August 4, 2000

Today is Friday, which generally means that I had plans with Pam and tonight was no exception. Normally, I make plans to spend Friday nights at her place, but lately work has been absolutely crazy and I would have to work through the weekend. Not that I minded all that much, since it is towards the end of the product. It is like those last few minutes or so of a run or workout, when you maybe exhausted but you're going on pure drive.

I did take a break for dinner though, and I would be driving across the pond to see Pam. Although I did see her on Wednesday when we both had dinner with Tino, I still missed her. I was delighted to see her.

We chatted briefly about where to go for dinner and we decided on going to Peso's, which is a fair walk from her place. Not that I mind really. Okay, it is that I mind, but for a different reason. It's not the actual walking, mind you. It's the walking outside that I don't happen to like… Not that I would label the Seattle weather as "hostile", if I had to label it I would probably say it was more of "unfriendly" or perhaps "apathetic".

We walked down to Peso's. Peso's is also a bar, which seems to be quite popular on Friday nights. The restaurant section was pretty full, so we sat at the bar for a little while and ordered margaritas. I did my best to unwind from the stuff that I was attending to at work, the drive across the bridge, and the most traumatic of all, the walk down to Peso's.

My eyes bugged me. I normally wear contact lenses, and they were running very dry tonight. I'm sure part of the reason was all the smoke from the surrounding tables. I normally carry eye drops with me and I was using them very consistently tonight… [Ugghh!]

We were moved to another table in the dining room for dinner, which was a little better in terms of the smoke, though my eyes were still a bit irritated. It's really not that serious, I can certainly cope. If nothing else, I would simply remove my contact lenses and walk around half blind. I had a pair of glasses at Pam's place, which are probably a little old in their prescription, but they'll do.

As for dinner, we both wound up getting the fajitas. I got the skirt steak fajitas and she got the chicken fajitas, and we also got some guacamole with our dinner. Actually, it was a ton of guacamole, but they also charged us $5 for it.

Pam alleges that I'm a notoriously neat eater. I suppose I don't see it that way; I see myself as being efficient. For instance, there's the issue of wrapping fajitas. When it comes to wrapping fajitas, you can either stuff them full or you can stuff them so they don't fall apart. These two approaches are mutually exclusive; this logic seems to elude my dear girlfriend, who fills her tortilla while flat and then is genuinely surprised when it falls apart immediately after the first bite.

The proper way to wrap a fajita is to take into account the volume capacity of the flour tortilla and thus only stuff the fajita with that amount of contents. This may take a little planning depending on the amount of condiments and sides you like, but it is fairly straightforward. Do not overstuff it; you'll have to fight that urge. You'll have to use more tortillas that way, but at least you won't wind up with a hand full of guacamole and sour cream.

Is this too much discussion on how to properly wrap a fajita?

Otherwise, our dinner was good. The chicken that she ordered was naturally a little dry, since it was white meat chicken, but that's been a pet peeve of mine for some time. The only dark meat chicken you can get anymore are in places that specialize in chicken. I just have this vision of farms with countless chickens running around with legs but no breasts; there's no accounting for the law of supply and demand.

We left Peso's shortly after that and went back to her place. I wasn't going to be spending the night there since I was still in death mode at work. Hopefully, I would get to spend more time with Pam this weekend.

August 4, 2000