food and video games

friday a vietnamese coworker came up to my desk and offered me something he’d gotten from a vietnamese shop. he does this from time to time, and i try to have a good attitude about trying things that sometimes seem a bit odd, and are about as likely to turn out poorly for my tastebuds as not. well, these things were excellent. the best way i can describe them is sort of like cajun hushpuppies. they’re made of corn meal and look like wedge fries. they are deep-fried, evidently involving curry and some kind of pepper. they’re also somewhat sweet. another co-worker tried them as well and commented how well they would go with beer. he was right on the money. i thought i’d get some friday after work, but the directions/instructions weren’t accurate so i couldn’t find the place.
today after lunch, my coworker showed up with a bag of them just for me! and he told me he’d given me incorrect info. i called up brad and kelli (i saw her credit card last night and realized i’d been spelling her name wrong all this time) and asked them if they wanted to meet me at the west alabama ice house for some beer and these wonderful things. they did. we met there and had a couple of hours of deep conversation about G-d, free will vs. predestination, spiritual matters, etc. over a couple of beers. afterward we headed to taco cabana for supper. another nice evening.
i was able to see kelli’s card last night because i hung out with her and brad last night as well. they called me and said they were in the area, so they dropped by my house. we then drove down westheimer and stopped at late nite pie. brad and i played a number of rounds of two-player joust on a stand up arcade there. man, i used to love playing joust back in the day. that and frogger.
but my absolute favorite arcade game was wizard of wor. hardly anyone seems to know that game, but it was great. especially two player. i used to get on my bike and meet up with a neighborhood friend at leo’s. they had a game room with 10 or so video games and a couple of pool tables. we’d spend saturday afternoons there, playing video games and pool, listening to joan jett and ac/dc and other stuff of that era on the jukebox, eating grilled cheese sandwiches and drinking burt braton (sp?) specials (which was some kind of concoction of sprite and cream or something, named after the guy who i guess had ordered it for years). that was probably sixth and seventh grade or so. ah, the joys of growing up in small town Texas when life was simpler and you were more isolated than the networked, connected, high-speed world of today.