Category Archives: Food

Photos From Bourbon Street & NOLA

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This last weekend, James and I flew to New Orleans/Metairie for work.  After we got done with everything, we had a couple of hours Saturday night to explore and try to have a little bit of fun.

First, we ate at NOLA, one of Emeril’s restaurants.  It was good.  No photos in there, but I drank Chimay Blue, an excellent Belgian beer, extremely smooth, almost a chocolatey texture (not the taste of chocolate), and 9% alcohol.  James was on an Abita kick (Abita being a local LA brewery).

After NOLA, we wandered around Bourbon Street for a bit.

Here are some pics:

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Stuff of the Day

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Update: I’ll be honest, I’m not particularly inspired to write/post right now.  This is pretty much just for Ivy.

Weekend was pretty good.  Spent it with my Kara, we entertained ourselves inexpensively, ate very well (perhaps too well, I need to not be poor again soon so I can afford to get back on my diet), had a lot of fun and many good snuggle times.  Weather most of the weekend was dreary.  I really kinda wanted to see about playing with/test driving some cars Saturday (though Kara really didn’t seem too keen on that idea), but the weather wasn’t cooperative for that.

Entirely too broke right now.  I had to borrow money from a friend until this upcoming payday on Friday so I could afford food to make sure I’d have something other than hamburger and ramen (not the end of the world, I’ve been worse off) and be confident of having enough gas my dad’s van I’m currently driving to be able to get to and from work this week.  Heard from Littlefield Automotive earlier, $350 to get my car from them.  Then haul it to Lubbock this Friday afternoon, and see what the Saab place there says it’ll cost to get things all fixed up.  I’m worried about what they’ll say.  I hope it’s a reasonable figure at all.  Even if I end up in (further) debt to my dad for a year or more, I’d really like my car back in proper working order.  I miss it.  I do like it.  I’d really rather not have to buy something else on the cheap right now.

Link of the Day: Students for an Orwellian Society

Spam of the Day: “Colo Cleanse Plus”

Funny of the Day: Burned by a pharaoh!

Pic of the Day: Irresistable geekette earrings

Quote of the Day: “Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.” – Douglas Pagels

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Work was ok yesterday.  Never did get a call back from Bounce Energy.  Haven’t checked my account today.

Air Conditioner at my apartment was messed with again (by request) Wednesday.  Whatever they did, it’s worse now.  Going to call them again, explain that I don’t consider my AC running for 4 hours solid and the temperature moving down 1 degree, or UP 2 degrees, to be acceptable.

Had lunch at the CAF yesterday with Kara, finishing off our leftovers from Carino’s.  Was yummy.  Also had a couple of Oatmeal Raisin cookies, that despite being a little hard from being a week or so old, were quite good.

After work, which I stayed a bit more than an hour late for, after killing some time at home, took Kara up on a much needed invite to go over to her and Matt’s apartment and watched the new movie version of Hairspray.  Fun movie, nice company, and working AC.

Link of the Day: Bluntcard.com

Spam of the Day: “Order the murder”

Funny of the Day: Could be worse.

Pic of the Day: Levar Burton’s license plate

Quote of the Day: “When you get spiders on your weiner, you’re fucked.” – Name withheld by request.

Stuff of the Day

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Update: Not lots of anything interesting to post about for yesterday.  Worked.  Ate food. Sockeye Salmon for lunch, which was actually a bit better than some of the other salmon I’ve had before.  Thankfully went home at a normal time, not having to work late.  Aside from laundry achievement, I was pretty well lazy.  Sat/laid in bed, watching tv and chatting with folks on my laptop.  I’m planning on something very similar tonight.

Link of the Day: The Pirate Bay sold, goes legit?

Spam of the Day: “And when he came to observe his feet”

Funny of the Day: I’ve been known to have this effect.

Pic of the Day: “Mouser?  That’s for AMATEURS.”

Quote of the Day: “lol, i actually had sauce running down my chin a sec ago, my bangcock roll exploded when i tried to take a bite” – Kara

Low-Carb Diet Survival: My Lunch Today

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So, sometimes doing the low-carb diet thing can be rough.  It requires a lot of willpower.  Not just to resist things that aren’t compatible with the diet, but also to alter behaviours that will have you doing things that will upset the diet and knock you way out of ketosis.  Like, oh, a sizable amount of drinking Thursday night.  Followed up by pizza Friday night, and a real, full-blown entirely sugared up soda.  Yeah, when I weighed this weekend, I was very unhappy with myself.  So, from Saturday afternoon on, I’ve been strictly “good” (ok, I did dip my finger in for a teensy bit of incredibly delicious, creamy, chocolate frosting) diet-wise.

Today for lunch, I went to a bit more effort than I usually do.  First, I grilled up some portabella mushroom slices:

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Next up, I’ve been working on some beef shoulder steaks (HEB sale special, I’m not made of money).  Normally, I thaw these out (these have been thawing since Saturday), throw some spices on them, and toss ’em on the grill and call it done.  With these, partly out of lazy last night, and partly out of a fit of fancy, I marinated them overnight.  The marinade was a homebrew concoction, with wine (cabernet sauvignon) and spices (salt, pepper, garlic, soy sauce, tabasco).

