Getting out

The irony was not lost on me that this would've been a quieter weekend if I had been going downtown for an opera like I originally thought. I like to arrive well-rested and ready for punishmentattentive, so I don't plan much else on opera days. But Nuphy gently corrected me that Ariadne auf Naxos is this coming Saturday, with Boris Godunov a week after that, so suddenly I was able to say yes to all sorts of things--to Game Night, to dinner on Devon, to shopping with the GWO.

We're down to one set of flannel sheets--and it's fraying--so his idea was to head to the heart of Lakeview in order to pick up some more. Alas, their selection was ass, so we left empty-handed except for a sweater-drying rack and an alarm clock that does NOTHING except keep track of time. As compensation, we ran riot through the Cost Plus and broke into the stroopwafels that very afternoon!

The original plan was that I would accompany him to errands on Clark, but getting up before 8 a.m. was catching up with me and I went straight home instead. Before he got off, I asked monshu to pick me up some kibbeh from Middle Eastern Bakery for lunch and, to punish me for abandoning him, he brought back fatayer instead. (Oh, woe is me! Forced to nourish myself with meat pies!)

I spent a couple hours contemplating chores before we had to leave for Little India for a date with two chickens charga and, incidentally, princeofcairo, mollpeartree, and gopower. The trip from Hyde Park was necessitated by critical depletion of strategic stores of mung dal and it gave us a handy excuse to replenish our failing stocks of cookies from Mughal Bakery.

Incredibly, there was actually a non-negligible amount of chicken charga remaining (albeit not, I would like to point out, from the bird placed in front of me) at the end of the meal; I ascribe this to an order of pasanda and, just maybe, a very generous stack of rotis. The Hyde Parkers had to begin the long journey home, but for us fabulous North Siders, our evening was just beginning: Game Night was going down, and only steps from my house!

It was a smaller turnout than usual, which was both pleasant and unfortunate. Normally, there are at least three games going at once, but Saturday night it was sometimes a struggle to keep even one going. I've complained before that I can socialise with these people any place, but finding guys to play games with is much harder. This time, however, I found myself not minding so much--maybe because it was a small enough group that I didn't feel relegated to the fringes.

It also gave me a chance to explore the apartment a bit more. I briefly noted the impressive nature of the books on the shelves, but this time I was able not only to study them in detail but also to learn more about them from our host. I'm still nebulous on his relationship to his "roommate", but the reason he's never there seems to be connecting to having a home in France. At his insistence, I perused the 19th century French Bible festooned with Gustave Doré lithographs, each one worth several hundred by itself.

The parkin I brought received some polite attention and the Mughal Bakery sampler got no love at all (Curse you, hot guy who brought the caramel-filled brownies!) so I ended up ferrying both back with me on my unseasonably-mild stroll home as I mused on my reluctance to host one of these myself. I'd love to return the favour to all the generous men who have opened their apartments to us, but then I imagine strangers treading on our Persian carpet and I curdle inside. Maybe we'll just invite them to our open house on Hogmanay.