the place and parking. But whatever, we’ll have to figure some better way of showing people that we are with the group. Dana mention maybe making a sign, though she didn’t want to look like a dork by holding it up (I offered to do it instead if she liked).
Still, the five of us had a good time. Afterwards we decided to go to Chili’s to get something to eat as a group, but before we left the parking lot I seemed to have upset Dana. Friday night I had offered to drive both her and Tanja from the movie theater to downtown to save on gas and parking fees (Dana had paid freaking $20 Friday night for parking). At the time, Tanja said she may just take me up on the offer, but Dana didn’t seem interested. However, when Tanja did take me up on the offer and Dana noticed, she seemed a bit upset.
Then when we got to Chili’s and discovered how long a wait it would be, she decided she had to forget about eating with us and head downtown early, even though there was plenty of time and we had already decided to go to El Mezcal just down the street rather than wait at Chili’s. I didn’t mean for it to look like it must have, but even after both Tanja and I offered to have anybody else ride in my car too, she was set on leaving us. Oh well, what’s done is done.
Caroline, Stephanie, Tanja, and I all went to El Mezcal. Caroline unfortunately wasn’t planning to make it to EP because she had just gotten back from a week long business trip and was rather tired. So we did hang out there a bit longer than we should have. Particularly because the food wasn’t all that great.
It’s funny how Tanja has a different food for every restaurant that she uses to judge it. For Automatic Slims, and any other place that serves it, her test food is calamari. If they can do that well, she knows they can cook almost anything (for the record, she says Automatic Slims is some of the best she’s ever had). For Mexican, it’s the chimichanga. El Mezcal certainly fell short on that test though. Also, she didn’t care for how small their shots of tequila were.
We had a good time there too, but eventually the three of us that were going downtown had to leave. We said good night to Caroline and wished her to get to feeling better (she’d been sick since Monday – so for her entire trip). And headed downtown.
Traffic was pretty bad and it ended up being too much for Stephanie who decided to forget about the meetup. Can’t really blame her there, though its too bad she didn’t make it. Especially since she’s going to be away for 6 weeks starting at the end of this month.
Tanja and I got to EP around 10:45. She was a bit taken aback by them having a cover charge to get in. I just took it as whatever, but I have to agree that it really should have been something mentioned about the meetup for people that are a little more concerned about the cost of these things. I mean, Dana has been good about pointing out the price ranges for the places we are going to for the Dining Out group. So it kind of makes sense to post something like “there is a $10 cover charge to get in” particularly when many of the parking garages in the area were charging $15-25 already!
Several people were already there from the group of course, Lance, Sherita, Tonya, and a couple of other people that I didn’t really catch the names of (it was just too damn loud in there to really hear each other very well). Its kind of nice to be a guy out numbered by the ladies as I didn’t have to pay for a single drink that night, hehe. The G3 Martinis were quite tasty (and strong). Over all, it was a bit chaotic. We had a table right at the front of the place next to the band that was playing the music very loudly. This did mean that it was a small matter for us to get out on the dance floor, but still.
I did have to be the gentleman thing for a bit though and watch purses and drinks as some of the ladies went to the dance floor. You know I am super naïve when it took me a minute to understand why they were asking me to watch their drinks though. Honestly, I can’t blame them for having concerns with a couple of the guys that were hanging around. Anyway, Dana did come and rescue me from that after a while. Though I ended up dancing more with Tanja than her this time around. Again, I got a few compliments on my dancing, though I did find out that I was lacking any clue how to dance back to back with a woman. Tanja and I just seemed out of sync when she wanted me to try it. The rest of the time we were good together though.
It was funny watching this one white guy in his late 30s that came to the meetup try to dance. Mostly because I imagine that is exactly how I looked when I was trying to dance with Maddie when we were in Vegas, lol. Then there was the Indian guy who said he couldn’t dance at all, but I was able to encourage him to get out there and just move. He and Dana ended up dancing some, though he moved even less than the white guy. Tonja and I sat back down after we kept noticing that all Dana was really doing was chatting with people while standing on the dance floor. After all, she’s the one that dragged both of us out to dance, but she wasn’t dancing at all.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention the added bit of drama where the guy Dana had seemed to be dating when he met us at the Dish after Bhan Thai showed up. I have no clue how that made her feel, but the guy was trying to hook up with one of the other women from the meetup group. That just seemed really cruel to me. Though when Tonya realized that she was hitting on a guy Dana had gone out with, she did sort of backed off even though Dana quietly said it was ok without making it sound all that convincing. No clue, but it did seem like a bit of drama that didn't need to happen.
