PTA Video Store

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A good friend of mine recently sent me a "virtual gift card" to a new site, the PTA Video Store. A portion of the proceeds goes toward the national PTA organization and all of the DVDs and instant downloads are rated either G, PG or PG-13. There is also a similar site, the Boys & Girls Club of America Video Store. HP is providing the services for both of them.

I ended up choosing two videos that have been my favorites since I was about eight, The Gods Must Be Crazy and the Princess Bride. I have close to a non-existent DVD collection, because I rarely ever watch movies more than once or twice. Those two movies are some of the few exceptions, in addition to Buckaroo Banzai, perhaps one of the best movies ever made. Really.

I find the notion of limiting the movie selection to PG-13 and below, to provide wholesome family entertainment, thought provoking. Growing up, starting at a very young age, I watched many movies that were rated R. My parents had no problems with my brother's and my seeing pretty much whatever we wanted. It wasn't until I was about 30 that I realized that I'd seen almost no horror movies, so it's really that my parents were effective in making us think we'd seen everything. Still, it seems to make sense for children to see such movies and perhaps learn a few things under the supervision of their parents, rather than with their peers. The same could be said for a lot of things other than movies, such as drinking.

I know that a lot of parents read my blog. What do you think? Do you or do you intend to limit what your kids watch?

*Incidently, this site rates my blog as R. That's good, because I don't want it to lose its incivility certification.

I Still Don't Like Shakespeare

One thing that I forgot to mention last night is that I saw a DVD of a performance of the Reduced Shakespeare Company. It was one of the most hilarious performances that I've seen in ages. Basically, the idea is for three guys to perform the 37 plays of Shakespeare in about an hour and half with a lot of improvisation, audience participation and various other bits of hilarity.

A friend with whom I only talked on irc, back in 1993, invited me to go see one of their performances not long after I arrived on my first trip to Boston. I turned his invitation down, saying that I didn't like Shakespeare. I later regretted it, because I suspected that I would have enjoyed it. Now that I've seen the DVD, I'm sure I would have. To this day, I haven't met that friend in person and I don't think his DVD is available on Netflix.

In any case, I highly recommend and urge you to rent the DVD of the Complete Works of Shakespare (Abridged) at your earliest convenience.

Capote

I saw a movie last night that is worth mentioning. It was Capote, about Truman Capote as he wrote his most famous true crime novel, In Cold Blood. I didn't particularly enjoy the film. It was probably educational, but that's about the only positive thing I can say. If this film accurately represented Capote, he was not a likable character, particularly due to his dishonesty. I don't know if the representation of his speaking was accurate, but the actor who played him was almost impossible to understand at times.

Please feel free to comment if there is some favorable aspect of this movie or any other that I failed to appreciate.

Penguins and Ice Cream

This afternoon, I saw Surf's Up, which was fun and enjoyable. It's a movie about surfing penguins filmed as if it were a documentary about surfing. It was very cute and well done. I would recommend going to a later showing to avoid hearing screaming kids throughout the movie. No, 4:10pm is not late enough to avoid that.

After dinner, LG recommended that we all go to Marble Slab Creamery. Coconut ice cream with pineapple pieces mixed in is an excellent combination.

A few days ago, I watched a DVD of Torch Song Trilogy. I though it was an excellent, funny and thought provoking film. It provided an unfathomable reminder that so many still perceive sexual preference to be a choice. As a straight female, it's still hard for me to imagine what it must be like to be gay and live in our still very straight-centric culture, where almost all forms of entertainment and regulations are still geared toward people who have relationships with the opposite sex. It, however, continues to get easier to relate to being different from the perceived cultural norm, as the percentage of people my age who are married and have children continues to skyrocket. While it is true that being married and having offspring crosses all cultures, the responses to this phase of life (the minivans, after school activites and the non-stop Disney DVD marathons) are all the epitome of American culture today.

