I made a promise to myself when Cook’s Illustrated began arriving in my mailbox: each month, I have to make at least one recipe from the latest issue. The Jan/Feb issue has an insanely simple bread recipe based on a no-knead recipe from Mark Bittman. I have used his French baguette recipe from How to Cook Everything with much success, but with this recipe, I may just leave the stand mixer in the cupboard from now on.
2 hour cooling time? Ugh! I can’t wait to eat this.
I got my first look at Vista with Angeline’s new Thinkpad. So far, it’s not looking too good.
The first snow has fallen, and so begins our inevitable slide into winter. Why does winter have to be so cold?
I haven’t been updating this or doing many projects recently, as work has occupied my life. Over the last month or two I’ve been prepping and shipping a 6-month-late, extremely buggy software release and cleaning up the ensuing mess. Unfortunately, I saw this coming a year ago, and continue to see danger ahead: our customer has retaliated by shortening our schedule for phase 2 from six to two months. Those whose managers have never read the Mythical Man Month are doomed to repeat it. Well, it’s about time to start taking off the month of vacation time that I’ve stowed away.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen a good band. Well, not too long ago — we saw Los Lonely Boys in Honolulu during our honeymoon. I meant to write that up, but what more is there to say than they are a capable cross between Santana and SRV? Anyway, the fact remains that I’ve seen many fewer shows this year than in recent times.
That is why when I saw that John Patitucci is playing tomorrow night with a 3 piece including the most frickin’ awesome drummer alive, Brian Blade, for only $25 at the Kennedy Center, I had to grab a pair of tickets. (The KC has a jazz club? Who knew?) Patitucci is most well-known as the bass player for various incarnations of Chick Corea bands, and if he doesn’t set the crowd ablaze, I’m sure Blade will.
Joe and Jessica can throw a good costume party. As we did 2 years ago, Angeline and I hit up the toons for inspiration. This time we went as Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go!, respectively. Who were just as obscure as Venture Bros. to everyone in attendance. Oh well.
I didn’t do as much engineering with this one as I did with the Monarch costume, but I did do some craft work: I replaced the black strap on a $10 messenger bag with an orange strap, hemmed Dora’s shorts which were originally jogging pants (yay for my new sewing abilities), and spent an hour or so drawing out the logo for the button to the right in Inkscape. I only saw the logo for a brief period at Toys ‘R Us and then worked from a really low res bitmap, so I was particularly pleased with how that last bit turned out.
I only saw it in pictures, but I think Jerome’s baby in a pot costume was the best there.
Frommer’s and Let’s Go! were our guide books to the foodie destinations on the islands. By the way, I hate that term, foodie. Anyway, we tried to hit some of the nicer restaurants as well as experience some local flavor. We also tried to take pictures of all of the food, though people looked at us funny.
In the latter category, saimin (similar to ramen noodles) was highly recommended by both guides. Hamura’s in Lihu’e, was definitely a locals spot; we stuck out like a pair of sore sunburned thumbs. The bowls come with a piece of fish, an egg, some random bits of greenery, and a couple of wontons. The food was great as these things go, though I prefer dry food to wet. I added a pair of satays to the mix that were excellent. Also a local Lihu’e haunt, The Deli and Bread Connection served up some mighty fine sandwiches. This was the only place we visited twice, so that says something.
On the pricier side, there was Ciao Mein, the strange mix of Asian and Italian food that had us eating risotto with chopsticks. Best word to describe this is “Wha?” They did sauce a decent chicken though.
Keo’s is a Thai restaurant in Waikiki. Here I had perhaps the best pork chop I’ve ever had. The more typical Asian fare looked good as well.
Our two best meals were actually at a chain restaurant. Sorry local establishments, but McDonald’s just knows how to make awesome fries. Ok, scratch that — they were actually at Roy’s Restaurant, which declares itself a practitioner of “Hawaiian fusion cuisine,” whatever that is. But they can cook the hell out of a fish. And steak. And BBQ ribs. The Waikiki location was so good we had to try the Poipu one too. Which wasn’t quite as good, but it still beat the pants off of a lot of the resort restaurants.