Tanja and I ended up leaving EP earlier than the others I believe because we just couldn’t talk to people with the music that loud. But we didn’t go home right away. Instead, Tanja really wanted to go on a carriage ride around downtown. She works downtown and is always seeing the carriages taking people around. And she owns her own horse, so she loves seeing the horses. Anyway, she has been wanting to do it ever since she moved to Memphis but she wasn’t going to do it by herself. Good naturedly, I told her I wouldn’t mind at all riding along with her on one. The one we chose was the same one that almost ran me over Thursday night, but it’s the one she really wanted to ride in. It’s one with the wire frame almost like a Cinderella pumpkin carriage, with blue string lights all over it. The woman who drives it also has a dog that came into the back and sat with us during the ride. It was a lot of fun, though it was rather cold even with the blanket the woman gave us to cuddle up in. And yes, i did take advantage of that to cuddle up with my arm around Tanja, hehe.
After that, we did head back to the Paradiso where she’d left her truck. Traffic was absolutely fucking terrible on the way back. At one point we were stuck at a single light for almost half an hour. It was insane. But it did give us time to talk some more.
She ended up telling me the story of how she came to be living in Memphis. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’d be right for me to share that since it was a very personal story. Suffice it to say, she arrived in Memphis under very different circumstances than how she thought they was going to be.
For my part, I talked to her about how I really haven’t had many relationships in my entire life (ok, I couldn’t go so far as to say I’ve only dated one girl for any length of time, but I did admit that my longest relationship was all of three months). Come to think of it, I was revealing a lot that night as I had been talking to Dana a bit about myself before the movie too.
And you know what? I really don’t have any problem with them or anybody else knowing anything and everything about myself. Something of my old self did hold me back a little bit with regards to my past relationships, but I would like to think I was still doing pretty well all things considered.
Tanja and I parted with a hug at her truck and I headed home (stopping to get gas as I had seriously been worrying I might run out before getting back to the Paradiso, can you imagine how lame that would look if it had happened while I was driving Tanja?). Got home around 3am and didn’t take too long to fall asleep.
Then I was up bright and early at 7am come Sunday morning. No hangover this time. I was still in a great mood from the night before (particularly the hug). I grabbed some food and booted up my computer, just in time to see Jerm logging off Aim and only minutes after he had emailed me to tell me to come over whenever I felt like it. He could have just called me like I told him would be fine, but it does show a lot of consideration that he emailed me instead. I’m just glad I decided to check my email that early rather than what I had done Saturday, which was laze around for a few hours before going online. So, I head over to their house as soon as I finished my breakfast and got there before he had even gotten back from getting their own food from McDonalds.
We worked quite deligently all day, all the way through lunch and finished up sometime around 3pm I think. Its funny just how much fun it can be to work alongside your friends. Just like when we redid John and Maddie’s flowerbeds in the front yard, it was a ton of work, but I had more fun doing it than many of the nights that we have just spent hanging out watching random stuff on tv. That seems so strange for a slacker like me to admit, but it is absolutely the truth.
As they were finishing up painting the garage door, I headed back to my house to get a shower and some clean clothes. I also ended up doing some stuff on meetup.com as I discovered that several people had tried to make the movie fan meetup, but couldn’t find us. I did my best to help Dana smooth things over and encourage them to try to make the next meetup. We really were trying to make sure everybody that was coming could find us. We just need to be better about advertising who we are when we get there. I haven’t seen any response from the people that were upset though. I do hope they will give it another try.
After that I headed back to Jerm and Krissi’s where Krissi and I watched a new episode of Reaper that was very funny while Jerm played a game. Then she showed me the season finale of The Office that I had missed while I was at Automatic Slims. That was an absolutely fantastic episode with a ton of surprises and plenty of twists to the various plot lines. I just love that show.
Then we all went to meet John and Maddie for sushi. This was my first time ever trying it. In the past, I was dead set against ever giving it a try, but this time it was surprisingly easy for them to convince me to go. In fact, all they had to do was ask. It wasn’t even the trying of sushi that made me hesitate for a moment. It was the fact that I had been spending so much money that weekend and hadn’t budgeted for another meal. I’m sure they would have understood if that was the case, but as I said earlier, it was ok, I could afford it. Besides, any time I can be with these friends is worthwhile in my book.
I ended up getting the a combo plate that had a ton of different sushi on it and sharing some of the sushi plates the others bought. Of it all, the only thing I didn’t particularly care for was the conch. There is just something about food that my teeth can’t cut into that seriously bothers me. Also, I had a problem with putting the whole thing in my mouth. The portions are just so much larger than what I would normally consider bite sized and yet you are supposed to put the whole thing in at once. It really just made me feel like I was stuffing my face like a big putting those whole things in at once. I know I can be a bit too stuck on propriety at times, but it just went so against my views on eating etiquette.
So, what did I think of the sushi? Well, I there was nothing that I hated. The texture was a bit off my palate at times, but the tastes were all ok. Still, I don’t know that I will ever go out of my way for it. Other than the Jaguar California rolls, none of it came across as strong enough a flavor for me. Yeah, dipping it in soy sauce with some wasabi would add flavor to everything. But that just seemed like cheating to me. I wanted to try the sushi in its basic form. And in doing so, I was having to focus on subtleties of taste that I don’t normally pay as fine attention to.
