I always go through a bit of an emotional arc when Aaron goes out of town, whether it's for a month or a week. First I spend time alone, trying to be productive but mostly indulging TV watching. Indulging in total slothdom is a good thing sometimes. Then I make nice social plans for a night, then I figure I can take the next night for myself and it turns out to be desperately lonely. Then I cram in lots of socializing with the girls which usually involves drinking. Then he comes home and life is normal again.

I will say, the socializing is quite fun, and I think it's a good way to create fun memories with my girlfriends. So last night involved dinner and karaoke. About dinner...

My current neighborhood is about as far from hipster as you can get, which is sort of a blesssing because it's really hard to keep up with all those people who are self-consciously attempting to look unself-conscious. It's also not overly yuppie, which was what I was afraid of encountering in the 'burbs.

I can safely say that the 'hood is not ghetto. But it is diverse as hell. So we figured wandering into a random Mexican joint would end up being a great experience. And boy were we right.

For one thing, the sign on the door was looking for waitstaff, and especially requested applicants that spoke English. According to one friend, when we walked into the joint, everything sort of quieted down and everyone stared at us (I should point out that it was me, an Indian guy, and a friend who is mixed race...we don't exactly look like a group of hicks from the Midwest). None of the waitresses spoke English, so we sort of had to cobble together some high school Spanish phrases, hoping that we weren't being offensive in the process.

So, the real point of all this. I ordered a burrito.

And it was the size of my head.

Or, perhaps a better description is that it was literally the width of my body:

Can you tell from the size of my beer how big this mother was?

There's no way to get this across on camera, but two of us decided to share an order of seafood cocktail, and the manager (the one who spoke English) said he would serve it in two dishes. Well, this was one of them. It was like a fishbowl.

All I can say is, thank goodness for neighborhood joints. I'll get into the karaoke scene some other time.