Tempus edax rerum

Keeping track of how one spends one time at work can be a very useful tool if one wants to get a somewhat objective look at what one is doing and how one's tasks are spread out throughout the day. This was first recommended to me by my mentor at IBM and one of his observations was that my day was "scattered", i.e. I was doing a large number of different types of tasks at seemingly random times during the day rather than doing similar tasks all at once. While structuring one's day into groups of similar tasks, such as confining the reading of e-mail to certain periods of the day, one may be more efficient, but it's not always practical in a support role. One of the observations that I found even more useful was to see just how much of my day was spent in informal meetings and helping others.

In order to make such observations, his recommendation was for me to record was I was doing during fifteen minute intervals throughout the day. These intervals could be color-coded in a spreadsheet. In the last few months, I've been doing this again to determine how much of my time is spent doing technical support and how much is spent doing other things, such as writing code or attending meetings. I've found that using Google Spreadsheets is an excellent and much easier way to track this than by using a full-blown spreadsheet package. When I was doing this before, I had a single spreadsheet for the entire year, but now I have a separate file for each week, which is more manageable. The problem with this approach is that it's difficult to get quantifiable data. While it's easy to visualize what I did in a week, it's difficult to observe long term trends. I'm guessing I could code them with an alphanumeric character and do some sort of count, but I'll have to play with that.

By reading lifehack.org a few days ago, I discovered an Ajax based tool called Time Tracker, by the Form Assembly. I'm told that Fred Brooks used chess clocks to keep track of his time and that is effectively what this tool provides. In many ways, it's simply marvelous. You start one timer for a particular task and when you start another one, the previous one stops. You can export to various file formats, such as XML, csv and OPML. You can adjust times with a cute little clock widget. It's far easier to keep track of time than with the spreadsheet method described above.

The problem is that the reporting isn't very readable, so for visualization purposes I still felt that I needed to color-code the spreadsheet. Another problem is if you forget to switch timers then you have to manually fix it with the widget, which I find happens a lot. I think it has enormous potential as the tool continues to get new features and some people may already find it useful for keeping track of billable time, but I've found there is surprisingly too much overhead compared to the spreadsheet method alone.

If any of my readers do try this at home and jump into the depths of time tracking, I have to recommend that you are make sure you are aware of the observer effect and also remember that explaining what you don't track can be as challenging as the categories that you do track.

My Handsome Boy

I've gone over to my parents' house several times recently, to visit FIFO. Here are two photos that I thought were particularly good.

This was the first shot I got in that day, which I thought was pretty good.

This is his "maybe she'll stop taking pictures of me soon" look. He really doesn't like having his picture taken at all. I almost never use the flash, but I think he dislikes something about the autofocus. Maybe he's just embarrassed and doesn't know how handsome he is.

Three More from the Road

While I was on my trip, I enjoyed going to several eating establishments other than Mary Chung's. Mary's is closed on Tuesdays, so we had no alternative but to look elsewhere that night.

After the day of visiting the New England Aquarium and shopping, and at my brother's recommendation, we went to Durgin Park. It was founded in 1826 and is one of the oldest restaurants in Boston. It has an excellent reputation for steaks, but I still don't eat beef and I realized that it was my last real opportunity to eat lobster. I was very impressed, because they did an excellent job cooking my 1 1/4 lb. creature. I barely used any melted butter and I've found that I enjoy it much more that way now. To me, the sign of a well prepared lobster is plenty of soft and tasty protein deposits, because if it's overcooked, they will be all dried out. It was just splendid and it was lovely eating outside along the main pathway through Faneuil Hall. Their apple pan dowdy was good, but I would have probably chosen something else given another opportunity.

Earlier in the visit, my brother, Karl, suggested that we all go to Basta Pasta Trattoria, which is one of the places that he and DC visit regularly. The chef/owner has apparently worked in several famous restaurants, but always dreamed of owning a neighborhood pizza joint. They have just a few tables and the dining is very informal, but it's a nice place to sit and enjoy handmade pasta dishes. I had pasta with chicken, walnuts and gorgonzola, which was delicious.

Most visitors to Cambridge quickly find out that the place to have ice cream and related desserts is Toscanini's. When I was in the area five years ago, I got to visit the original location, in Central Square, as well as one in the MIT Student Center, building W20. I was horrified, if not devastated, to find out that the one in W20 had been replaced by a Mexican place. The original Tosci's is not exactly wheelchair accessible. They have about four large and unusually shallow steps. With calorie-burning anxiety and the help of two strong male family members, it's still doable. Unfortunately, one of Tosci's freezers had malfunctioned and they'd lost half of their ice cream stock. I chose to have a vanilla ice cream soda with mint syrup, which was subtle, but very good.

Is this a Durham-Themed Blog?

Well, no. I live closest to Hillsborough, NC, approximately nine miles from the Durham city limits. Besides, I write about whatever suits my fancy.

If you've stumbled upon this blog recently, perhaps because you've been steered in this direction in the last couple of days by Kevin or Joe, and you only read Durham blogs, then you might want to take the following into consideration.

I was born in Durham. I lived the first fourteen years of my life in Durham. I went to college in Durham. I've worked in Durham ever since I graduated from college. When I go somewhere after work other than home, it's usually in Durham. I also live on the Durham side of Hillsborough. While it appears that my collection of photos that I've taken of recognizable Durham landmarks is minute, more often than not, I write about Durham.

