Tag Archives: Wine

Stuff of the Day

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Update:  So, what do I post for an update.  Weekend.  Weekend was the least active one I’ve had in a couple of months.  I stayed at home.  Pretty much all weekend, except for a short trip to Wal-mart Friday evening with Ivy, so I could grab a couple of things (primarily, more cereal.  Apparently, I’ve -really- missed raisin bran more than I knew).  Otherwise, I stayed in all weekend, slept a lot to catch up on not having enough for a while (I slept in WAY late on Saturday), watched a lot of Top Gear (all of Season 1 and a couple of episodes of Season 2), and drank some wine.  I’m pretty much out of Bota Shiraz now.  I -might- be able to get another half-glass or so out of it.  I didn’t really clean much – I did some dishes, tidied up the kitchen a little, but didn’t do much beyond that.  I really need to vacuum, still haven’t done that.

Was I moping?  Maybe I was just being practical, given that my car is sitting in the shop, with still no prognosis (I’m giving Littlefield until 3ish, and if they haven’t called me by then – which they won’t, of course – I’ll call them for a status update), and I needed some sleep and me time.  I had offers for companionship, which I rejected.  Some of it, genuinely because I didn’t really want anyone to intrude (oh, and Saturday, my left shoulder was sore and aching horribly) on my solo veg time.  Some of it, maybe . . . because I just didn’t really think that being with someone else I didn’t really want to be with when the person I wanted to be with was off with someone else for the weekend would make me feel any better.

Some friends had a poker game Saturday night that I’d have really liked to be able to go to, but I lacked transportation, and they couldn’t find anyone willing to give me a ride to and from their place.  Understandable, I guess, but I really would have liked to have been there.  I could have used the companionship and fun.  Does that seem to be a contradiction of the other offers of companionship I mentioned above?  All I can say is, they’re different sorts of things, really.

I’ve already had a couple of texts from one woman hinting that she wants to do something with me tonight.  I haven’t figured out yet how I’m going to decline.

Link of the Day: Jeremy Clarkson Sound Box video

Spam of the Day: “LUKY JUNE ONLINE CASINO PROMO”

Funny of the Day: “How’s the Magma?”

Pic of the Day: Kermit the Frog + Internet Horror

Quote of the Day: “(757): Shark Week may as well be Shark Weed.” – another gem from TFLN

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: Got Windows 7 (Build 7068) running on my gaming rig at home last night, and basically functional.  Testing out the “maybe this will run better with a fresh OS install, as well as being able to address all 4GB of RAM” concept.  Didn’t unfortunately have time to give it some serious evaluation – which means actually playing and working on leveling in WoW, with combat, looting, etc.  If I still get the occasional random hitching, then it means either that one of (or a combination of) the addons I use is the culprit, or that I simply need to get some hardware upgrades done.  Finally met a friend I’ve been communicating with via Twitter and other social network sites and a little on the phone last night.  She’s attractive, intelligent, funny, a bit geeky.  Someone I could definitely either just have as a friend, or date.  Not a clue what she thinks of me in return.

Was starting to get concerned about someone else, I just found out she lost her phone.  Got the bottle of Penfold’s Bin 28 Shiraz (I think ours is a different year though) from James (my direct boss, and our CIO) yesterday.  I was pretty sure I have a corkscrew . . . but if I do, I was unable to find it last night.  There’s a chance there’s still one hiding in a box somewhere, but I think I’m probably just going to have to buy another.  Seriously, this’ll be at least 3, if not more, corkscrews I’ve bought in the last 2 years.  That doesn’t count the one I ran off at New Year’s Eve ’07 to help Ganit acquire.

Link of the Day: Wall-E Computer case – one of the most intensive custom case jobs I’ve ever seen. Note: LOTS of images, long load time.

Spam of the Day: “Bring her to the seventh sky”

Funny of the Day: Woman’s Ideal Strip Club

Pic of the Day: Just Awesome.

Quote of the Day: “If the delete key were meant for something else, it would be labeled ‘Delete/back/whatever the hell some jackass decided.'” – David Chartier

Stuff of the Day

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Brief Update of the Day: Sheesh, what’s with the wind last night and today?  All the dust in the air has my allergies in overdrive, and the loose flue in my apartment was clanging all night long.  Freaking the cat out, making it hard for me to get to sleep.  I ended up being like 4 minutes late for work this morning because I had to dig around frantically to see if I had any more Advair left.  I found 1 single disc left, finally.  Sucks that I felt like I NEEDED a blast of that to function.  Had been doing pretty well without it the last couple of weeks.

Link of the Day: Google Reveals Once-secret Server Hardware

Spam of the Day: “6 Complimentary Bottles of Wine & Deluxe Corkscrew Set on us!”

Pic of the Day: “Say ‘Wheat’.  Now say, ‘Wil Wheaton.'”

Quote of the Day: “Anyone who doesn’t understand sex or fishing has done neither.” – Unknown, overheard and tweeted

Eventful, Good Times of Late

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Didn’t make any posts this weekend – not even Daily Stuff.  This has been, overall, a busy, eventful, unexpected, and altogether excellent weekend.

