So my good intentions to bike to work today went out of the window when it took me so long to unsuccessfully pump up the bike tire (wtf is with that!?) that I barely made it as it was, even though I took the train and power walked from the station... given the number of hours I've banked after I'm technically done work, I'm sure no one would say anything about being a few minutes late, but still... I hate being late!

Annnyway, spent the entire day working on the same thing today, which was fun (handily!)- I got to research existing books on tea (either very Asian, or very 'your grandmother threw up on this!') and then start working on a few sample layouts for a design job we seem to be possibly doing. It was good fun, and I got to wander down to the gorgeous design and lifestyle book shop down the street in the name of research.

It was good fun to be playing around in InDesign again (oh yea, I'm just that cool, we won't mention how excited trolling through typefaces got me or anything!) It's a bit of a challenging 'brief', b/c the book hasn't been written yet, so we don't know much about length of text, the style of the book, or even particularly what the text to image ratio would be or anything. On the other hand its great to not have any constraints except for size, so it was really fun to work on once I got rolling!

I was just leaving at five (kinda vaguely on time!) when Helen said I should come to the opening of Suji's the whole office had been invited to that afternoon. As it didn't start for another hour, I headed off to study nihongo for awhile, and then came back to the office.

(walking back and forth between the office and Mcds where I had a drink and was studying, there was some serious excitement to the tune of at least 10 fire trucks, this dude on his huge cherry picker, etc. It was all going down at the brown building on the corner beside Donki...not sure what the story was, but pretty dramatic looking!)

In the end, I worked for another 45 minutes or so (Weekender goes to print tomorrow morning), and then at 7ish or just after, Helen, Arina and I went downstairs where we were shortly met by Anthony and his friend. We've all been intrigued by the construction just next door to us, so it was great to see the place on opening night - it's lovely!

Suji's is "the next best thing to mom's home cooking". Actually, it's probably safely better than MY mom's home cooking, for one (sorry mom!). It's a New York themed restaurant and bar (we're very excited about their brunch!) owned by a Korean/American woman (Suji). We had a good time meeting Suji herself, plus her brother (who is the General Manager of their original location in Soeul), the chef, Jason, who was great fun, and various other members of the staff, all of whom seem to be here via NYC, and are all super friendly, great people. Suji's officially opens for dinner on Friday, and then kicks of the brunch scene on Saturday - we saw the menu and it looks sooo good, can't wait!

Arina and I left at the same time, and on the way to the station discovered we're both Odakyu Line dwellers, so we traveled as far as my station together; it was nice to have some company! It's about 10:30 now, and Peter is out with some business people until who knows when, so I think I'll grab some food (I didn't eat much at Suji's, it was good though!) and then perhaps watch the second Coachella DVD before heading to bed fairly early (yea, right!)

D