Still, it was a good experience overall (I definitely liked the warm green dragon sake) and I’m glad they got me to go with them. :)
After that, I was finally starting to feel tired as everybody else seemed to be too. We all went back to our own homes (with me stopping by the grocery store on the way).
Upon getting home, I checked my mail and then saw that Amber was online. So, I ended up chatting with her for quite a while. We were also playing scrabulous where she crushed me thanks to my complete inability to think of words. She seemed like she’d had a bad weekend and had been wanting somebody to talk to, but I wasn’t around. So, I ended up staying up later than I really should have. But it seemed to cheer her up, so that makes me happy. I’ll just catch up on sleep sometime during the week, preferably before my big meeting Wednesday.
Happy Things: I had something in mind for here, but as usual, I seem to have completely forgotten what it was. I know, how about “Stepping out of the box.” Maybe leaping would be a more apt description of what I have been doing, but the concept is still the same. I have been adventuring outside my self-imposed limits and discovering there is an entire world out there through which can I can journey without fear. Yes, bad things can happen when you don’t have the “safety” of some barrier between you and the rest of the world, but that same barrier also prevents so many good things from happening that it just isn’t worth it. I am truly happy to be able to say that I am finally letting go of my box. |
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| The weekend |
[May. 11th, 2008|06:52 pm] |
Well, I was having a pretty good weekend. Unlike I have done far too often of late, I was actually enjoying spending time by myself. I was probably just as introspective as ever when I was by myself, but this weekend I didn't let that get me depressed as it has in the past. I even surprised myself by that.
Friday night I enjoyed watching some old movies I haven't seen in years but had suddenly gotten on my mind for one reason or another. I did let myself drink a little bit more than I should have, but I'm pretty sure it just effected me so much because I was so drained from my workout. Besides, they were just the kind of movies that go well with a drink or two.
Saturday, I was actually able to sleep in late. This is unheard of for me because i am constantly battling insomnia. So, that was an excellent start to the day! I had decided that my flowerbed in front of my house needed to be weeded. It was long past due. So, after a relaxing breakfast, I got right to it. It took several hours of straight work by myself, but I think I got all the weeds taken care of, at least in the one big bed. I still have plenty of weeds throughout my yard that need to be takend care of and the area on the other side of my driveway along with around the tree in my front yard need to be taken care of.
Unfortunately, that one main flowerbed still needs a ton of work. In the process of weeding I realized how fucked up the bed is. Most of it has less thann an inch of top soil over the hard clay that is the natural soil of this area. Not only that, but whoever planted those bushes had no fucking clue what they were doing, or just didn't care. All they seemed to have done was take the shrubs out of the cheap plastic pots they come in and plopped them down. Then piled dirt around them. So these bushes pretty much all just sit on top of the ground with their roots coming right out exposed around them since the clay they sit on top of is so hard. Not only that, but a good half dozen shrubs that had been planted were just completely dead, yet still sitting there.
Even after I realized that i had given myself a terrible, terrible blister on the palm of my hand, I didn't let any of this discourage me. Instead, it was getting excited about all the work I had to look forward to. I was enjoying this shit. I remember when we helped John and Maddie redo their flowerbeds (thankfully I don't have as large a bed as they did), and I'm thinking I will need to do the same for mine. And I am looking forward to having all that hard work ahead of me! How much of a surprise that is for a slacker like me!?!
Saturday night, I was sore from working outside all day and my blister that had broken open was quite painful. But none of that slowed me down. I grilled up a pork tenderloin with an orange baste that I found a recipe for. Watched Into the Wild, which I absolutely loved and will talk about later. Then went right into doing my P90X exercise for the day. It was the Plyometrics video which is good because I'm not sure I could have done it if it were one where I had to grip the weights with my blistered hand.
I seriously need to figure out something to do for the ground I am exercising on. I am getting so sweaty from these things that its making my hardwood floors slippery. But that just goes to show how much I am getting out of them. Its a hassle to clean the floors after each night's exercise, but its worth it. I just don't want to slip and hurt myself one of these days.
After that I took a shower to wash off the dirt and grime...and then soaked myself in the tub with the jets of water massaging my tired muscles. It was glorious. Then I read a book for a couple of hours while cuddling with the kittens which is always good.
I didn't get to sleep as late this morning, but that is mostly because it is Mother's Day and I had planned to surprise her for it. I got up relatively early. Fixed my usual breakfast and then got myself ready. I dressed particularly well and then drove all the way out to Bellevue to surprise her at church. And that is where my weekend took a bad turn.
