mamagotcha's looked fun, so I made one.


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I thought I'd been to Arizona, but I can't find any specific evidence that I have...

I bring you the best bicycle snob parody I've ever read.

p.s. I love that "lethargic" is a mood choice. It makes up for the fact that "verklempt" is not in the list.

Sweet mother of f'ing pearl, I have not laughed so hard in years.

Fish and Foul

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My friend Jaime says that the application MuseScore is a lot like Finale's PrintMusic, but freeware. Highly recommended.

We ate last night at Andaluca, a little Mediterranean-style place in the basement of the Mayflower Park Hotel downtown. When Dan took me on the Seattle food tour last year we started at Andaluca, and we kept saying we wanted to go back -- so we finally did.

( In which I bore you with the details of our food and talk about the service and the restaurant )

Then we went to see Star Wars in Concert, which was billed as a really big deal and had Anthony Daniels narrating. The parts of it that I saw were impressive in their scope, although frankly they reminded me of a video I once saw of a Yanni concert in a big stadium. Anyway: I don't want to pooh-pooh it too much, because the orchestra was very skilled and it was neat to hear Williams's score played live while watching footage from the films and to see each little storyline condensed down and shown along with the themes Williams wrote for those characters or that bit. However, it was in KeyArena, and our tickets were on a side, and the action was all up front, and my neck was sore. As a result, I spent a lot of time staring across the arena at people on the other side, instead of at the stage.

Small World Theorem Proof: While looking for our seats, I passed the girl who was in the chair next to me at Vain on Sunday. She's Japanese and has a gorgeous dye job that makes her look like a bird of paradise.

Last night after hair dye we went out to Taberno del Alabardero, a Spanish place in Belltown that Seattle Metro magazine claimed had a paella you had to eat before you die.

The good: the atmosphere is low-key and pretty, very Spanish, and even though we were grossly underdressed, as soon as I ordered sherry (manzanilla for Dan, Amontillado for me) they treated us extremely well. (They had a small menu for some kind of $30 try-it event that's going on, so maybe they figured we were part of that crowd originally.) They have an acorn-fed Iberico ham that's dry aged and sitting out for carving in the dining room, and it was absolutely to die for. Its texture was halfway between aged parmesan cheese and prosciutto. They had a decent selection of sherries and ports, although you don't see the ports until you get the dessert menu. The creme brulee was delicious and nicely reinvented (with a raspberry coulee on top of a cookie crust and the custard placed on top, almost flan-style). Did I mention that the wait staff was very attentive and competent? There seemed to be a minimum of 2 waiters poised and ready to remove our plates the second we were done with them. I was especially impressed to note that they were invisible until I placed my fork and knife crossed on my plate (the signal you're finished), at which point one of them immediately materialized. I'd go back for the service alone. But!

The bad: the paella. I was feeling forgiving after such good sherry and ham, but the more I think about it the more I think the paella was extremely sub-par. We ordered saffron rice with pork ribs and peppers. The rice was just barely undercooked and toothy -- not hard but distracting, although the flavor was good. The peppers were just barely overcooked and soft -- not falling apart but distracting, although again the flavor was good. The ribs were a disappointment, though -- unquestionably overcooked, sometimes to the point of dry carbonization, and the bits that were still recognizably soft and meaty were essentially flavorless. Fortunately, the most expensive dish (the ham) was the most impressive.

The verdict: the service and the additional items kept me from being unhappy with my main course, but only just. I'll have to go back and try something else -- a good excuse to drink the sherry.

Today at breakfast Dan and I were talking about how the caloric content of foods was something that had, in the relative length of human history, only just begun to matter to us as a species. I said that one thing I believed was that food had evolved -- not consciously, but as a function of how it's produced by people -- into a form where only the most delicious survives: gourmet restaurants serve foie gras and croissants and fish prepared in a confit (wait... those are all suspiciously French!), fast food restaurants add fat and salt to enhance the immediate satisfaction and flavor hit of their foods, etc. A corollary to this realization was the realization that we had at least a month's worth of food stored in our house that we weren't eating just because it was being passed over in favor of more delicious things.