Now, I have to admit that my favorite restaurant is actually in Carrboro, but I can't go there every night.

Night Owl's Literary Lifehack

Ever since I moved into my own house, I've been struggling with how to make myself get up in the mornings. Of course, I always get up eventually and by some standards it's even timely. It's just not necessarily when I, personally, would choose to get up if I were completely conscious and it's not always the same hour as when my alarm first goes off.

I've tried all kinds of crazy tactics from turning on multiple alarm clocks throughout the house (all of which I can ignore) to setting my programmable thermostat to bake myself out of bed. Before I gave up on that strategy, well-done was, on occasion, the order of the day. A friend of mine once rigged up his computer and his printer to pull a cup of water onto his head at a specified time. I haven't gone that far.

Finally, perhaps inspired by the recent publicity for DailyLit, I decided to try getting up and reading a book for exactly 15 minutes before getting on with my morning hygiene routine. I've done this for a week now and it's worked flawlessly. I'd been getting behind on reading Harry Potter books, so I've been reading the 5th one, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's exciting enough for me to want to get up out of bed to read more. The amazing thing is that I feel so much more refreshed and clearheaded than when I head straight for the toothbrush. The important thing is to have a second alarm set such that I only read for 15 minutes. After I've been reading for that long, I'm awake enough to obey the alarm and get ready.

Yes, it may take several weeks to read a book this way, but there's nothing stopping me from taking an evening to read for longer periods. I have a large stack of things I've been meaning to read, so there's plenty available for my morning reading. It's one of those rare win-win situations, where I get to read more and get to experience more of my mornings. I get to work a bit earlier and the weekends are longer, too.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

While we were in Boston, I decided to take YB's recommendation and go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which is just a hop skip and a jump from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Originally, I had planned to go both museums on the same day, but going to the MFA alway seems to take the majority of the day and we didn't want to rush it. That turned out to be a good decision, because the Isabella Steward Gardner museum deserved quite a bit of attention.

The museum, which is the house in which the wealthy art collector lived, is jam-packed full of artwork by artists such as Sargent, Zorn, Rubens, Titian and Botticelli. The house is still decorated as it was when Gardner died, in 1924, so the rooms are lit very dimly to preserve both the watercolors and the fabrics. One of the rooms has a cabinet like structure that allows people to view panels full of framed artwork as if they were pages in a book. There are far too many works to display on the walls alone. They had even more paintings, including a Monet, before a major heist in 1990.

I thought one of the most beautiful aspects of the museum was the central enclosed atrium, which is full of sculptures, palms, orchids, caryotas and hydrangeas. It just seemed extremely peaceful. The majority of the rooms of the house look out onto the atrium through glass or open windows. I actually think just the atrium alone would be worth visiting, even without the artwork in the rest of the museum.

While their elevator is old and small, it seems more modern than many of the ones on Duke's campus and it works fine. Some of the doorways on the upper floors are extremely narrow. I actually worried that my comparatively small chair was going to get stuck going through one of them on the third floor and I just barely made it through. Visitors with larger wheelchairs should definitely keep that in mind.

Another interesting characteristic is that almost none of the artwork is labeled. In a couple of the rooms with the more famous paintings, they have laminated cards indicating the artist of each of the paintings on each of the four walls. Those were extremely helpful. Later on, one of the docents recommended that we borrow a guidebook from the front desk. That was useful, but it was still difficult to identify some pieces based on their written descriptions of the everything in the room. I'm afraid that I practically detest audio tours, with rare exceptions, so I wasn't willing to use that option.

All in all, I thought it was a wonderful experience, which I would recommend highly.

Time for Tea

It's been so absurdly hot in the last few days that I've come close to appreciating winter, but I'm not quite there yet. Give me a couple of more days.

Tonight, I went to Gulf Rim, in Hillsborough, and verified that the food is still the excellent quality that it was when it was the Flying Fish. My oysters and fries were great.

I added my first poll to the blog. Check it out. It's down a ways in the left column. It took me a while to think of a nice philosophical question that would be appropriate for this blog.

May you all enjoy some nice and refreshing beverages in the next couple of days. Here's a photo of some sweet iced tea from the Refectory, which has absolute perfection when it comes to sweet tea.

Mouse of Fine Arts

One of the things I traditionally do when I'm visiting Boston is go to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. My trip in July was no exception. They actually seemed to have fewer Impressionist paintings from their usual enormous collection, but they still had many impressive ones. I would imagine that whenever there is a traveling exhibition of a single artist, such as Monet, that puts somewhat of a dent in the set of ones that are permanently on display around the world. One of the most spectacular and most memorable paintings is an enormous portrait of Monet's wife in a kimono. It's very detailed and yet unmistakably in Monet's style.

They also had a special exhibition of work by Edward Hopper. Hopper's Nighthawks has been parodied countless times, so it was wild seeing the original in person. I was actually very impressed with the rest of his repertoire. His experience as a professional illustrator shined throughout his career. He was an artist who knew how to paint light and volume. His series of lighthouses looked like the true cylindrical objects that they were, almost popping out of their canvases. It was nice to see paintings that had such a range of tonal value. I would highly recommend that anyone in the Boston area go see the exhibition, which runs through August 19th.