Yeah, she was quite suprised to see me there, waiting for her when she came to the sanctuary after her Sunday School class. And for a moment seemed genuinely grateful for the gesture. But then she just went into the old habit of doing nothing but complain about my father and then my sister and her likely divorce. I kept trying to steer the conversation to more pleasant topics. I want this to be a happy day for her, but she just wouldn't let go. Even during the damn service she had to make remarks to me about that shit.
That's another thing, the sermon today seriously pissed me off. Ok, ok, I'll go ahead and admit that I don't exactly believe in the Bible. Hell, I downright hate organized religion. I have never felt any sense of joy or rapture or anything else from being among a congregation of "believers". And i put that word in quotations because there are far too many hypocrites to be found within the church.
Anyway, today's sermon was about mothers of course. But what was its main precept? Women must be submissive and obedient to their husbands! Now, I am not going to try to claim that I am some huge advocate for the feminist movement, but come the fuck on? That is just total BULLSHIT. Men, women, freaking hermaphrodites should be treated as equals, because that is what they are. In general, men are no better than men, nor is the vice versa true. Individuals can excell in some categories better than other individuals. But I refuse to accept any generality that says that makes any group of people is better than another.
The pastor went on about how God created man first and created woman second only to serve man "as man was created to serve God". As he was going over that argument, I kept thinking about how some people snarkily say that just means that God didn't get it right the first time and made it better when he made woman.
Then he had to go into how woman is responsible for the original sin and basically saying that is further proof that women can't be responsible for decision making. That is just utter fucking nonsense. Women can make decisions as well as men can. In fact, I'd take a decision made by one of my female friends over one made by myself 9 times out of 10. So, when it comes to this man, I'd have to say women can make better decisions.
What really upset me was how throughout the whole thing, women throughout the audience were nodding right along with every single point he made, particularly my mother and even my sister, who is a super-independent woman (or so I thought) and is wanting a divorce despite her husband crying to her left and right, was nodding to some of the points. Its like they were fucking brainwashed and seriously didn't think they deserved better.
Whatever. As I said, the sermon didn't sit well with me and just served to reafirm why I don't like to attend church and why I have my own beliefs rather than following the Bible.
After church, I was in a bad mood to say the least, but I still had something else that I wanted to do with it being Mother's Day. This was my older sister's first Mother's Day as she'd just had her baby a couple weeks ago. So, I went to visit her. I even took her some small gifts which she absolutely loved. I really haven't seen her much lately because they live all the way out in Arlington which is like an hour drive from my house. that is just too far just to stop by and say hello. So, I planned to stay for a while.
My parents came over too, though they had to complain about having to buy food for everybody rather than my sister cooking something. I'm sorry, but if you invite yourself over to somebody's house you shouldn't automatically assume that they are going to cook for you, especially if they are still weak from just having had a baby! I am always happy to cook for people when they come to my house, and even when i don't have something elaborate I still have food they can eat be it frozen pizza or just chips if that's all they want, but that is me. Most people aren't like that and they shouldn't have to be.
And can you guess what they all wanted to talk about? Well, if I mentioned that my younger sister didn't come specifically because her husband has been forbidden to step in my older sister's house, would that be enough of a hint.
I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound insensitive. I know this is a very traumatic event for everybody involved and everybody has their own opinions on the subject of the possible divorce. But come on. Do we really need to spend hour upon hour discussing it among ourselves when it is Laura and Jimmy's decision to make and not ours? Isn't there anything else going the hell on in the world that can be talked about? My brother coming over too and then calling Laura to harrass her about not coming over didn't help matters.
I finally just had enough and had to get out of there. Normally, i am completely complacent to just stay around until somebody tells me to go home. But for once in my life, I just took the damn initiative and told them I was going home. And i wasn't going to let them talk me into staying longer or try to make me feel guilty about leaving either.
Then that is when my parents remembered something which pissed me off more. There was an important letter that arrived for me over two weeks ago and they just now remembered to tell me about it. Not only did that, but they had fucking opened it when it was none of their damn business. So they knew it was important, and yet they still neglected to tell me about it. Morever, I have now missed a deadline because of the delay in finding out about it which could make some trouble for me.
With everything else, I just couldn't handle them any more. I "thanked" them as best I could for finally remembering to tell me about the letter (why the hell was it kept separately from the rest of the random mail I had still gotten at their address?) and drove off. And the thing is that they probably don't understand at all just how pissed off I was or even why I might be upset.
What the hell ever. I am just glad its over with and now I am trying to relax at home. You know what though? Its all ok. No matter how much I complain; no matter how much I feel my weekend was ruined; it will all be ok. And coming home to two kittens that just want to sit in my lap and purr softly to me as I pet them can do wonders for anything. A few weeks or months ago, I might have had the urge for a few drinks after a day like today, but that just doesn't compare to this kind of comfort. The moment I walked in the door and they came to greet me I could feel the anger draining from me. Oh its still there to some degree, but somehow these two just make it so much easier to handle.