Red Bellied Food Snob and the Queen

I've finally started working on copying over photos from floppies, which I took with my old Sony Mavica. It's a 1.1 megapixel camera and is comparatively gigantic, but it has a great lens, with 8X optical zoom. So, I'm finding some great, albeit comparatively low resolution images. The last time I tried copying any of these, I was getting lots of bad sector errors, but I haven't run into too many problems so far using an IBM floppy reader. Most of the ones I've been copying are from January of 2000, when we had the big snow, which was approximately 30 inches in Hillsborough. I took so many pictures of birds, that it's almost ridiculous. Here's a beautiful example of what was probably one of the relatives of my adoring fan, the obnoxious head-banging red bellied woodpecker:

Last night, after guitar practice, we went to Tripps. Regular readers will know that I am a food snob. I fail to understand why people go to chain restaurants, although, as JJ did point out, they have good parking. To be fair, my meal, salmon with lobster cream sauce with broccoli, cauliflower and mashed potatoes, was good. They weren't generous with the sauce, which is both good and bad, depending on whether one is feeling health conscious. The entree, with a glass of fresh squeezed grapefruit juice, cost $21 and change. For that price, I hope to have something that's better than "good". As always, the company was the important thing, so I definitely had a great time.

The night before last, I saw The Queen. I hadn't realized how much it focused on Diana's death. It was interesting watching a movie that was about a time and subject that I recall so well. It brought back memories of second semester calculus, since that's what I was taking at the time and our instructor was from Britain. Helen Mirren, who I'd watched previously in Prime Suspect episodes, did an excellent job portraying Queen Elizabeth, but I have to wonder whether the whole royal family is really as unpleasant as they seemed in the movie. It's been about twenty years since I read a biography of Elizabeth and her sister, so I don't remember much, but it seemed almost as if both the book and the movie were about two completely different people.

Now I'm craving grapefruit juice.

Pirates III and Bacon Chocolate

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean III last night. It still wasn't as good as the first one, but it was much better than the second one. It still needs major editing. After two hours, I was wishing it would end. One interesting aspect is that I think Keith Richards looks less creepy as a pirate than he does normally.

Some of you will remember when I blogged about the bacon ice cream at Tayst, in Nashville. It was one of those "I am not making this up" blog posts. Thanks to the Amazon Daily blog, I discovered that Vosges is now making a bacon chocolate bar. Intriguing!

Easy Rider

I saw the movie, Easy Rider, last night. It's one that I've been meaning to see for a really long time. I'd always heard of it described as a movie about motorcycle riding with an awesome soundtrack and a sad ending. Surprisingly, I hadn't ever heard of it as a movie that reflects poorly on the South. It certainly does. My question is, have things really changed that much since 1969? Has intolerance for long-haired hippies just been replaced by fears of Middle Eastern looking men and illegal immigrants? Or has this xenophobia just spread to the rest of the country as well?


I also saw this beautiful bike in downtown Hillsborough last night. My Treo didn't really do it justice, but I accidently left my Canon at home.

Rant and Skeedaddle

A couple of days ago, I saw the movie Pan's Lambrynth. It's basically a Spanish film about how a girl who loves fairy tales experiences one for herself. I thought it was fascinating that this tale, which on the surface would be appropriate for children, was depicted with a great deal of fairly gruesome violence. It's done in such a way that makes one feel strongly against one of the characters, but I'm guessing that it wouldn't have taken much to make it suitable for a wider audience and retain much of that character development. On the other hand, I'm strongly against sanitizing everything for children. I think it's important for kids to be aware that, yes, there are people who torture others. They need to know that this is something that's condoned by many, including our government. Despicable people are unfortunately not rare. Parents who are expecting their children to learn such things on their own, when they are adults, are endangering the lives of their children.

Last night we went to Caffe Driade, in Chapel Hill, to see Hugh and Anastasia (also known as HC and AM) play in their band, Skeedaddle. I'm using their actual names because they are now famous, having appeared on a small stage. They were probably famous in Charlottesville, too, but I didn't know them then. It was a lot of fun. They and their band members are so very talented and can play an impressive array of instruments. Caffe Driade has great coffee, too. We were worried that the concert would get rained out, but we managed to only hit rain on the way home.

No Ice, Thanks

Yesterday I asked for another blogger to make his blog's banner image be a link back to his blog, to make it easy to get back if viewing a single post. I just noticed that my blog doesn't work like that. Well, it does now, but it didn't a few minutes ago. It's very simple. I don't read my blog, so it doesn't have to meet my usability expectations. Ok, so that's not a very good excuse.