Following lunch in the downstairs cafeteria, I was also thoroughly entertained by a mouse in the museum's open atrium. The museum is about to undergo major renovations and expansion. One fellow patron was concerned that this atrium would be eliminated by a new wing, but it looked from the plans as if this lovely sitting and eating area will be spared.

Nifty North Carolina Nature

In the past few weeks, I've been fortunate enough to be able to observe and photograph some nifty natural phenomena. Just as I was leaving the American Tobacco Campus, after a meeting, I saw a luna moth (Actias luna) lying on the ground. I've only seen maybe two or three in my life, since they aren't very common here, but this is the closest look I've ever had at one. Unfortunately, since it was blowing around a bit, I think it was a little past its prime, but it was still beautiful.

I also observed some mushrooms on the Academic Quad of Duke's West Campus.

This is what mushrooms in the same patch looked like the next day. I have no idea what kind they were. I've just discovered that trying to identify mushrooms based on photographs on the web is highly difficult for the completely inexperienced. They might be Chlorophyllum molybdites and they might not.

Looking Through Different Lenses

I've discovered an interesting pastime. While I was in Boston, I went to the New England Aquarium, which I'd last visited about ten years ago. I attempted to take several pictures, all of which I've uploaded to flickr, good and bad. Ok, they are mostly bad, because it's dark inside, fish move fast and I hadn't even played with changing the ISO setting yet. The point is that not only can one compare one's photography and feel as if everyone in the world is more talented and has a more expensive and heavier camera, but one can also see what different experiences other people have had in exactly the same setting. The latter is what is fascinating.

You can take a look at my New England Aquarium photos. Then take a look at the beautiful ones other people have taken.

The next time you go to a public place that allows photography, whether you take your own or not, try searching on that location in flickr and see what others have seen there.

Juicing and Whacking

This afternoon, I tried out my new juicer, the Black & Decker Citrusmate Plus Juicer. The limes I had looked a little worse for wear, but I had a couple of lemons that needed to be used. I decided to make about 3 cups of lemonade. The juicer was very easy to use, did the job and was surprisingly easy to clean. It was so much faster and easier than using an old fashioned manual juicer. For $18.24, that's pretty awesome. I didn't have juice flying off in all directions, but a few seeds were flung, so you have to pay attention to that.

I was pretty horrified at most of the lemonade recipes that I found on the web and in cookbooks. Most call for one part lemon juice, one part water and one part sugar. That's a LOT of sugar. I don't particularly like very sweet lemonade, so I decided to try a recipe called Lemonade #3. It was especially convenient since I only had two lemons. I thought it was good. My dad immediately ran for some Splenda.

Tonight I made Squash Stir Fry Surprise again. This time I used white wine instead of red and added two tablespoons of the lemon juice. I liked my invented dish a lot the first time I made it, but this time I thought it was incredibly good. I took CV's recommendation and whacked the head of garlic before I tried to peel it. I hit it with a can a few times and the cloves were so much easier to peel. It only took a few minutes this time. Thanks CV! The reason I've been working with whole heads of garlic so often is because we've been getting them from our Elysian Fields Farm share. When that's over, I'm sure I'll go back to using my minced garlic from Costco. I do like eating whole cloves of garlic, though.

Restaurant Newsflash!

This evening, I learned from a reliable source that the original Taverna Nikos, in Brightleaf Square, will be reopening in a week. Bill Bakis, who has been busy with Nikos Taverna in Morrisville, will be running it again. This is excellent news!

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.

Van Bambi

Well, my dad drove the van to Vann Mann, in Charlotte, this morning and the van doors naturally started working normally as soon as he got there. That figures, doesn't it? They are going to mail me a replacement chip that apparently has less of a propensity for getting into funky states. Hopefully I won't have any more problems before it gets here.

The deer are getting a tad bolder at my house. They were just outside the guest room window while I was eating dinner this evening. There were actually two fawns wandering around chewing on everything green in sight. There were several wandering around my yard this weekend, even while I was outside.

This is all she did after she started eating the forsythias and got yelled at through an open window. She moved one of her ears. She couldn't have cared less. For a mere $19.95, you, too, can come over one evening and have your ego deflated. I accept paypal.

Three Cs

One of the coolest things about my trip to Boston was getting to meet a fellow blogger, Camilla, who writes one of my favorite blogs. Although her blog has changed its primary topic in the last seven months or so, it is filled with stunning photographs, mathematical creative endeavors and, of course, the occasional cooking adventure. Every now and then, I've had an additional treat of seeing my brother, her former housemate, in a photo or two, and have been relieved to see that he was still alive.

Camilla invited me and my dad to dinner to meet her, her husband, Monty, and her adorable son, Denton. She fixed an incredible dinner of roasted chicken that was culminated by a Yeasted Sugar Cake, with strawberries, plums and whipped cream. Plums and real whipped cream are two of my favorite things in the universe. Before I even left Boston, I had to order the Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone cookbook, which has the cake recipe. I'm sure I will give it a try soon.

