Home, part 3: Nom nom nom

The day's worth of delays meant I got home on Sunday, the day before Heather's birthday. This was her twenty-first, so the actual party would be held that night, leading up to midnight when she actually turned legal. Unshaven and wearing a t-shirt too big for me that I hadn't worn in a few years, I went to the party. A bunch of her friends and coworkers were there, and there was a ton of stuff to eat and drink. I was running on empty, and I knew exactly what was in store for the birthday girl, so I bowed out pretty early. The next morning, though, I dropped off some bagels and Powerade at her doorstep.

That day, the four of us took Heather out to lunch at a hibachi grill. It's called Hinode ("sunrise"), and it follows the exact same formula as Inoko and every other Japanese steakhouse I've been to. Except they can't hold a candle to yellow sauce, but that goes without saying.
We were trying to think of what to do that evening for her birthday, but Heather was on-call that afternoon, and got called in. Mom, Dad, and I decided to go see a movie. I had three movies on my to-do list: Indiana Jones and the Ridiculously Long Title, Wall-E, and The Dark Knight. I had them listed that way, too, in order of increasing expectations. Indiana Jones wasn't even at the dollar theater--an indication of how it had fared; I'd avoided reading reviews or following up on it after its release--Wall-E wasn't playing at the time we wanted, and we were going to wait for Heather to see The Dark Knight. Undeterred, we headed to the theater and picked one at the last minute: Swing Vote. It was cute, but more of a rental than a theater flick.

On Tuesday, I played golf with Dad, something I'd been longing to do for a full year. I managed two pars, which is as good as I've ever done. For having gone a year without touching a club, I don't think that's half bad.

Other than that, though, I can't keep track of when I did the things I did at home over those first four days. I tried in vain to find a Pizza Hut with a lunch buffet--the one I found over Christmas had been bulldozed--and instead settled on Breadeaux, which was one of the places Brian and Eric showed me when we used to skip lunch in high school. I also stopped at a sushi bar, and ate at Waffle House an average of once a day. (Hey, I had to make my rounds.)