The Helmand

Yesterday night for Dave's birthday a bunch of us went to The Helmand, an Afghan restaurant in North Beach in San Francisco. Helmand has a sister restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its primary claim to fame is in being owned by the sister of Afghan president Hamid Karzai. In the lobby there is an old photo of an Afghan sport I had once read about, where dozens of men on horseback compete for possession of a headless goat carcass. It's a good restaurant, although I wasn't quite as crazy about it as some of my friends were. The bread is extremely tasty though. Rather bizarrely, this quiet, tasteful restaurant is located along a couple blocks that are almost entirely filled with strip clubs.

After dinner we walked through North Beach to a chocolate store that gives free fudge samples (which unfortunately all contained eggs), and then ended up in Columbus Cafe, a very small, very loud "dive bar" that had a huge distracting video screen and an impressive variety of quality beers on tap.

Turning the gas on in our apartment causes the pipes to make this leaking noise, which sounds as though the apartment is going to be slowly flooded, or methane is going to slowly leak out and asphyxiate us...

Johanna has arrived in Reading. She sent me a video of her dorm room today. It looks nice.