And so begins the great challenge and experiment: we'll eat ourselves literally out of house and home. Every foodstuff we're currently storing will be eaten. When it's gone, it's gone until the end of the experiment, with the exception of the following fresh staples:

1. Dairy (Milk, Eggs, and Butter)
2. Seasonal vegetables (no cans or frozen)
3. Seasonal fruits (no cans or frozen)
4. Alcohol (because who are we kidding)

I'm a little concerned that we're low on AP flour, but I have whole wheat flour, cake flour, and bread flour I'll have to use to compensate.

At the end of this process, the hope is that we'll have an utterly bare pantry, an empty "soda refrigerator," and the chance to start totally anew, buying only the things we'd be satisfied that we're eating. Maybe we'll re-use the pantry to store craft supplies. I want to learn how to be more creative with what we have, supplementing only with fresh things we need in our diets anyway. I want to learn to substitute, and master more of the science of cooking. Of course, we'll eat out occasionally, so we're not quite reaching the level of survivalists. That's why I've dubbed this "Iron Chef Home." The secret ingredient is: THE PANTRY!!!!

I'll blog the process, including what it's like when we get down to the last of it and we're eating rice in Tang-catsup sauce.

There have been reports of incidents at Magnuson Park off-leash dog area, near the beach. An owner with pit bulls (the breed is not the problem here, the owner is) allowed and perhaps encouraged his dogs to attack other dogs. He does not attempt to stop the attacks and flees when the dogs separate.

One boxer has been killed and four more dogs severely injured. From the notification:

White Male, early 20’s, heavily tattooed arms, shaved head with White Female, early 20’s, med to heavy build, long brown hair.
DOGS: 3 pit bulls; 2 adults, 1 adolescent
White or gray, brindle, and brown (pup)
Vehicle: very old silver pickup truck with damage to right rear body

Both of the attacks happened Fridays between 11:30 a.m. and noon, first on September 25th and then October 2nd. Please pass this on to other Seattle dog owners who visit Magnuson Park -- the police need help with the license number of the vehicle (including calling and reporting a vehicle matching the description parked at the parking areas). If you visit other dog areas, be on the lookout for a vehicle matching this description in parking lots.

Network Support Specialist at KCTS 9 (Public Television Seattle)

Posted for a friend (the head broadcast engineer).

For those of you who might be interested in such a device:

http://www.woot.com/

NatureMill Indoor PRO Composter. Uses electricity and wood pellets to break down compost using heat. Claims to be odor-free. $249.

(I reduce my carbon footprint in a lot of ways, but I don't compost because I have nowhere to do it and nowhere to put the resulting compost. Still, I know many of you who do.)

Except for the very brief beginning "round the bend" hill that I walked because it's steeper than I'm allowed to ride, I rode up the 520 hill this morning. I will not lie: it was hard. But here I am.

"An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing."

From a rather uncomfortably truthy article by David Wong.

Nutro is recalling their dry cat foods with "use by" dates in a certain range. Details are on their web site.

I was at Petco today and was surprised to see some Nutro dry food still on the shelves. Before I could look to verify that the production dates were in the "safe" ranges, a Nutro rep ran up to me and wanted to know if she could answer any questions. I said, "Why is this food on the shelves?" She replied that it was in safe date ranges, but that the problem with the recalled food was "just inaccurate labeling" anyway. (Long story short: some recalled food contains very high levels of zinc and all of it has low or no potassium.) In spite of this "inaccurate labeling" claim, Nutro's web site suggests that owners be on the lookout for stomach upset, vomiting, refusal of food, etc.

Ham had a few rough days about two weeks ago during which we'd just gotten a new bag of Nutro kitten food and he was eating some of it. I will spare you the details, but he had some fairly serious gastrointestinal issues. In an unrelated move, we decided to switch to feeding both cats adult cat food for a while, and Ham's issues cleared up (in fairness, the adult food is also Nutro, but with a different expiration date so therefore in a different lot).

Lucky for the Nutro rep I had two impressionable young children with me in the store. I still told her in no uncertain terms that she had no business acting like the recall was no big deal or just an administrative move, and told her that my cat had been sick before I knew about the recall but taking him off the food solved his problems. She backpedaled and apologized, but in my mind it's still too little, too late. As soon as I can phase the cats off of Nutro food, I will switch for good.

STAR TREK better than I hoped. Fast-paced but compelling. Blended camp with drama, sci fi with nerd sci. Evocative of original in good way.

I ♥ Amazon Fresh. That is all.