Friday Night Fever (3/29/02) - Last night, I rushed home from work to meet friends for dinner at 6:30PM. Unfortunately, Alina and Allen (and little Faith) didn’t show up at Daimo Chinese Restaurant in Richmond until 7PM. I knew that would happen. Last week they were 20 minutes late.

Jenny and I have always wanted to eat at Daimo’s since it always seems crowded when we drive past it. The menu is gigantic, with over 500 items. Dinner was the standard Chinese fare, Hong Kong-style. We have Singapore-style chow fun (spicy hot!), catfish with black bean sauce (yummy), kung pao chicken (poor), veal short ribs (so-so) and jook with kidney & liver (yuck). This mixed review gets two stars, maybe two and a half for atmosphere. I don’t think we’ll be coming here too often.

And now for the exciting part—after dinner, we all drove down to Toys ‘R’ Us to register for Jenny’s baby shower. Thrilling, huh? I absolutely hate shopping, and when it’s at a dumpy store like Toys ‘R’ Us, it’s even more unbearable. Now I’m glad I didn’t get the Williams-Sonoma offer. I realized tonight that working for a retail company would go against my core values of minimal consumption and anti-consumerism. For me, it would be the moral equivalent of working at Planned Parenthood as an abortionist or as a spokesman for the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). I hate buying anything other than food and toilet paper. I also despise getting mail order catalogs, too.

Jenny and Alina were like kids in a candy store, snapping up everything from diapers to nipple brushes for the registry. I questioned some items initially, but I soon acquiesced for Jenny’s sake. The baby shower and the delivery day—much like our wedding—will be her moment to shine. For all she’s going though right now, Jenny deserves to have things her way.