This past weekend was great - long weekend..

The main highlight was our now famous Fondue party - it was an exciting yet comfortable mixture of the old gang (Jeff, Ann, Dave(s), etc) some old forgotten rediscovered peeps (Flo, Brianna - who I ran into the day before at a Chinese proficiency test), and new peeps (Violetta, and Linly +1). Luckly we had an expert ex-Swiss(exchange student), otherwise, Amy and I would probably have accidently created a basketball instead of chesse fondue.

Other highlights of the weekend included lots of trashy reality-TV watching, dinner and dimsum with Linda (who came down for a surprise visit), playing Grand Theft Auto and doing unspeakable things (virtually) at Jeff's place, and a lot of hometime comprised of hard-working cleaning up and laid-back chilling out. I think by now, all the major parts of the apartment have been hit, making it quite pleasant and comfortable now.

The highlight of yesterday was almost burning down my apartment twice. Amy and I had made some "Russian Stew" (i.e. Cabbage Vegetable soup) that we were nursing and eating the past few days. Yesterday, the broth level was rather low, so I added some water in, and planned to simmer it all day, it was against my better judgement, but the prospect of all-day simmered soup trumped my better bad judgement. Well, I spent all day at school yesterday. As I came home and walked down the stairwell to my floor, I smelt burnt food - i was in the middle of thinking some negative statement towards a random neighbour when i had my oh-shit moment, dropped my shit, and scrambled into my apartment. I had left the heat on high on a full pot of soup. The apartment was filled with smoke, and while the pot was not actually on fire, the charcol that had been created was smothering. All joking aside, I am really lucky I didn't burn down the whole apartment - I think someone up above was looking down on me and compensating for my stupidity. I think was saved me, was that the pot was filled with with probably 2 1/2 gallons of liquid, which probably took a while to burn off before a real fire hazard came about.

As if fate was laughing at me, Russian soup having been crossed off the menu, Amy and I decided to make some garlic bread for dinner using some of the leftover french bread from the fondue party. This time, to no fault of ourselves, the garlic bread promptly caught on fire.

Anyways, right after the russian-stew-turn-charchol incident, I took a 30 min walk out to Ghetto-DC to buy Erasure and Ladytron Tickets (Erasure is coming out w/ an album! and is touring! in DC!!!). I had a lot of time to reflect. I think I am, by nature, an absentminded, careless person. For the most part, i have realized this weakness and force myself to be organized, and attentive. However, being that attentiveness is not natural and a subconcious characteristic, I can have moments of lapse due to exogenous considerations. For example, I realized I was going to run late meeting Amy for lunch (not that my fire wasn't 100% my fault), or when I lose the many electronic devices I've lost in the past (waking up on a plane just in time to deboard, in a taxi, lost and late for a wedding), etc. I'm not sure what I've learned from this - I still get in absentminded states when I'm under preassure, tired, etc. I guess just be extra-extra careful when dealing with fire(?).

Amy and I just discovered a way to play scrabble over the internet. Here goes another notch on our productivity!