A weekend with Paul

I know you missed my updates! Well, here I am.

It has been a pretty busy weekend. Paul came up Friday night and we went to eat at a restaurant called "Tomato Thyme". The service was SO SLOW. Our waiter was an older man named Jeff who kept his thinning white hair in a pony tail, and it took us probably 50-60 minutes to get our food. At one point he came out and offered us a free appetizer: either the calamari (sp) or fried ravioli. We chose the fried ravioli (since Paul is a vegetarian), and sure enough the dude shows up 4 minutes later with the calamari. He was so flustered and rushed. We felt bad for him and ate our food (when it finally got there) without any kind of complaint. It’s always nice to have one table that doesn’t give you any shit, you know? Friday night Paul and I just hung out and didn’t do much since I had to be to work super early the next day.

Saturday my team and I didn’t get to do the TFA. Instead we did maintenance at a school, which involved pruning trees, removing/adjusting ready stakes, and spreading mulch. There were probably over 100 trees though, so this took a considerable amount of time. I was paired up with one of my teammates, Matt, and that was pretty awesome. He’s kindof a quiet guy but has a really dry and sarcastic sense of humor, so we have a lot in common (so we laughed a lot!). He’s also a really good worker though, and that’s the really important thing.

We were there until like 130 (didn’t get to eat lunch.. blah) and then had to go unload everything and head back to the office. We left around 230… that’s the time we were supposed to be out, since the Our City Forest Christmas party was scheduled to start around 4. All the Americorps members were scheduled to be there around 345 to help out, but it really ended up only being me and a few others. Paul was recruited to do the bartending actually; he really enjoyed it for the 2 hours or so that he did it, and everyone said he did a really good job. I was assigned nametags for awhile… this basically meant that I pounced on people as they came in and demanded they told me their first name and how to spell it. Fun! That’s definitely my idea of a party. In fact, I don’t know why more kids don’t have parties with this theme.

The party was at Our City Forest’s president’s house. Her house isn’t very big, so it was really just a small, hot house with a lot of people crammed inside (Americorps members, volunteers, friend of the organization, and people who had received trees were all invited. Some city council members and reporters showed up, too). It was fun though, but really loud and really crowded. Paul met a few people, though it was kindof hectic. We stayed there until about 830 (the party was scheduled to end at 8), though I hear some people stayed past 11. Here is pretty much the only picture I’ve found so far of the event:

That’s Karoline (one of my roommates), Ian and I. I know I look like crap. I didn’t feel like schmoozing at the party for 4 hours, so whatever.

Sunday Paul and I drove downtown to the Technology and Innovation museum to see the "Body Worlds 2" exhibit. This was a display of real human bodies preserved through plasination. It was… well, interesting, but also really f*cking gross. Here’s the website if you’re interested. It was creepy but I think it was definitely worth it. Not only was it interesting and informative, it also raised philosophical questions (particularly about how we develop our sense of self and what exactly that means). If you get the chance to go you should. You probably shouldn’t eat beforehand though, unless you have a stomach of steel.

Sunday night Paul and I went back to the Ethiopian restaurant. It’s the same one I had been to before, but he had never previously had Ethiopian food. I must admit that I liked it more this time; this either has to do with me getting used to the spices, or the fact that we had strictly vegetarian dishes. I’m not technically a vegetarian, but do find myself ordering/eating vegetarian food more than food with meat in it. We also went downtown last night to a fashionable bar, but it was pretty terrible; the place was kindof deserted but the bartender still managed to ignore Paul and I in favor of his fashionable, buff, loud, jock-type friends. He even gave his friends the frosty beer glasses while we got warm ass beer. Ugh, it was awful. We left pretty quickly though, went to the store and bought a 6-pack and some spicy cheetos (not exactly health food, I know), came to the house and played Scrabble. Paul got pretty frustrated though since he’s not good at word games, so we quit.

Today Paul and I went for a hike at one of the state parks a few miles from here. At one point in the trail there were 5-7 deer directly in front of us; they were very beautiful and weren’t afraid at all. I really only wish I had a camera. We hiked up to this place called "Inspiration Point" which sounds like a total make-out place, but it was really just kindof dirty and, dare I say, uninspiring. After a couple of miles hiking we left, headed downtown and ate at this awesome Taiwanese restaurant. It was definitely the best place we had eaten at all weekend.

Paul left a few hours ago and I’ve just been sitting here. We have such an awesome time together, and I really hate how depressed it makes me when he leaves. ::sigh:: I might be spending time with him this Christmas since I can’t afford to go home.

Okay, this is getting long so I’ll end it for now. I might include more information later on a Favs Only entry, though I haven’t decided yet.