Would I read my blog if I weren't the author? I'm sure I would if I knew me, but probably not if I didn't. I rarely read the blogs of complete strangers on a regular basis, unless they have some connection to someone I know (particularly a family member) or have a local theme. If none of the above are true, they have to have lots of pictures of cats, dogs, have a large progressive following or write about gadgets. If I've heard them speak in person, then I don't consider them to be complete strangers, I usually sit on the front row, after all. So, if I spoke, heard myself, and were a good speaker, then I'm sure I would read my blog.

Last night I saw Alice's Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie. It had been highly recommended by LA and the song had been referenced many times by JJ, so I thought it was time to see it. I guess I would describe it as tangential, which coming from me, of course, is a compliment. It's definitely worth seeing.

Normally on this day and at this time, I would be on Duke's East Campus for the graduation reception on the East Duke Lawn. We, however, are having a hail storm right now and I like only so much ice in my punch.

Fun with Yeast

I spent most of the weekend cleaning and preparing to have a bunch of friends over on Sunday night. I made two pizzas: one bacon, onion and tomato sauce and one shrimp, bacon and pesto. The dough rose beautifully, unlike my recent batches of roll dough. We also had a salad with spinach, lettuce, strawberries, walnuts, grapes and the Honey Asian Citrus dressing. I made brownies, too.

It was great to do some cooking again, because it's something I really enjoy. As usual, my enjoyment of a particular activity is inversely proportional to the time I spend on it, perhaps with the exception of blogging.

The important thing is that I had a really good time with my friends. We played Pictionary, which I probably hadn't played in 15 years or so. I think it was even more fun than I'd remembered. It was also great to have HS over, who turned out to be an excellent cooking companion.

Monday night, my parents and I watched Paradise Now. That was a very interesting, but sad, film about two Palestinian suicide bombers. It seemed to fit well with what I could remember having learned in Dr. Miller's historical terrorism course at Duke. I had trouble with the subtitles, because the bottom half of the last line always got chopped off. There is probably some way to move them around or move the image on the screen, but I wasn't able to figure it out in the length of time that one can fool with such things before the rest of the audience starts to become restless.

Tonight we celebrated Mother's Day. In the Triangle, Mother's Day always coincides with graduation at at least two of the local universities. At ACME Food & Beverage Co., they decided to make up for this by offering free dessert for mothers tonight instead. So, I took my parents out to eat, which was a nice mid-week treat. I don't have any pictures of the food, since it's too dark for my new phone, but take a look at this enormous portion of food that I got for lunch today at the Refectory.

Gadget Joy

Today I went to my weekly meeting at the American Tobacco Campus, but I came back to West Campus for lunch. AE wanted to show her friend, DS (many name collisions on these intials lately- I leave distinguishing them as a hopeless exercise for the reader) around Duke. As I mentioned previously, there isn't a lot on campus that is open this week, so we met at Twinnie's. We then carried our stuff back up the hill and ate on the library patio. The weather was perfect.

My parents and I ate at Thai Cafe tonight. It's the time of year when I need to convince restaurants that donating gift certificates to be used as door prizes for the CIT Showcase is good advertising. It is!

When I got home, my Think Outside Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard was waiting for me. That was very exciting. So far, I am extremely pleased with it. It's lightweight and compact. I downloaded the Treo 650 driver and then I was ready to go. Configuring the secure connection was a little tricky, because I was finally watching the second half of West Side Story and not paying attention to the instructions closely enough. It's a little tricky anyway, because you have to keep putting the keyboard in discovery mode while configuring the passkeys. It is very cool, though. I like the idea of having something that should also work with whatever tablet or phone I get in the future, too, since it uses bluetooth.

Duke Plays and Serves Sorbets

Yesterday, at the weekly Visualization Forum, Jeremy Block gave an interesting talk on biochemistry modeling using the DiVE, the "cave" or virtual environment cube that has images projected on all six sides. We had penne pasta with eggplant and great desserts, so it would have been enjoyable regardless.

Last night I met AE, KD and JH at Chai's, followed by Shade Tree Coffee. We had a lot of fun and celebrated JH's two job offers. He accepted both of them!

After that, I went to Duke Plays, a huge party that was an effort by two Duke seniors to provide alternatives to lacrossesque drunken off-campus debauchery. The huge party (and I do mean huge) was hosted in the first floors of the two library buildings. As far as locations, they could not have picked one that was more convenient. I really liked being able to lock my heavy leather coat and purse in my office. The party was open to faculty, staff and alumni and since I qualified on two counts and am even library staff, I thought I should attend. I believe it was actually only the second alumni event that I have attended since graduating seven years ago.

