Nightlife

Charlotte and Tyler are here! I showed them the winter wonderland/nightclub district near the hostel, where all the bars were packed. And all the chairs on the street were packed:

... because it turns out that the soccer game the high Australians invited me to watch was kind of a big deal. Fortunately Tyler and Charlotte passed a nice quiet street-corner cafe on the way to find me, so we went there to catch the rest of the game. And to have smoooooooth Belgian beers. Yes indeed.

Visitors

Charlotte and Tyler came to town for the weekend, so we broke out the finery.

Last Night in Raleigh

For my last night in town we picked up Mickey and went to an awesome brew pub. Which beer do you think I chose?
Anyway, after one of those and one or so of the $2 pints of Pilsner, Tyler and I felt confident enough to challenge Charlotte two on one:
Then we dropped Mickey off, had one last look at his fantastic book collection,
and went back to Charlotte's, crawled into our toques and sleeping bags and went to bed cold and satisfied.

Plants and Animals

Yep, so, we went to the arboretum (and the Morning Times) today, so the pictures pretty much explain themselves.




Oh, well, I guess this one could use some explaining - see, that giant bush thing is actually a grass. Tyler said "man, if you had a whole lawn of those you could hide your house behind them!" and I EXPLODED WITH HILARITY. The image in my mind was so absurd. That is what I like. It is my sense of humour.

It's Official

You know what? I'm on vacation, so I'll put up as many pictures as I want. Besides, I went to three cities today: First Raleigh, where we went to an historic doughnut shop for melty goo:
Then to Durham, where we saw an auction at an anti-mall, drove by a real haunted house:
And checked out the Duke campus:
I kid you not, this picture is from the half of campus that Charlotte and Tyler thought was less pretty. Too castley everywhere, they said, you get tired of it. Castley. I think that's half of why they think NCSU counts as ugly. The other half is that they've never been to my home town.

Anywho, before leaving town we went to a cool cartoony political art exhibit and then went for goormay popsicles:
Those are actual rose petals in that popsicle. Damn. Mine was Chocolate and Cinnamon, which should be made illegal it was so addictive.

Then we went to Chapel Hill for a yummy yam burrito, some irresponsibly delicious espresso drinks, and a tasty used bookstore:
Alas, they didn't have The Three Amigos, but I'll still have to agree with the News Observer:

Academic Life

A typical workday: Watched Charlotte and Walt nail a picture of Walt dressed as a Fairy Princess to the wall with a shoe:
Watched Tyler save Walt's life:Lunch:
Took turns flying remote-controlled Helicopter around Walt's Office:


You know, the usual.

Variety

Jingxia had over Albertans old and new (see below) for dinner tonight. I don't think we expected a 9-dish feast: red bean, eggplant, tofu, cashew, mushroom, beef, pork, chicken, and shark-fin soup. You can see how amazing it was.
(you can also see how few people obeyed my silly-face directive.)

Co-incidence

Can you imagine? Tyler's dad's friend from 30 years ago in Martha's Vineyard and my Aunt's friend's friend from Millbrae that I'm staying with in Menlo Park just happen to live right across the street from eachother. That coincidence got me invited to a nice dinner in a pretty sweet house about 3 somersaults away from my front door.

The Library

If I'm not working downstairs i'm working upstairs in this library. Either way, it's usually until 12:00 or 1:00 am, and I'm not the last to bed.

The City

I went to the city today to meet up with Charlotte and Tyler. We went to SFMOMA, which was awesome, then got lost trying to find Mission's thrift stores. You can tell we didn't mind too much being lost.