Friends Don't Let Friends Drink and Blog

Heya!

Well, it's Thursday, 9:09pm here in South Africa. Our hotel is next to the ocean, and so we can hear the waves hitting the rocks (which occasionally we mistake for whales). We just returned from dinner in the 5-star restaurant in our hotel, called "Salt", which led to me telling my "Two peanuts were walking down the street and one was assaulted" joke far too many times. Still funny every time.

Lizzie had her conference this morning, gave her talk, and actually was driven to the event by a fellow named Waleed, who said that Emmanuel had told him about us, and then asked how she was voting. She said that she didn't believe in voting because it makes you sterile, and she wants to have lots and lots of babies. It was just safer that way. Also, thinking gives you wrinkles. Yuck.

When she came back, I was still fighting shutterfly (the connection here is so slow. We have an awesome coriolis force video to put up, but we'll have to wait until we get back to the states and have the bandwith to do it.) but hopefully by the time we have to leave tomorrow, most of the pictures will be up. (That's right, folks, we're taking off 6pm here, which would be uh, noon in Boston).

So yes, dinner. I generally don't drink much wine, because I am a total lightweight (the waiter at the restaurant we were at last night, when I ordered my martini, looked at me and said, concerned, "But that is very strong!" I'm of Irish descent, dammit, bring me my ZZzzzzzz....) however, South Africa is famous for it's vineyards, and I had to try some South African wine, and ordered a Pinotage, named Carpe Diem. Lizzie had the gall to order a dessert wine with dinner, which threw our waiter off big time, almost as much as when she said "all set", a peculiar Northern US idiom which not everyone even in the United States seems to get. Especially because it doesn't make much sense.

The Pinotage was ridiculously good, and it had the instant effect of turning on those Irish genes I possess which turn my face bright red. Now I matched my wine, how exciting! Lizzie made the mistake of having some weird beet-root tart for dinner, but being the classy gal I am, I had squid tempura, forgetting that tempura meant fried, and I hate fried food. Anyway, I (classily) picked it out of the coating, and then we both decided that more wine would erase the poor dinner choices, and oh how it did, especially when coupled with dessert. I had a dessert wine this time, and it was hella good, and I dared Lizzie to have a dinner wine with dessert to really screw up our waiter, but she said she was all set. We paid, stumbled back to our room, and I checked on shutterfly, which is still uploading our pictures. Sheeyit. Bring on the Pinotage--it's going to be a long night! (Note, a side effect of me blogging while slighting intoxicated is that I think this is freaking hilarious. Wait, no, I always think I'm hilarious, even when I tell stupid peanut jokes. Or cheese ones. Right, Seth and Lauren?)