The next day she and Denton showed us around Mt. Auburn Cemetery, in Cambridge. Other than drive by shootings from the car, which I later painted, I'd never actually been to a cemetery before. Mt. Auburn Cemetery, which is 175 years old, is absolutely beautiful. It has gorgeous old trees and all the paths are paved, so it's a great place to walk around. I could have probably taken a few hundred more photos. We went there primarily with the purpose of birdwatching, but we didn't see any uncommon ones. Robins were particularly plentiful. I was also likely way too enthralled by looking at the trees.

Happy, Hideous, Lovely and Refreshing

Saturday night, my van decided that it didn't want to open the automatic doors anymore. My dad spent rest of the weekend taking everything apart, trying to determine why. The motors in the doors were fine. The limit switches were fine. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to figure it out, but a signal is being generated constantly indicating that the doors should close. My dad is planning to drive it to Charlotte to get it fixed. Ordinarily, this would drive me up the wall, but since I recently drove over 1700 miles within a week and a half, I don't mind it so much. From that perspective it's really good timing. I'm also very happy that this didn't happen while I was on my trip!

I haven't seen any sign of the skink.

The Flying Fish is no more. It was actually bought out a couple of months ago and is now called the Gulf Rim. They pretty much have the same menu, with a few additions. They also painted the interior of the restaurant a hideous shade of orange. Granted, I think most, but not all, shades of orange are hideous.

The Thai Cafe has finished their renovations for their new addition and it looks lovely.

On their current menu, ACME Food and Beverage Co. has a shrimp and crawfish pasta served with heirloom tomatoes sauce that is both beautiful and delicious. This past weekend, they also had watermelon sorbet as a special, which was delightful. My dad thought you might as well eat a slice of watermelon, but I thought it was even more refreshing and certainly colder.

Bull McCabe's Irish Pub

I was eager to go to Bull McCabe's Irish Pub last night, after guitar practice, because I'd read several, mostly positive, reviews since it opened. It has interesting decor and I think the fully stocked bookshelves add a lot.

It, however, doesn't have wheelchair accessible seating options and it looses quite a few points in my book because of that. There are picnic benches outside, which can be ok as long as the ends overhang some. Unfortunately, their benches aren't built that way. We sat there for a bit, before the bottom dropped out of a thunderstorm. By then, some of the indoor tables were free. Unfortunately, they were barely better, because they only have a few booths and they have supports at the ends of their tables.

I really liked my fish and chips, though. The fish was crispy, but not excessively so. The french fries were nice and crispy, too. The creamy coleslaw was a little too soupy, in my opinion, but I'm picky about coleslaw.

With the exception of a quesadilla, I was pleased to see that most of the items on the menu seemed appropriate for an Irish pub. This is in contrast to an Irish pub that I went to in Cambridge, the Asgard, which had more cosmopolitan fare. It seems wrong to order jambalaya or bruschetta in a pub, don't you think? Fortunately, visiting the Asgard was the pre-party after party for Oscelot's Open Source Day II, so I didn't let it bother me too much.

House Skink and an Improv Workshop

There is a blue-tailed skink loose somewhere in my house. I hope I don't find out where it is while I'm asleep. Wherever you are, no matter how far away, you will hear my startled scream, I'm sure.

Here's one that got in my parents' house a number of years ago. I just read that the tail of a skink is highly toxic to cats, so cat-owning readers should apparently beware. (Update: This is a myth.)

In other news, if you are at all interested in theatre or want to try something spontaneous and new, you might consider finding out more about an Improv Workshop that will be taught in Durham, August 17-19.

I Love Mary Chung's!

People who know me, particularly in person, know that I can go on and on about Mary Chung's Chinese Restaurant on Mass Ave. (near Central Square), in Cambridge. Anytime anyone gets within a 50 mile radius of it, I insist that they have to go. Two weeks ago, I actually managed to get my boss to go by actually driving him there. He did go willingly, I think. I ate there three out of the nine nights that I was in the Boston area.
I also insist that people order my favorite dish, Suan La Chow Show. It's a soup-appetizer dish, which contains pork dumplings in a tangy-spicy soy based sauce, with bean sprouts. Basically, once you eat the dumplings, the wait staff starts trying to take it away, so I don't think most people eat all of the liquid and sprouts. This dish is very hot, but it is absolutely delicious, in my opinion.

Among other things, we also had scallion pie, also known as scallion pancakes. I really like these.
We also had Lion's Head, which is a giant non-spicy pork meatball in a thin broth, with cabbage. It reminded us of krautrouladen, or cabbage rolls, a traditional German beef dish. Fortunately, it really was pork, since I still don't eat beef. It was incredibly good.

I'd remembered liking Dun Dun Noodles, but I hadn't remembered that they are spicy enough to spontaneously combust. We also had Orange Sauce Chicken and Velvet Chicken, which were mild and excellent. The fried peking ravioli, fondly referred to as "ravs", which are basically potstickers, are also a must.

Anyone who is willing to bring me back some Suan La Chow Show on a plane will forever hold a special place in my heart. Yes, I already want more.

Fun Driving in Boston

Now that I have some laundry started, it's time for me to write a little bit about my trip to Boston.

