Social Hours

I’ve been having a ton of fun just getting together with friends.  Most weeks I have had lunch or dinner with a friend, or been out doing stuff with friends.  That was one of the things that I had stopped doing as much in the last year.  Work was leaving me too exhausted to socialize with friends.  I am glad to be cultivating my friendships again, because I think it’s really important for my mental health. 

What I haven’t been remembering to do is take photos with my friends every time we get together.  Hopefully I can remember more often than not!

On Tuesday 8/15 I had lunch with my friend Erecca at Stir Fresh.  I forgot to take a photo of us, but I remembered to take one of my food, LOL.

I actually have a story to tell about this lunch outing.  I was in line at Stir Fresh, getting my ingredients together for the Mongolian grill.  I was in the inner line and when I finished getting my ingredients, a bunch of guys from the outer line got in front of me with their food.  I asked what the line procedure was, since it seemed to me that they were cutting in front of me at the grill.  They said I had to go to the back of the line behind them, and I didn’t agree.  One of the other guys in the back of the outer line started arguing with me and then said, “Yea, you’re a genius” in a really sarcastic way.  I said, “There’s no need for name calling.”  After we got our food we sat down and I was slightly rattled.  I don’t normally get into verbal arguments with strangers in public.  But Charlottsville had just happened a few days prior, and I am Asian and my friend Erecca is black.  Maybe I was more sensitive due to recent events.  So Erecca and I talked about Charlottesville and racism, and how she wants to talk to her biracial kids about it but didn’t know how yet.  At the end of our meal, when the waitress brought our boxes for leftovers to us, she said that someone paid for our check already.  On the way out, I asked her who paid for it.  She said the guy said he felt bad for acting like a jerk in line, so he wanted to pay for our food.  I was totally surprised by it.  And I was also humbled by it.  Because of recent events and how my view of our beautiful country is clouded by racism, I was humbled to see that what I had assumed was racism was not, and that I shouldn’t make assumptions about people in general.  I was humbled because I was sort of doing exactly what I didn’t want other people to do. 

On Thursday 8/17 I met up with Sally for dinner at a new dim sum place called Fung Fung Yuen. 

I’ll just state up front that I would not recommend this place to anyone right now.  The service is slow and horrible, and the food is just so so.  The saving grace was that this was my first adult girlfriend date with one of my best friends in YEARS.  So I treasured the conversations that we had, despite the very slow and terrible service at the restaurant.  If I had been in a hurry, I would have pulled my hair out.   Dim sum is usually a place where the food come around on rolling carts and you point to what you want and they put it immediately on your table.  Well, this place just didn’t have enough food and carts to go around, because we didn’t see many carts with food come by our table, and we had a LONG time in between dishes.  I was so hungry.  I didn’t take photos of all the food, but here are a couple we had.

Xiao Long Bao

BBQ pork buns

Shrimp balls

The wait staff hardly ever came by our table.  We asked for a menu and it never came.  We asked another person for a menu and got one 10 minutes later.  Then it took forever for anyone to show up to take our order.  We wanted to actually order some food because there wasn’t enough food on carts coming around.  Then they never showed up with the check and we had to ask for it several times while waiting for a long time.  Then after we up our credit card down, nobody came to get it.  I actually had to wave the bill and credit card in my hand for a couple of minutes before someone came to get it.  It was the worst meal experience I’ve had in a long time.  But it was contrasted by the best experience of hanging out with a long time friend and chatting like adults, without kids.  I like hanging out with all of them, but it had literally been YEARS since we had adult girlfriend time.  And this was only the 2nd time we’ve done it since the kids were born 5.5 years ago.

On Saturday 8/19 we went to Todd’s company picnic at Liberty Station in Point Loma. 

We saw lots of Todd’s friends there, as well as my friend Daryl’s family.  We failed to get a photo with anyone, LOL.  But I do have a couple of photos of the food!

We saw this big sign and had to take a photo in front of it.  Liberty Station used to be the US Naval training station. 

On Tuesday 8/22 I had lunch with my friend Susan from work at Curry And More.  Good food and good service at this place!

I had a lot of fun catching up with Susan and talk work gossip as well.  I don’t miss work, but I do miss my work friends and hearing about what’s going on at work!

On Wednesday 8/23 we went to Todd’s friends Jonathan & Kameran’s house for dinner.  Once again we forgot to take photos of people, but I took a photo of my plate, ha ha.  They have a smoker and served up some smoked BBQ ribs!  We brought the broccoli and dessert.  It was a fun evening of chatting.

On Sunday 8/27, I drove to Miramar Lake at 8:30 in the morning to meet up with Sally and her mom and kids for a morning walk.  When I first got there, there was still fog over the lake and the view was really cool!

We walked for two hours and got about 4-5 miles in.  I had 12,000 steps on my Fitbit when I left.  It was fun to get some movement in while hanging out!

Todd has said to me that he’s glad that I am hanging out with girlfriends while I’m on leave.  I’m thankful for them.  Many of them have reached out to me to schedule fun lunch dates.  I have not felt isolated at all, even though I am not working right now.  It’s been a blessing!