The food they served was absolutely incredible. It was all dessert hors d'oeuvres and was all delivered by by roaming people with serving trays. Again, it could not have been more convenient. They served mini-chocolate éclairs, weird little pies with a cherry in the middle, mini-creme brules, mini-white chocolate thingies, chocolate dipped cheesecake on a stick, samosa-like pastries containing warm peanut butter and jelly, canolis, pineapple mousse with whipped creme and pistachios, and more. The two best things were individual spoons filled with orange honey sorbet and skewers with balls of melon and pineapple dipped in honey and chopped mint. Wow. They also had lime sorbet, but I never ended up getting a scoop of that. I got three scoops of the the orange, due to AT's help, for which I am very thankful.

It's a good thing they had the roaming serving platters, because it was simply impossible to move once the party got going. I would guess that there were at the very least a thousand people there, if not more. I look forward to hearing the official estimates. It was a semiformal occasion and most of the attendees dressed up quite a bit. The library was almost completely transformed into a glitzy nightclub. There were four different bars, colored spotlights and exhibits depicting recreational activities of Duke students since the beginning of time. There were two bands, Katharine Whalen of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Pulsar Triyo, both of which I inadvertently managed to avoid for the most part. I spent the majority of the time talking to LA and YB safely between two bookcases. I also got to chat with with several other co-workers, too. I even had a couple of very brief encounters with actual undergraduates, which were entertaining.

Was it a success? By most measures, absolutely! I couldn't have been happier with the food and that is, of course, my main criterion of judgment. I had a great time. Alcohol, however, was served and I certainly witnessed some things near the end of the party that suggested to me that not all were partying in the spirit in which it was intended.

Today, I saw part of West Side Story. In the middle, it suddenly started freezing up. It would just lurch along. It eventually became ridiculous enough such that we gave up. It's possible that my DVD player is particularly sensitive, because I suspect it's not a particularly good one. It came free with my television, after all. Believe it or not, but I think that this is the only (albeit partial) live action musical that I've ever seen other than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Snow Sans Snacks

I have some catching up to do. I'll attempt to stick to the more interesting bits, but I'm not promising anything.

Early last week, I saw V is for Vendetta. I thought it was an excellent movie, because it was both entertaining and thought provoking.

Early that week, I also had lunch at the Refectory with NP. This is still noteworthy because I actually finished my equally sized portion of Sopa du Pollo well before he did. It's my favorite dish there. It's basically a "Mexican chicken casserole".


Last weekend, KS and DB visited. DB was so adorable, especially when carrying around my stuffed animals. It was really a treat to have them over for the weekend. Saturday night, we went to Chai's with AE, DS, JH and AHB. I had chicken pad thai and I believe KS did, too. (Sorry, RP, I'm just not certain!) Afterwards, we went to Shade Tree and were joined by JH's friends, L and S. I had a nice cup of cafe mocha and KS had a sundae, which looked very good. Sunday morning, my parents came over and we made crepe style pancakes, which we served with maple syrup and strawberries. I thought DB was very good while we ate.

Sometime this week, I saw Everything is Illuminated, which I thought was another really interesting movie. One of the characters sounds very similar to Borat, which makes it funnier than was probably originally intended. It also took me a while to not think of Elijah Wood's character as Frodo and there's one line in the movie that is extremely appropriate for that context.

I had lunch with NP again on Tuesday and got to hear all about his wearing a kilt and eating haggis at a recent party. We had chicken and shrimp gumbo, which was good.

Thursday was supposed to be the day of our department retreat, where we were supposed to give presentations of research topics that we'd been working on in groups. My group was investigating the future of Learning Management Systems. Unfortunately, we had a winter storm warning and I elected to work on ordinary work from home. All the schools were closed, it was snowing when I had planned to leave home and I didn't want to drive there and get stuck. Well, like many of these things, it fizzled and would likely have been perfectly fine if I'd gone. They did apparently have over 300 accidents in Orange County, but the roads at least looked ok. I was disappointed that I missed it, but probably saved myself from a few extra thousand calories in sandwiches, popsicles and candy that way.