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While the first steak was grilling on my trusty Foreman Grill, I broke out some frozen broccoli florets (I’d have preferred fresh broccoli, steamed, but I cooked and ate the last of that last night with my steelhead trout).  Cooked them in the microwave most of the way, then finished up the last bit with butter and slices of colby-jack cheese melting on top of them:

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While they were cooking, my first steak (these are pretty thin, so they grill very quickly) finished:

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I have to say, after tasting the steak (I’ve had some of this shoulder steak before, I bought 4 packages of it when it was on sale) this time, the overnight marinating was definitely worthwhile.  Far more flavorful and tender than before.

Here’s a shot of everything put together, what I actually ate for lunch today:

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Altogether, delicious.  Aside from the prep time on the steaks, this was pretty quick – I went home, grilled and nuked everything, ate, flossed and brushed my teeth, watched twitter blab about Apple at WWDC a bit, in around 45 minutes.  I’ve got more mushrooms grilled and waiting, and steak for another 4 meals easily.

Stuff of the Day

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Update of the Day: It was a fairly busy weekend.  Added a few checkboxes to the “new experiences” list.  See my earlier post on DanceFAIL for one example.

Saturday, had a frienDate with K.  Dutch on everything.  Not thrilled with going backwards with someone, but I’d rather be friends with her than nothing.  We ate at Cheddars, and it was really surprisingly good.  I had the best Sirloin steak I’ve had easily over a year, the shrimp was decent, and the dressing on their Caesar salad was one of the best I’ve ever had in a restaurant.  I also had a little teensy bit of the Croissant that came with my salad.  ZOMG it was so light, flaky, and delicious.  I wanted to devour the entire thing.  But, trying to stick with the low-carb diet there . . . Not that it seems to have done any good (more on that below).  We killed some time doing some shopping at Barnes & Noble and Pier 1.  She got a gift or two for her niece, and I happened to spot some book she’d been looking for and snatched up immediately as we were in the line up to the cashwrap to check out.  Then we saw Star Trek again, then wrapped up with some mutual grocery shopping at HEB.  I know it all sounds really pedestrian, but I really enjoyed the 8 hours we spent together, regardless.

I weighed this morning, same routine I do every time I weigh.  UP 3.8 pounds.  Not horribly surprised, I had a vague feeling I’d gotten a little heavier.  Definitely unhappy about it, though.  Apparently, despite doing very good on actually being carb-conscious on what I ate this whole weekend, I either drank enough that burning the alcohol for energy continued for so long that all the fat I consumed didn’t get burned at all and just stuck around, or maybe one of the “diet” coke and vodkas I had wasn’t actually diet.  1 single decent glass of regular, fully sugared/HFCS’d coke will easily knock me right out of ketosis.  Almost wishing now I’d gone for some of the really, incredibly tempting scrumptious stuff at Cheddars I didn’t order.  :/

Got another one of the packages in today I was expecting, the PetFoodDirect shipment.  In addition to another bag of Innova dry food for her, got a dozen cans of Evo canned food.  She sort of got accustomed to having it as a treat/supplement a couple times a day in IN and AL, and this is the first time since I’ve moved back to Midland she’s had any.  She definitely seemed to enjoy it.

Link of the Day: Microsoft’s new Bing search engine

Spam of the Day: “Your drawbolt will go deeper in.”

Funny of the Day: “Not just ANY girl porn”

Pic of the Day: “Does he look like a bitch?”

Quote of the Day: “Damn those reckless Amish!” – Me

Stuff of the . . . Week?

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Update: Yeah, so . . . I’ve been “bad.”  Long weekend, with Monday off, and I didn’t bother to do anything on the computer all that time.  Well . . . that’s not true.  I -did- play a rather lot of Plants vs. Zombies.  If you haven’t played it yet, check it out.  There’s a free demo for it, with 1 hour of play.  Trust me, it’s enough to get you hooked.

So, then, the work week.  Been pretty busy most of this week, and the other days where I wasn’t, I was chatting online with someone.  Not the best of news there, but I’m remaining confident.  So, some of my not updating any day this week except Friday, today, was part slacking and part being really busy with work stuff.  I want for stuff on the new product version to hurry the heck up, so we can shoehorn it out the door and then I can get the raise I’ve been assured will happen.  I can survive on what I’m being paid right now, but if I want to do interesting things, go places, have fun other than sitting at home watching tv/movies and playing too much WoW (I’ve done enough of that the last 5 years, thanks), I need more money.

So, I could probably make one heck of a mega post just devoted to catching things up from the last several days.  Screw that, here are the links:

Link of the Day: Google Wave

Spam of the Day: “cuttlefish”

Funny of the Day: Yes, and then cookies.

