Friday night after work we hit the new restaurant at City Center called Asian Temptation with my friends from work.. We were seated at a dark and cozy row of tables on the second floor of the stylish two level dining room. To make a long weekend story a teeny bit shorter, the food was nothing spectacular and there was no sake list but our helpful server Jenny brought out 3 bottles for us to choose from. I drank my fair share of sake and chased it down with a large Sapporo while laughing it up with my motley crew of coworkers. Afterwards Tom and I decided to hit Mi Cabanita for some dart practice. It was a little busy in there and we had to play partners, winner staying on and the losers had to buy the drinks. I don’t know how many hours we played, but Tom and I went undefeated the entire night, and we both got hammered on free beers and shots. Tom felt bad for some of the guys that we beat repeatedly and ended up buying more shots after we were done playing to help ease their pain.

It was really cold out that night, so when I got home, I decided it would be a good idea to take a hot bath before bed. I at least had the good sense to take a bottle of water with me to the tub to keep myself hydrated. I needed it. It felt so nice and warm in the tub that I ended up falling asleep, waking up every once in a while when the water temperature got a little chilly, and using my toes to kick on some more hot water. I was just too comfortable and sleepy to get out of the tub. When I finally did, it was 8:30am! My fingertips were all white and shriveled as I showered off and finally crawled into bed for some real sleep.

I slept until 1:30p and woke up feeling hungry but too pooped to go out into the cold to get some food. I decided to just make some pasta so I could use up some more of my Aero Garden’s basil. I boiled up some rotini and sauced it with nothing but salt, pepper, some gently fried crushed garlic, a chiffonade of basil, and generous amounts of the awesome olive oil that Lisa brought back for me from Italy. It’s really the taste of the olive oil that I craved; the pasta was merely a carrier for it. It’s flavor profile is relatively light as it first hits the palate, but it finishes with that bright green perfumy essence that you only get from terrific young olive oils. I absolutely love it. Last week I was craving that oil so much but didn’t have any food in the house, so I just took some plain saltine-style crackers, drizzled them liberally with the olive oil and a little salt, pepper and dill (from the Aero Garden of course) and that was my snack. Pretty damn good.

Later Saturday evening we were to meet at Sugar for a surprise dual birthday party for Gar and Rog. As a bunch of us were waiting for the guests of honor, all our cell phones went off with a text message from none other than Gar himself, telling us that he and Esther were on their way to Sugar. Nice. So when they finally arrived and Gar saw us there, he still didn’t quite get that it was a surprise party, probably thinking that we all got his text message and raced over to Sugar, hahahaha. Esther had reserved two tables for us and we had bottle service, Grey Goose with cranberry juice and Red Bull as the mixers. I stayed sober because I had to drive, but everyone else got completely rocked. We closed things out by aborting a trip to Mamoun’s and rerouting to Yokocho where we chowed down until closing (4:30am). Sadly we left nearly a full pitcher of beer on the table, mainly because I wasn’t drinking and everybody else was working on finishing the two bottles of sake we had ordered. It was quite a night. I think details of what happened and what people may actually remember are far from complete. Twoin couldn’t even remember paying the check at Yokocho! It was another Twoin Identity memory lapse. “Tell me who’s running Treadstone! Who’s running the missions now?!!” 🙂