so. scene:

there i was, an average sunday afternoon at home. nothing much going on. i was, in fact, cleaning my kitchen and doing the laundry. my hair was pushed back with a plastic headband to keep it out of my face; i was wearing khakis stained with pink paint from painting my bathroom, a t-shirt wherein a nerdy joke about emacs versus vi was being explained in comic form and, horror of horrors, i had grabbed a pair of Doc Marten sandals to put on over my socked feet while i ran downstairs to the basement to pull out the last load of laundry.

i had just gotten it upstairs and dumped it out on the bed to be folded and put away when m. showed up at my door with some soup he’d made. i went downstairs to answer the door … and he said, “get in the car!”

he then proceeded to steal me off to the hopleaf, one of my favorite beer-fan bars in the city, where others were lying in wait for us. we had a fantastic dinner (venison! and their wonderful mussels! and the “unhealthiest appetizer ever”! and the apple fritters (by which they mean deep fried tart apple slices with crème anglaise) and the chocolate torte thing (that was so dense with dark chocolate that we kept cracking jokes about how it was about to collapse into a black hole — okay, yes, two of the people there work at Argonne and we’re all giant nerds; shush)) were delicious, and of course the beers were marvellous. (i was having a very Unibroue evening, so several glasses of Maudite were had, along with a mug of warm Quelque Chose, though i did start out with some St. Louis framboise which was also excellent.) but best of all was the company of my friends.

this was an awesome birthday, even if i was caught, in fact not dead, in public wearing socks with sandals. :)