Today was notable for a few different reasons. First, both of my managers at my job are in Barcelona (the b@st@rds went to SPAIN and didn’t take me! I @#$@# SPEAK SPANISH!!), so the dozen or so phone calls have been fielding in their stead have kept me from completing my increased work load.

Second, one of the engineers I work with took me to have dim-sum for lunch! During my college years, even though I had a slew of chinese friends I had unfortunately missed out on two seperate dim-sum outings due to bad timing and other obligations/priorities. The engineer who brought me to dim-sum’s name is Paul. Taiwanese by birth, he speaks chinese (mandarin), english, and japanese. Only Diego down the hall (german, spanish, english, bits of portuguese and italian) eclipses Paul’s linguistic flexibility. (I guess I come in third with fairly good spanish, basic japanese and even more basic mandarin). Anyways, dim-sum was very yummy. It is a Cantonese custom and means ‘snack’ in that dialect . Although i passed on the chicken feet (perish the thought), I did try a few new dishes. My favorite was the various types of baozi (steamed sweet dough dumplings with goodies in the middle!). The icon for this post is the barbecue pork baozi (whose chinese name escapes me for the moment). Unfortunately, during lunch I clumsily knocked my glass of water over with the back end of my chopsticks (embarassing… but they were really long). Nevertheless, I’ll be headed back for some more dim-sum in the near future :-), hopefully with a friend in tow.

Third, was the weather today! 72-degrees and GREAT riding weather for the motorcycle. I rode it to and from work and then around and about on minor errands and to pick up dinner. I also got to jog at the park near here (East Roswell Park). I put in my mile-and-a-half at a good pace. I started my cooldown lap just it time to recieve a call from the very lovely Natalie Ramsey who was returning an earlier called to inform me that she’d arrived in Denver. I am not sure whether it was the endorphins in my system from the jog, but we enjoyed a really warm conversation and traded a heartfelt pleasantry or two. I haven’t felt like she was a buddy since waaay back in Harris dorm, so our chat left me in pretty high spirits. I hope it endures when she makes visits back to Atlanta.

Good Luck out in Denver, Nat!