Tam threw a potluck dinner party at her place in the Sunset, which meant lots of white wine, salad by Luke and Nicole, a roaated green bean and cashew side we made, chicken parmesan and pasta Tam and Josh made, and desert tarts made by Tam's coworker Mary. All the food was great -- we ate really well, and had a lot of fun talking and telling stories. Around 11:15 we broke up and now we're driving home from the city.

A late post-gym lunch of a mushroom-pine nut-salad greens-hot pepper sandwich with soy milk, with warmed cherry pie and ice cream for desert. (Warning: plates heated in the oven become hot! Don't make my mistake.)

Aditi and Alex and I went to brunch at La Note in Berkeley, someplace I hadn't been in a long time. I had the Cote Nord, a goat cheese omelette on bread, which was as rich as I remembered but somehow blander -- still good --and a hard cider. I also tried some of Alex's meal (the great pancakes with creme fraiche) and Aditi's (an okay omelette). We'd originally intended to go hiking, but the weather wasn't cooperative; this was a good substitute.

A mediocre pizza at Firewood Grill at the Metreon...had to eat _something_ before Iolanthe. The best part of the meal was reading House of Leaves.

Colin's birthday lunch at Irish Bank. I'm normally not one for fish and chips, but it sounded right today, and was great. There wasn't a huge amount of fish, but it wa nicely crisped and very fresh (good fries too). I also had a Harp. The Irish Bank is a great place; I'll have to bring Alex. The irish waitress took a shine to our group of 8 and actually asked some other people to move so we didn't have to move tables to sit together. Afterward we had cake for Colin (or was that "Cohin"?) in the office, and then I went back to the iPhone app.

Alex made chicken and dumplings, which we ate while we played srabble with the neighbors. Good stuff! Speed scrabble is fun.

Clam chowder in a bread bowl from Boudins downtown. I didn't know they had a downstairs.

Big dinner! We made started out with pasta and sauce -- red sauce with onion, garlic, freezer-burned squash, and tomato -- and with a starter of bread, olive oil, and vinegar. We opened some wine -- a white zinfandel we picked up in Sonoma, which was great, but too light and sweet for what we were about to eat.

Disaster struck as Alex was finishing the sauce and I was making banana bread for desert: a whole canister of salt poured into the pasta sauce. Someone had forgotten to put the lid back on after a pinch went into the banana bread. We fixed it, but only by adding two more cans of tomato sauce and another can of diced tomatos, diluting the flavor a bit. Alex found the whole thing quite hilarious. Turned out okay in the end -- the pasta sauce wasn't great, but at his suggestion we put some giardiniera peppers in the bowls, which somewhat drowned out a lot of the rest of the flavor. The banana bread was sweet and tasty, a nice end to go with the Daily Show on a quiet night at home (quiet aside from earlier hilarity trying to get four-feed video chatting to work).

An awesome corned beef sandwich from the Sentinel, brought back to the office. Wow, is that place amazing!

Grille veggie burrito from Whole Foods (surprisingly affordable!), one of the few places in this town still open for fast food after 9 PM. Good (especially after yoga with no dinner) though a little unorthodox (asparagus, really? Guess it was Whole Foods). With food in our stomachs, we headed on to the Albatross to celebrate Barack Obama's inauguration.

The pineapple cheddar turkey burger at Bistro Burger. (It wasn't that great.) Pineapple in honor of our new president's Hawaiian roots...?!

Josh and I met up today (gorgeous day for a day off) to talk about the ReadCongress project, which he's interested in joining. We started out at Sonoma County Coffee in Berkeley, a neat new cafe where I had a strawberry and banana smoothie and we talked through the project's code and it's goals. After that, we had lunch at a Musical Offerings Cafe, an uncrowded and very comfortable cafe and music store. I had the eggplant and tomato sandwich, which was very good. All told a promising restart to the project.

Stephanie's friend Colleen came into town for the long weekend, and she threw a wine-and-cheese party we went to. Claude, Rebecca, and Jeremy were also there. She started us off with kyrs royale, and from there, it was food and drink as you'd expect, and excellent conversation.

Tom ka gai made from a coconut ginger soup mix we had. It hit the spot after getting back from the gym, though it wasn't as good as a restaurant soup -- too much citric acid flavor and not enough other flavors. Still, it was filling, and got us through an episode of Weeds and the sunset so I could play Silent Hill V in the dark.

Korean spicy BBQ chicken at the food court in the Westfield Mall with Alex after a hard hour of shopping the balance off a Crate and Barrel gift card. The noodles were good, but the chicken was a bit tough in places; the Korean place at the Emeryville Public Market does it better, I think. The portions were way too big for one person for lunch, but luckily, we split the plate.

Corn meal waffles, made from scratch. They taste heavier and sweeter than regular waffles -- interesting flavor, and not that much harder to make. (Historical side note: this is the first time I've ever cooked with Crisco.)

JT, Colin, Tyler, and I went to Zebulon, a burger place near the northern end of SOMA that JT had been puhing all week. It was a nice walk on another gorgeous San Francisco winter day for the sixish block walk. I had the cheddar chipotle burger (from several other tempting options); it was medium rare and juicy and good. (Side note: it's interesting, as part of the new job, to go for the first time to a place I know I'll be going to over and over again.)

Eating outdoors on a warm, sunny San Francisco winter day with Seth in an pedestrian alley with a view straight to Union Square: a good lunch. We ate at Bistro 69, which was reasonable in both price and quality (though not excellent in either). It was good to see him before he left for Geneva again. I had a chicken eggplant parmesan sandwich and a caesar salad, which were good though left me still a bit hungry. The only thing missing from lunch was a beer, but we can't have everything, can we?

Work from home = chocolate chip waffles. They were a bit crunchier than I aimed for, but still very tasty. I learned a few important lessons this morning:
1. Too many chocolate chips may threaten a waffle's structural integrity.
2. More smaller waffles are probably better than fewer big ones if the goal is crispy but not crunchy waffles.
3. Never forget to Pam even part of the waffle maker, or you'll end up with broken waffles (especially given lesson #1).

Another Thai dinner, this time with Stephanie and Seth at Little Plearn in Berkeley before Arabian Nights at the Berkeley Rep. Decent eggplant, pork, and shrimp dish with brown rice.