Friday, I went to the weekly Visualization Forum and listened to a talk by Michael Young, from NC State, on "Leveraging narrative concepts in the automatic construction of interactive experiences". He talked about some of the algorithms used for programming dynamic interactive video games. It was pretty interesting. The spinach lasagna was good, too.

Friday night, at guitar practice, I felt as if I actually was making some progress with shifting to and from the B Minor chord on Wild Horses. Afterwards, JJ, JA, EB, MP, HB and I went to El Corral. I had Vegetarian F, which was two spinach quesadillas. That was good. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of ordering a fried banana. I momentarily forgot that their idea of frying something was to add corn flakes. That is actually a nice effect when it's Mexican Fried Ice Cream, but bananas need to be cooked thoroughly before I like them. I need stick to the ones at Kim Son, which are wonderful.

This evening, I met AE, EG, JB and LB at Chai's for dinner. It was nice to see LB for the first time, because she's very cute. It was also good to see EG, since I hadn't seen her in over five months. I ordered what was effectively sesame chicken. It was a lot of sweet fried chicken with rice and no vegetables. AE and I went to Shade Tree afterwards and talked for quite a while. Check out that link, because now they actually have a demo of how they do some of their neat latte art.

Why We Fight

I saw Why We Fight tonight, and I highly recommend it. It focuses on the history of the military-industrial complex and, in my opinion, is far more effective than Fahrenheit 9/11, in part because it doesn't try to be funny. While I think Fahrenheit 9/11 is an excellent movie, Why We Fight comes across as more objective and educational.

Movies and Murder

One thing that I left off from my post covering Christmas Eve is that my parents gave me a DVD of Buckaroo Banzai, from my Amazon wishlist. My Dad, AE and I watched it that night, since I had not seen in it at least a decade and I was eager to watch it again. It is one of the few movies that I've seen ten times or so. I'm not sure that AE agreed that it is one of the greatest movies ever made, but I'm confident that she'll only need to watch it a few more times.

I had Monday and Friday off, since they were Duke holidays, but I had decided to work Tuesday through Thursday as an experiment. When I worked for IBM, I had to use up all my vacation at the end of the year, because the days didn't roll over. Now I have the opportunity to save up to two year's worth. Now that I've tried it, I'm not sure it's worth saving the three days. There's something to be said for having a whole week off and getting plenty of sleep each day, even if I would have had to handle a few pages during my time off. The cafeterias on campus weren't open either, so I had no reason to go outside at lunchtime, since I just had leftovers to heat up in the microwave. At least I tried it.

Tuesday night, my parents watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I thought it was an interesting movie and some parts are very funny. One startling thing was that it actually shared two cast members with Buckaroo Banzai, Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli.

I can't think of anything remarkable that happened on Wednesday.

Thursday, after work, my dad and I went to Tonali, which had been recommended by AJ. Based on his recommendation, I even recommended it to numerous people without having actually gone there myself. The owner/chef was the sous chef at Four Square and it serves unusual Mexican fare. Unlike Four Square, the prices are inexpensive. They do not have any sort of liquor license yet, which may be a concern to some. I had some mashed potato pancakes with some greens, which were good. My dad had a paella special, which I thought was very good. For dessert, we shared dulce de leche creme brulee, which was fantastic. It was easily the best creme brulee I've ever eaten. Their menu changes every week, so I look forward to trying many other dishes in the future.

As I was getting ready to go to bed last night, I noticed a huge spider (2 inches in diameter?) in the middle of my bedroom floor. The encounter with the black widow really set me back in terms of my arachnophobia and I've ended up calling my dad to come to the rescue twice since then. That's a very high number of large spiders compared to the previous two winters here. This time I was determined to handle it myself. It was time to transform into Lenore the Spider Killer.

I quickly determined that using a plunger was not an effective way to smash a spider and it got away. Next, I decided to try using one of my reachers (or "arm things" as I like to call them) and that was much more accurate, but it still got away and crawled under my secretary desk. I whipped out my LED flashlight and looked underneath the desk from my bathroom. From there, I could actually see its eyes, glowing blue. I got my binoculars from the great room and then looked again from my bathroom. Combined with the light from the flashlight, I could see it really well. Eventually it crawled behind one of the legs of the desk, so I wasn't sure where it was exactly. I waited, because I knew I would have a hard time sleeping knowing it was there. Approximately 22 minutes later, it crawled out into the room. I was fast enough and accurate enough with the reacher that time.

