Circle of Life

Saturday evening I went down to DC (as I do semi-regularly now) to hang out with Tyler and Palmer, some old Woodberry friends. Tyler Brown is quite literally the Woodberry friend I have known the longest, as he was my host when I visited the Woodberry campus for the very first time. His gloriously blatant honesty (which contrasted sharply with the patronizing feeling I got from my hosts at other schools I visited) was the thing that tipped me over the edge in wanting to go to Woodberry.

The conversation went something like this (but it was ten years ago, so it's likely that none of this actually happened and I've gone beyond paraphrasing into mythology):

Me: "So tell me about Woodberry."

Tyler: "Sometimes it sucks. A lot of people don't like being here because they were forced to go here in one way or another. There are a good number of jerks. A lot of the rules are arbitrary But... it's a beautiful campus, they've got lots of resources, and if you want to they'll let you do really awesome things sometimes."

And that was it for me. It was a good choice on my part, and I've always been grateful to Tyler for, in his own way, convincing me to go to Woodberry.

This year, in another completely roundabout way, Tyler Brown convinced me to go to Law School. Well, it was mostly Palmer, but Tyler was the catalyst and if I can fit Tyler into the story it makes for a nicer... story.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll put the details of that conversion ("what?! I DON'T hate the idea of law?") in another post.

Back to Saturday. Palmer finished his final law school exams and so we had some drinks and then went to the BEST Chinese place ever, Jackey Cafe. On second thought, I really have no objective way of knowing whether it's the best ever, but the sesame chicken I had there was the BEST sesame chicken I've ever had.

Sunday- saw Thor with Tyler. Entertainingly underwhelming.

Sunday evening Tyler and I went into Baltimore to find somewhere random to eat before he took a train back to DC. We took a gamble with an Afghan Kabob place and won bigtime. After tenuously placing our order with the ten-year-old cashier (no one else seemed to be around, so we thought he might be making our food as well...) we sat back and watched Al Jazeera on the TV for a bit (where I learned more about the upcoming Endeavor launch than I think I ever would have on CNN, FOX, NBC, etc...). When the food came out, there was a ton of it and the kabobs were delicious. More importantly, though, my meal came with a side-dish of seasoned chickpeas which may as well have been laced with laced with crack cocaine. I could have eaten those chickpeas for every meal for a week. They were THAT good (though I'm pretty sure I'm displaying my ignorance about crack cocaine and drug consumption in general when saying something like that. I just don't have any go-to metaphors for when something tastes good, since tastes are subjective. Laced with nicotine? Salvia? I'm out of my territory here. Is there a highly addictive and flavorless substance that you just eat?).

So this entire post was to say that if you go to Afghan Kabob on North Charles Street in Baltimore, I recommend the chickpeas. That was what I wanted to get across when I sat down (stood up) to write this.