How to care for your extrovert

[liv]

I do very much love my friends. The minute I post even slightly meepy things to DW, lots of people get in touch. And if there's one thing that cheers me up it's getting to talk to my friends! Thank you so much to everybody who left helpful, supportive comments on my post. Now I have actual plans for meeting up with withagreatlove, and have made some progress towards plans with khalinche. I had some really cheering conversations with hatam_soferet and rysmiel and ghoti, and I've started talking to people a bit about means other than email to keep in touch.

And then at the weekend I was back in Cambridge where my people are, even if only briefly, and that helped to fix my mood the rest of the way. jack had a gathering at the Haymakers to celebrate his birthday with friends, having spent the actual day of with his family. I drank Pickled Pig cider and ate tasty pizza and lots of people I really enjoy talking to, as well as a few people I hadn't met before. I got very extrovert-happy by the end of the afternoon, I was squeaky with excitement to see people, and holding forth a bit about work stuff and Jewish community politics. If you've not seen me like that I talk pretty much like I write ranty blog posts, loudly and with more jokes and gesticulating.

In the evening I went to Restaurant 22 with jack and ghoti. The experience was completely perfect, relaxing and with excellent service of the kind that is so good you almost don't notice it's being provided. Of course the thoroughly excellent company helped; we just talked about all kinds of interesting things without any interruptions to deal with anything mundane.

The food was... very nice indeed, but less exciting than the previous time I ate there. I had a veggie starter I really enjoyed, mainly butternut squash and rice and just really interesting accompaniments and combinations of flavours and textures, including some little squares about the dimensions of stamps, which basically acted like two mouthfuls of toasted cheese. There was only one veggie main course, described as a vegetable strudel. The centrepiece of the dish was the most disappointing part of the meal, I think primarily because I expect strudel to be made of filo pastry and this was a better version of the kind of rather heavy greasy stuff you get in chain pie shops, and the filling was again nice but didn't have a very distinctive flavour. The accompaniments, including really tiny amounts of some very nice salsa, were delicious, though. Dessert was a very good ginger and cranberry cheesecake, but I actually liked the palate cleanser, a passionfruit sorbet, even better. We decided not to have wine with the meal, partly cos we'd been in the pub all afternoon anyway, but with three of us who like that kind of thing, it made sense to buy a whole bottle of dessert wine, so we finished up with a very tasty French Muscat, let me go and look it up... 2010 Cazes Muscat de Rivesaltes, it's called.

Sunday I just woke up feeling really relaxed and contented. We took the opportunity to have a pretty relaxed day, a bit of sitting companionably drinking tea and chatting and reading the internet, a low-effort lunch. In the afternoon ghoti and cjwatson and their B came over to play bridge. Which meant we got to use our new exciting card table, which has a green cover with adorable little suit symbols. It was a really nice casual game, we weren't even keeping score but we were all trying to improve our play, and we had a couple of interesting hands.

And I met my new cohort of students, dear little first years, this morning, and to nobody's surprise teaching is a lot more fun and satisfying than marking.

Also ghoti made me some gloves for my birthday, and they are awesome because they have subtle owls knitted into them. So now I can go around with owls on my warm hands, this is very pleasing.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

squee - sounds fabulous. We really need to work on meeting up :)

[liv]

Yes, definitely I need to come and visit you and not wait for months again. I'm thinking mid-March, maybe? Cos I finish teaching then and should be able to work from home for a few days during the week.

[rysmiel]

Oh, go you finding things to cheer you up. *hug*

[kaberett]

(... I will make you a Strudel at some point.)

[liv]

<3 You are the best. It's hard to think of anything more deep-down cheering than your offering to feed me.

[khalinche]

You are so lovely.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I'm sorry you were less than overwhelmed by the food, but it was lovely to be there with you. And very happy that you have such excellent friends.

[liv]

It was the most perfect wonderful evening, and thank you for all of it. I think you're right that it's probably worth looking at the menu for R22 ahead of time, though I'm not sure where else we'd go if we wanted a meal of that style within walking distance of our homes, and this month's selection didn't look promising.

I am so blessed in my friends; basically the whole second half of my life has been about really amazing friendships. Thank you for being happy for me, too.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I'm always happy to cook, so long as you appreciate that my presentation needs work and occasionally I try something and it doesn't quite work. Mind, my breads are never as nice as R22's, my kitchen is too cold and we don't gave an airing cupboard so the rise is off.

But for a special occasion rather than celebrating that I'm allowed to cook poncy good for well dressed friends, I'd probably stick to safer recipes.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Also, how about Midsummer House? It's a bit more expensive but it's within walking distance. It falls under our posh restaurant policy though, so you'd probably not get my company.

[kaberett]

TERRIBLE AT VEGETARIANISM

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

:( I just had a brief look at the sample vegetarian menu and it seemed nice enough to me, but I didn't look at the meat one for comparison, and I don't know how often it is like that. I know things often suffer by comparison with the meat option.

[kaberett]

Oh wait they have a sample vegetarian menu these days?! That's new since last time I checked. (Last time I checked every single dish on the menu outside their door was non-veg. Which... yeah.)

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to know what aspect of my previous behaviour indicates that I would suggest a restaurant to a vegetarian without first checking that they had some vegetarian food? I mean 'that I would be prepared to eat/pay that amount of money for' is a thing that sometimes meat eaters never do, so I can see that, which is what I assumed you were assuming. But if you have the spoons, and a coherent answer, I am genuinely interested in that, so I can change the behaviour.

As far as I can tell from the website - I have never been to the restaurant nor read the menu outside the door - they have two menus at any time, a meat and a vegetarian, each consisting of options of 5, 7 or 10 courses. But they're all laid out as 'main menu' and 'vegetarian menu'.

[liv]

*hug* Go easy, I don't think kaberett meant to accuse you. They're stressed at the moment anyway, and I 'spect you're not in the best mood either. I took the all-caps comment as a joke; that's how Kab and I talk to eachother sometimes, sort of pretend over-dramatic as a way of expressing affection.

I think you've been incredibly respectful of mine and jack's vegetarianism, to much a greater extent than I would really expect from meat-eaters. I really appreciate how thoughtful you are about that.

[kaberett]

Um, honestly it's mostly that I have kneejerk grump about the place?

[withagreatlove]

That sounds like a very pleasant weekend and I learnt something new: I didn't know you played Bridge! (My mother does, and she's a fiend - it chimes wonderfully with her mathematical, left-brained approach. I, however, haven't got the foggiest how to play :)).

I'm so glad you've managed to make connections and plans and I really do look forward to seeing you! Yay!

[liv]

Yup, I learned as a child from an elderly East End Jew. It does appeal to mathsy types, but I know a lot of really intuitive players. I think a generation or so ago bridge would've been a necessary skill for someone in your line of work, but much less so now.

[withagreatlove]

Well, thank God for its increasing irrelevancy, because I'm sure I would have been awful at it!