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I had a chat session with Jeremy this afternoon as he was waiting to see if his helicopter pick-up to drop him onto a glacier in New Zealand would occur because it was a cloudy day. I was busy franticly making web pages and updating pages to prepare for our press release scheduled for tomorrow morning so that the web site reflected what was included in the press release. I also am running out of time to promote the big improv event this Sunday and on April 2nd. The postcard, which is way cool is available in PDF form.

When I got home it was already about eight and Sarah had gone wild with her order from Vinny Testa’s after probably forgetting that they serve portions for groups of ten. So we got through the salad and the scampi but there was a large tray that looked like it came from a caterer that went right into the fridge.

We had been debating how little we had prepared to do tonight because our latest movie selection left us with only one movie – The Five Obstructions and given that it seemed like an artsy movie similar to Run Lola Run, Sara thought it would be better to read or put her head in the oven than to watch the movie that we had.

Luckily Kate needed to get her Rio charger back from the ski trip so she stopped by sporting a spiffy new and straight hair cut. She had already gotten herself some sushi but otherwise she could have helped us with the massive tray of pasta, cheese, meat, and other items that we never opened. Since we didn’t have any entertainment other than each other we just sat and chatted for about 45 minutes. Kate was a good source of entertainment for us since she has good stories. We talked about Easter and Passover a lot because it is coming soon. Kate had a very fun event she used to go to with her parents as a child where they converted an entire golf course into a giant Easter egg hunt. She loved the hunt but was not successful as a finder of the eggs. So her father would keep a couple of eggs in his pocket handy and artfully drop them on the ground near young Kate to give her the illusion of having found the much sought after egg. The discussion about egg hunting reminded me of the Passover Afi-komen, the matzoh piece that we Jews have to search for to end the Seder. I think the easter egg is some blend between the search for the Afi-komen and a pagan ritual.

We were considering when we would go to Olive’s to test the patience of Kate's friend Meredith and try her pasta. I mainly wanted to learn more about restaurant party culture. Kate and Sarah, with some prodding on my part, got into their stories from crazy blue collar jobs from when they were younger where the workplace was filled with massive drinking, lots of promiscuous sex, and plenty of drug use. At one place Kate worked at the boss only hired pretty girls and then would try to seduce them. If he was making progress they would get better shifts but if they didn’t then they would be relegated to dreaded shifts like the 8 AM Sunday brunch shift. Sunday brunch was dreaded because everyone would drink until they would drop on Saturday nights and then have wild promiscuous sex or so it was implied. The fry chef at the restaurant was hired because he was a drug dealer and could supply the staff including the chef adequately with cocaine. So on the Sunday mornings when Kate was working because she wouldn’t play the manager’s games she once in a while would serve a dish then visit the bathroom to regurgitate then on to the next table. One table at a time.

Sarah had some crazy camp stories involving wild times in Bedford between camp councilors and swim instructors who would have full multi-keg parties on Thursday nights and then blunder around with massive hangovers on Friday mornings with sunglasses on to keep control of the little tykes in the camp.

I was feeling jealous and left out because I lacked a time and place when I worked in an incestuous, drug addled, party culture location. I just told them about how I worked with Hitoshi, the Japanese post-doc and got pretty good at working the centrifuge and doing mini-preps. There were probably lots of wild orgies involving the e coli and yeast cells when we zapped them via electricity or heat shock to induce plasmids and cosmids but other than that it was a dry summer.