dusted.net

I’m kinda getting used to wearing a tux now… Marine Ball for the 234th U.S.M.C. anniversary was a blast. The dinner unfortunately wasn’t very large, especially since I had more or less skipped lunch that day. But tasty! We ended up going out with Finten and Jennifer with some of the Marine guard to Asian Heritage Road, and managed to crawl off the dancefloor around 3 in the morning. Most fun I’ve had in awhile really, and made me miss all the dancing and going out Cindy and I would do in Lafayette.

I am about “balled” out this past couple of months, looking forward to being a homebody for the rest of the year. There are some Thanksgiving and Christmas parties at some friend’s places, but at least I can just show up in jeans to those!

Now that I’ve finally beaten GTA3-San Andreas, I’ve been catching up on my reading. First, something easy – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. You’ve probably already heard about it, but it’s making the rounds in our household now. Much of what is in the book are ideas that I’ve (and many others) have had before, that success is more of a matter of “right place & right time,” but it is interesting to see just at fundamental of a level it exists at, how the seemingly insignificant at the time makes such a huge difference in people’s lives later on. It’s made me review my life a little bit more and identify those crossroads, and how it affected my life. Anyway, it’s some fluff reading before I get into the real bastard of a book and the preceding books in the series.

especially during Halloween! It was two nights of witching hours for us this year. Cindy and I again went with a theme, this time of Scooby Doo. She made a great Daphne (rawr) while my slacker butt went as Shaggy. We even had scooby snacks to pass out! The first party was at the lounge in the US embassy – we made a few friends there, some of which CIndy had already befriended and I got to meet for the first time. The next night we went party hopping to a couple of places, the first near Changat with a superhero theme. We had such illuminaries as Captain Offensive, The Flash, and various other superheroes that didn’t have names, but did have some interesting powers. It was quite a cool party and a good way to start the night before moving on to the next.

And the next place paid off. By far the winner of Halloween partying are the Norwegians, with the Fagervik’s very impressive decorations and entertainment. Good food, good music, good dancing, and loads of people there to chat with. Best of all it’s only 6 floors above where we live, so it’s easy to stumble home afterwards I was pretty much drained by the time we went home, after two nights of staying out late and having fun.

I think it’s funny how at a lot of social gatherings we go to people still get a kick out of Cindy and I being Americans living abroad, and the fact that we’re not being total rednecks :p