2008 already???

So I made it my new year’s resolution to resurrect my journal from abandonment hell. It seems a lot of you faithful readers that are now finished with college now need something to help you procrastinate from your actual lives. So be it.

It only seems right to pick up from the start of this new calendar year. I promise future entries won’t be this long in terms of words or time-span.

Since Suze4Booze’s annual new year’s parties ended their four-year run with 2007 (under the correct assumption the gang wouldn’t be as available or local this year), I rang in the new year with my family for a change. My parents, Adrian, his girlfriend Monica and I went to Jaleo for their Noche Vieja.

[I think this would be an appropriate point to note that I’ve begun a new food-oriented blog “where’d ya eat?” to spare you all hunger pangs while you read about my life and to further detail all the delicious aspects for you foodies. I usually hate links in blogs, but I will make an exception for any restaurants I happen along and end up writing about.]

After enjoying the unlimited tapas, sangria, cava (Spanish equivalent of champagne), desserts, New Year’s favors, and dancing, we came home to imbibe a little more and resurrect the Marin family karaoke machine. I mean, c’mon, we’re Asian. Good times.

I went to the Italian embassy to get my visa, and I was about five minutes late of when the visa office closed. Lucky for me, the nice consulate lady who I thought would take my info and tell me to come back took a look at my passport and noted I had the same birthday as her son, right down to the year.

My mom and I met Adrian and Monica for lunch at Zorba’s Café, which was nice because it’s usually packed but even had easy parking the day after New Year’s.

We spent the afternoon at the National Gallery of Art wandering around the Edward Hopper exhibit visiting from Chicago. I got to see my favorite painting ever Nighthawks, which I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. Unlike most famous paintings, it’s surprisingly larger in real life than one might expect. The lighting and the momentum are spectacular though. I bought a print that I have yet to frame and hang.

David came to visit me for a weekend, which was awesome. Also awesome was Ryanne’s birthday falling on the same weekend, so it was one less night I had to plan. His visit was not unlike my visit to Chicago last January: Relax, eat, drink, sleep, rinse, repeat.

so happy to see Ryanne on her birthday

He got here on Friday, and we went to lunch with Mon Mon and Jon Jon at Matuba, which is my favorite Japanese restaurant in this area. Low-key but delicious. We spent the afternoon playing sports... of the video game persuasion. Wii Tennis and the NES classic “Double Dribble.” Strangely, we can understand the physics of 256-bit tennis but 8-bit basketball is too much for our college graduate minds. We met up with Ryanne, the other Visi girls, et al for happy hour at Café Citron, where we had dinner before moving on to Porter's for the actual birthday-at-midnight countdown. Ryanne and I went upstairs to the DJ, so she could ask him to play The Cupid Shuffle at midnight. And he did! And it was awesome. Even though someone forgot the steps...

Visi '03: so purty

David and I slept away about half of Saturday before having lunch with my parents at Peking Gourmet Inn. (Adrian and Monica left for New Orleans in the morning.) He and I spent the afternoon walking around Old Town and watching the Redskins not-beat the Seahawks at Murphy’s with some brews. We grabbed dinner at Warehouse Bar & Grill and met up with my longtime friend Harry Potter Patrick to go to Clyde’s for more beers and watch the Colts/Steelers game.

He left the next morning, so I spent the next few days doing what he and Patrick recommended: Beating Super Mario Galaxy on Wii. (I almost suggested David bring his but didn’t fearing I would bore and/or offend him, but to my surprise, he would’ve considering he only has a few more stars left.) Anyway, I did beat the hell out of that game. (Beating Bowser is one thing, completist that I am, getting all 120 stars is another.) But I’m not hardcore enough to go after the 121st star. At least not yet.

I also spent a night at my even longer time friend Ludovic’s house guiding him through Resident Evil 4 (for the Wii also). We got through about two thirds of the game. But for the first time in maybe a decade, it was a sleepover that actually involved sleeping. Over.

Now I’m just resting up for a visit from my other favorite Chicago boy, Mike. Perhaps I can ask Ryanne to have another birthday since I think I’ve almost forgotten how to plan a night out.