Damn am I ever glad to have them. I think I'll treat them to some moist cat food this evening, I do that too rarely for how much pleasure they give me.
Happy Things: This week is going to be a busy one for me actually. Not only am I going to try to tackle the rest of the weeds in my yard, and maybe overhauling the main flowerbed on the weekend, but Thursday night is another meetup with the Dining Out group. We are going to eat at Automatic Slims. I've never eaten there, but Krissi said she had and it was quite good. I'm looking forward to that. Then Saturday I actually am going to do two different meetups. One that is for Movie Fans (which I definitely am one). We are going to be meeting at the Paradiso theater to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It looks like an interesting movie.
Then Saturday night will the first meeting of another meetup group, this one for Memphis Night Life. Being a shy introvert, I've never bothered trying to experience night life, but I think it will be good for me to finally do so. For the first meeting of the group we'll be checking out Wild Bills. I've never heard of it, but that's not surprising. The group post says its "widely regarded as the best authentic blues bar and dance hall in Memphis." I'll just have to see I guess. Both of these new groups I've joined have a lot of the same members, including the organizer. So, unlike the geeky game meetup, I have no worries about nobody else showing up for it.
So, I have a few things to look forward to this week. :) |
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| General Update |
[May. 6th, 2008|12:28 pm] |
Just taking a moment to vent at the beginning here...it is really getting on my nerves that my sister keeps telling me she is doing "tres mal" (very bad in French), but absolutely refuses to tell me anything when I try to talk to her about it. She either answers me in Spanish, which she knows I can't understand, or she just flat out ignores my questions. It's really just confusing when she goes out of her way to tell me that she is doing badly, but won't tell me anything more than that...
Then there is my mother who is annoying the hell out of me by constantly making it sound like I am the only thing keep her sane and that my life is perfect. My life is far from perfect, but the last time I tried telling her even the smallest negative thing about it, she over-reacted beyond belief and it took weeks for her to stop!
Anyway...
Guess I didn't really mention it, but I had a pretty good weekend. I tried to do a meetup of a geeky game group, but it ended up a bust with nobody else showing up. I kind of figured that was going to happen when Saturday morning I saw that the organizer had changed her RSVP to 'No', but I drove all the way out to Cordova any, just in case. Still, that wasn't a total loss. It meant I could go see Iron Man with my friends that afternoon. And while I was out that way I stopped by to see my sister who just had her first baby and lives in Arlington. That visit ran a bit long and I ended up getting to the movie later than I should have, but Jeremy and Beth were able to save me a seat even though the showing was sold out when I got there.
The movie was pretty good. It had a lot to do with the character development of Tony Stark from the playboy millionaire of a weapons manufacturer to the determined super-hero that is against arming the world. The special effects were amazing, and it even had a few unexpected bits of humor that fit quite well (stripper pole in the private jet, testing the suit's jets for the first time). I wasn't that big a fan of Iron when I used to collect comics, but from what I remembered it does a fair job at staying true to the original. It was also nice to have the bit aluding to his friend becoming War Machine (i think that was the super-hero's name).
Unfortunately, we failed to stay after the credits. So we did miss the little excerpt at the end. But oh well.
After that we headed to Steak & Shake for a meal. I have to say, it was my first and probably only time I will ever eat there. The service was the slowest I have ever seen. The milkshake was good and so was the burger, but it wasn't worth that kind of wait.
After that Jeremy and Beth had to go home to releave the babysitter, which is too bad. But I was glad they could make down to hang out for as long as they did. I don't see them too often, but its always fun when I do.
The rest of us eventually headed over to my house, where I got John and Jerm to try out Mario Kart for a little bit. Not too long though because Maddie and Krissi weren't really interested in playing it at all. So, we pulled out Conan and watched all the way through the Barbarian and then into the Destroyer before most people were drifting off to sleep.
Watching those great old movies (along with the line "you want to live forever") reminded me that I still haven't gotten Krissi to watch Flash. A long time ago, she told me she'd never seen it and I keep meaning to get her to watch it, but it never happens. Oh well.
Sunday, well, sunday was just a housework day. I have been seriously neglecting my laundry lately and so I spent a large part of the day washing clothes and then ironing while I watched some anime. I really wish my friends liked anime since it would be good to share some of it with them, but not what I was watching Sunday. And not for the reason you might be thinking. There's nothing overly bad about the Nadesco, but it does have the stereotypical anime characters of the harem genre (in the goofy sort of way, not anything sexual - you'd have to know anime to understand what is meant when i say "harem" here) and there are a ton of in-jokes relating to anime fandom which wouldn't be funny to non-anime watchers. But I liked it. So I guess that is ok.
I also, got into a baking mood and made first one loaf of banana gingerbread and then another loaf of just plain banana bread. Both turned out wonderfully.