Last week, I pretty much decided that with my upcoming paycheck on the 6th, along with my income tax return, with what I had in checking/savings, it was finally time (Again – the near $1200 of car repairs delayed me by a bit more than a month on my plans) to move on the whole Apartment/Getting-my-own-place-again goal.  Having already done a lot of the initial work of investigating, evaluating, eliminating apartment complexes here in Midland in January, this time it was a briefer process, starting with a short list of candidates.  Four complexes that were any real serious consideration, and another I called just to check on it as an option, and because it’s literally throwing distance from our office.  They were the most expensive, so that was pretty much an easy elimination.  

Of the other 4, I went and looked at all of them – 1 of the 4 I’d seen a 1BR Townhome before, which I liked a lot.  Really liked.  I just know Baby, my cat, would love the stairs there, and I liked the layout, but it was a little bit beyond what I would be comfortable with based on my projective budgeting.  Rent in Midland is stupidly costly right now – prices are still high from rapid rising over a few years of oilfield prosperity.  The oilfield prosperity is starting to show some real, true (worrisome to oilfield/oil company employees) signs of decline, but any drop in the inflated rent prices will take several more months, if not a year, before they start to happen.  In Huntsville, I had a 2BR, 1.5Bath 1100 square foot townhome for less than I’m (going to be) paying for a 710 square foot 1BR/1BA flat here in Midland.

So, anyway, after checking out all of the other 3 options, with some drama and surprises involved there, I decided on going for what’s supposedly the nicest/best rated of the complexes, Windscape.  Current schedule is to move in on the 13th.  Friday the 13th . . . I can’t help but feel that with everything that happened last week and weekend, it’s something that’s meant to be, and any luck I experience on that day will be Good.  It’s just going to be a tight week for me financially until my payday+ this Friday.

Friday night was looking to be pretty uneventful – I tried to get hold of a couple of people to see about doing something interesting:  seeing a movie with a friend, or going out for whatever workable (she’d mentioned wanting to go to a karaoke bar) with another, female, friend – but it seemed that stuff just wasn’t going to be happening that night.  So, without someone to make going out (and thus spending money) a worthwhile excuse, stay home and . . . apparently watch Seabiscuit with my dad.  During which I find out about some bad medical news about a friend of mine.  Not horrible stuff, but still unfortunate and unpleasant, kind of a bummer, which had (and still has) me worried for her.

Then at 10:15 that night, I get a text from Ms. Fire, commanding me to head down to the hotel lounge she’s in and ask her to dance.  I hop up, change shirts, brush my teeth, and head off to the lounge.  She seemed surprised I “actually came.”  To my surprise (though only a little bit) it was Tejano Night at this club.  I haven’t danced in like 9 years, and I haven’t danced to something other than techno/trance in a good dozen.  I wasn’t very good, but it didn’t seem to matter – the intent and effort, and quite possibly the fact she was a bit inebriated, seemed to matter more.

I’ll not go into further details on the rest of that night . . . but it was wonderful, and surprising.  

Saturday, despite lack of sleep, I got out to see that movie (The Street Fighter Chun-Li one) with my friend Ivy.  It wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t great either, but it was entertaining (even though I think Kristen Kreuk is just wrong for the role).  It had some very nice cinematography of Bangkok in it too.  

Sunday, I had a date to try to see Les Miserables at  MCT.  I type “try” because when I attempted to buy tickets Monday of last week, they were nearly entirely sold out – they only had 3 seats left, none of them anywhere near each other.  The nice old lady at the box office suggested I show up an hour before the show to try to get no-show seat tickets.  After discussing this concept with J, my supposed date, she said we should go ahead and try for it, and plans were made for her to meet me at the theater, see Les Mis, and then who knows?

I dress up as I thought reasonably appropriate for going to the Theater (to discover there later that several folks just went in whatever – but I still felt good about my clothing choice, I think dressing decently for the Theater is still respectful), and show up there a couple of minutes before 1:00.  I’m 4th on the list for no-show seats, with the box office manager informing me that she has no doubt I’ll get tickets.  I wait, seeing tons of people stream in, mingling, talking to friends . . . and then run into a good friend of my Mammaw.  People take their normal, had their tickets in advance, seats, being ushered and hurried into the theater by staff, and at 2:00, the box office manager starts calling out names for the no-show seat tickets.  J still hasn’t shown up (I’d been looking for her, for the entire hour).  I let the box office manager know my date didn’t show, someone else should get the other ticket, and she snatches back the pair she handed me, hunts around frantically, and then gives me a single ticket.  It was a decent seat.

Les Mis was excellent.  One of the best Community Theater productions I’ve ever seen (and most of my comparisons are from MCT shows, so that’s good comparisons, as MCT has been one of the best Community Theaters in the nation for a long time).  Not only was David Odom, who was a friend of mine in High School, on the debate team with me, in the play (as I knew beforehand and expected), but Robert Reed, another High School friend was in the cast as well.  I graduated with both of those guys.   There were other people who I knew from when I was involved in the theater back in the 90s.  I’m considering volunteering for a few shows, maybe auditioning for a part or two.  If not, I’ll at least get a membership, and make MCT a regular part of my entertainment options.

I’ve been trying to get in touch with J the last two 2 days, with no luck thus far.  I don’t know what the deal is, what happened – if there’s a good reason she wasn’t there, a bad reason, if I was just stood up, or what.  If I was stood up, oh well, her loss.  My weekend overall was so good, it doesn’t really upset me.