Somehow yesterday slipped away from me without my getting to the blog, but I wanted to send a quick shout out to Dianna:

Dianna is the best officemate a sprite could ask for, and I miss her tremendously now that I’m not at Wes anymore. And, in addition to being a kick-ass officemate, she remains a wonderful friend and an inspiration for what someone can accomplish when she follows her bliss. If anyone can inspire me to put down the book and get off the couch, she can. Thanks, Di, for all you do and for being such a groovy chick!

One of the things I miss most about Connecticut (aside from the obvious loved ones) is pizza. Yes, they sell something called pizza in D.C. — and some of it is even good — but it’s not actually pizza.

District friends have stopped asking me to join them for pizza, afraid to hear once again my treatise about the subject. My folks try to oblige us by having pizza whenever we visit them in the northern reaches of the state, but the Sicilians must have preferred to stay by the shore, because it’s just not the same.

But Friday, in our second annual Good Friday Pizza Dinner, the random duck and I managed to convince 7 friends still in the region to join us for our own version of a religious experience at Modern Apizza in New Haven.

For the uninitiated, New Haven has boasted some of the most famous pizzerias in the world since the 1930s. The Wooster Street eateries — Pepe’s and Sally’s, in particular — are the most well known and should be experienced periodically. But in my book (and, now, my blog), Modern on State Street is the best.

The lines are shorter. You can generally find parking without having to circle the block 12 times. And the pizza — oh, the pizza! The crust is dark, but not tooth-breaking (my biggest complaint with Pepe’s). And the sauce, mozzarella (pronounced moot-za-rell-(optional)a), and crust are all tasty. (Living in D.C. has really made me appreciate how underrated a good crust is.) And the pies are hot!

We ordered four pies for the table — cheese (the perfect, unadulterated pizza — to which all others everywhere are compared), pepperoni with half mushroom, bacon with half artichoke hearts, and the Veggie Bomb (which was laden with probably a dozen different vegetables) — as well as several salads, and garlic bread with cheese. No one left hungry and no one left slices behind (a sacrilege if ever I heard one).

The only downside to the night? It will probably be another long, long year before I make it to Modern again. But memories of an evening with great friends and great food will fuel me for quite a while.

Life is good.