sobriety, squids, & black cows

this should have been posted yesterday (if we're keeping in time with our once-a-week post ratio suggested by fellow bloggers and friends) but i delayed because i knew last night would reveal a whole bunch of bit-betters...

life is a bit better when you're sober-- or at least it is for our dear friend ns. last night, we celebrated his 2-year anniversary of going sober, which as it probably happens for most, was more accurately the 2-year anniversary of the last time he was pissdrunk, which would actually make today the true 2-year anniversary of his sobriety. congrats, ns! we're all real proud of you!

we were supposed to surprise ns at pho 75, but ab, always seeking out the bit-betters, suggested we throw a hitch in the party plans and sneak over to the lovely nam phuong, which is more than a bit better than pho 75 (though not nearly as fancy or colonial-fusion as its website would like you to believe).

10 of us ate papaya&tofu salad; salt&pepper squids (a bit better than calamari); spring and summer rolls; crispy, pan-fried, cellophane, vermicelli, and egg noodles with eggplant, tofu, chicken, and beef in black bean, fish, and lemongrass sauces; and an enormous vegetarian crepe with unknown ingredients. and we proudly cleared most plates.

jonathan made a toast to ns, who is a bit better than most recovering alcoholics because he will never deny a small sip of your beer, just for the taste-- always the connoisseuer. and it turns out his friends like him a bit better now that he's sober.

a whittled-down party of 5 went back to sh's house for ice cream sodas, where it was determined that the coke float is a bit better than its traditional brother, the root beer float, aka, the black cow. both are genius in their simple construction: breyers vanilla ice cream (be not misled by ice creams by any other name) and the essential bendy straw. the coca-cola (sorry, pepsi drinkers, no substitutes) subverts the whole experience, throwing in an unexpected, unfamiliar, but delicious interplay between the fakeness of the cola syrup and pureness of the vanilla ice cream. divine.

on a scale of 1-5 (1. nofun 2. somefun 3. abitfun 4. alottafun 5. toomuchfun) ns rated his party somewhere between a 3 and a 4. well, maybe a couple of martinis would have tipped the scales.