I can't remember whether I've mentioned this here before, but I really like driving in Boston. It's challenging, with its maniacal drivers, its overabundance of one-way streets and the occasional unlabeled intersection. Lanes are almost optional due to people's parking in them and many of the lanes aren't marked with lines at all. Someone once told me that that every car in Boston has a dent, so I'm always happy to be driving a pre-dented van. Boston drivers expect you to suddenly pull in front if them, because you can't get anywhere if you don't. Boston drivers, for the most part, are alert because of that. You have to think and react quickly.

I get the impression that over half the people in the Triangle aren't even paying attention to the fact that they are in a moving vehicle while they are talking on the phone, much less trying to drive it somewhere. My brother assures me that some Boston drivers don't pay attention either, but it's got to be the exception rather than the majority. On my morning commute from Hillsborough to Durham a lot of the drivers drive way below the speed limit, because they either don't have a clue or they are engrossed in their conversations. I'm not saying that my driving is perfect here, particularly when I'm talking to a passenger, but I do think I'm pretty alert, for the most part.

Now, it's not just that I like driving in the city. I've hated driving in D.C. every time I've been there. While many Boston drivers were polite and even waved to let me in, I've experienced many cases were drivers in D.C. were rude or made what I considered to be dangerous maneuvers. Of course, just a few experiences can color one's perceptions strongly, but I really get the sense that there is something pathological about driving in D.C. I was in stop and go traffic on the D.C. Beltline on Saturday and someone just stood on his or her horn when I was changing lanes. I was using my turn signal. I don't recall my being honked at once while I was in Boston.

One bit of excitement was when I was driving down Mass Ave., toward downtown Boston, and I had to go through a tight squeeze. I should have slowed down more, but my side mirror hit the mirror of a truck that was parked on the right. It knocked my mirror out and the small-domed wide angle mirror popped off of that. Driving without both mirrors would be impossible. The main mirror was just a pressure fit, but the smaller one had been put on with double sided tape. I noticed that we lucky enough to have this happen just across the street from a convenience store, City Convenience. My dad ran across the street, got some double sided tape and taped the small mirror back on. The driver of the truck could have complained about the slightest scratch, but he was very nice and just made sure that none of the flying parts belonged on his truck.

Boston is notorious for being a horrible place to drive, so I'm probably just deranged. I'm not sure my readers needed more convincing, though.

Blu Seafood and the Mussel Thief

I've lamented in the past about the quality of the camera on the Treo 700p as compared to the Treo 650. Well, complaining is silly in this case, because I've finally played with my Canon SD500 camera enough to figure out how to get semi-great food shots in a restaurant setting, without flash. All I need is the macro setting and ISO 200.

I hadn't read any reviews of Blu Seafood and Bar, which opened on 9th Street about a week and a half ago, so I had to try it out. The decor is much brighter and cleaner looking than the recently departed Grasshopper was. The service was very friendly and excellent. I decided to order the fried calamari appetizer and a salad.

First we tried their bread, which was delicious. This was actually our second serving.

The calamari was good. It wasn't the best I've ever eaten, but it was pretty good. It was served with lemon mayo, but I liked it better plain. I'm actually quite fond of Rockfish's calamari, which is surprising given that it's a chain. I would be interested to know where local readers prefer to get calamari around here.

This was a great salad and it was much larger than it looks. It had tomatoes, shredded cucumbers, feta, onions, salad greens, small pieces of pita and a lemon-mint vinaigrette. I'm actually not a big fan of salads, but I enjoyed this tremendously and would happily order it again.

In fact, I would probably just order the salad. Since I erred on the side of ordering too much, I didn't have room for dessert. They had chocolate fondue for two, for $12. I love chocolate fondue.

Here's a picture of my father's order of paella. I was getting carried away taking high-resolution food photos and I thought the presentation was particularly nice. He would have preferred that it had more shrimp and fewer bivalves, but I would have liked it as-is and managed to steal a mussel.

Happiness and Excitement

Happiness is returning home after 2 weeks and discovering that the coffee grounds that one left in the coffee pot have not molded.

That's right, the proverbial newspapers at the end of this blog's driveway have been building up for a reason. I've been in Boston, for both business and pleasure, and drove home last night. I have lots of highlights, food stories and photos to share...in good time.

One of the exciting events while I was gone was Blogger's enabling the easy routing of RSS traffic through Feedburner and discovering that I have not one or two subscribers, but more than twenty. I was stunned. Thank you all for reading!

Gorilla Ginger Gadgets

I've been trying out quite a few new things lately and you all should benefit from my thorough research.

The iPhone. While I haven't actually touched one yet, I have seen my hippest friend use his. To put it bluntly, the iPhone makes my Treo 700p look pathetic. I really didn't think that it would be nearly as nifty as it is. The web browsing capability, particularly with wifi, is what really sells this product. Scrolling and zooming looks almost effortless and it is most certainly not effortless with the Treo 700p. Again, I am fortunate in that I will be spared from spending the $600, because I don't get service from AT&T anywhere where I would want to use it. As wonderful as the iPhone may be, I draw the line at having to drive somewhere else to use one. The take-home message here is that this blog, my blog, has now been bookmarked on an iPhone. That's worth more in my book than any technorati ranking I've ever seen.

