andre 3000 was all wrong.

scott has just prepped the 2004 oscar pull for everybody! we've been gambling on the oscars for a few years now...i would have won the first year, except some asshole jacked his entire set of answers from roger ebert and won over me. i still think he should have been disqualified. the second year, i was in italy. but this year -- this year is MY year, baby. i'm ready. bring it on. my house is having an oscar party on sunday, feb. 29 -- everyone's invited, if you think you can stand the four-hour bore-a-thon. i think we should create a custom oscar drink to help us through the evening. goldschlager with something? the oscar pull rules and ballot are contained within.

wow, limbaugh is...i mean...i can do nothing but laugh.

the three-day weekend will go down as a very good three-day weekend, i think. there were equal amounts of lazing, boozing, and actually doing things of substance.

it started off on friday night, when a group of us went to adams morgan to celebrate tommy's 24th birthday. we weren't sure exactly where to go; we were only sure that we are extreme cheapos, and did not want to pay a cover anywhere. we eventually ended up at some place called tom-tom's, mostly due to its name. i'd never heard of it before, and i got a kind of weird slimey vibe from it at first, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. we comandeered a seated section upstairs around 10 or 1030 and ended up staying there the rest of the night, until about 230. tommy said he was one drink away from throwing up, so i think we can call the evening a success. my crowning moment of the night came when a guy passing by pointed out to me that i was smoking a cigarette from the wrong end.

the next day, tommy and i had agreed to go to the national gallery of art since we hadn't been there in ages, and it sounded like a romantic yet pseudo-cultured type of thing to do. so we dragged ourselves into the city and kind of stared at paintings for a couple of hours, too hungover to really appreciate anything. i did enjoy the chance to see verrocchio's restored david, even though i didn't think it was that impressive at all. and i don't really care where goliath's head was supposed to be. i mean, it's cliched, but anyone who's seen michelangelo's david probably can't give a crap about any of the other sculptures.

that night, tommy and i went to trader joe's and picked up some stuff to make dinner with. we ended up making an arugula salad with walnuts, pecorino cheese and cherry tomatoes; rosemary-garlic chicken baked in olive oil and white wine; and spinach-ricotta gnocchi (a recipe we'd learned when we took a cooking class once). dude, those gnocchi were good, and pretty easy to make. i love watching gnocchi float to the top of the pot after you've dumped them in boiling water. we had bets on which one would make it to the top first. i never said we were an exciting couple. the best part of the gnocchi is that after taking them out of the water, you bake them in the oven with liberal, liberal amounts of butter and parmesan, so they come out all...well, buttery and a little crispy on the outside.

after dinner we and charles rented "confessions of a dangerous mind." i have to admit to sleeping through a lot of it due to the red wine i'd consumed, but i thought it looked stylish and seemed to be pretty good overall. except i hate julia roberts. dunno why. she's just not sexy. and she walks funny.

sunday was tommy's official birthday, so i spent some time with him and gave him his presents: simpsons season 3 dvd, and a voltage converter (which weighs about 40 pounds and was apparently shipped to me from india). yup. last year, when he was living with me in italy, i'd bought him an espresso maker, which brought us great joy until he brought it back here and we figured out that, hmm, it doesn't plug in! but now it works, and i can try and try again to make myself cappucinos. i just can't foam the fucking milk. it's hard.

monday, feeling squishy, i decided to take some of my own advice and went for a walk. i walked two miles to tommy's house and abused his internet, then walked a mile to harris teeter and bought some food, then walked a mile home. my ass hurts today. it forgot it had muscles. but it's a good thing i reminded it, because i signed up for a 10k in d.c. in march. it's only $20, if anyone is interested. through the streets of d.c. eesh. it will be hard. the last time i ran was the last 5 miles of the marine corp marathon with becca. must train to avoid looking like running idiot.

monday night, it was another attempt at trivia night. (kriston and sue, were you all there? i looked briefly for you but didn't see you.) well...it wasn't quite as bad as the last time, but there was nothing to crow about, either. i'd say we were firmly entrenched in the bottom third of the group. it's fairly discouraging that we'd done pretty decently our first time out, and have hardcore sucked the past two times. but i will not give up hope! i think if charles and jen make it out next week, we'll stand a better chance.

how funny that i call that the short version of my weekend. i am nothing if not a long-winded liar. pictures might be forthcoming of tommy's bday night out.

anyhow, back to work!

alitalia is starting up a direct flight from d.c. to milan, amongst other italian cities, and is having a spring sale. tickets cost $380, and with taxes, it comes to a flight for under $500. not too shabby!

i am hereby proclaiming friendster as the stupidest, most pointless thing on the internet today. i have not made one single friend or activity partner through it.

real, actual work is impeding the flow of what i had hoped would be a bloggy day. glad for the chance to be occupied, but annoyed that my employers would deign to give me responsibility when i've gotten so accustomed to doing nothing and have therefore created my own little eight-hour entertainment routine.