Thursday, September 25, 2008
Busy Bees


So maybe some of you have been wondering where I've been for the entire month of September since I haven't been blogging. Well, it's partly that Chris and I are so busy with work and school. But even more than that, we just haven't had time to do anything blog-worthy.

But I'm happy to report that some of that hard work is paying off. Chris got the highest grade in the class on his Spanish test (brag much?), and I'm really loving all my English classes (haven't had any tests yet, so nothing to gloat about).

And with all that work we decided to have some fun last weekend, starting with a very carnivorous dinner in Palo Alto--the place (Pampas) specializes in serving 14 types of Brazilian meat. So basically, you sit down for dinner and the waiters bring around these huge skewers of tri-tip or filet mignon or leg of lamb and then they saw it off on to your plate. This goes on and on: they bring the meat, saw it, you devour, and then they bring on another. It was really fun, but the whole thing made us feel pretty gluttonous. At one point the waiter came around with something we'd already sampled, so he asked "Any special requests?" And I replied "Yes, we'd like the turkey wrapped in bacon." I mean, what could be worse (or better) than meat wrapped in meat? It was then we knew we had to stop before overdoing it.

Also that weekend, we ventured up the peninsula to San Francisco for a visit with my good friend Shelby. She just moved to the city, so we wanted to check out her new digs and grab a yummy brunch at this restaurant called Foreign Cinema. Fun place, and Shelby noted there were lots of adorable gaybies (translation: many cute gay couples and their adopted infants). She is a fantastic person and so thoughtful that before I left she gave me a kitchen utensil specifically for pitting and cutting avocados! I tested it out and it works wonderfully. So now I can go back to eating them without having flashbacks of the knife disaster. Chris loves the new device, although he still winces a little at the sight of an avocado.

Coming up: We'll be watching the Cubbies kick butt in October and seeing a David Sedaris reading in the city. There is still much of the semester left, but I hope to be better about updating the Cube.





Posted by Kelley at 5:00 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, September 11, 2008
Here!




Been a while, for the blog and for me in a classroom. But here we are, and there I was last week, squeezed into one of those lefty-unfriendly desks and announcing myself present for the first day of Spanish 1A and the beginning of the end of my college career (when it's been going on for 12 years, career is just the word).

Much is different this time round. There are still chalkboards and projector screens, but also a 40-inch flat-screen television hanging from the ceiling. Lil' Wayne shows up out of nowhere when a phone rings. There is finally an alternative to grabbing your ankles at the bookstore, with far better deals to be found on Amazon. (A result of this, however, is that no one actually has the textbook for the first three or four classes.)

What's also new is my determination, the sum of being a bit embarrassed plus being the one who's paying. And there's this: on two of my three days a week, when class is dismissed I walk outside and meet a pretty girl, give her a kiss and sling my arm around her, and in that moment I am the Big Man On Campus instead of the Old Man at City College.

The learning theme continued Monday with quiz night at our favorite bar, Trial's. First time out, and Kelley and I came second. We would have won had she not written "Little Shop of Horrors" when she was thinking "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and had I just put down "Carl Lewis" instead of insisting that, because we boycotted the Moscow Games, no one could have been on the U.S. Olympic team from 1980 through 1996. Ah well, we shall keep at it.

Posted by Chris at 7:46 AM | 0 comments