At work Monday, we got a little cultural culinary lesson!

Ling, the newest hire to the department, brought a box of fruit native to her home country, China, for us to try!

Apparently, this fruit grows in more temperate climates, so she ordered them from Florida, where they are grown and exported stateside!

She said they are commonly eaten straight or used in dessert.

Ling was thoughtful enough to print out a Wikipedia page for us to refer to.

What’s crazy about this fruit is that the husk is hard, so it has to be peeled off to get to the fruit! It has one seed/pit in the center, so I had to be mindful of that as I was trying them. I thought it tasted/had a similar texture to a grape!

Friday, I met up with a friend who I worked with at my very first job after graduating college!

This is a crazy story. Last week, I was in the lunch room with others and they were discussing one of their offices moving and who would be working there. The name Ifrah came up and my ears perked. I pulled up a photo from back in the day and asked if this was who they were talking about…it was!

Ifrah and I worked together in Columbus back in 2015 to 2016. She moved to a different state, so I hadn’t seen her since then! After discovering she was in the area, I reached out to her and we determined that we had to meet up and catch up. She recommended The Warehouse in Old Town Alexandria!

It’s not often I’m indecisive when looking at a menu, but this place had so many seafood options that I was struggling to pick! I ended up going with a surf and turf (filet mignon and a lump crab cake) and was not disappointed!

It was so good to catch up. Ifrah is still as fun-loving and good-humored as ever.

After we parted ways, I decided to I wasn’t done with the beautiful evening and decided to walking by the different restaurants and shops, all the while people-watching along the way.

When I spotted an ice cream shop, I decided that was just what was needed on my meandering.

This is the same walk that Kathryn and I did several weeks ago and it was just as lovely now as it was then! There were so many people out, to walk their dogs, to picnic with their families, to stroll hand-in-hand with someone they love. It really was such a picturesque time and I just happily ate my ice cream as I watched it all happen around me.

Saturday morning, Kristen and I checked off another item on our recommendations list: Castle in the Sky! Any Studio Ghibli fans out there?

I hadn’t watched the movie for a very long time, so I felt like I was watching it all over again for the first time! I will never get over how talented those teams were, to put together such beautiful films.

Saturday evening was part two of celebrating Elizabeth’s birthday: an escape room!

I last did an escape room when a friend designed one and set it up in the Perry’s basement back in Rio. It had been a while, too long in fact!

I will say that I hold a title with pride, in that I have never been part of team where we didn’t get out in time.

Thankfully, this crew was the perfect size and had a healthy representation of personalities to function well under the pressure, so that title still remains in hand.

The most fun moment, however, was actually as we were leaving. Patrick offered up the idea of doing one of the other rooms since we still had plenty of evening left. We asked the owner if he had an opening and he did! Thirty minutes later, we were back in another room to escape from!

The first room had a 40% success rate. The second 30%. Not only did we beat the odds, but for the second room, we also finished in a short enough time to make it on the board!

Our team name was Double Half Dozens (there were six of us and we doubled up on the night). 4th place isn’t too shabby for no hints and, as we later learned, given the harder clue version.

It was an absolute blast of a time! You can’t beat a good group of friends and some good ol’ brain exercise!