I realized I never wrote about our dinner at The Asgard on Thursday night. Our waitress was really nice, first of all. We (Seema, Shani the girl from the Media Lab, and me) started out with potato skins (mmm, melted cheese) and spinach artichoke dip on sourdough rounds. Both were very good and probably not very healthy.

Then I had pan-fried risotto, which is an interesting thought, since risotto is supposed to be creamy. It was served on top of a roasted tomato sauce with grilled asparagus on the side. The texture was reminiscent of hashbrowns. I think I liked it, although the combination of flavor and texture was disconcerting. But I ate it up, all the same.

Seema got a tasty tomato mozzarella sandwich (I know it was tasty because I got to eat the leftovers yesterday). Not as good as Flour's version, but still good. That combination of pesto, tomatoes, and mozzarella is just awesome. Oh, and Shani got some kind of fish stuffed with crab, which she didn't like. I figured it'd be good since stuffing anything with crab should make it better, but she said it was grainy (and she told this to the waitress and got her dinner for free, plus dessert on the house--she was very self-assured).

Seema got mud pie for dessert and said it was the best dessert ever (and the waitress agreed). I had Molten Chocolate Cake (although they spelled it "Moulton"--I'm never sure if it's referring to the place that invented it or to the gooeyness of the center of the cake). Anyway, it was very rich, and I couldn't finish it all (gasp!), but delicious all the same.

And then they split the bill between our three credit cards, and it was very painless paying for dinner. I always hate worrying about whether I'll have the right amount of cash to pay for my part of dinner, so it was great how smoothly they handled things. Thumbs up for the Asgard.

So I'd probably go there again, since it's so close to my dorm and the food is pretty good. I was expecting it to be a pub with food as an afterthought, but it's a genuine restaurant.

There are only crappy movies on TV today. How unfortunate. Good thing I have work to do, and the movies are just background noise. Hey, the hunk from Supergirl is in Mr. Destiny (the Internet tells me his name is Hart Bochner). He never made it big...I wish Supergirl were on TV right now!

Oh my god, I totally forgot that he was in Die Hard! He's the smarmy bastard who gets himself killed at the office party by pretending to know Bruce Willis! Okay, so maybe he has done okay for himself, movie-wise. Die Hard reminds me of Patrick, just like tons of other stuff does. He's visiting me on Wednesday! I can't wait :)

I've been doing programming work all day, so I don't have much of interest to say. But look at these cute baby raviolis that I got at the store. I think I'll have them for dinner tomorrow night. I don't see how they're big enough to fit any filling into!

So I went out to dinner in Harvard Square with Mike Rust and Seema tonight. It was my first time meeting Mike, even though we both went to Mudd, and he graduated only a year before me. He and Seema are a lot of fun together; I hope she gets into the Media Lab!

We ate at a Malaysian restaurant called Penang, in Harvard Square. It was all industrial-looking inside; not what I would've expected from a Malaysian restaurant (but what do I know?). I had pineapple fried rice, and it was served in a real pineapple shell (that white stuff is squid, and there was also shrimp in it). Fancy!

Afterwards, we had ice cream at Toscaninis (I know, ice cream in the middle of winter--crazy). I had the gingersnap molasses ice cream again; I also had a free sample of the green tea ice cream, and it was pretty good. Click the picture below for a few more from this evening (sorry about the unflattering picture, Mike :)

Oh, and guess who I ran into at Toscaninis? Allie from OG Suite at Mudd (well, she went to Scripps, but I only know her from Mudd). I went up and said hi to her, and she said that she was just visiting MIT and Harvard, and that she's living in LA right now. That was a strange coincidence. I'm glad she remembered me and didn't think I was a big weirdo.

So yeah, I had a good time with Mike and Seema. I'm glad they happily talked most of the time, because I'm more comfortable listening than talking in most cases. They're funny together :) Seema's staying with him and Liz tonight, so it's back to normal life for me. It was fun having a visitor. It made me look at MIT differently, like it's actually a cool place to be.

Seema's here (she's a candidate for grad school in the MIT Media Lab, in case I didn't say that before). It sounds like she had a great time talking to people today; I think the Media Lab is way cool. I haven't had that much interaction with them, but they just seem like they really encourage creativity and having fun. Good stuff...

I had a humongo chicken enchilada for lunch today (from Rebecca's Cafe, the same place that makes the awesome portobello mushroom sandwich). I think it had scrambled eggs in it, which is unusual, but it was very tasty. But it made me really sleepy for the whole afternoon, so I had to struggle to work on writing my thesis instead of falling asleep on top of it.

We're going out to dinner at this Irish pub a few blocks away from my dorm (it's called The Asgard). I hope it's good!

Tonight I made some Blackberry Pockets (from the Williams-Sonoma Pie and Tart cookbook, of course) because baking relaxes me, plus Seema's visiting tomorrow, and it'd be nice to have a good snack if we're hungry. They're like mini-pies, about 4" in diameter. They turned out pretty well, although I think they'd be better with some vanilla ice cream on the side. They're very simple; just fresh blackberries, sugar and cornstarch inside circles of pie dough.