Motivation of the wrong sort

I had a fairly relaxing time this weekend past, probably because I scrapped the idea about a birthday party/house warming. It's more a function of locale and locally available friends than "at-rest" inertial physics that ultimately doomed the endeavor. Friends out of town, friends out of town permanently, friends permanently out of reality (read as: "Steve"), and so on and so forth. That and I didn't have a grill or at least a grilling location that wouldn't involve the Decatur/Atlanta Fire Dept. Plus, I can't honestly say I felt comfortable trying to get people together in honor of my own birthday. Granted, I am an attention-slut, but for some reason I can't do it upfront with "Hey let's party in my name! Uh, I don't drink, but sure, bring your own beer and let's party in my name!".

Earlier on Monday (my actual birthday day 17th), my friend Sara was determined to make my birthday something more than just dinner at a regular haunt. So I suggested a new place I liked, Taqueria Del Sol. Thankfully (yes, thankfully) they were closed on Mondays, and we were forced to find sustenance elsewhere in Decatur. A quick spin and we ended up at Taqueria Del Sol's more creative cousin, Zocalo's. I was happily impressed with the food, and we had the most talkative of servers who told us a deep compounding series of stories that involved revenge pranks. We're talking 20 minutes worth of stories here kids. From his parents' tactics, to his co-workers' demise, we knew everything about him and revenge pranks. Super glued toilet seats, ex-lax margaritas, and the surprise of the night: habenaro sauce on your office chair. The latter is utterly devious. Hot sauce on your office chair will eventually seep into your enemy's skin, providing you with a not so friendly irritation of the most wrong kind. The food was the highlight, but I'll get into that later, as I have yet to learn how to spell anything on that menu correctly.

Afterwards we met up with Shaun and went to go see "Thank you for Smoking". PR Spin at it's best/worst/horrifying/funniest. We saw this movie on the incredible recommendation from my buddy Matt. Matt loved the movie because he IS the spin doctor. The short of it all, go see it.

Friday, I saw the Inside Man with Jodie Foster's legs starring. Oh and Clive Owen, and Denzel Washington, and Willam Dafoe. A thinking flick with humourous dialoge that focuses on the (not-so)-little racial indignities each society as a whole inflects upon itself and others. As for the crime itself, it's rather inexplicable without giving it away.

Saturday, the highlight was the creation of a truckload of mashed potatoes. Though, I'll have to cut back on Mr. Alton Brown's definition of tasty salt since I've switched to using gourmet/kosher salt. It's a bit salty with his recommendation of 2 whole freaking tablespoons. One and 1/4 would have been enough I wager. Taters go great with steak. Yum.

Sunday... I wanted to feed people, but I fed myself. Pot roast! It's fun cooking something as strange as Alton Brown's Pot Roast. Also, Since I was alone this weekend I figured I might as well watch the chick flicks that accumulated on my DVR: Amelie', Wimbledon, the family favorite: An Evening with Kevin Smith (okay so it's not a chick flick, but damn funny).

Quick rundown: Amelie' - HA! + French = the Unpossible come true. I dug it.
Wimbledon - Pure cheese. But I'm in love with Kirsten Dunst. 2/5
An Evening with Kevin Smith - Most fellacio jokes during a series of
interviews....EVER.

-k