Wontons and Weddings

At one point, I was going to make a separate cooking blog, but my cooking style due to our life style has gone pretty simple. Since Erin and I aren't home at the same time as often, I've been cooking either in bulk to make a bunch of meals at once (grill 4 pounds of chicken in one go) or making ridiculously simple meals to make the most of our time together (turkey burgers turkey burgers turkey burgers!). Last night, we made dinner together, and damn did it turn out good. Potstickers:

They're chicken, and non-traditionally shaped, but they're cooked the right way - at least I think they are. Damn tasty and professional looking. This any my other recent culinary adventures all come courtesy of Alton Brown. See the granola bars below, they're from Sunday.
I finally got my broken tooth fixed. It broke in, like November of 2003, I finally got a root canal last spring, and went to get it crowned last month. Since I waited so long, the next tooth over decayed to the point they had to crown it as well, and being so small they had to do it in gold - yeah, I don't get it either. I guess it's sort of bad ass? I'm like a pirate, or something. So, I guess my father's advice of "Why bother going to the dentist if it doesn't hurt" kinda failed me here.


We got to see D's pictures of Jared and Lisa's wedding on facebook, and immediately regretted not finding a way out there. I feel like this is the first major event we've missed out on since leaving, and it sucks. It looks like every one had a good time, and it looks to have been a nice day. Congratulations to the Happy Couple, we look forward to celebrating with you in July.

Non-lazy Friday

Oh, I forgot the redeeming factor that balanced (somewhat) my weakness on Friday: I participated in Bike to Work Day. It was fun, didn't take as much out of me as I expected, and made me feel a lot more connected with my commute. 30 minutes each way, I figure I almost canceled out the
Chicken Sang-wich from McD's. I didn't feel sore until Sunday, though that may have been part hang over, so it's hard to judge. I'm thinking of doing it once or twice again this week, maybe work up to doing it every day. It makes perfect sense, it saves me something like $2 a day in gas money, it's healthy, and it wakes me up in the morning. We'll see how I feel after doing it mid week I guess.

Lazy Friday

So, despite welcomed encouragement, I gave into both temptations mentioned in my last post. Good news though: the rip off chicken sandwich doesn't hold a candle to the original. The key difference is the bun. McD's steamed really doesn't hold up compared to the toasted original, it just tasted pasty and nasty. Could also be that I've not had white bread in months.

The other pit fall that got me was Mr Pibb and Red Vines, as they equal crazy delicious. Link to explain for the confused. The movie was good, better than the first. I'm going to reread the books before the next one hits.

We've been hanging out with Steve lately. He's gone from being a farmer to being a farmer. We met up with him on Saturday at a farmer's market he was working, and hung out all weekend. We had a great time, had some wine, and got Steve playing some Rock Band. He's got some rough decisions to go through, so good luck to him and I'm hoping everything works out for him whatever he decides.

Chick-faux-lay

So, I cut fast food and soda out of my diet. In fact, I cut out High Fructose Corn Syrup as much as possible. I knew there would be two holes in my resolve, one for each. One: when I go see Prince Caspian it is imperative that I have me some Mr Pibb and Red Vines, as they are crazy delicious. Two: I love me some Chick-Fil-A. My first, and only experience with it was on our cross country trek, and it was heaven on a bun. Seriously, I like me some chicken sandwiches, and this was bar none the best chicken sandwich I've ever had. But Chick-Fil-A is primarily a southern and mid west thing. How could it tempt me from half a country away?

Enter Mickey D's
This is the Southern Chicken Sandwich. Seasoned chicken breast, buttered bun, pickles. The classic Chick-Fil-A sandwich down to the garnish. On top of that, they're giving it away for free on Thursday. It... it's just not fair! Sigh. Expect a review of it sometime soon. Maybe if it doesn't live up to the original it won't be as hard to resist.

Raw Deal

We've been remiss in our movie watching. Not having a big group to go out with makes it less tempting to go see things on opening night, add in Erin's variable schedule and my occasionally late hours, and it's just not worth making plans. So we were a week late in seeing Iron Man. The two big-ish towns near us are San Mateo and Redwood City, the later of which is our preferred destination for movies, as it's got better parking, though the restaurants in San Mateo are more convenient and varied. We hit Redwood City this time, with my intent being to hit a fast casual place like Chipotle or Tacone as I love me some Burritos and even the chain places out here do a good job with them (don't tell Erin - I think Chipotle is better than Moe's). Erin wasn't struck by anything on either menu, so we decided to celebrate my recent pay increase and Erin's haircut (I'll link to her blog if she ever gets around to posting about it like she claimed she would). Just down the street for the counter service joints pandering to high schoolers we found this place.