The baking mood stuck with me the next morning too, as I just had to make some fresh buttermilk biscuits from scratch to go with my breakfast. Damn were those delicious fresh out of the oven. Really, I ate too many of them. I was feeling stuffed all day long, lol.
Oh well, that's what the P90X exercises are for. But I'll talk about those another day. I am late getting back to work from lunch.
Happy Things: Feeling sore. Yeah that wouldn't normally be a happy thing would it? But its the good kind of soreness from working out hard, and I mean really hard. And I'm having fun doing it too. :) |
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| Meetup |
[May. 2nd, 2008|12:15 pm] |
Damn, I just realized that I still haven't gotten around to posting about my hike. I've just been so damn busy at work that I haven't had the chance to type it up.I seriously need to make the time to do that this weekend.
But that will have to wait. I wanted to go ahead and talk about the meetup I did last night. This was another meetup with the Memphis Dining Out Group, the second meeting I've been to. And it was just as enjoyable as the first one, maybe even more so.
This time we met at Bhan Thai which is a smallish restaurant, that serves some excellent Thai cuisine. Parking is rather limited out back with maybe a dozen places, but there is a parking lot just down the street that is for overflow parking.
I got there right at 7 and already most of the people had shown up. It was nice to see a lot of new faces along with several from the last meetup I did with them. All told, I believe there were just over a dozen people that showed up to this one. It was great. One bad thing was that we did have to split up the group among two tables. That seemed rather odd since the organizer had made reservations for the whole group, but then I wasn't impressed with the service we received anyway. Despite the size of our group, we only had the one server and he was constantly being uncooperative. We made several suggestions for organizing it so we could all sit together (and the place was not busy at all, we had the entire main dinig room to ourselves as everybody else had either gone to the patio out back or the eating area by the bar), but he kept saying it couldn't be done. It took forever to get the drinks to come, and when he was taking orders for appetizers he freaking skipped half the people there.
Enough on the negative, though. That was really a small thing and it didn't detract too much from the rest of the evening.
I tried to be good about getting everybody that I spoke to's name and remembering it, though in the chaos of such a large group, I did miss several people. I mostly ended up just talking to the ones sitting right by me. Caroline and Kenise (they were both at the other meeting), Gemmessee (she's from Germany originally), William, Aaron (who brought some fantastic white wine to share with people - I particularly loved the Vouvray) and...damn, forgot his name, he was Aaron's friend and didn't really talk much except about the wine.
The conversation ran the gambit, mostly just general getting to know you chit chat like what do you do for a living, where are you from, what do you do for fun; that sort of thing. We also got into a bit about boardgames because Caroline and I are both members of a boardgame meetup group (too bad the organizer for that stepped down before a meetup could be set), talked about wine some and how Aaron's friend has wine in practically every room of his house, and even some current events (like the sicko in Austria who had locked his daughter up in the basement for 24 years). Like I said it ran the gambit, but it never grew stale. With that many different people there was always somebody else with an interesting story or topic.
After about 3 hours, people started to head home for the night, but a group of us were still having fun. So we decided to head over to the Dish for "dessert". I say that in quotations because the real thing we were going there for was the cheese plates they have. I can't remember how we got onto the subject, but Aaron was all about the different cheeses they server there and was offerring to buy us some to share. Who were we to argue?
It ended up being 6 of us that went over there and we did have more than just the cheese. Aside from the drinks (I rather like the Dishwater drink I had along with tastes of other people's drinks), we also got a chocolate tart (which was good, but a bit odd for my tastes) and a creme brulee which was absolutely amazing. I didn't want to stop taking bights of that! It really makes me want to try the several recipes i've seen online for making it sometime.
Anyway, there was a smidgin of dancing done when the dj got going, but not much. Mostly we just sat around talking until late in the night. Ended up leaving there sometime around midnight and heading home.
Didn't get to sleep until around 1am. So I am a bit tired today. But I definitely had a lot of fun.
Now I am looking forward to the geeky boardgames group that is meeting this Saturday at noon all the more. I started to cancel on that one because my friend Jerm was trying to organize a bunch of people to go see Iron Man that afternoon. Its really hard for me to miss any chance to hang out with all of them, but I know I need to branch out and meet new people too. And these meetup groups are such a great way to do that! So, I'll go to the meetup and if it happens to not be very good or we end after only a short time, I'll try connecting up with them for the movie or something afterwards (at the very least I'll probably invite people over to try out Mario Kart on the Wii which is a ton of fun Saturday night). I'm kind of thinking that it may end up being nobody there at the meeting because it will be the first one of the group and Dana has several times mentioned how nobody showed up to the first two meetings of the dining out group even though people had RSVP'd that they'd be there. Also, the organizer of the game group had RSVP'd that she'd be at the Dining Out meetup last night, but was a no-show. We'll see. It is certainly worth checking out at the very least.
Happy Things: Really, just can't same any more about how great its been to find meetup.com. I'm enjoying these meetings immensely!
