An Unexpected Party

Dad is here now (well, not now -- he's at his hotel room not to far from here. Yesterday i called him up on my break at work around 4:30 (i was just getting around to it), and he said, "so what are you doing this weekend?" I said, "Uh, the SUPERBOWL," as if i couldn't believe he was asking. Then he said, "What else?" Well, the plan was that if The Davinci Code didn't come in the mail on Friday, i was going to spend all day today in a Barnes and Noble reading since i have to have the book read by Tuesday. He said, "I was thinking of coming down this weekend to visit and bring your shelf." AWESOME! I have been wanting him to come down and see my for a while, and now that he had this beautiful shelf he got me for Christmas stuck at his apartment because it wouldn't fit in my car, he had to make it down sometime soon. So he did! Today he came down around 3 or 4 ish, we sat around and talked and drank a lot of water, got him checked into his hotel in Brookline, and had a couple funny experiences there. One, the elevator smelled like someone had taken a dump on the carpet and then someone had tried desperately to get the smell out with bleach -- but all the bleach in the world could not rid the elevator of the smell of dump. Furthermore, his room overlooks a dining room -- an atrium type thing the Holiday Inn has set up, which, while not unattractive, is not the most comforting view. So we tried to close the heavier curtains on the sides of the light feather thing in front of the window. They didn't move. They were solely for decoration. But Dad discovered a third set of curtains (THREE DAMNED SETS OF CURTAINS) behind the feathery ones. How to close them? Well, there was no chain or rope or anything. You actually had to go behind the feathery set and walk it all the way along through, and then negotiate your way back out again through all the curtains. It was so needless it was comical. When we made our way back to the elevator, the smell of poo was no longer so strong, nor was it even present. Yes, someone who was carrying a lot of bleach had cut a raunchy one in the elevator and left it with us shortly after we got on. Not a pleasant thought.

Dad, Dan, and I went out to dinner at the Common Ground Bar and Grill not to far off from here, and tonite i tried a great beer called Stovepipe Porter by Otter's Creek in Vermont. It was incredible! It was good and dark, while at the same time being smooth and remarkably light in weight. I loved it. I'll have to see if i can find any of that around here for retail. Mmm. And it was fun just sitting around chatting with Dad and Dan about movies, music, dopplegangers, where we saw ours, if we have seen ours, and whatnot. It was great fun. Not to mention the profundity of pub food. Mmm. I'm liking the nouveau American palate that many pubs are adopting these days. We ate some incredible nachos, a spinach feta roasted garlic pizza, great beer, Dan got a good looking cheezeburger, Dad got a plate of penne pasta with a surloin steak, and the two of them also split some buffalo chicken wings. There was SO MUCH FOOD on that table. It looked ridiculous.

So he did bring the shelf with him, and i have spent the majority of the evening re-arranging the room to get things on the shelf. It's lovely! The shelf is cast iron and simple in design. I love it. And it's so nice to have something to put the rest of my books on other than milk crates. Tasteful vertical space is crucial.

Tomorrow, breakfast with Dad, more reading of the impossible-to-put-down Davinci Code (i'm telling ya, it's a real page-turner. Not to mention it being full of fun bits of latin and French since it starts off and so far takes place mostly in Le Louvre. France me manque, mais peut-etre c'est possible pour me retourner quelque jours. Alors.) Then,

GO PATS!