Ginger Beer by the Ginger People. I've been looking for a sodium benzoate free replacement for Blenheim Ginger Ale for months now. I've finally found one. It doesn't actually taste similar, but it many ways I think it's an improvement. It's barely carbonated, so it's far more drinkable. I've seen several people almost choke on Blenheim and that just won't happen with this beer. It's non-alcoholic and made with real ginger juice. One of my complaints about most brands of natural ginger ales is that is has some other fruit flavor added, like pineapple. This doesn't, which is great. Disclaimer: My most faithful reader of this blog thinks it tastes awful.

Now if only I can find a decent all-natural replacement for IBC and Saranac root beer...

I am now the proud owner of a Gorillapod tripod. This product is also way more awesome than I had imagined. I can attach it right to my chair. Not only that, but I've already imagined other things that I can connect to it. I'm planning on screwing on a something with a clip so I can have a music stand that will attach to almost anything. There's nothing worse than having one's music blow off the table while you're in the middle of a song. Ok, maybe there is. It also has a detachable piece that screws on semi-permanently to one's camera so you can easily dock onto the tripod. The only problem that it covers the SD card/battery compartment on my Canon SD500. That makes it a little less permanent, obviously, but it's still handy for short term use.

Squash Stir Fry Surprise

Last night, in an attempt to use up vegetables from our Elysian Fields farm share, I made a stir fry that I thought was surprisingly good.
canola oil
garlic (all the cloves from a single head)
2 onions
2 heaping tsp of brown sugar
1 cup of red wine
2 tsp of soy sauce
about 5 medium sized summer squash, sliced
dried basil (about 3 tsp or more)
dried orange peel (about 2 tsp or more)
black pepper
2 boca burgers cut into little pieces

I had the whole garlic cloves, the onions and the sugar cooking for a while, then I added the wine and the soy sauce. Next I put in the squash. I was adding it in as I was cutting, when I probably should have put it all in at once. I let that all cook on medium heat for a good long while, such that the liquid was boiling the whole time. The boca burgers, which I added near the end, soaked most of it up, too, which was great.

My dad always gives me a hard time about not tasting my cooking while I'm making it, but it really turned out well in the end. I love making these things up as I go along. It was good with rye bread, but it would have been great over rice, too.

This was the first time I'd ever peeled a head of uncooked garlic before. I was getting faster toward the end, but it's time consuming for the inexperienced.

How the iPhone Has Made Me Hip

I figured through the various degrees of separation that I would know someone who would already have an iPhone. I do and, in fact, on Friday night, I was able to be in his presence during his hour or two of need while he was waiting for his phone to activate. I feel so much hipper for knowing him now and he was already one of the hippest people I knew. Much of that hipness has to have rubbed off on me, right? Not only that, but at least one of my co-workers has already handled an iPhone in an Apple store and I have seen the pictures which documented her very hand's holding a genuine iPhone. That makes me even hipper. It gets better. That same co-worker has been known to read this blog, so that even makes Eclectic Glob of Tangential Verbosity hip! I feel so much more special for not having experienced owning or fondling an iPhone myself and living through my friends vicariously, because it generously allows so many people to contribute to my existence.

Terrific Twisted Noodles

A couple of nights ago, my parents and I went to Thai Cafe and had another excellent meal. They had a new coconut shrimp appetizer special, which was good. It came with a mayonnaise based sauce, which I wasn't as crazy about, because their tangy honey based dipping sauces are so much better. The real excitement of the evening was my parking job. When my dad saw how close I was to the bricks, he repeatedly urged me not to mess with masonry. I, however, was rather pleased with my efforts.

Last night, after guitar practice, I wanted to try out one of the newer restaurants in Durham, so we all went to Twisted Noodles, a new Thai restaurant in one of the strip malls on University Drive, kind of behind Eastern Lights. JA told me that I'd never go to Thai Cafe again after tasting the food at Twisted Noodles. I don't think that's actually true, but I was immensely pleased.

I ordered Pad Thai, since that's the standard basis of comparison for most Thai restaurants. It was excellent and I was pleased to have enough for my lunch this afternoon. Thai Cafe's strikes me as somewhat on the mushy side, while the noodles I had last night had the perfect firmness. I like a little more emphasis on the tamarind flavor, but it was very good and that's just my personal preference. JJ had the duck special, which our waiter described as "the show", because it came out on an almost deafening sizzling hot platter. The bite that I tasted was absolutely delicious.

Dessert was actually the best of all. For $1.95, they have warm crepes rolled in condensed milk and sugar, called rotee. They are simply wonderful and it's a nicely sized portion, cut into six pieces. You can get it with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for another $2, but I think it's completely unnecessary.

A restaurant critics, albeit an amateur one, should always go to a restaurant more than once before reviewing it, right? Well, I did just that. I decided that my parents needed to go to Twisted Noodles as soon as possible. We shared the shrimp tempura appetizer. The batter is thinner than Thai Cafe's, so it's not nearly as doughy. Both the shrimp and the broccoli were great. You probably get more for your money at Thai Cafe, since that is almost more than I can eat as a meal, but this was a good sized portion and practical to share. I had an enormous bowl of roast pork wonton and noodle soup, which was delicious. I have more than enough for lunch tomorrow. I'd been looking forward to having a second rotee all day and my second one was just as good as the first.

