the Dalaverse

Excellent night out, especially for a Wednesday. Katherine, Megan, and I met Tina at Houlihans in Columbia. Food was great, company better. We sat around after the check was paid for what must have been an hour.

Dad saw Angelina Jolie yesterday! They're filming "Salt" in DC and were apparently on the opposite side of the Navy Memorial Metro, and he could see her from upstairs in the Archives (he was doing research). He reports that she was sitting in a director's chair and wearing a tan coat. I asked if she had blond hair, but she had a hat on so he couldn't tell (set photos tell me I was right). It's rather exciting. Crews film in DC from time to time, but we rarely get to actually see them. I did see Kevin Smith in his comic shop in Red Bank once, though (they were filming something so we couldn't actually go inside, btu he was easily recognizable through the window). That is by far my most impressive celebrity sighting. I can't decide if Angelina trumps it. But Dad met Fidel Castro when he was a kid, so that's pretty much the all-time winner.

Thinking of asking for something really frivolous for my birthday. I'm into jewelry at the moment and have become obsessed with colored pearls. The dyed ones are perfectly lovely, but what I really want is some genuine Tahitian black pearls. They are freaking beautiful. And expensive - I'm not thinking of like a whole strand, obviously, because I'm not insane. But I found some nice stud earrings and pendants on sale at various places (did you know that you can actually get some fairly pricey jewelry from Kohls? I did not). The thing is, I don't actually have a lot of fine jewelry - there's my aquamarine pendant/earrings/ring set (the ring was the first thing I bought from my first job, then my parents added the rest), the pearl necklace and earrings I got for high school graduation, and...that's pretty much it. I suppose you could count my class ring (which, have I ever told you, has BOATS on it? Yeah, I wouldn't have cared if it were any old dumb college ring, but fortunately St. Mary's is AWESOME). The rest of it is varying degrees of costume stuff, cut crstals and cheap metals. I'm not knocking it, but it would be nice to start acquiring more...grown-up bling, if you will. My mom and I may have completely divergent taste in jewelry, but she does like her 14K gold.

I dunno. Maybe I'll go look at it in the store and go "ewww." But right now we wants the precious. At least I don't give a shit about diamonds, so that'll never cause me heartache. IMO the job of a diamond, if present, is to be a tiny, sparkly accent to a colored gem.

In other news, I am nearly done reading Watchmen and super excited to see the movie.