ice cream and hamburgers

im not really a 'hamburger person', meaning: while i enjoy a good hamburger now and then, if i'm at a normal restaurant and there are other things to be had, i probably wont order a burger. that said, i had one the best hamburgers ever at this place called 'five guys'. i like that a regular hamburger has 2 patties and you have to specify 'small' if you only want one. i like that i can order things like mushrooms, sauteed onions and/or fresh jalapeno peppers on my hamburger in addition to normal hamburger things. i also think its amusing that they give you an order of french fries by dumping cups of them everywhere in your paper bag, all over your wrapped hamburgers so you have to dig your hamburger out of a salty greazy mess.

i also finally got in on this 'coldstone' icecream fad. there is one of those right next door to five guys. they put ice cream on this cold thing and smash around your chosen ingredients by hand instead of blending them with a machine. i invented my most best ice cream creation ever. it was: cake batter ice cream, reeses pb cups, and red raspberries! ive never had a more delicious tasting mixture. i should market this flavor, but what shoudl i call it?

my laptop apathy

remember way back around christmas when my computer died? i guess that was about 4 months ago. my dear sister spent hours on the phone with dell and got me a new harddrive and installed it and everything. that made me very happy, but several things still werent working- such as sound, video, and so forth. my dad fixed the sound with all those mysterious things called drivers. but for the longest time we couldnt figure out the video. we tried all kinds of drivers and programs but apparently they were the wrong ones. i was getting some weird errors that didnt quite tell me the problem, just side effects of it- like not playing dvds because my output function was enabled (what the heck?).

so anyway, one of the main uses of my laptop in the past has been watching dvds. after this looong period of not having that (and the fact that no one was ever online when i was awake) i just stopped using it, except for checking my email when mom's computer wasnt on. but dad and i fixed it yesterday! it was as simple as downloading the correct driver (i had tried 2 or 3 already).

hooray! i can watch sports night in my room again!

philadelphia

i finally went to visit my good friend emily, who's doing a grad program in philly. its sad that its taken me all the school year to go see her. she lives in indiana normally, so its about 6 hours shorter to drive to philly. whats wrong with me? i had a great time. i hadnt realised how much i miss being around friends from school, or even around people my age. i know i got really sick of being around only people my age when i was in college. i missed the little kids and older people, the variety of age. but now i just feel isolated. its not that i want to be in huge groups of 20 somethings again, just a few of my closest friends to hang out with, the ones i havent seen in months.

anyway, i had fun walking all over downtown philly where ej lives. my shoes were falling a part by the time we had walked a couple hours. they were pretty old to start with, but my suburban life requires very little walking- more driving than anything.

we had some great food. i will always love try different foods. we had middle eastern for lunch (lamb, olives, feta cheese, pita bread and real thick sweet coffee) and chinese for dinner (lychee duck) one day. and i got bubble tea again. man that stuff is great. i wish i had quick access to it around here. one thing im really looking forward to about going to school in dallas is ethnic food. lots of good mexican too =) another thing im looking forward to is learning about languages.

i'll have to post a couple pictures from the weekend but i need to download them.