Occasionally, a day proceeds in a much more pleasant way than our morning-selves assume that it will. Having woken up stiff and with a nasty headache — the lately unavoidable result of overindulging in Dalwhinnie of an evening — I felt it to be rather likely that I might find today something of a chore.

Reading my morning news over a bowl of cereal didn’t help, and even a hot shower achieved only minimal results. I’m coming to understand what all those adults have meant over the years when complaining about “getting old” and “do it while you can”. In the medium term, it’s not that you can’t do the things you once did, but that you no longer want to… the repercussions are harsher, and continue to become more so. Alas, I may have to impose limitations on my intake of whisky, much as I have already imposed strict limitations on soju (or, as I’ve come to think of it, The Liar, after the degree to which it misrepresents its own destructive power).

After reluctantly putting on clothes to reinforce my humanity, I figured a little walk and some real food might do me some good. It’s unbelievably gorgeous outside today… a result, I suppose, of the storm season, and the mild weather that traps itself between successive waves of thunder and miserable rain. A breezy and slightly overcast 70-ish degrees is enough to put me over the top into “giddy” when I’m feeling well, but it helps even on days when I feel stretched out, or beat down or stupid.

I strolled a block over to the new “Thai and Vietnamese” restaurant that just opened because my mid-hangover cravings pretty much always fall into the category of rich, salty, and sometimes oily. I don’t know the physiological reasons for all those, but I know it’s true, and I try to do what my body tells me. I like Saigon Cafe because the food’s quite good, prices reasonable, and it’s got outdoor seating.

An aside : The guy sitting across from me in the patio area was doing some sort of clever twist with his chopsticks to get the noodles in his Pho to wrap around and stay attached to them. Since our usual Pho spot uses those long, slick, plastic chopsticks, I have some kind of trouble grasping slippery noodles… perhaps I need to experiment to find that dude’s method. The guy was otherwise of questionable culinary interest, as he hadn’t even put basil in his broth. Blasphemy!

I’ve become a great fan of the combination of steamed rice, sweet/salty pork, and egg recently, so I got the bbq pork rice dish with a fried egg on the side. It’s not so different from a semi-regular weekend breakfast dish I make, which is rice with a few strips of crumbled bacon and an egg over the whole business. The egg yolk gets all up in the rice and is rich and sticky and wonderful, and offsets the pork. By the end of the meal, I was feeling great, and glad I made the choices I did (subsequent to the scotch related decisions last night, that is).

On the way back I walked past the pool area to collect my mail and could not help but laugh at the collection of people therein. My apartment complex is about two stones throws away from Emory, so there are quite a lot of undergrads up in here. Thus, the poolside crew fit that description as well, though oddly, it was all guys. Oddly, because a lot of very noticeable girls live here too, so I guess I kinda figured they’d be invited. Anyway, that’s not the funny part. The funny part is that these dudes’ radio was blaring “I want it that way” by the Backstreet Boys, with no apparent chagrin. At best, this makes those guys tremendously lazy and poor planners (I know one of those guys has an iPod) and at worst demonstrates really awful taste in music.

Anyway, now I’m vegetating on the couch, feeling like today might not be a total loss, and thinking about what I ought to accomplish now that I’ve got the proper state of mind and body to do so.

Saturday, April 29th, 2006 @ 2:17 pm Shallow Thoughts
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