Last Tuesday was quiz night at Rope. Here I am, explaining to my teammates how it is that I can provide confident, wrong answers every time. (It involves beer and a well-developed sense of delusion.)

I probably should’ve stayed in the back seat. And speaking of the back seat,

This has probably been one of the best vacation weekends I’ve had in a long time. Most of my work is done on my big summer web-type jobs (and now it’s time to start on your sites, Ben and Bradley!) - and my 29th birthday was on Friday, so starting Thursday evening I decided to take a few days off (and that meant no emails, no internet, and NO WORK).

How soup dumplings and a Bessa-R makes Ben feel

Thursday night started with drinks at Double Happiness, a hard-to-find underground (literally) bar with a happy hour that helped ease the slightly expensive drinks, and then dinner at Joe’s Shanghai for soup dumplings - which rivaled New Green Bo in tastiness. It was pretty touristy, but still seemed pretty authentic. After that, Ben and Amanda had me over for some delicious Basil Hayden Bourbon.

How a little too much Basil Hayden’s makes Justin feel

Most of Friday I napped. With the air conditioner on, even! (I figure I get one day a year, I’ve rationalized, to lay in a climate-controlled stupor - at Con Edison’s highly unreasonable rates, we can’t really afford more than one or two days of coolness.)

Then Friday night Tessa and I went to our favorite Indian restaurant, the Raj Mahal, and then back over to Brooklyn for the rest of the evening at Barcade, an old video game and beer bar. I got to sample about 8 different beers (that I remember) including one called Blithering Idiot from the Weyerbacher Brewing Co. that was awfully delicious. I also sampled a cask ale (Hooker’s Irish Red, the Dogfish Head Indian Brown (which is one of my favorite beers now), and more that I don’t recall… (I was also bought shots, and I believe that may have led to a memorable, but not rememberable evening). There was also Asteroids, Arkanoid, Spyhunter, and a couple games of Super Mario Bros.

On Saturday, we went to see The Bourne Ultimatum, which, despite the title (seems almost like a parody), was a very entertaining film with a really good fight scene in it. Then, I met up with Michael, Andrea, and her brother Ryan (who is visiting from Nebraska), for some Thai food and then drinks at one of our favorite places, Port 41, which is one of the strangest (and sometimes bizarrely scariest) bars in NYC.

Then today, Tessa’s friend Anna flew in, and we ate hummus and babaghanouj from Zaytoons at Fort Greene Park.

I had so much fun I am now absolutely exhausted, and actually ready to get back to work.

We also have an important update to our apartment which will be posted soon!

Only Brendan could find his missing ball with his eyes closed. Way to go Brendan!

Matt has introduced me to my new favorite board game of all time so far: Tigris & Euphrates. It’s a little like Settlers of Catan, only different. There are rules and a turn-based online game available on the boardgamegeek website - so if anyone’s interested in learning the game and playing, let me know!

Tigris & Euphrates is great to play while working, because you get emailed when it’s your turn. Any amount of time can pass between moves, from a couple of minutes to hours - I’ve got three games going right now; one of them is with a person from Australia and a person from England, so our schedules don’t match up frequently, so the game moves at about two rounds per day. You can also set up private games, and those can finish fairly quickly.

After my first win (my second game, even; though Matt may have been playing a little loose), we celebrated with a long-distance high-five: