i reckon' a good night

Seems more and more that those pre-conceived notions as to how nights will play out? Yeah. They don't seem to quite pan out as planned. Not necessarily for the worse, but differently.

I had a friend in town from Australia so what better reason to round up the troops and hit the town. That among about a thousand other reasons clearly hitting closer to home to each.

Lima was our first stop - a place I'd honestly been meaning to check out since back in the day it first opened. Finally, MsH and I opted to enter its doors at the suggestion of Sel.

It was off to a rocky start, as MsH and I made a mad dash from the metro in the downpour that appeared from nowhere. All of the sudden, the sediment and plentiful icky water that found its way into my nice mules seemed to know no bounds. Yeah. No good.

We were a bit bummed to find nowhere optimal to sit upon our entry, but it was not long before we'd found our way to a great upstairs table with a server who would pay us the utmost attention until the moment we headed out. He was a riot. Down to only mint leaves, MsH had him convinced he'd swiped her mojito while there was mas para beber. So what was the result? A round of white for the ladies.

Minor snafu coming off the metro as my heel was literally stuck in the grate. Thought I was about to be one-shoed for the evening, until we managed to pry out one of my absolute faves. Almost catastrophic!

We then met the Aussie, his fellow mate from Sydney (gotta use my Aussie-isms), and a friend of his from Amsterdam. I actually met the Aussie a couple of Thanksgivings back during a week long trip to Amsterdam. (Ahhhh, the 'dam...). This is a funny story.

Tam studied in Amsterdam a couple years back, so my parents and I decided to go Dutch on our family turkey day festivities. Funniest part was it was me and my pretty conservative 'rents in Amsterdam during Cannibis Cup of all weeks. Quite funny.

So yeah, the Aussie was studying too there for the year. He's younger than me, but I thought he was quite cute. Very Matt Damon-ish. Add in the Aussie accent and yeah... not half-bad. We ended up hanging out a couple nights before I headed back. Fun times. We exchanged email addresses but with the exception of a couple of emails here and there, nothing since.

So this summer he and his friend came over to the States for their first visit. They arrived into LA, rented a car, and have been making their way across the US. I think they've probably seen more of the US than I have!

I didn't want to show up solo, having recently formally gone off the singleton market (as I'm sure you've noticed, I don't talk much about that side of my life here - and aren't likely to start too much now).. Just wanted to get that out on the off-chance that the Titan is reading this. MsH and Sel met them at FrontPage last night. MsH laughed as I walked in and said "Hmmm, he's shorter than I remembered. Then again, I was wearing rain boots in Amsterdam. Not three inch heels..."

We had a blast, chatting with them. We were talking about accents and ang phrases. We were amused to hear that they've gotten some grief as they say reckon' a lot. Haha. Me, of course, being a travel-a-holic was listening and asking for details as to where they've been. They're planning to go to Philadelphia (so they can run up the stairs from Rocky) and then on to NYC.

Final, final stop? The Aussie's then on to Paris, where he'll be living for a year. Job? Nah. Maybe he'll work in a bar. I couldn't live like that... I'm too practical in some ways I guess. But oh how I love to hear of others living it up in such a way.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T