Thai Hot

This is the receipt from M.M.'s birthday dinner on Tuesday. Even with six exclamation marks, it wasn't hot enough for him, so he asked for some hot sauce and piled it on. Afterward he claimed he couldn't concentrate because his mouth was on fire. What a wuss.

Editrix

A big congratulations to M.M., who informs me he's been accepted to the University of Maryland's M.B.A. program. He was nice enough to give me some credit for editing his essays (but do admissions people really read these things? I have my doubts). It's great to know his work paid off, including my making him re-write two of his three essays. I find editing other peoples' stuff to be oddly fun, but sometimes I think I get a little carried away...

I've been busy this past month, and also uninspired, blog-wise. Let's have a moment of silence for some of the topics I thought about writing about, but just never got around to:

• How hard (and unpleasant) it is to adjust to a style of tae kwon do where you can hit people in the face, when you're used to a style where you can't
• How lightening struck so close to my building on Friday night that it set off the fire alarm, which turns out to emit an adorably quaint clanging sound
• How G.R. and I threw a surprisingly kick-ass dinner party on Saturday

Also, congratulations to TOWWAS, who finally has Internet access in her lovely and conveniently-situated IKEA-furnished new apartment, and thus can go back to blogging far, far more regularly than I. (Now there's a sentence in need of editing.)

Unlucky

Lest you think my life is all free art and decadent California breakfasts, here are some unfortunate things that have happened to me recently:

• I got a $35 parking ticket in Del Mar while M.M. and I were off hunting for quarters to put in their ridiculously overpriced meters.
• The bottle of vintage Nicaraguan rum I picked up in Tijuana broke in M.M.'s checked bag on the way back (curses to Homeland Security and its inane liquids ban!).
• I skipped tae kwon do and came straight home from work today intending to do some much-needed laundry, only to find that a water main had broken. I didn't have water until just minutes ago--that is, 11:20 p.m.

Speaking of tae kwon do, here's something good that happened last week that I haven't blogged about: I got my brown belt. I'd been a red belt since July, what with switching schools and being rather lazy about learning the new curriculum. My next test will be for black belt. Yikes.

Free art weekend

A painting by the nostalgic Turkish guy

Well, once again it's my bedtime and I haven't yet blogged, so I'll make this quick. I soaked in a ton of culture for free this past Saturday without even going to the Smithsonian. MM and I started off with the Japanese Street Festival, which concluded this year's Cherry Blossom Festival. While the bastardized pan-Asian cuisine and landscape architects from Portland did not get me feeling very Japanese, we did see some interesting displays of dancing, drumming, and swordsmanship.

Next stop was a temporary exhibit of Turkish paintings just down the street from The Ninth Floor. Unfortunately the name of the artist escapes me--it's something fairly long and, well, Turkish-looking. The paintings were surprisingly nostalgic. I liked the colors.

All this was very family-friendly; for the hipster free art experience we had to travel far--almost to the airport, in fact, to a place called Artomatic. It's an annual showcase for local artists that takes up two floors of a large office building in Crystal City, one of the Virginia suburbs. The artists each get their own little space to take over, which lends itself to an almost dreamlike experience. In a few steps I went from something involving a large circle of live grass, to wax sculptures resembling sea anemones, to symmetrical black and white photos of naked breasts. There was a ton of art, so much that I eventually gave up on seeing it all. I did make a point, though, of seeing all the Peeps dioramas.