Oh yeah, another even bigger Happy Thing (can't believe it slipped my mind), my friend that got laid off not long ago got a call this morning from somebody she interviewed with Wednesday. The woman was so impressed that she wanted to get Amber to come in to work today! At this point its just contract work as it is in such a rush, but it sounds very promising. I hope it works out well for her!!! |
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| update |
[Apr. 24th, 2008|05:47 pm] |
I keep wanting to post all about my hiking trip, but I just can't seem to find the time or the energy to do so. I am starting to feel better at least, and expect that I'll be just fine for the zombie walk tomorrow (I certainly hope so). My sister got to go home from the hospital with her baby this afternoon. She still seems to be in a great deal of pain and she sounded rather weak on the phone. But she seems more cheerful at least. She keeps going on about how good the cake I baked for her is. So, I am definitely glad I stayed up a little late despite being sick to make it the other night.
Other than that, not much going on I guess. One good thing is that I am not letting sickness prevent me from exercising like I did the last time. Last night I exercised for an hour and a half. I seem to already be getting the hang of these exercise videos despite how difficult they are. Despite having jumped up to using 30 lb. weights (instead of the 10's I used the first time) with the back and chest dvd, my muscles are hardly sore at all. I wish I could do more of the chin-ups/pull-ups without the aid of a chair, but considering in the first 30 years of my life I was never able to do even a single pull-up or chin-up, I'm willing to cut myself some slack.
Tonight, I'm going to head over to my friends' house to catch the Office episode I missed last week due to the meetup, and to watch tonight's new episode. Always happy to watch the Office and hang out with friends. And tomorrow night we're doing the Memphis Zombie Walk. Now that is going to be a ton of fun. I already made a bunch of fake blood last night (4 water bottles worth). I would have made more for the fun of it, but the grocery store by my house was extremely low on red food coloring and I just wasn't going to waste money buying a bunch of the multi-color packs of food coloring.
Anything else going on? Not really. My friend that got laid off from her work is having a bit of a rough time with everybody she knows telling her what she should be doing, whether she should be looking for a job or take unemployment for a year and stay home to take care of the kids. It really seems like she needs to have some time to herself to figure out what it is that she wants to do, but I don't see that happening with her keeping so busy taking care of the kids and her husband having to go out of town a lot lately. At least one thing has been looking up for her though…she's been kicking my butt in Scrabulous on Facebook. Hehe.
Nothing else this week, though next week I am going to be doing another meetup with the same group of people. And the week after that, I think I'll be trying a meetup with a group of movie lovers (several of the same people are in that group too). There's also a meetup group for boardgames that I was looking at that is trying to have a meetup that week, though they haven't even picked a place to have it yet. So, I wouldn't be surprised if that doesn't really happen. And there is yet another meetup group that I may try checking out, its for geeky games and the person who is trying to setup the meeting mentioned she would bring Chez Geek and Fluxx. We'll see.
Happy Things: Getting over fears. With these meetups and my attempts at online dating, I've notice a distinct lack of fear when talking to strangers. This is something that had plagued me my whole life, but recently its just gone. Furthermore, on my hiking I noticed another fear that was distinctly absent, my fear of heights. This has been one of my strongest fears. Hell, I can remember one time when I was I don't know at least 12, maybe older, when I was visiting my grandparents in Ashville. We were with my mother's parents (yeah, I'm thinking I was well into my teens at this point) and taking a walk around their neighborhood. They live on the mountain that is at the heart of Ashville, about halfway up it. So the walk was up and down along the road. I can remember at one point they wanted to walk up to this one house. It wasn't even at the top of the mountain or anything, but my fear of heights was so overwhelming that I could not even for myself to walk up the driveway! And it was a wide assed driveway at that. It was a little bit steep, but not nearly as steep as my grandfather's own driveway. But it was just too high up for me to go up for whatever reason. Even as recently as the last time I attempted this very same trail, I had problems with my fear of heights. But, on this hike, I didn't feel even the slightest twinge of fear at the heights of mountains. I walked right up to the edge of the highest and steepest of the lookouts without getting even the least bit anxious. I'm not exactly sure what has brought on this sudden change in my fears, but I'd say it is a good thing to be getting over fears that have hounded me for so long! J |
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| Mollie Fontaine Lounge and The Memphis Dining Out Meetup Group |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|09:55 pm] |
As I mentioned in my last post, I went to a meetup of complete strangers tonight. I found out about this group through Meetup.com and I have to say that I am definitely going to be doing it again and probably going to checkout some other Meetup groups.
First off, I'll talk about the Mollie Fontaine Lounge restaurant we met at. Its on Adams Ave downtown in an old part of town. This particular restaurant has only been open since I think September of last year somebody said, though there was another one open in the same building previously (I think it was called Celio or something like that). The building itself is an old four story home, though they only seem to be using two of the floors for the restaurant now.