Today my parents picked up take-out sushi from Kurama. As always, that was wonderful. Kurama still has the best sushi in the area, in my opinion.

AE and I went to Shanghai for dinner. We had soup, steamed pork dumplings and shared an order of ma po tofu. I was actually somewhat disappointed in the ma po tofu, because I think that Eastern Lights's version is far better. Fortunately, I was already pretty full from the soup and the dumplings. We went to Kroger afterwards and I resisted buying a DVD of the Princess Bride for $10. That's another movie that I've probably seen ten times and not in the last decade, but I figure I can always get it from NetFlix if I feel like it. AE also found a bottle of "Seasoning" that we thought was amusing.

Happy Secular Winter Holiday 2006!

I would like to wish all of my dear readers and their loved ones a Happy Secular Winter Holiday. I hope you are enjoying some sort of respite from your hectic lives and have relished the smidgen of extra daylight that we have already received.

I started this blog three years and one day ago. I'm not sure I really believed that I would still be writing in it and I certainly have made fewer posts in 2006 than in previous years. I, however, am glad that I've kept it up as well as I have.

I've continued to have a good break. I had lunch with DS and AE at Nosh on Saturday and then went furniture shopping consulting afterwards. I think I like shopping more when I'm not the one making the decisions. At Nosh, I had Piper's patties, which were effectively little omelette's. I'm not sure whether I would order it again. I think their Rocket Breakfast or Mike's Slammer breakfast is much better. It tasted good, though, so I just might not have been in the right mood for it.

Yesterday, the 24th, my parents started working on straightening the tree and I left to pick up AE. We also picked up two SRP pizzas (meat, blue cheese, cream cheese, mozarella and caramelized onions) from Nosh, substituting chicken for beef. Those were excellent. We spent the day decorating the tree. It's likely the nicest tree that my family has ever had. It's certainly the largest, since it's nine feet tall.

For dinner, we had shrimp, lettuce with balsamic vinaigrette and crackers. I tried out the mango horseradish sauce that I bought at A Southern Season. I didn't really like it that much, unfortunately. I may try mixing it with something else, as is suggested on the label. We also tried out a bottle of wine that I got from FW, who owns Creek Side Winery, in Elon. I just tasted it, but I thought it was delicious. My parents and AE seemed to agree.

Next, my dad lit the candles and we started playing the Bach's Christmas Oratorio CD. I took lots of pictures of the tree, as always. I didn't take any more movies, because I figured I have enough of those. Finally, we opened presents.
My parents primarily got stuff from my Amazon wishlist. I have such good taste.

This morning, my Dad came over and we made crepe pancakes. I haven't been baking enough recently. I didn't even immediately recall where I keep the flour! The pancakes were lovely, though.

For AE's present, I told her that I'd make her three pairs of earrings picked out from my design notebooks. I used to draw every earring that I made and keep track of how well each design sold. She did that and then picked out the beads that she wanted. I made one of the pairs and I'll be making the other two soon.

I made rolls. I'm not sure, but it's possible that I hadn't done that since last January. I should do it more often, because they are so good. My mom brought over the turkey breast, dressing and cranberry sauce. She also made gravy and green beans here, so we had quite a feast.

Before and after dinner, AE and I watched the movie, Harriet the Spy. I read the book when I was 7 or 8. While I didn't remember much from the book, it seemed to be a good portrayal.

Avoiding Washing Dishes

I should be cleaning the house, so I don't know why I'm writing now. Actually, that's probably exactly why I'm writing now. At least the stove doesn't have mail on it anymore.

Last Sunday, I went to Brasa to celebrate DS's birthday. I'd never been to a Brazillian steakhouse before. They have an appetizer bar with lots of random food, including things like raw oysters and fried bananas. They also have people wandering around with skewers serving various kinds of meat directly at the table. Since I still don't eat beef, I was pleased that they also had pork sausage, pork ribs, pork loin, chicken, cinnamon coated pineapple and chicken hearts. I neglected to sample the chicken hearts and probably will have that flavor remain unknown to me for a good long while.

