It dawned on me last night that tonight is my night to host Top Comments and Kitchen Table Kibitzing (Friday has been "my" Top Comments night for so long that I just take it for granted)! And today, between preparing my Top Comments diary, comps reading, and attending our August Houston Area Kossacks meet-up, I've barely had time to put together something original for Kitchen Table Kibitzing. So I thought I'd just kill two birds with one stone (that's a terrible saying...poor birds...) and post some meet-up pr0n tonight. Because who doesn't love meet-up pr0n? You do, don't lie!
This time, we decided to meet at Hollywood Vietnamese and Chinese, a rather legendary, LGBT-friendly establishment in the Montrose gayborhood, for some good, cheap eats. Once we navigated the menu (which is almost as long as my Ph.D. dissertation is going to be), that is. They truly are all-encompassing with their Asian food, serving standard Vietnamese dishes such as vermicelli and even pad Thai. The food was delicious, and the conversation was fun. Follow me below the rice noodles for the pr0nnnnn...
I'll start with the food pr0n. I mentioned the vermicelli--here's jmbar2's:
As for me, I tried the beef pho. I was skeptical, to be honest, because I'm a pretty big pho snob, and in my experience places that don't specialize in it tend not to serve very good pho. But I was very pleasantly surprised.
This looked pretty tasty, too, so I snapped a picture of it before GrannyOPhilly and her husband could dig in. You can see her chopsticks in the upper left corner, ready to go!
And now on to the people. First, GrannyOPhilly and her husband:
And suesue and her husband:
And Libby Shaw:
And (from left to right) Libby Shaw again, cosette, and htowngenie:
And, finally, a group picture of all of us, taken by our lovely waiter (who was on top of his shit and never let me run out of Diet Coke!). Starting on the left and working the way around the table...cosette, Libby Shaw, htowngenie, your humble diarist, jmbar2, GrannyOPhilly's husband, GrannyOPhilly, suesue, and Mr. suesue's arm (whoops!).
A good time was had by all, and we missed those who couldn't make it. But next month, it's looking like we're going to have a house party in support of Wendy Davis, so hopefully we'll see our prodigal Houston Area Kossacks soon!
Now, on to the kibitzing!
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of their evening around a virtual kitchen table with kossacks who are caring and supportive of one another. So bring your stories, jokes, photos, funny pics, music, interesting videos, and so forth. Or just say "Hi" if you've had a long day and are too exhausted to participate more actively. We would also appreciate links—including quotations—to diaries, news stories, and books that you think this community would appreciate.
Please note that pie fights will be unwelcome in this community, just as in most other series at DKos. There's lots of space at the rest of the site for fighting with other Democrats, progressives, and liberals, and we don't want those battles dragged into this community.
Finally, readers may notice that most who are posting diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but that definitely does not mean that newcomers will be excluded or unwelcome. We're happy to welcome guests to our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
KTK posts nightly at 5:00 Pacific, 6:00 Mountain, 7:00 Central, 8:00 Eastern.