a bit of culture

On Friday night I met up with a big group of coworkers at Sabang, a brilliant Indonesian restaurant with a massive vegetarian menu that includes an array of vegetarian seafood. It was fun and the dinner lasted until 10pm, which is positively scandalous for a hermit like me.

I had an embarrassing incident when I first arrived. I walked in and I heard someone say, “Oh, here’s another one!” and she motioned for me to come over to her table. I didn’t recognize the three people at the table, but since I’d never met one of the coworkers who was going to be at the dinner, and since I didn’t know most of the spouses who were going to be there, either, I just assumed that these people were either spouses or last-minute-addition coworkers who I hadn’t met yet.

They introduced themselves and started gabbing about how one of them had gotten arrested for passing out Impeach Bush buttons somewhere. That definitely made them seem like people from my office. (What can I say? We’re a liberal bunch.) But slowly I began thinking, “Wait a minute...am I at the wrong table? Something doesn’t feel right.” So I mumbled something about needing to run outside to check my voicemail, and I hid in the lobby, waiting to see if any coworkers showed up. They did, and when we walked into the restaurant together, they didn’t go to the table where I’d just been. So I had been at the wrong table after all! D’oh! I tried to shrink down into my seat so my original dining companions wouldn’t see me and wonder what the hell I was doing sitting with an entirely different group. But even if they didn’t see me, they still must’ve been wondering what was up with that weird girl who sat down with them, introduced herself, and then disappeared into the night.

On Saturday I worked on freelancing for a few hours and then hit a Capital Fringe Festival play, The Lesbian and the Flying Pig. It was about the US under Christian fundamentalist rule, and it was funny, moving, and scary. (Scary mainly because a Christian fundamentalist is currently in charge of the US; he may not be of Handmaid’s Tale proportions, but still!) As the play was only a block away from the National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian American Art Museum, and there was an hour between when the play ended and the museum closed, I decided to browse through their modern art wing. I was quite entranced with one Andrew Wyeth painting I saw, but finding a copy for my apartment is proving to be very difficult.

On Sunday morning I went to a coworker’s son’s bris and naming ceremony at her house. It was my first bris and I loved every minute of it. The rabbi was hilarious and the whole ceremony was just so moving, lovely, and meaningful. They had quite the lunch spread, so two other coworkers and I settled down after the ceremony with plates of food and spent a good hour or so eating and chatting. We really hit it off with one guy at our table—a Manchester, England, native.

In a different vein, this is an avatar I created on Yahoo a few weeks ago. It’s as close as I could come to making an avatar who looks like me. I gave her my brown hair, blue eyes, black-framed glasses, and square face, and put her in an outfit that looks like my clothing. I made her look pissed off, too. Fitting!



song heard most recently before posting:
Shady River—The Chapin Sisters