It was hot at the office on Monday. They are doing some sort of maintenance and the early warnings indicated that it would actually be cooler than usual instead of hot. Apparently it was cooler in some parts of the building, but it was 80F in our cubical area. Fortunately, several of us escaped to the Macaroni Grill. I had lobster ravioli, which is the same thing I ordered almost exactly a year ago when we were there commemorating NW's departure.

That night, my parents and I watched Four Weddings and a Funeral and I enjoyed it. Hugh Grant looked a lot younger over 12 years ago. I guess I did, too.

It was was very hot at the office again. The Duke University Library Staff Association put on its annual holiday party in the Gothic Reading Room. The food was catered by Ole NC Bar-B-Que and was actually pretty good. People were supposed to bring in desserts. A bunch of us had a good time trying to figure out a long list of Christmas carols from a list of their acronyms.

Tuesday night, I met AE, JH, AH and KD at Chai's. I had chicken pad thai and that was good. AE and I went to Shade Tree Coffee afterwards. They were out of decaf espresso beans, so I had the opportunity to discover that their drip coffee is very good.

Wednesday was hot at the office, but not quite as hot as previous days. It was only 77F. I escaped once again and had lunch with NP at Thai Cafe. We shared some Thai Cafe Baskets and I had an order of chicken massaman with spicy coconut soup. As always, the food was superb. Since it was lunchtime, I also got to order Thai Iced Tea, since I didn't have to worry about the caffeine's keeping me awake.

Wednesday night, I had dinner with my parents at the Flying Fish. They were out of oysters! I tried their ceviche and got a side order of fries. That was an enormous amount of food. Either the fries or the ceviche would have been more than I could have eaten for a meal. The ceviche was very good, but it wasn't nearly as good as HC's.

Yesterday, I went to a Staff Development Committee meeting and then had lunch with DS at the Loop. I got to show him around the office afterwards. I don't know for sure, but I suspect that my cube decorations are more of a shock to those who have seen how I decorate my home. It's completely different, although I seem to be accumulating more stuff around the house as more boxes of my grandmother's knickknacks get unpacked.

Last night, I went to JJ and JA's for guitar practice. That was fun, as always. We decided to see if we could get a table at Grasshopper, since it was a Thursday. We did. We shared some really delicious calamari as an appetizer. It was sliced very thin and was just perfect. We also shared fried pork dumplings and fresh spring rolls. For my entree, I had an order of bun with hanging roast pork. It was very similar to the vermicelli dish I had the Kim Son Vietnamese restaurant a couple of weeks ago, but the meat was far better at Grasshopper. I probably like the pickled vegetables and noodles better at Kim Son, but this was very good, too.

I had today off from work, so my parents and I went to the Flying Fish for lunch since we knew another oyster shipment should have come in. Afterwards, we all went to Catherine Callaway's to pick out some earrings. It was nice having a longer chat with her and it was nice to see she was very busy with customers. I used to hang out in her shop quite a bit when I was a teenager and she inspired me more than anyone else to start making jewelry.

Tonight I cooked dinner for my dad. I made my usual shrimp pasta with bacon and garlic. He was supposed to bring a bottle of wine with him, suitable to use as cooking wine, but he had forgotten. As an experiment, I decided to use beer instead. I used most of a bottle of Corona and he drank the rest. I also added a bit of ginger to my basil and chives mixture. It turned out well. I still prefer using wine, but it was a decent substitute.

White Elephant Tape Measure Exchange

I forgot to mention at least two things in my last post.

My parents and I watched An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday. I thought it was extremely well done. It wasn't as depressing as I'd feared, but I also didn't see it as uplifting either. It's good that it's not depressing, because that would lead to fewer people watching it. One sad aspect is thinking that we were watching the guy that could have been our president. The world would have been a very different place. Of course, I might have had a similar reaction had I been watching a Barney video. Almost any entity, animate or not, would be better than what we have. One of the more disturbing things to me were the photos of glaciers that have receded or almost disappeared completely. I kind of hope they weren't paying attention to the seasons when they were making the comparisons, but I suspect they were. I guess it all makes me wonder just how much damage we have to do to the earth and just how many peoples lives have to be directly impacted adversely by the resulting changes for enough people to do something that will really make a big impact. I say big impact because I know that every hybrid car, every solar panel and every recycled French fry makes a difference.

