Although my birthday wasn’t until next Monday, Melody decided to move up her visit to capitalize on the long weekend. With a co-fellow helping to cover clinic, I sneaked out of work Friday morning to pick up my other half from the airport, left her home to catch some zzz’s, then returned to wrap up at work. Exhausted afterwards, I joined her for an afternoon nap until dinner at the newly-opened Bleu Olive for Mediterranean fare just across the street which included a tasty mussel appetizer with roasted pork belly and gorgonzola cream. The meal put us back in a coma, and we awoke late next morning for shopping at Southpoint Mall. For lunch, we sought out the mysterious hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant tucked inside the local Kroger, where we were greeted by a talkative HK native who served up only mediocre beef chow fun and fried rice. We did score some work clothes for Melody at the mall, but our best discovery was Atomic Empire. This haven for geeks not only featured weekly MTG tournaments and board game nights, but also a library of demos to try out. We broke out their set of Carcasonne, and became quickly immersed in the German board game. We brought home a copy to continue re-building the French medieval town, laying down tiles and meeples over home-cooked bun rieu while watching the third installation of the Batman trilogy. On Sunday, after stuffing our faces with beignets and steak frites from Rue Cler, we celebrated MLK day and Obama’s inauguration by starting our own revolution – against the Templars of Britain. With the end of Ezio and Altair’s story, Assassin’s Creed 3 brings forth a new half-English half-Mohawk hero and moves the setting back home to Boston during the time of the American Revolution. With new features like climbing trees and firing muskets, the game kept us occupied through Monday, with only a brief pause for Indian buffet and locopops, before Melody had to head home.