Some important things to note: They do not have enough wait staff and may not have enough people working in the kitchen. Tonight we observed four people get up and leave, because no one took their order. That said, their staff are extremely courteous and friendly and the food is worth the wait. I have no idea how common this is, but in the two times I've been there, they've been out of several things and have removed some items from the menu. Don't be surprised and just consider it as part of the charm.

Will I quit going to the Thai Cafe? Of course not. I love the Thai Cafe Baskets, the Massaman curry dishes, their coconut soup with shrimp and their potstickers. It's also pretty fast. I am excited that they are expanding and hope that their popularity will continue. No, I am just looking forward to enjoying Thai food even more often now!

Refreshing Cucumber-Mint Salad for an Indoor Picnic

We were supposed to take off from work this afternoon and have a picnic at a shelter in Duke Forest, but we had to cancel due to an impending thunderstorm. It was rather hot today, so that might have been a good thing.

I made a cucumber-mint salad, which I thought turned out well. I based it on parts of recipes I saw on the web, but it was influenced heavily by what I happened to have on hand. In lieu of the picnic, we ended up snacking on perishable goods (cookies can spoil within minutes, I hear) in the quasi-kitchen and the salad is almost gone, so I must not have been the only one. I thought it was pretty, too, but ironically, I didn't photograph it.

Here's the recipe:
6 medium sized cucumbers
1 cup (or so) of coarsely chopped fresh mint
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
black pepper

I peeled and sliced the cucumbers and added the mint. I put the lemon juice, sugar, pepper and oil in a jar and shook it before pouring it on the cucumbers. I stirred it all up and put it in the refrigerator overnight, so the flavors blended quite a bit.

Slushy Granita Goodness

Yes, it is worth the mess. It's wonderful. It has the perfect tartness, in my opinion.

This camera phone pic doesn't do it justice, but I was in a hurry to try the granita and I was uploading photos from my SD card at the time. The recipe makes a quart, so I'm looking forward to several more servings.

In other news, my as yet unlabeled Field Day 2007 pics are now available on Flickr. We had a great time and I made 6 contacts on 40 meter phone and 10 contacts on digital PSK31, on 40 meters.

Granita Goo

Since I wanted to use up some of my naked lemons from making the lemon-blackpepper-cornmeal cookies last weekend, I decided to make lemon granita from the same Luscious Lemon Desserts cookbook. At a high level, it's pretty easy until you realize that you need to put a 9"x13" pan full of sticky liquid onto a shelf in the freezer. I had realized that enough to clear out a space, but not to realize how difficult it is to keep such a pan....level. The one I'm using is made of pyrex glass so it's on the heavy and unwieldy side. I'm imagining that some sort of container with a plastic or rubber tight-fitting lid would be so much nicer than just covering it with tinfoil.

You also need to stir the frozen stuff every half hour for a few hours, which means precariously taking it out of the freezer again. I think my kitchen is going to be sticky for a while, no matter how much I scrub.

Stay tuned and find out whether the taste of the granita will make it all worthwhile. I have a feeling that I'm going to want the ice cream/sorbet maker attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer in the not too distant future.

Field Day 2007!

Since this blog has continued to get several local hits recently, I thought I would tell all of you about the most exciting activity going on this weekend. Forget Durham Rising.* The real action will be at Field Day. Actually, this is far from being just a local phenomenon, but I highly recommend participating where ever you happen to be.

For those of you who don't remember my reports on past years' activities, Field Day is a 24 hour period on the fourth full weekend in June where amateur radio operators get together and try to make as many contacts as possible, with other hams in the United States. While individuals can participate at home, many ham radio clubs get together in some location away from power lines and preferably not at the lowest altitude they can find and make it a community event. I have been an operator for 10 years now and I have not missed a Field Day since I started. Of course, part of the fun is to eat lots of junk food while you're operating and since my dad does the grillin' for OCRA, the club I hang out with for this, I am looking forward to an exquisitely prepared Boca burger. One other nifty thing that OCRA does is operate as if there were emergency conditions, using no more than 5 watts of power while transmitting.

All stations will be operating from 2pm Saturday to 2pm Sunday. Yes, that means in the middle of the night, I am likely to be operating in the middle of a field swatting at big bugs flying into my hair. One of the coolest things about Field Day is that anyone, regardless of whether or not they are a licensed operator, can participate. This also means that hams with lower license classes (Technician) can use High Frequency (HF) bands during that 24 hour period. This is potentially a great experience for those who want to experience this hobby, or service, first hand.

• In Orange County, the Orange County Radio Amateurs (OCRA) will be operating at Blackwood Farm, on the corner of Highway 86 and New Hope Church Road. If you are heading toward Chapel Hill on 86, it will be on your right, just before the traffic light at New Hope Church Road. You can also look at a map.
• In Durham County, the Durham FM Association (DFMA) will be operating in Hillsborough, at the intersection of Miller and Baldwin Roads. More information and directions are available.
  
• In Wake County, the Raleigh Amateur Radio Service (RARS) will have their Field Day in Apex.

Again, there are clubs doing this all over the United States and Canada.

To see photographs of OCRA Field Days from the past couple of years, you can see my flickr sets.

• Field Day 2006
• Field Day 2005
  

*No, really, you can do both!

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.