Anyway, it has a very nice, relaxed atmosphere with an interesting assortment of art on the ways, subdued lighting, and some soft piano music playing in the background (later in the evening they had a live pianist who had the most amazing singing voice for the jazzy tunes she was doing). They had an interesting assortment of foods on the menu that were all quite delicious. One thing though, the portion sizes left something to be desired, especially after the waiter had tried telling us many people share items. I mean one dish was the thinnest piece of ham i've ever seen (you could see right through it), no wider than an inch with a smattering of vegetables on top. Really, they were appetizers for one type portions. But like I said everything was extremely delicious.
Now on to the group...I can say nothing bad about these people at all. There was an odd mix of people and they were all fun to be with. Hell, among the people that had done this a few times there was talk of doing some meetups at people's houses and I was absolutely ready to invite every one of them to my home for one. They were that cool and fun to be with.
The turn out ended up being a bit light considering at one point 19 people had rsvp'd that they would be there, but we still had 9 people show up. One ended up leaving halfway through it and another ended up being rather late, but that's no matter. We all had a good time. It was predominately women who came, with the only guys being the one that left early, a guy that does IT for the WKNO station here in town, and myself.
Topics of conversation ran the gambut, but everybody (including myself) had plenty of time to speak up and tell a story or two about themselves. The 3 or 4 of us that were new tended to be asked more questions just because we were new to the group, but I made a point of asking the others questions and we found several interests we shared. For instance, the woman who organized it also does some hiking/backpacking and another woman loves to cook much like I do.
I'd go on and on, but I really should be getting some sleep before my big hiking trip tomorrow.
Let's just say that I am definitely looking forward to doing this again and there are a couple of people in particular that I'd really like to get to know better. ;)
Happy Things: Breaking out of my shell and being cool with meeting new people. I honestly believed it would be impossible for me to ever be capable of doing that. But this meetup definitely proved how wrong I was on that mark. I'm sure I still have a long way to go. But I now feel that there is hope for me yet. |
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| Update |
[Apr. 17th, 2008|05:56 pm] |
Let's see, I haven't posted anything for a couple of days. Work has actually been quite busy for some reason lately. So I haven't had time to type shit up while I'm there. And I've actually had a few things going on in the evenings too.
Monday I twisted my ankle because I was having too much fun with an exercise video and got careless. That got me worried about the hike this weekend, which means I have been skipping exercise for the rest of the week to make sure the ankle gets healed up. Honestly, I probably should have exercised last night because it was feeling just fine, but whatever.
Tuesday night I went out to eat with my parents, rather painful, but it was more painful having them harassing left and right about when I would go out to eat with them for my birthday. It was bad enough that I was happy about the Chinese food upsetting my stomach so I had a good excuse to cut it short.
Wednesday night….well Wednesday night kind of pissed me off. I was all too happy to skip out on my sister's weekly visit with my parents. They still want me to be there even though I've moved out, but its just damn rough with her continuing to have her husband bring the kids over to my parents' house early and everybody trying to eat dinner as if everything is ok. Speaking of which, I just found she's going to be serving him with divorce papers on May 2. We'll just have to see how that goes. My parents continue to be siding with Jimmy for some reason, but at the same time they are worried that he is going to take the kids and run as soon as he gets served….
Sorry got off on a tangent there. Anyways, I was skipping it because I was supposed to have a date. It wasn't going to be anything special. I was just meeting this girl from match for coffee. We had tried to meet up for the past couple of weekends, but something kept coming up in her life. We kept emailing each other and every time we talked on the phone everything seemed fine. We'd talk for a couple of hours with no problems at all.
Because I'm going to be out of town this weekend, she suggested we try meeting after work during the week. We worked out that we'd meet up at 6pm. Well, by 7pm she still hadn't shown up and she wasn't answering her phone. So, I finally just gave up after another half an hour and headed home. She seemed nice enough on the phone, but that just ain't cool.
Dwelled enough on that.
Tonight should be a lot better. :)
I believe I mentioned it in passing in an earlier post, I'm trying out something new…and rather scary for me. It's a website called meetup.com where people with similar interests can organize events to meet up. Its to help completely strangers meet new people and still have a good chance at having fun because you have similar interests. Tonight is the first one I am going to. Its for a group interested in food that meets up every couple of weeks (ostensibly just once a month, but it seems like they meet more than that too in smaller groups) at different restaurants in the area. This one will be at the Mollie Fontaine Lounge in downtown Memphis. I've never been there. So not sure what to expect, but the food is kind of a side point to this for me. I am far more interested in meeting the 17 people that are supposed to be meeting there. Wish me luck, because I am about to head there as soon as I finish this post.
Happy Thing: I am oh so excited about leaving for my camping trip tomorrow morning. |
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slacker1337's journal
tired
satisfied
cranky
curious