Fri, Sept 26 - another bomb threat, plus first Presidential debate

9.50m - a sample cookie from Starbucks that Cecy brought for me from her coffee run (thanks, Cecy!). We had an oh so important meeting with Finance this morning that we were scrambling to prepare for - they decided an hour before the meeting that all of a sudden it had become necessary to have all our information in binders (instead of on the environmentally friendly shared drive, where we put it), so there was much fussing and swearing over tabs and copying and title pages until we got everything done, five minutes before the meeting - at which point Finance decided to postpone the whole thing. Ah well.
It ended up being a good thing though because at what would have been halfway through the meeting, there was yet another bomb threat and we had to evacuate. Who knows, we might have gotten left behind in the conference room, and missed out on that 3-h-evacuation lunch break...12.34pm - I'd already had a ramen lunch planned w/Nadya (below is the Mabo ramen at Asahi, plus some tsukemono - pickled cucumber), otherwise I would have joined the other MGMers either at Pink Taco for margaritas, or at the movies...

1.46pm - we were supposed to call the emergency hotline at 2pm to see if it was safe to return to work, so I I had some time to kill and went home for some cherry-lychee-vodka sorbet for dessert

4.35pm - the hotline wasn't updated until 2.40pm, so I didn't get back to work until 3.10. And honestly, nobody got much work done for the rest of the day, what with the bomb threat adrenaline, the resentment of actually having to come back to work afterwards, the anticipation of the first presidential debate tonight and, oh, the sky falling down economy-wise. I'd had only half of my soup for lunch (took the rest home for Ritesh), so I got hungry again and went for a little stroll over to Breadbar to pick up some baguette for tonight, and look what I found there: a fabulous, excellent rhubarb tart! To think that I could have missed it!

7.25pm - Korean pancakes, at Greg and Phinney's, watching the debate, w/ Ritesh

7.25pm - some white wine from the neighborhood

7.27pm - grapes, brie, and a buckwheat baguette from Breadbar

7.28pm - some bruschetta w/ olive tapenade

7.45pm - the next bottle - Ritesh got French wine to match...

8.09pm - ...the pates I'd brought from France (pork-hazelnut on the left, duck w/ green pepper on the right). The wine was good but pate I can live without. Reminds me a bit too much of the liver sausage I had to eat as a kid in Germany. Brrr....

9.00pm - ha!

10.14pm - mint ice cream sandwiches for dessert, while agonizing over Obama's perceived weaknesses (lecturing! too much complexity! going off on dissertations! and why oh why did he have to keep telling McCain that he was right?). But the polls look better than we expected, so phew.