Now, given that this is the Bay Area, a foodie mecca if I've ever seen one, and home to plenty of pricey eateries, this place was pretty reasonable. But it was up there, about as much as I'd be willing to spend on a dinner without a really good reason. (spoiler alert: we spent just over 100, tip included, for 2 meals, 2 decent glasses of wine, and after dinner drinks) I ordered the NY strip steak, and applied my rule of ordering steak rare if it's over 20 bucks - I don't trust chefs at any place less than that to do rare correctly, so I do mid rare normally. I should say in advance of this, I don't think I've ever sent back a meal at a restaurant before. I just don't do it, especially since I saw Waiting... - it made me a bit paranoid. We were waiting a bit too long for our meals, given both Erin and myself ordered rare/mid rare steaks, so I had a feeling something was up. Erin's came out fine, but mine was medium well - maybe medium being pretty generous. If I cooked it for myself, I'd have eaten it without complaint. I almost kept my mouth shut, but when our waitress came over to ask if everything was alright I decided couldn't let it go - Damnit I'm paying 25 bucks for this steak, it'd better be right!

An interlude here for a moment - I find I can't keep the venom out of my voice when I complain about something. Even if I try to control my tone and be up beat and what not, there's a tinge of malice at the end of the sentence. I must come off as really pissed off, which may or may not have worked in my favor this time.

She took my plate back without complaint, and someone (I'd assume the chef) came out to say it would be just a minute. The replacement was prompt, and just looking at it through the sauce before slicing into it I could tell this piece of meat had just barely been introduced to the flame, like a coworker's spouse at a party - an acquaintance made in passing and quickly forgotten about. Now, clearly, I enjoy rare steak. But this steak was rare in nearly the same way Sushi is rare. The center was literally cold to the touch. I'll repeat that for emphasis - the meat was cold! I really wasn't going to be the guy who sends his steak back twice, so I decided to live with it. I was fairly well rewarded; it wound up being a bit chewy, but it had a damn good flavor. By the time I finished it, the temp had evened out so I didn't even have that disturbing cold twinge with each bite.

I took this picture with my camera phone at the end of dinner - low quality for obvious reasons, I tried to clear it up a bit in Gimp. If anything, it was more red/purple in person. The pink you see here is deceptive, if I had seen it on someone else's plate I would have assumed it was seared tuna.


Oh, and Iron Man rocked. Tony Stark at the beginning reminds me of Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, which I think was about right for pre-redemption Stark. I'm really looking forward to the sequels, since I love Warmachine and I can't wait to see what Terrence Howard does with an action role. Oh, if you haven't seen it, stay till after the credits for some awesome Marvel universe movies foreshadowing as well. If they can pull off (warning: Iron Man post credits scene spoilers in link) this whole thing the way they're talking about it, it will without doubt be the crowning achievement of the whole Superhero movie thing that's been going on for the last 6 years or so.

Big Money

I arrived at work today to find out the update I'd had released last night (which I'd been working on for 3 months) had half a dozen bugs. One of the underwriters stopped my on my way in the door to let me know. "Ok, let me clock in, I'll be right back." I made it half way to my desk before I realized I didn't have my laptop with me. *sigh* I'd brought it home so I could fix any bugs remotely in the morning. I got up early double checked with my contact in Albany, but of course the SF users wouldn't inform him, since they can just go straight to me. Now it's 10 AM, I could have solved this 2 hours ago and not killed productivity for the whole department, plus I have to drive back home to get my machine. I made record time and clocked in by 10:30, and knocked out the bugs one by one - half of which weren't even bugs, just misinterpretations of new features by the users. Damn, looking back on it I missed my chance to use favorite refrain of developers everywhere - "working as intended!"

I killed my whole day fixing bugs and hand holding users through the new, more automated UW system. Rough work as, well, everything that went wrong was my fault. Sort of depressing, having your mistakes laid out before you. Around 5 o'clock, I had a surprise annual review sprung on me. Surprise because we don't do annual reports in our company anymore. Apparently, we still do, just not on paper and they have no official effect. This one did. I got a raise.

A big-ish one. Not as large as the last, but seeing as instead of my expected cost of living increase (3.8%) I got more than four times that (about 16%), it certainly caught my attention.

So, big news I guess. Brightened my day. I'd been a bit worried since the other guy on my team got fired with no warning in February, and I wasn't really doing the job they brought me out for - still basically a software developer, maybe that and a project manager. Guess I've been doing alright.

Birthday greetings

The last time I spoke to my father was on my birthday. Today is his. I left work early to call him. He was at dinner, and said he'd call me when he got home. That was at 6:30 - 9:30 on his coast. It's now almost 1am his time. This should probably bother me, shouldn't it?