The weekend that was and wasn't

Andrew and I had an interesting weekend of almost doing many things. We tried to see The Ugly Duckling - even made it to the theatre (not always guaranteed when you get us in a house together on a Friday night!)... but... it was sold out. I almost managed to force him to accompany me to a free morning zumba class at Dance Underground... but we couldn't find the time and didn't quite make it out of the house where we may have ascertained such information better.

This was sooo *not* us
on Saturday morning

We actually did make it to Unicorn - a Circus themed bar that is disappointingly clean (and articulate?) and not the slightest bit sleazy, although it apparently does serve funnel cakes and hot dogs to capture some of the "feel" of a circus - for Andrea's 21st birthday shenanigans. Andrea is Andrew's very cool roommate who kind of fills a bit of the little sister role nicely in the house. We did not, however, manage to stay there for more then about ten minutes, nor did we successfully manage to, say, order a beverage.

After trekking through the overgrowth of humanity - machetes would have been handy albeit messy, but otherwise it felt very much like foraging into a very swank Heart of Darkness - we finally managed to locate our party stuffed into a corner near the bar. For the ten or so people who had amassed in association with our intended libations, we had about two chairs and a doll sized table between us.

We did have quick access to the bar, but as it turned out, not to the side of the bar where a bartender was on staff and the waiter who appeared to be assisting was not particularly helpful in the drink acquisition end of things. After a series of exchanges punctuated by "WHAT??" every third word - and "excuse me" from a passing waiter, every fourth - and some translation on my part, Andrew and the waiter ascertained that there may be either Guinness or Stella on tap and probably some others but the bartender was over on the other side buried in a mound of people.

Andrew ultimately decided that he was past the point of fighting for drinks, so we hugged Andrea a second time in the span of about five minutes and departed. On our way home, we did actually manage to go to Safeway and buy a beer to drink in her honor. I drank about three ounces and Andrew drank the rest of about half the bottle. I'd say between us, we may have had nearly a glass of beer! We are such party animals!!

We did actually manage to accomplish a fair amount of studying and made it out to Queen Sheba, which is one of about three of our stock standards in my neighborhood. It's Ethiopian, which right there has me pretty happy - I love playing with my food (extra little snacks in the fingernails for later!) and no forks fairly much guarantees lots and lots of that, plus the standard diet involves lots of legumes and vegetables and spices not entirely different than the Indian palate but slightly tweaked to be a separate cuisine. Oh and don't forget the injera - a slightly sour and pancakey/crepey flat bread made from tef, which serves both as plate and utensils in the restaurant. I adore injera. It's just so fascinating. And again, part of the appealing mess. And if we split the vegetarian plate, we get A LOT of food, so Andrew's pretty happy as well.

objects in photo look waaaay smaller than they actually are

 Last night we actually left with injera still on the plate! It's one of those places to go to early or on off-hours as we have tried and failed to find seating or service there during the Capitol Hill dinner rush. And if you go there when there isn't a rush, you might have to go hunting in the back kitchen area to find waitstaff. Oh and you will be sitting through some kind of elevator remix version of 1980's video game music - or this is what it appears to my ears - but it's worth it. And they have really neat lamps:

I also managed a significant amount of "homework" and the like. Enough, in fact, to give myself a thoroughly effective migraine by the end of Saturday. I never realized I got migraines until about a month or two ago when somebody linked the symptoms to their experiences. Mine are exceedingly mild, albeit mildly irritating.  Mostly my version of a migraine is sensitivity to light, and extreme sensitivity to sound - everything echoes around my apparently empty head like a yodel in the alps. It's kind of like getting really crappy superpowers that mostly make life more annoying and do virtually nothing to fight crime. Oh and I have more difficulty concentrating and some vertigo. Not, again, unlike the oft described "tripping out." Hey, it's cheaper than drugs and equally effective in making for some very low level expansion of one's definition of sapience (duuuuude).

So in sum, I stayed home, ate and tripped out instead of going to hip bars, working out and watching strange foreign films at indie theatres. Guess I'm not a yuppie quite yet after all.