What's Been Happening?

It's been busy all over.

12/29: ojouchan and I watch The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus with pbchris. It's fun, and is upfront about its refusal to have a story, as opposed to a series of things that happen and then eventually end. We all liked it. Before that, we went to Kabuki for happy hour, and we liked it quite a bit. But afterward, Ojou didn't feel well, so Chris and I went off to finish the evening, seeing some improv comedy at IO West. We were underwhelmed.

12/30: ojouchan and I sleep in and go shopping for 1920s-ish clothes for New Year's Eve. I also get a haircut. It's a bit shorter than we'd intended, but it's okay. I also get a meticulous shave trimming my beard short and trying out a new shape. (Beards weren't big in the American 20s, but I wasn't going to shave it all off.

12/31: We go out to New Year's Eve at Malediction with Chris, which turns out to be less 1920s than advertised. But that just means we look better than everyone else. Ojou's vintage furs and Josephine Baker curls were particularly amazing. Afterward, we eat a meal at Denny's between 2 and 4 a.m. That was an adventure too, but mostly an adventure in being hungry and tired and waiting for food at a slammed Denny's.

1/1: After waffling on what to do, we end up going over to our friend J's apartment, where we lay around, drink alcohol, and play boardgames. Monopoly was, inevitably, massively unbalanced by the Ojou and J's insistence on having a kitty on Free Parking. While playing Monopoly, we watched bad reality TV on the Playboy Channel. We then switched to playing Zombies, which I hadn't played for a while. The game started out very slow because we had an awkward tile draw, but the moment the Helipad came out, the endgame was awesome.

1/2: Nothing, of note, I think.

1/3-1/8: I go back to work, and agree to work Thursday and Friday (covering for my manager) in exchange for Saturday and Sunday off (my birthday weekend). My experience working on Thursday and Friday causes me to seriously reconsider pushing for a Monday-Friday workweek.

1/8: I head over to cramerica's apartment after work (which I got out of late). We have a simple pasta meal and play a game of Agricola. The game is fun, but it ended up taking way too long.

1/9: Ojou and I started out thinking we'd go all over LA on the Metro, but I woke up really late due to Agricola. So we just went to Chinatown. We've been short on tea, so we bought a whole bunch. Ojou got a wide variety in small sizes, and I got a quarter pound of a few standards (an oolong, a white, genmaicha, and lapsang souchong). So work will go back to being tea central for me. Afterward, we went to a restaurant for what we thought was dim sum, but turned out not to be. It was very confusing, and we ordered too much food, but some of it was fantastic.

Later that evening, we met up with wjukknibs and K at Chili's. Unfortunately, Ojou and I were still full from not dim sum, so we just had some appetizers. From there, we went to see Sherlock Holmes at the Arclight. I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed Downey's Holmes more than the trailers led me to think I would, but the movie as a whole didn't quite work for me.

1/10: My birthday! The parents, the sister, and the brother-in-law met Ojou and me for brunch at The Waffle. It's actually a nice little place, and is probably a better alternative than Denny's for late-night stuff. Also, soy bacon is not really any good.

Now, I'm chilling on the couch. Ojou's baking a massive birthday cake. After posting, I'm going to play Bioshock, which I got for my birthday from my sister and brother-in-law. Later on, we're meeting up with J and her boyfriend at The Hungry Cat.

Back to work tomorrow, but at least it's only for three days.

And now, you're caught up!