Pic of the Day: LeVar Burton is fucking awesome! (via @wilw)

Quote of the Day: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” – Frederick Douglass

Stuff of the Day

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Update of the Day: Managed the “ignore the alarm that I know means I really need to get up and start getting ready for work and various and sundry stuff, and roll back over in bed” thing this morning.  Actually got up/out of bed at 7:46 a.m. Still made it in the door at 8:00 a.m.  A couple of minutes later than I’d really prefer to be here – James goes with the “If you’re on time, you’re already late” idea.  I rushed quite a bit, and flat out skipped a few things.  Going to have to do a proper job of things this afternoon when I prepare for my movie date.  For STAR TREK!

Lunch was grilled mahi mahi.  I’m not certain if I’ve ever had mahi mahi before.  It was good.  Almost a buttery taste to it.  Mahi mahi is win.

Link of the Day: FWhyMe.com

Spam of the Day: “Wiping good off the shelves”

Funny of the Day: War on Drugs

Pic of the Day: Awesome shot of Cartagena, Colombia

Quote of the Day: “Faith is not trying to believe something regardless of the evidence: faith is daring to do something regardless of the consequences.”  – Sherwood Eddy

Stuff of the Day

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Update of the Day: Totally blew my diet today at lunch.  Had to – my dad IM’d me asking if I had plans for lunch yet.  Invited me to go meet him at Kuo’s for lunch.  Heck, can’t say no to that.

Was late to work this morning.  Really aggravating, because not only have I been trying to rather make a point of not letting that happen again, I even went to bed early last night.  I was falling asleep at like 10:30, and slept pretty solidy throughout the night.  Dunno what happened this morning, I have very vague memories of an alarm, and then next thing I know, a meowing cat at 5 minutes before I’m supposed to be at work.  Not good.

Got a movie date tomorrow night for Star Trek.  🙂

Link of the Day: Peter Dinklage to play Tyrion Lannister!  Oh, also, they found some guy to direct.

Spam of the Day: “Drop your pants with “I know I’m the best” look.”

Funny of the Day: Ask an Asian

Pics of the Day: Some awesome photos by Mark Seliger

Quote of the Day: “Those of us who refuse to risk and grow get swallowed up by life.”  – Patty Hansen

Stuff of the Day

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Update of the Day: Maybe just a tiny little trace hint of ketones in my urine this morning.  

So, I finally get semi-industrious last night, and try to go install the water filter I bought like 2-3 weeks ago.  The primary thing for which I borrowed James’ cordless drill/driver.  I clear out all the cleaning supplies, trash bags, etc., out from under the sink, and worm and maneuver myself up under and into there to get at the hoses running from the cold water valve to the faucet.  After all this contorting and work, I discover . . . the hose is larger than the one that came with the filter.  Like, 1.5x the size.  Thus, to my dismay, the filter I bought . . . yeah, totally won’t work with the plumbing for my kitchen sink in my apartment.  

Now, the reason I bought the under-sink in-line filter, was because the sink itself is really shallow, and the faucet head arcs out in a very low arc, giving maybe 7 inches, if that, of clearance between the bottom of the faucet and the sink.  I’d originally planned on just an on-faucet filter, but if I go with one of those, I’ll lose around an inch to an inch and a half of clearance, on something that’s already a small space.  I suppose I could replace the entire faucet assembly, but that’d be a lot more work than I’m comfortable with right now, would run a much higher risk of being noticed by the complex . . . and I think I’d still have to come up with some sort of adapter or something to go from the weird size of tubing from the valves to the faucet.  Oh, and it’d cost a lot more money.

So, I don’t know, maybe I’ll have to go with a filter pitcher or jug or something.  Not really happy either way.  If Midland water wasn’t so terrible, I wouldn’t care so much.

Called Dr. Doctor’s office this morning, to try to get her to pick up the ball she – or someone – dropped and get my damn prescription sorted out with the insurance company and pharmacy so I can start the treatment I apparently need.  Haven’t heard back yet.  I’m going to give them another 10 minutes or so, and call them again if I haven’t heard anything.  And then every 2 hours until 1, at which time I’ll start calling every hour if they haven’t taken care of it.  Ridiculous crap.

So, finally, Dr. Doctor said to come in and see her, briefly, she wouldn’t charge me.  I went in for an 11:10 a.m. visit.  Waited about 5 minutes, then got in to see her, spent slightly more than 5 minutes on the phone (she kept saying if it took more than 5 minutes she was going to charge me for a visit, and said she was watching the clock).  She griped at me for being impatient with her staff, then apologized to me.  Supposedly the pre-approval is taken care of, and I should be able to get the actual script filled now. 

Link of the Day: Geocities to (finally) close. – Amusingly topical, as I decries Myspace as Geocities 2.0 on Twitter today, and apparently that’s the funniest thing since suicidal clowns.

Spam of the Day: “Prepare for every possibility” – Uhm . . . how, precisely?

Funny of the Day: “We’re fucking marketable“

Pic of the Day: I didn’t realize cameras were required for that, Pentax.  I’ve been doing it wrong?

Quote of the Day: “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is a little voice at the end of the day that says… I’ll try again tomorrow.” – Anonymous