Friday evening I hit Fogo de Chao with a friend. It was, in a word, amazing. To begin with, they let you hit a fairly large salad bar, as if you were in a Ponderosa, Golden Corral, or Western Sizzlin'. But the comparison to a standard low-budget steakhouse ends right there: once you've idiotically gorged on greens, they bring out a series of sides, and then you get to use the discs.

Oh yes: the discs.

One turns them from red to green and suddenly crazy gaucho-pants-wearing men with long knives show up to dispense slices of meat to all in attendance. Make them frown by rejecting them, or watch them smile when you agree to try the fillet of lamb! It's all good. For more background on the actual process, feel free to visit their website but put simply, there are 12 different types of meat floating around (some wrapped in delicious bacon) and all are excellent.

Saving room for dessert was a challenge, but we managed to do so, in the process polishing off a couple bottles of Brazilian wine.

The only sad moment came when the bill arrived. Despite the carnival like atmosphere, the style of dress (this is DC, after all) should've clued me in that this was more of a Sam & Harry's than a Ponderosa. Value wise, however, you definitely get your meat money's worth. The next time your favorite carnivore is in town, get him to Fogo, fast!

That's right: I'm finally going to hit Fogo tonight for some tasty meat.

Now if only the weather will stay perfect, this could be a great way to start out the evening...

Any day that there's a blue sky above me I'm going to be feeling pretty good. Throw in a convertible, some tasty lunch and an increasingly interesting book into the mix and the result is a marvelous mood melange; excited anticipation of evening activities, a content feeling all over from lunch, etc.

It makes my multi-tasking abilities about 50% more efficient, as well, so that instead of juggling five things at once, I can keep ten balls up in the air.

Okay, there are still tons of things broken, including:

• comments
• staff/members page
• style on the back-end
• searching
• registration
• archives

Hopefully I'll have time over the next couple of days to get all that working again, probably in the order above.

Until then, though, feel free to keep posting stories. And e-mailing me to tell me how much you hate the new look.

Okay, I think I fixed the problems with logging in. To log back in, type in your nickname (or e-mail address, if it's been set) into the form to the left. Then click "pontificate" at the bottom of the page. Sound good?