Hookah, Hockey and Happy Times
Thee weather here has been spectacular. It’s barely rained and the weather’s been cool or warm. The temperature is about 70-90 degrees (approximately 20-30 degress Celsius). It’s been so nice, I haven’t minded walking around town lately. I hear it’s been pissing rain back home. That sucks! It’s been pretty nice here. I guess that’s one positive thing about this neck of the woods. Case in point, last weekend, it was a beautifully gorgeous day and there was an event in my area called Taste of Bethesda. Picture this: the annual Nibbles and Bites event in Richmond, but a venue that is 10x bigger, stretching across multiple blocks. The city basically shut down a
ll of the streets in the Woodmont Triangle area. The best part about this is that it was basically in my back yard. I saw the posters for it the day before and I dragged my ass out to check it out because the website listed a bunch of decent restaurants, including Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and Morton’s. The concept was the same as N&B; buy tickets and exchange them for food. Tickets were $1.25 a piece and none of the food offerings were supposed to be more than 3 tickets. It seemed reasonable, but a lot of the items were priced at 3 tickets and a lot of the offerings were a rip off. Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s were offering up tiny steak sandwiches and as much as I like them for their steaks, I just didn’t feel like getting a 1/4 sandwich for $3.75. There was a local restaurant with a huge pan of paella.
Check out the picture below. I started off with a crab cake sandwich. It was pretty good. I wish it was a little hotter, but it was pretty good. Lately, I had been craving sausage rolls. They don’t really sell them here. I haven’t found them at Safeway, and I am too lazy to trek out to Giants to check if they carry them. Anyway, I saw someone order these Irish Sausage Rolls and the 4 pieces they handed him looked so good. So I ordered it too. Well, I guess the guy earlier had ordered 2 orders, cause they only handed me two measly pieces. Two tickets, for two bites. I’ll give the restaurant credit though. They were awesome!
Next up, I found a place that offered up a BBQ platter. It was the best value in the whole event. Ribs, pulled pork, drumstick, coleslaw and a biscuit. It was pretty good too. I bought some more tickets just to get a bottle of water and I was pretty full by then. So I had 3 left over tickets and decided to get a cupcake. Let’s preface this by saying that there’s a place just a couple buildings over from my apartment called Just Cakes. I’ve always wanted to go in and take a look, but I always feared that I would walk out with too many sweets. So this was a perfect time to try out their cupcakes. I was going to get a regular cupcake for 2 tickets, but just as I got up to the booth, they had run out, so I bought a fancy 3 ticket one which was supposed to be a deluxe type of cupcake. Wow! It was fantastic! Wes and Lisa, when you come visit, I’ll be sure to get you some from there. A total ripoff for a cupcake, but it was damn good and a perfect way to end the afternoon. If I’m still here next year, I cannot wait to attend the event again.
This weekend, a bunch of us went out to Buffalo Billiards. It’s a huge ass sports bar near the office with a lot of pool tables, dart boards, and shuffleboard tables. We decided to play shuffleboard. It ’s not the one you play on the floor with the flat discs and sticks/cues. This one’s played on a long ass table with these weighted pucks that look like mini curling stones. It’s pretty fun. If you spot one in Vancouver, you should definitely give it a try. In fact, someone should buy one of those instead of a pool table. It takes up less room and is easy for anyone to play. You just slide the pucks down the table and try to get it as close to the edge as possible. The closer you get, the more points you score. It’s actually very similar to curling, cause some of the rules are the same. It’s neat cause the pucks glide down the table with ease. I look forward to playing it again soon.
Last night we went out to lunch at Pho 75. Service sucked ass, as expected, but the food was pretty good. Their ice coffee was good too. The menu was pretty basic. In fact, the first 4 items sounded identical except for slight variations on one meat item. We hit up the mall for a few hours, then we went to Dupont for some dinner. We had our sites on the Afterwards Cafe, a restaurant in the back of Kramerbooks on Connecticut Ave. The wait was too long so we went to a huge Italian restaurant called Buca di Bepo. It was an hour long wait too, so we settled on fast food at Five Guys. The burgers are pretty good and if you get french fries with your order, they’ll give you a generous amount. After dinner, we chilld out Gazuza’s for some drinks and hookah. I had never tried hookah before but I was curious to try it out. They have one of those Hookah places on Davie I think. Hookah is the flavoured tobacco water pipe thingy. We ordered the double apple and it was surprisingly pretty nice.
I’m so glad hockey season is back. I intend on winning as many of my hockey pools as possible and I’m really looking forward to watching the Canucks on October 26th out here. There are over 20 of us going to the game that night so it should be pretty fun. I just finished watching Saturday Night Live from last night and Bon Jovi was the host. He sucked big time. I think he was so bad, he was only in 4 skits. Don’t quit your day job Jon. Earlier today, I watched Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto. I had no idea what the movie was about, but it was quite entertaining. I highly recommend it. Anyway, no hi jinx or anything lately, at least nothing I can think of, so I’ll sign off for now.
