after literally dining solely on cereal, fruit, popcorn, cheese, and crackers for the last several days (punctuated by unattended free food in the lab *pounce!* and the pathetic appearance of a food truck lunch), i am relieved to be going out for an actual meal tonight with fellow hpair comrade lipoff. he claims the cong you bing are unparalleled at wang's in somerville. in any case, i plan for many savoury homemade dumplings to meet their demise at the end of my chopsticks. yum.

curiously amusing moment today: my labmate dbdbking was a bit peckish this afternoon, so i offered him some microwave popcorn (wrapped, unpopped) that i had lying around. he looked at it curiously and confessed he had never made popcorn before. ever. it's either a cultural thing, or i just have a strange existence where i can't imagine life before microwave popcorn (the quickest! way to! buttery! salty!), but he either gets popcorn at the movie theater or has the sweet, caramelly kind. we went to the kitchen and got really good at listening to the popping. (of course i didnt want his first batch to be burned! how traumatic.) after digging his hands into the bag after the steam had subsided, he seemed to think the taste was satisfactory.

i think i made a new recruit into popcornism!