Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: March 2009
Eating Portland part deux
I think interviews went okay today, but I always feel like I’m either blathering or too quiet. For this interview, I tried to err on the side of too quiet. Perhaps it’s like the early stages of a romance, when mystery is a good thing, so that your date is free to imagine anything she likes about you. Blathering ruins the mystery.
On the other hand, I blathered like hell on my first date with Karen, and she still married me. It must have been especially entertaining blather.
We dined at an upscale joint tonight. I’m not sure my salad is on that menu. Spinach, check; roasted beets, check; Walla Walla onions? I don’t think so! And there was blue cheese, too. Tasty salad.
For dinner, I had the Petrale Sole, also not on that menu. It’s hard to pay attention to the food when you’re focused on staying engaged and looking like you have two neurons to rub together, but my sole was excellent. Tender flesh, thin crisp crust (perhaps from a thin layer of flour and finely ground bread crumbs, but dammit I really wasn’t paying attention, so I’ll never manage to replicate it!), side of sauteed root vegetables, a nice pilaf beneath, and a saffron beurre blanc. Yes, I would return.
Good food. Good company.
I’m catching the red eye tomorrow: 6:20 AM. Folks in the department tell me that TSA doesn’t even show up until 5, so there’s no point getting there two hours early. I’ll get up at 4:30 . . . that should give me plenty of time.
Waiting game follows.
D.
Eating Portland
As usual, the appetizers were the best part of dinner. That and the view.
I began my evening at a place recommended to me by the realtor who shlepped me around town today: the Portland City Grill, a surprisingly* tasty eatery on the 30th floor of the US Bank building, AKA “Big Pink”:
I made it in time for their Happy Hour, and ordered a margarita and an oyster salad. The latter consisted of two small fried oysters topped with a citrus/mango salsa, served on a bed of mixed greens tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette. I could have easily made a main course of it.
From there I walked a few blocks east to the original McCormick and Shmick’s, where I ordered fried calamari with three sauces, and the rainbow trout entree. I found it mildly amusing to imagine ingesting a fish bone and asking my interviewers tomorrow to please pleeeeease scope me and pull the damned thing out. Won’t that make a fine first impression! Especially when I whine and complain with every centimeter of the scope’s passage.
The calamari was top notch: tender, not chewy. Two of the dipping sauces were standard, a tartar variation and cocktail sauce, but the third was cilantro and green onion, sweet and tart. As for the entree, it wasn’t bad rainbow trout but it wasn’t anything spectacular, either. Some sort of beurre blanc, topped with bay scallops and teensy tomatoes. The vegies (mashed potatoes and green beans) were perfect, though.
Interview tomorrow!
D.
*A killer view and good food? Yup.
Ice cream with chunks of Toffler
After dinner, I loaded up my laptop and GPS into my backpack, along with my defunct Blackberry (which I use as an alarm clock, address book, and eBook reader), my cell phone, and the little gizmo that lets me log onto the hospital computer from a remote terminal, so that I can answer my patients’ emails. If I was into the iPod thing I’d have loaded that into the backpack, too. Tomorrow, when I leave my car in long term parking, I’ll take my Blue Ant Supertooth* and toss that into the backpack, too. Yes, I can fit all the electronics I need into one rather-heavy-now backpack.
I like to tell my son about our junior high school computer, the one that filled a room and looked like HAL’s memory from 2001. Most of that monster’s memory was dedicated to understanding Basic, and what little was left over could be taxed by a Blackjack program.
Earlier still, in our home growing up we had a built-in black-and-white TV with a built-in fish tank above it. (How’s that for intelligent design?) I can’t remember that TV ever working. TVs back then had radio tubes (pause a moment to explain radio tubes to my son) and a dial to change the channels. My parents still have one of those dial-type TVs, and gets decent reception on one channel. I showed it to Jake the last time we visited.
We still own a CRT-type TV, but we rarely watch it. It used to be our good TV. Nowadays, I turn it on if I’m working in the kitchen, peeling shrimp or what-not. I imagine we’ll replace it soon with a flat-screen TV. Considering how infrequently we watch it, we probably ought to sell it before we move. Sucker weighs a ton.
Not that the flat-screen TV is a lightweight, but considering the size of it, it’s amazing I can lift it. Meanwhile, our stereo from 20+ years ago languishes in boxes, and I’m beginning to wonder about the utility of hanging onto our VCR. VCRs. We have two. Not counting the one I used to have in the Crescent City office.
With any luck, my son should live well into his 80s, and maybe beyond. I wonder sometimes about what we’ll achieve with regard to life extension. But even ignoring that, Jake should see the late 2070s or even the 2080s. What will we see together? What will he see that Karen and I won’t live to see? Will all that gear I lug in my backpack fit into a wallet? Will it be built into a fancy set of eyeglasses, the ultimate heads-up display? And when will we start internalizing this gear?
As a sometimes science fiction writer, my mind wanders to stories where technology has allowed us to cheat death. If we could load the sum total of our knowledge, our personality quirks (mannerisms, diction), our logic and style and creativity into an AI, would anything be missing? We’ll probably see an AI beat the Turing test in our lifetimes; will we see one so sophisticated that we can’t tell a loved one apart from his AI doppleganger? I suspect so. At that point, have we cheated death?
. . . Which is what it’s all about, at least for me. It’s not my own death I fear (not MUCH, anyway!) but the death of loved ones. As I’ve said a hundred times, if I were a better Buddhist none of this would bug me. I’m simply too attached to this business of living.
D.
*cuz some of us don’t like looking like Borg, and besides, those other thingies hurt my ears.
Snopes, you gotta love ’em
Today, a patient told me I could make Mountain Dew glow in the dark by combining it with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. He referenced this YouTube video.
I’m still enough of a chemist to realize that soft drinks don’t fluoresce, so I checked the last word in urban legends: Snopes.com. And, guess what: it’s bull.
I bet the Mountain Dew people love that viral video. Sells lots of Dew. But I bet they’re less enamored of the rumor that Mountain Dew shrinks your nads.
D.
Your musical interlude
Have I mentioned lately how much I dig the Dandy Warhols?
Love the song, but I also like the narrative of this video. Reminds me a bit of Atom Egoyan’s Exotica.
Good Dandy Warhols starter CD would be Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, or perhaps the latest one, Earth to the Dandy Warhols. Dandy Warhols Come Down is excellent, too. The only one I’m a bit indifferent to (of the ones I’ve heard) is Welcome to the Monkey House.
That’s all I got tonight . . . and sorry I haven’t been around much but today is representative: up at 5, home by 8. Okay, this was a bad day, but I wanted to hear those violins 🙂
D.
Sausagy nonsense
My pal Lucie sent me a link to a recipe for Merguez sausage. I printed out a copy, but now the darn thing is locked behind a firewall! The only thing more nonsensical than locking things behind membership-only firewalls is putting it up for all to see and THEN locking it away.
I’ve made some minor changes. It’s my recipe now.
(Why pork? It seems to be one of the few meats I can still tolerate.)
Toast heaping half-teaspoonfuls of cumin seeds, coriander seeds, and fennel seeds until slightly smoky, then grind in a spice grinder.
Add this to 1 lb of ground pork, along with 2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh cilantro, 1.5 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of paprika, and 1/2 teaspoon of Spanish smoked paprika (you can substitute red pepper flakes or cayenne). Mush it all together with your hands, and when it’s all nicely mushed, form it into sausages.
No, I haven’t tried them yet — I’m letting them air-dry in the fridge — but they smell lovely. I’ll keep you posted.
D.
Yeah, I’m bad
I get bored easily, which is why I rarely finish my games. Oblivion, Beyond Divinity, The Witcher, and so many more . . . all lie moldering on their virtual shelves. I’ve finished a few games, like Diablo and Diablo 2, Fallout 2, and Oddworld (about a dozen times), but so many more remain untouched. Waiting. You know, like those lonely toys in Toy Story.
I suppose I could reinstall Oblivion, but naaaah. I want to be this dude.
I remember playing the original Prince of Persia back in ’90, my internship year. Best I can recall, it was a linear scroller, heavy on the button-mashing, an exercise in eye-fingertip coordination. Lots of jumping and grabbing and leaping and hacking and smashing. I’ve been meaning to check out the newer versions of the franchise, but only got around to it today when I found the Sands of Time trilogy for twenty bucks.
A trilogy, a whole trilogy. Probably 60 hours of gameplay! Never mind that I’ll probably tire of it after two hours; for now, I’m a sword-wielding wall-walking somersaulting Prince of Persia.
I wish Diablo 3 would come out.
D.
Cuz it’s like secret
All I want to know is: what’s the release date for Diablo 3?
There are all kinds of nifty things on the official Blizzard site, like a cool cinematic and a map that finally puts Lut Gholein and Tristram — well, on the map. I mean, what kind of doofuses must ye be to not realize fantasy lovers like MAPS? (Note to Tammy: next book needs a map.)
There’s a gameplay video, too. I see that the Barbarian has a new skill: he can stomp his enemies into blood pudding. Cool!
But no word as to the release date. Blizzard, don’t you understand I really need more games I have no time to play?
D.
Tofu burger, anyone?
Shades of The Freshman: Exotic Meats.
I think I could live my whole life without tasting lion meat, but 6-count shrimp? I’m tempted.
D.
Eggs
I went to a K-6 elementary school. The day we graduated, I went on a bike ride with two of my closest pals, Dan Baudino and Frank Howarth. (I’m ever hopeful these folks will google themselves and find me. Over the years, I haven’t had much luck tracking them down on the ‘net.) We rode down to Arcadia Park and beyond. There was an egg factory over on Baldwin Ave, if I remember correctly; it was one of those places where eggs were sorted into medium, large, and extra large cartons. We had no business being there but just the same, the workers let us watch.
To be continued . . .
Okay, I’m back.
I’m on call tonight, which means I’m shacked up here in Martinez (roughly equidistant between the two hospitals I cover) with my computer and my new Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job, hoping I’m not jinxing myself by taking off my tie and shirt, kicking back, and booting up the laptop.
So. Eggs.