... 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.
... with real Maple and Saskatoonberry syrups! Plus two fruit salads composed with complementary distributions of fruit! Nota bad way to start a morning.
By ridiculous coincidence, Tyler's visit coincided with Olivia's. wee-haw.
You know who else is, it turns out, awesome? Olivia. She comes from Oklahoma, like the best webcomic artist there is. She gave me an excuse to order this extravagant Vegetarian Soviet Republic Mixer Platter, and allowed, nay, insisted that I eat all the beets. 
Then she and Tyler and I went to the lake and took pictures.
[Tyler is awesome too, but we all already knew that]
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.
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.
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.
Those are actual rose petals in that popsicle. Damn. Mine was Chocolate and Cinnamon, which should be made illegal it was so addictive.
Alas, they didn't have The Three Amigos, but I'll still have to agree with the News Observer:
Watched Tyler save Walt's life:
Lunch:
Took turns flying remote-controlled Helicopter around Walt's Office:
You know, the usual.
Me and Charlotte and Tyler and Walt had so much good times at LSA that I took their invitation to Raleigh seriously. The first thing we did when I got there was to go and get some grits and biscuits at Finch's. Don't believe this building isn't abandoned? Check their webcam.
Awesome.
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.)
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.
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.
We went to the beach today. It was windy, and the water was extremely cold, but that didn't stop Tyler from being exuberant.
I'm not the only one taking a picture a day! I think Tamrika's photos are going in a gallery, though. I doubt the one she's taking here will make the cut.
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