I guess my last post was just before my parents and brother headed out to San Clemente for winter break. While a little crowded it was good to have the whole family together (everyone stayed in my one bedroom apartment). My parents got the living room, I got the bedroom and Eric got the bit of hallway between the bedroom and bathroom. We were able to cover some pretty good ground during the trip. We headed to Legoland with my uncle and his family. We saw my cousin's family up in Sherman Oaks including both the son we knew about and the one that was born so recently we didn't even know about him until a few days before we headed up. Always nice to go to the home of a professional chef, I mean it's always good to see family... Went to the retirement home when my great aunt lives. Nothing like getting advice - when you take care of yourself think about if you really want to live to be old - to get the day going. But we did recover by heading to little Tokyo and China Town and Hollywood Blvd. Went to Temecula which is a very nice town with some not so great wine. Well, their desert wines were good and I had ice wine for the first time, although as much as it is per bottle it may be a while before I have it again. We met up with Jess in Rowland Heights and headed to Hong Kong Plaza for some Schezwan food. Also got some time by the pool, played some sudoku, and watched some scrubs.
Two weeks later Max came out to San Clemente and we headed up to Mammoth Mountain for some skiing. Other than one attempt when I was young that didn't go so well, this was my first time skiing. Friday when we got up there I asked Max to give me a quick lesson since the slopes were only open for another two hours. We went up the easiest slope and Max was very patient with me, but it took me over an hour to get down since I fell over every time I made a turn. I was feeling pretty defeated after that. Max was a good teacher, but I think we both overestimated where my ability would be. The next day I took some lessons and they started us off with stuff like walking around in our skis and going down what is basically the walkway to the chair-lifts that has a slight incline to it. By the end of the lesson we went down the easy slope and it went a lot better. Max and I skied together a bit more that day, I was worried that Max would get bored skiing with me, but he was able to entertain himself by doing things like skiing backwards and carrying my skis when I took on too steep of a hill. The next day I took lessons again and they went well but by the end my knees hurt so bad I had to stop. I was proud to get down the easy slope once without falling and to get to making turns while keeping the skis mostly parallel (as opposed to wedge turns). There wasn't much going on at night in the town, but after skiing that was quite alright with me. I'm not sure when I'll head out next, but I would definitely be up for skiing again.
This weekend I headed up to Glendale and met up with Evan. We went to The Laugh Factory in Hollywood. The comics were really good. The host was a black woman who is married to a Jewish guy so it was the first time I had seen a black person do Jewish humor (part of me says that I should be writing African American, but I've been informed that the word black is the way to go). One of the better comics was Aries Spears who used to (or maybe still is) be on MadTV. Luckily, unlike the show he was very funny. Definitely something I would do again. And for those wondering, yes The Laugh Factory in NYC is where Michael Richards gave his racist stand up act.
There is some missing time that wasn't covered by this post. Most of that time was spent watching Battlestar Galatica (BSG) which has become a new obsession. Luckily I made it through all of the episodes so I can now do stuff with my life. Unfortunately I watched it in the following order: The Story So Far (a summery of seasons 1 and 2), what's been made of season 3, season 1 (thanks Julie for season 1), season 2, then the miniseries (prequel to season 1). Especially in a show where the cylons (the robots that revolted against humans, but look like humans) are slowly revealed it can really throw off what they are trying to do with the episode. But still good stuff. I do agree with Max that Firefly is better, largely because BSG takes itself so serious and Firefly was able to have a little more fun. But since there's only one season of Firefly and I've seen it a stupid number of times, I'm enjoying watching a show that has some new material. I also much prefer Firefly's method of dealing with cursing by doing it all in Chinese as opposed to using the word Frack which strikes me as odd every time I hear it, although I guess I'm just out of it since apparently it is catching on. Anyway, I could go on and on about BSG, but I better stop to avoid this paragraph getting longer than the one about seeing my family.
Well, apparently the last month of my life can be summed up in four paragraphs.
The other interesting thing going on I don't want to say too directly to avoid making an announcement about someone else's life on my blog, but I'm sharing a moment with Eliot in the My House episode of Scrubs. I guess it is a bit different in that she wanted people to recognize that she was also moving on with her life. But for me it is that I see my friends from KC moving along with their lives and it's not so much that I'm looking for recognition of moving on too (which is odd because normally my ego loves recognition), but that I feel almost no desire to make that kind of progress. I do desire progress, but primarily progress in my career and as an engineer (I've heard a few stories about people getting in trouble because of potential employers finding information about them online so I occasionally feel the need to throw in lines like this last one to make sure if a future employer is reading this that they don't get the impression I'm an unmotivated bum. You might think that I should worry about my currently employer reading this and wondering about me discussing future employers. But, at a startup no one expects you to stay around forever - in fact one of the biggest laughs I ever got out of my boss was when I made a sarcastic comment about wanting to be a lifetime employee of the company).
Well, enough of that train of thought. If you haven't seen Bill O'Reillly and Steven Colbert on the O'Reilly Factor and on the Colbert Report, it wasn't as amazing as I was hoping, but still worth checking out. I think Colbert on the factor is better than O'Reilly on the report. I really want to watch it with someone who likes O'Reilly. Not that I normally want to associate with such people, but when I watch both it seems like Colbert makes a fool out of Bill, but I think that BIll makes BIll look like a fool. So I'm curious if an O'Reilly fan thinks O'Reilly got Colbert.
A final thought: should Uni really be served on rice? I've tried it a couple times and the first time didn't think much of it because I didn't catch much flavor. The second time I noticed that there is a really good subtle flavor, but then as soon as I hit the rice it wipes out the Uni flavor. So having tried it twice I've decided that I know better than all those sushi chefs out there and that they should switch to serving Uni as sashimi instead of as sushi.
1 comment:
yummmm.... I know your post was about lots of things, but now all I can think about is that delicious Schezuan food we had in the RH & uni. MMmmmm.. Anyway, yes I think uni definitely should be eaten with rice, but not too much rice. I actually think that the proportion of rice-to-uni is pretty much perfect when you get uni sushi. But if you get an uni dish at a restaurant and it's sitting on rice, it's usually too much rice. Good thing rice is like, free. So you can just eat the uni. But really, if you're eating that much uni there's something wrong with you because it's a delicacy and should be eaten sparingly as such.
There's also cooked uni, which is equally delicious but slightly different in flavor. I think it's steamed or smoked or something. There's an awesome place in Santa Monica that has an uni spaghetti dish. It's called Blue Marlin. You should check it out next time you take a lady out.
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