I can't remember what the other thing that I forgot was. Oh yes, when we went to Kim Son on Friday night, we had deep fried bananas and ice cream for dessert. I think I've determined for certain that I only dislike raw bananas. If they are well cooked, I like them. I don't think they are cooked enough in banana pudding and I suspect this is due to some sort of allergy.

Tonight the Durham FM Association had its annual Christmas party, which included a white elephant gift exchange. I'd never participated in one of those before and it was surprisingly fun. I ended up with a 12' tape measure, by choice. My dad ended up with a 100' tape measure by choice. Some things definitely tend to run in families. About 40 of us ate dinner that was catered by the Shrimp Boat and it was pretty good. It was definitely better than last year for some reason. JH joined us for dinner, which made it even more fun.

Boop!

Last Saturday, GM and I picked up AE and we went to Taverna Nikos for dinner. Not long after we arrived, I received my first text message from an actual human being. I'm surprised it's taken that long considering I have a phone with a qwerty keyboard. My parents got them from my brother years ago. Then again, it's not as if I've sent them to anyone.

I ate shrimps and scallops in a lemon cream sauce over penne pasta.. The shrimp were absolutely perfect. As I suspected, I discovered that my new fondness for scallops is not all inclusive. I don't know if it's the type of scallops or the degree to which they are cooked, but I wasn't as enthused about these. Fortunately, the rest of the food was more than I could eat.

After dinner, we all went to see the Bulgarian Women's Chorus at Duke's Page Auditorium. Like almost everything I've seen there, this was part of my family's season tickets to the Duke Artists' Series. We had to work harder at finding a parking space in the Bryan Center parking garage, because there was also a men's basketball game at the same time. The choir appeared first in flowered white dresses with their hair completely covered in white cloth. They sang folk songs with unusual tempos and harmonies. Some songs were comical when in a repeated phrase they would enthusiastically say "boop!". Of course, we had no idea what they were singing about, because there were no translations provided. After the intermission, they wore black dresses without head coverings. Strangely enough, that made them look almost as if they were completely different people.

The next morning I went to the late service of the church that GM attended when he lived in Durham, Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian. I went to hear GM play the oboe with their orchestra and their large choir. They played Vivaldi's Magnificat, several hyms and carols. I hadn't attended a church service since I was 12 or 13, so it was an unusual experience for me. I explained to several people, who welcomed me, that I was there to hear the music.

Afterwards, GM and I met up with AE, JH and P at Madhatter's. I had a eggs benedict and a latte. The eggs were superb and not overcooked, like they were the last I was there. AE and I went in WholeFoods for a bit and GM headed back to his new home in Charleston.

As soon as I got home, my parents and I watched the movie, the Constant Gardener. Flashbacks in the story made it a little confusing at first, but I thought it was a very good movie about evil drug companies. It was written by Le Carre, so it's not surprising that it had a good plot.

That night, I went over to JJ and JA's to play music. We spent a lot of time working on Jingle Bells, which was fun. JJ picked up Chinese food from Shanghai. After dinner, we watched the Christmas Story, which I hadn't seen in about 20 years.

Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship with Fudge

Yesterday, before the gustatory festivities, my parents and I watched Casablanca. None of us had ever seen it. I thought it was a very good movie, although it was hard for me to follow where the characters were supposed to be from at first, because I'm not used to black and white films and the fake accents weren't terribly strong. It's kind of interesting watching a movie you've heard half the dialog and the music before, but you didn't know the plot. Again, I've probably only seen half a dozen black and white films in my life, but I thought the use of contrast and light made it a beautiful film.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday was that I'd used a particularly cool web application for creating a mock-up of the user interface of a Blackboard building block (module) that I'm going to be writing. The drawing application is called Gliffy. It was very simple, easy to use and I ended up with exactly the sort of drawing I wanted. I've never used Visio, but this may be a good substitute if you don't feel like dealing with the licensing or installation of a traditional desktop application. Thanks to CV for suggesting this!

On a whim, I made fudge for the first time today. I used the recipe on the inside of the Baker's Chocolate box and it was extremely easy. I'm pleased with how it turned out. I actually only used 15/16 of the chocolate, because I ended up losing one of the chocolate squares in the pile of paper wrappers.

I went over to my parents' house to visit FIFO and eat my mom's homemade pizza. If you aren't impressed with dogs, then perhaps you will be after seeing this: