Hitched

Friday night I went to dinner with the 'rents plus an uncle who was in town. We went to a Lebanese joint in Pentagon Row, which included the neat feature of backgammon at the tables. The glass over the table would slide off and beneath it was a fully-functional backgammon set. I played my uncle, and though I was slightly favored when all the pieces where "home," he rolled two doubles down the back stretch to win.

Saturday afternoon I celebrated Dean's victory via C-Span! (Woohoo! We're all Deaniacs now, baby.) In the evening, I celebrated with some former Salem, NH staffers in Dupont for a hour. Had to skip the larger Union Sq celebration as I had plans with Amy and Carrie. The three of us went to an Indian restaurant where I had this delicious carrot dessert (after a pretty good Saag Paneer entree).

Next we went to see "Hitch." The made up statistics that Will Smith quotes throughout the movie almost made me laugh at inappropriate times (perhaps only because I deal with stats for a living). In general, it was a very funny movie, and I do agree with the critics that Kevin James was hilarious. I had trouble sympathizing with Smith's character during the formulaic melodramatic segment, but that was really my only gripe. I'd say it's worth about an $8 ticket.

We capped the evening with a spontaneous trip to the Silver Diner, where we each ordered some sort of ice cream dessert. We coincidentally sat next to two of Amy's church friends. They had seen "Hitch" the night before and the cross-table talk/laughter (I think I did a reasonable Will Smith impression) confused some onlookers. The sugar high kept me up until 4am (I'm glad "The Natural" was on AMC to entertain me).

Sunday: Miranda, Maya, Brian, Marcie, and I hiked the Billy Goat trail in Great Falls, MD. Everyone finished unscathed, which is an impressive feat given the amount of rocks on the trail. We then met up with Nick back in Crystal City for Thai food.

I got stuck at work Valentine's Day evening, and arrived at the West Wing crew's party a bit late. Unfortunately, I was the 13th guest, and thus consigned either me or Leslie (who was the first to leave) to an undetermined period of bad luck.

None of the potential misfortune struck that evening though as most of the attendees got wasted, creating one of the funniest (if not the funniest) games of taboo I have ever been a part of. The competition soon devolved into "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" style where "the points don't matter" and the opposing team would chime in whenever they were annoyed at the active team's inability to guess the "obvious" answer. (A description of "milk" soon after "birth control" evoked a particularly lengthy burst of hilarity.)