And we ate lots and lots of ahi. Raw, seared, maki rolls, nut crusted, peppercorn crusted… any way that it could be prepared, I think we ate it.
I’m married now, woot! Angeline and I were wed in a quick ceremony in Rockville with 80 of our closest friends and family. I’m so lucky! I feel so grown up.
We’ve spent the last week on Oahu, and today we’re hopping on a plane to go visit Kauai for a week. Also, this marks the last day of free hotel internet, so I guess I might as well blog a note or two.
Our hotel is situated right on Waikiki Beach. I would definitely stay at this spot again – it’s extremely convenient to plenty of dining options and, while not the largest beach on the island, Waikiki Beach has plenty of charm. At this time of year it’s not too terribly crowded.
While here we climbed Diamond Head (a former volcano crater with excellent views of Waikiki), visited the Polynesian Culture Center for a luau, circumnavigated the island, visited a pineapple plantation, went swimming near the Banzai Pipeline (non-existent at this time of year), ate some incredible meals, and just generally relaxed. One of the coolest things was snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, where we saw a large sea turtle eating algae off of a rock. We were close enough that we could reach out and touch him, if that weren’t frowned upon by the park service.
It’s actually a bit too windy here to fly the kites, especially since I left my 150 lb line at home. I may try to fly my eddy this week on Kauai even so.
Anyone who has been looking at my flickr feed has seen that I’ve had another kite in the works for the last couple of months. I’ve had this particular one in mind for a while but didn’t quite have the sewing skills to pull it off until now. So, I present, the Snorlax rokkaku:
To build this, first, I stole a graphic off of Wikipedia and re-drew it in Inkscape, so that I’d have a vector version to work with. I saved an EPS version of the image then used the poster program in Linux to print it out, scaled way up, on regular letter size paper with cut and paste margins. After assembling all of the individual pieces of paper together into one huge image, I placed it on my glass coffee table, put black ripstop nylon on top, and a lamp under the table, so that I could then trace it with a white fabric pencil.
Next, I layered several large sheets of ripstop nylon: white on bottom, turquoise, gray, and the black which had the tracing of the design on top. I sewed zigzags along all of the lines, then cut out layers of ripstop from the front and back until the appropriate color was left. Finally, I added triangular panels of RSN for the top and bottom of the kite, hemmed the whole thing, and added spar pockets and reinforcements. I sparred it with carbon rods – SkyShark P400 center spar and a pair of P200s or P300s for the spreaders (I have both for varying wind conditions).
Now the rationale: I wanted to finish this one in time for our honeymoon, as Snorlax is something of a mascot for Angeline. At least, that’s what she got when she did the ‘which Pokemon are you?’ quiz (Keirsey has nothing on the internets). We don’t really know anything about the Snorlaxi but it seemed like the perfect cartoon to put on this rok, and now Angeline has her own kite to fly when I’m putting up my della porta in Hawaii!
From: privacymanager@bestbuy.com
> Bob said:
> Someone signed my email address up for reward zone program and it wasn't
> me. Please remove it, thanks.Bob,
I am Chazy with Best Buy Customer Care.
Thank your for contacting Best Buy about your Reward Zone account. I
will be more than glad to assist you.I am pleased to inform you that in order to provide the best service
possible, we will need more information from you. Please reply to this
email with your full name, mailing address and phone number so we can
find your Reward Zone account.Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns. We
look forward to your next visit to one of our stores or to
www.BestBuy.com.Thank you,
Chazy
Best Buy Customer Care Team
Yeah… I’ll get right on that, guy. I’m pleased to inform you that you are a moron.
We’re down to 31 days until the wedding, and pretty much everything is done, modulo the odd vendor meeting, dance lesson, and so forth. We have also sent sharp sticks by way of courier to the invitees who haven’t sent their cards in yet. *Poke!*
