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Karen VisitsI left work early today to pick up my friend Karen at the airport. Longtime readers may remember that Karen and I were good friends when we lived in Madison. Well, now I'm here, and she's finally finished her degree and has moved elsewhere herself. She's in town this weekend for a technical conference, and is staying with me tonight before heading to the hotel tomorrow. (Karen has pretty serious allergies, which is why I bought the new vacuum cleaner yesterday, to vacuum before she arrived. She can weather cats for a day or two, but probably wouldn't want to spend an extended time here.)Her flight was a bit late, but I arrived at the airport almost just as she was stepping off the plane. What timing! We grabbed her bags easily enough, and she got to see my new car. Then we drove to my place where we hung out for a little while, saw the cats, and set things up so she could sleep on my futon and have the spare bathroom to herself. (Yes, I have a full-service apartment, I do I do!) We stopped in at Apple so I could give her the tour. We bumped into my friend John - whom I've actually known almost as long as Karen, some to think of it - sitting around in the remnants of the afternoon beer bust, and said hi. It was a nice evening to walk around, what with the temperature having dropped considerably since Wednesday. After offering some food options, we decided to head to Menlo Park for Chinese. Upon arriving, who did we see standing on the street corner trying to decide on dinner plans themselves, but Lucy, Bill, and another woman I know in the area. They get together many Fridays for dinner and beer (I don't generally join them for reasons that are basically boorish). We observed that all of us but Lucy had lived in Madison for some number of years, and had a brief fun time chatting. Karen and I stuck to out Chinese plans, while the rest of them headed off for another place (as it turns out, the place they had in mind no longer exists, and they ended up going for sushi, so it was kind of nice not to be adding two more voices to those negotiations). Dinner was excellent, particularly a spicy pine nut chicken dish which I'd never had before. (I love pine nuts; I get them on my pizza at work!) I got a fortune in my cookie which read, "Share your good fortune with your friends, as well as your bad." Well, Karen got a cookie without a fortune, so I gave her mine! We walked around after dinner, working off some of the food we consumed, and talked about a variety of things, including relationships, as neither of us has a lot positive to report on that front of late (I mainly just have nothing to report, as you've probably noticed). We also talked about how my job is going, and how she's fitting in at her new job and new city. (Unlike me out here, she didn't really know anyone there before she moved there, which I think has been hard for her.) It sure was nice to catch up on things with her; it's been a year and a half since we've seen each other, and telephone isn't quite sufficient. We topped off the evening by going to Borrone where we each got dessert ("I guess I'm not as full as I thought I was!" pronounced Karen as she bought a slice of cheesecake, her will having been broken down by Borrone's case of desserts), and headed home to crash. It was a pleasant, leisurely evening. A great thing.
 By the way, I've finished writing up the entries for my Madison vacation of a few weeks ago, in three entries: 29 May, 1 June and 6 June, if you want to catch up on them.
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