Friday

Last night was neat in a "small world"-type of way. Our friend Stephanie is in town visiting her husband Bob, so yesterday's happy hour was in their honor. Sunshine met Stephanie in orientation class back in 2004, before either had worked a stint abroad. I met Stephanie at our friend Matt's going away party in Monterrey.* She had recently returned from a post in Saudi Arabia, and was the coworker newly arrived to replace Matt. Shortly afterwards, we also left Monterrey, following Matt to DC, while Stephanie is still in the midst of a two-year commitment in México. Last night's happy hour was pretty popular: I estimate there were about twenty-five people there. These were unevenly divided between Stephanie's friends from México and orientation, her friends from Saudi, and Bob's friends from DC. I knew only three people there, excluding Sunshine (but I know more of them now). It was nice to hear scuttlebutt from Monterrey (like: they've opened an IHOP in San Pedro). The happy hour was at some pool dive under a pedestrian bridge in Rosslyn. Since this is the District Area, the dive is rife with swank wavy tabletops and lit by lantern-like globes, but it's still a dive. Their pretzel basket was excellent. After several happy hours, sixteen of us made our way up the hill to a tiny Japanese place called Kanpai. We took up most of the establishment. Luckily, I think we were the only table. The menu at Kanpai is limited but the food is good. I had shumai soup and a sashimi don including tuna, mackerel, whitefish, yellowtail, octopus, salmon, oshinko, and some marinated mushrooms. All the usual suspects, but presenting simple things well is better than the opposite. Plus, it was excellent to dine with Stephanie and Bob again. [Cavin]