YoYo World

Even after living in my house for over three years (unbelievable), I still have lots of stuff that needs to be moved from my parents' house to mine. Late last week, my parents brought over a bunch of the paintings and drawings that I did while I was in highschool. Many of them haven't even been photographed, so they haven't been up on my website. Above is an example of one of which I was and am very pleased. That is my hand in the painting, but whatever you think about what this might say about my personality, remember that, as a lefty, my right hand was the most convenient model. I painted this using gouache on bristol board in 1993.

A Zestive Occasion

I had a party at my house last night and as a result did several things for the first time.

1. I zested lemons. That was surprisingly easy and enjoyable, because it smells so good. The lemons reminded me of shorn sheep afterwards.
   
2. I used my microplane. I received this as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago and hadn't used it before, because I had never tried to get lemon zest from lemons. I've always used dried lemon peel. Using the microplane makes getting zest super easy, because you don't get into the bitter tasting pith. You can also use it for woodworking or grating hard cheeses, such as parmesan. I hadn't used it for grating because I've always been happy enough with Kraft. Yes. I may be every other kind of snob, but I'm not a parmesan cheese snob and I consider it to be one of my favorite foods. It's a meal, not a condiment.
3. I discovered that I like eating plain mangoes. Mango sorbet is way too boring to me and I thought the fruit was also kind of bland. A few months ago, I decided that they just needed to be combined with lime juice, which I'd tried at GM's. The ones I served last night, which were pre-sliced from CostCo, were just wonderful by themselves.
   

4. There was a lot of debate at the party about how salsa is defined and whether what I made was salsa or chutney. Since my mom is avoiding all vegetables in the Solanaceae family (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and potatoes), I wanted to make some very mild salsa with mangoes and lime juice. I also added onions, black pepper, fresh mint, brown sugar and minced ginger. I would have used honey, but I knew one of my guests had a honey allergy. From what I have been able to determine, salsa consists primarily of uncooked fruit or veggies while chutney has usually been cooked. While it may not have been typical salsa, since it had neither tomatoes nor peppers and was barely hot at all, it was certainly salsaesque.
   

5. I made lemon-cornmeal and black pepper cookies from the Luscious Lemon Desserts cookbook, by Lori Longbotham. That's why I needed zest from four gigantic lemons. It was fun, because you make logs of dough, chill them in the refrigerator and slice them. This may seem trivial for some, particularly those who are used to making cookies from canned cookie dough, but I'd never made that style of cookie before. I was really pleased with how they turned out, too.

Did I break new ground in any new non-food related ways? Well, no, but I had a really good time.

Showing Off My Impeccable Taste

As is probably hard not to notice, I've added a bunch of Amazon ads to my site. I've actually had loads of fun with this. If I'd been clueful enough to realize that one can put up ads the products of one's choosing, then I would have done this years ago. These are products that I use and like.

For example, I have an ad for Leonidas dark chocolate covered orange peel. I certainly don't care whether or not you buy it from Amazon. If you live near Durham, I strongly encourage you to support your local businesses and buy it from the chocolate counter in Parizade. That's what I do, unless I am shipping it to someone directly. The point is, if you like dark chocolate, please try this chocolate, because in my opinion it's the best dark chocolate covered orange peel available and I've tried a lot of different kinds.

Many of my readers can tell you that I can talk for a good twenty minutes about how I think that Duke's mayonnaise is the only mayo worth buying. Some people have never heard of it, but I have even craved it! Now you can see what the bottle looks like so you can try it out the next time you go to your local supermarket, because I'm assuming that you won't want to buy a whole gallon from Amazon.

In addition to adding a little more color to the site, it's fun showing off which music I think is the best. If they are compilations, they are the ones that I have and like the best or the ones that have the highest percentage of my favorite songs.

From Princess to Pauper

Forget sitemeter. If you want to know who is reading your blog posts, all you have to do is say something really outrageous. In order to guarantee results, your attempts at humor while leveling with your audience must fall completely flat.

$10.28

Back in the day, people would say things to me like "You are neither cute nor funny, young lady!"
Now sometimes I think I can be sarcastic and pull it off. I forget that my readers don't have the benefit of seeing that twinkle in my eye or my smirk. You have been spared from the giggling.

Anyone who has had a semi-lengthy conversation with me over IM knows that half of what I type is smileys. I try to avoid that in my blog. I'm conserving bandwidth.

Adsense Riches and picasa2flickr

If any of you have wondered, yes, I am getting rich off my Google Adsense ads. Since I put the first ones up last October I've earned $1028.

I've been uploading lots of photos to flickr. I've been thrilled with the new picasa2flickr plugin for flickr. The only problem I've seen so far is that it doesn't seem to transfer when the photo was actually taken. That's a major flaw, but it's still much more convenient than any other flickr uploader I've seen, so I think I'll live with it and correct the dates later. Maybe I'm naive to think that I'll actually will have time to do that, but we'll see. It's a little more likely since I want photos in sets to appear in the correct order.

What? You think I forgot a decimal point up there?

In the middle, perhaps? I won't be actually getting a check from Google for quite a while. That's ok. I'm entertained by seeing what ads come up based on my writing and that's the real reason I put them up.

Update: The missing time and date info may just be because the pictures I've been uploading have been from an old camera. The info I have in picasa itself is likely just the timestamp of the file and that alone may not be enough flickr.

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.