Labor Day. Day of not doing anything. I'm sitting here in the living room at The Boys', watching Darin play Tekken 2 against Al. Al has been playing nonstop since he got the copy of Tekken 2, so even though he's not great at it, he's better than Darin is. And Darin takes losing various matches so well -- they're all learning experiences for him. I hate losing. I hate watching Darin lose. But he doesn't care.
My standard running joke is that Darin is just a more evolved human being than I am.
Last night Darin and Michael came back fairly late from the WorldCon. Michael stayed at the apartment -- he slept on the floor of the living room. We got up relatively late, about 10am, and spent an hour trying to decide what to do for breakfast. We settled on a dim sum place in Chinatown (the Empress Pavilion -- listed in several books as the best dim sum place around). We didn't call Fernando and Nevin because yesterday morning we got the idea that they didn't like dim sum.
We drove downtown and of course took the wrong exit, which meant we drove through an unpleasant area before entering Chinatown. We had to drive around a bit before we found the restaurant and parking in a multi-level parking structure was annoying and competitive. Michael got out of the car right after we entered the parking structure and went to put our names on the list. After Darin and I parked we walked down to the restaurant and Michael told us that our number was B74. The numbers currently being called were around B20.
We walked around Chinatown a bit. Lots of families out buying bakery goods and walking around. The public bathroom was labeled "Damas," which I found amusing. When we got back to the little shopping center where the restaurant was, we stopped in the market so I could get something to drink. We tried to get the parking stub validated, but the cashier said, very slowly and with much difficulty, that it required a purchase of at least ten dollars.
She had a really heavy accent. I wondered if the cashier was here legally or illegally -- because Los Angeles runs on illegal immigrants and it voted overwhelmingly to support Proposition 187, the Anti-Immigrant measure. I guess the thinking goes that the illegals can do all the dirty work and we'll just keep pretending they don't exist so that we can pay them even less and use them more. It's completely pathetic.
Whenever someone says, "Do you know what illegal immigrants bring?" I always want to respond, "Economic growth?"
Enough ranting.
Eventually we got seated at the restaurant and we picked several thousand dishes off passing carts. Okay, maybe not several thousand but an awful lot, and that was in the first three minutes or so. Of course, pork bao were the last things to come along, and I had been going on and on and on about bao since we had decided to get dim sum. When Michael was ordering bao off the cart he turned to me and asked, "Is one order enough, or should Darin and I get our own?" Since I was so stuffed at that point, I could manage only one tiny bao.
However, we got Chinese food for dinner tonight too and ordered a whole bunch more bao, so I am bao-satisfied. In fact, it'll be a while before I want to look at a pork bun again.
We drove back via Sunset and then Coldwater Canyon and then stopped at the apartment to get Darin and Michael's bags. Then we continued on to the Boys. I'd been feeling tired, so I lay down in Harry's room. I'm not sure I slept, but I don't remember a heck of a lot the rest of the afternoon, so I bet I did.
I was woken by the screaming of Her Imperial Highness, Elinor, aka Bunchkin. A group of people (Darin, Nevin, Michael, and Fernando) were playing Settlers of Catan, and Al was playing Tekken 2 with Therese. I settled down and started playing more of Jewelbox (have Powerbook, will travel). After a while we ordered a whole bunch of Chinese food and kept playing Settlers and Tekken 2.
I keep watching the clock now, because I have to get Darin and Michael to the airport at 9. Darin's going home after 4 nights down here. We made our decision about when we'd see one another again, but it's still tough not being together. (Great -- he hasn't even left yet and I'm bummed out. Prepatory bummage.)