Stargazing

It's been another productive couple of days, catching up on the usual drudgery, but also incorporating some fun. Yesterday, after an abnormally long absence, we returned to Putt Putt to partake in their Super Saturday Special. We played two exciting rounds of mini golf, indulged on our complimentary peanut butter M&Ms, and played in the arcade. As usual, I won Flaming Finger's jackpot on my first try, subsequent tries being much harder. I did manage to win a large jackpot on my last try of the day, however, thanks to the fact that some idiot slimed the screen with who knows what...it was absolutely disgusting, but I got a nice amount of tickets out of it. Still, thinking back on it really grosses me out. *shudder*

The day before that, I put together a lunch at the all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant near campus - it was a great turnout - mostly old Hanta crewers (Liz, Jewels, Scott, and Sarah), but Nate came, too! Not everyone knew each other, but everyone hit it off splendidly, and we all had a great time. Nate and I gorged ourselves on sushi while the others were a bit more discreet. Hopefully I can get us all together again for another fun luncheon.

The night before THAT, Scott, Sarah, Jim, Nate and I met up for dinner at the Standard Diner. I'd driven past the place several times before and just assumed it was a diner, and a standard one at that. I couldn't have been more wrong. It turned out it was another one of NM's signature trendy yuppie hangouts. The food was all pretty pricey, and each item featured a strange twist...there were burgers adorned with crabcakes, mac and cheese with green chile, chicken fried sashimi-grade tuna...even the water came with a cucumber instead of a lemon! Nate and I weren't that thrilled with our selections, but that's not to say other things might not have been good. Places like this like to experiment, and a lot of times what they concoct isn't the best...but I can't imagine you could go too wrong with crabcakes and burgers (though Scott said the crabcakes from Jinja were better). Still, for an unusual pseudo-diner experience, it's worth checking out.

Other than that, last night, Nate and I decided to drive out to the east side of the Sandia's in search of Comet Holmes, currently the largest single object in our solar system (the diameter of its coma is larger than the sun!). We finally found a pull off that was devoid of light and scanned the sky with our binoculars. Finally, Nate noticed a dim, fuzzy circle alongside a bright star - we don't know what else it could have been! So we watched it for a while...it's really not all that spectacular, but it was satisfying to know we were able to spot the thing. It's too bad we live amidst all the city lights - I wish we could just sit on our porch and stargaze sometimes - you never know what you might see!

So that's life 'til now...it's always an adventure!