01/26/2005 Entry: "Socialitis"

So last week was pretty social, which doesn't happen that often.

Friday a week ago I went into NYC to meet up with PreZ and his co-workers to go to karaoke. I didn't sing, but PreZ and several others did. Lots of fun, and yummy Japanese food to boot, though unfortunately most of what I ate was off the appetiser menu because the rest of the menu was predominantly sushi, and I wasn't in the mood for tempura or teriyaki.

One of PreZ's co-workers suggested that for another outing type thing we should go to Russian place/restaurant, as she and her partner are Russian. This definitely sounds interesting, so hopefully that will actually happen some time.

Then that Saturday there was Julian's housewarming, even though the weather outside was far from accommodating the 'warming' part. Kreestof arrived at our place late that afternoon and we had pizza and stuff, before he headed off home to get ready and to meet us there. We brought Vampire wine as a gift which was a success :) It was lots of fun, and we met a bunch of new people. Had an interesting conversation about all kinds of cameras with a friend of Julian's, Theo I believe. A major camera geek to the point it was like talking to a camera salesman :) but it was nice to get info on various digital camera types and such.

We had some amusement about the fact that in Julian's neighbourhood EVERYONE double parks. Like, 2-3 cars on either side of the road on every single block, it was quite ridiculous.

Last Monday we headed up to PreZ's aunt, as we hadn't seen her at Christmas. We combined it with a trip to their mall because they have a maternity Gap up there that I wanted to check out. The shopping was a wash, but it was nice to catch up with his aunt.

Last Wednesday was lunch with Kit, and a karate class, so some chatter with various people there I hadn't seen in 2 months. They were having a black and brown belt class after our regular class, so I got to talk to our sensei Liz for a bit which was nice. I really like our dojo, people are so nice, helpful and supportive there.

And Friday we went out to have dinner with a bunch of PreZ's ex-colleagues from Micromuse. It was a bit of an impromptu dinner to get together and celebrate various things, including my pregnancy, someone else's new baby and some other stuff. We had yummy Chinese food, and good conversation, and decided that we should all gettogether again at some point, at the very least sometime after our baby is born.

This past weekend was pretty quiet on the social scale, with a blizzard coming in. Kit braved the storm on Saturday to stay here, as his pipes had frozen or something and his Jewish landlord was unavailible on the sabbath for assistance. No running water and sub-optimal heating isn't a pleasant forecast for a winter storm, so he crashed here for 2 nights. Thankfully Metro North trains were running on schedule, even though there was heavy snowfall and there had been 18-24 inches forecast, of which I'm sure most actually fell too.