Holiday socializing

[oyceter]

1. I met up with jinian and W. last last week, and we had delicious fusion Vietnamese, complete with duck spring rolls. I love duck spring rolls. Whoever thought of them was a genius. I burbled madly about quite a few anime and manga series to both of them and now must remember to mail some over, and then I dragged them over and sicced rats on them.
   
   In a nice, non-horror-movie fashion, of course.
   
   Alas and alack, dinner took so long that I was scared they had forgotten my order again (this has been happening to me quite often lately), so I wasn't able to pimp all that much to them. But! Snail mail will do as well!



2. I met up with yhlee and dragged her away from her sister a few days ago, we had delicious New Orleans food. I had a fried chicken po'boy and stole some of my sister's gumbo, both of which were wonderful. But! The best part ever were the beignets, warm and fresh and toasty from the deep fryer, liberally sprinkled over with sugar and cinnamon. They came with three dipping sauces -- chocolate, caramel, and raspberry -- and I liked each one better than the last, no matter what order I tried them in.
   
   We then attempted to watch The Collector, except my computer decided it hated Yoon's disc. So we contented ourselves with 1x02 of Spooks, because that is the one that made me decide the show was worth watching, and episode 1 of Ouran, which I hadn't actually planned on pimping. But Yoon asked for something light and fluffy, and Ouran is my favorite light and fluffy and absolutely hilarious thing ever.
   
   Even though that was the third or fourth time I've seen the first episode, I still nearly fell off the couch. The lightbulbs! The blinking arrows! The commoner coffee!



3. Yesterday I went to watch Blood Diamond with an old co-worker. It is an excellent movie and I must write it up. Soon. When I get through the book and manga backlog.
   
   Why do you mock me?!

ETA: and since I am planning on pimping a ton of stuff, does anyone have good recs for a DVD-ROM/CD-ROM burning program? Freeware is happy, but mine is so capricious that I am willing to shell out a little money (only in the two-digits range though, and the less the better). I've been using Click 'n Burn, which sometimes burns and sometimes mucks up the disc. Or maybe it's just my DVD-RW drive....