Twas a Happy Halloween

Man. Things were magical last night. You know how sometimes things just fall into place and you feel like the world was made for you to enjoy? That was last night. I thought we would be handing out candy to the kids alone, ordering pizza, and going to bed early. Which would have been fine.

But, friends decided to come join us--so the four of us sat outside, drinking wine, laughing and handing out candy to the adorable children who were directed to our non-decorated house from the neighbors' extravaganza (which included a petting zoo of jello molds of brains, dyed udon noodles, radishes with fake eyeballs glued on the front, several dry ice experiments, a smoke machine, music, the mummies, strobe lights, spiders, spider webs galore). Another friend showed up after he left work, and then we were five.

When it was too dark for kids, we decided to go get "7 courses of beef." Yes, there is such a thing, it's a traditional Vietnamese meal, and it is wonderful. E and I always laughed about seeing it on the menu at our favorite South Bay Vietnamese restaurant. One day, we ordered it when out with one of our friends who is a huge eater and always up for a dare (okay, E & I were up for it too... who wouldn't be, it's 7 courses of beef?). Turns out the courses are smaller than you'd think, it's actually almost a light meal, and DAMN, are the courses good: a flash fried beef salad (awesome), beef in vinegar and onion fondue to be constructed (by you) into rice paper rolls with veggies (a gift from the gods), 3 different types of small beef rolls, beef/vermicelli/spice meatballs on rice crackers, and a rice-based porrige with, you guessed it, beef. Dinner was long and full of laughter. Plus, there's the drip coffee into condensed milk.

We tried to find a friend's housewarming party and failed. Mainly because I looked at the start of the mapquest map instead of the end and we drove around our own neighborhood looking for his street. Didn't happen. We didn't really want to go anyways, but we felt good knowing that we tried, and it just didn't work, we didn't even have his new number.

We came back, lost one of the friends, played some video games and called it a night. That was exactly what I needed after this week of school.