Category: Food

Categories
Beer Food General

Day ’round the house

Today I went no further than a half-mile from my house, and it was nice. After last weekend’s running around it was good to just anchor down a bit.

Since Kelly had class all day, I had intended to sleep in late, but by 9am I got up and decided to have a full day. I fixed myself some coffee, had some cereal, and then spent some quality time with my new toy (the MacBook Pro). After a couple hours playing / tinkering / learning (and paying bills online, urgh) I set out to do some yardwork. This was at around 11am. Just as I was about to go outside, it started pouring down rain. Oh well, more play time! About an hour later the sun emerged again, so I got all ready to get outside and… rain again. Hrm. Ok, more geeking out. Finally, at around 2pm I decided I needed to do something productive, so I did a bit of grocery shopping at the local grocery store. After getting home and looking at the ominous clouds I decided not to bother going out and mowing my lawn, and instead decided to wash the car. This may sound foolhardy, but think about it… the rain helps wash the soap off! 🙂 However, I got the car washed, dried, and into the garage before any further showers. Kelly got back from class shortly after I finished washing the car, but needed some ‘decompress’ time, so I decided to detail the car pretty heavily (vacuum, wiped down all the vinyl & plastics, cleaned the windows inside and out, etc). After about three and a half hours of all that car cleaning nonsense (resulting in a super clean car) I got cleaned up and Kelly and I went out for some dinner.

We decided to walk to the Concordia Ale House (still within the half-mile range mentioned above), which we hadn’t been to in quite a while. I was very happy to see they were pouring the Terminal Gravity ESG (Extra-Special Golden), a delicious, light, summer-y golden ale. I also had a pint of Hales ‘Dublin Stout’, which was really good (creamy, not overly strong or bitter, somewhat remarkable for a Northwest stout). We also had some really good food… I had a turkey melt (with jack cheese and bacon, mmm), and Kelly had a tomato, pesto, cheese sandwich. We both had a nice relaxing time out, and then walked home. Good day. Feeling refreshed, though a little sore. Surprising what 3+ hours of car cleaning will do. 🙂

Categories
Food

Dinner for Miranda

Tonight I went to dinner for Miranda’s birthday at what was once Salvador Molly’s on Belmont, and is now ‘Calypso: Restaurant & Lounge’. I was a bit bummed to learn that Salvadore Molly’s was no more (only after getting home and searching the internets did I learn that the original location in Hillsdale is still around, which makes me happy, read on…)

The atmosphere of Calpyso is only vaguely similar to Salvadore Molly’s, only a bit less eclectic and fun. Some of the menu was similar… they had their version of "Great Balls of Fire", called something else which I can’t remember (something like Devil Balls or something) only without the "prize" of the Polaroid / Wall of Flame at the end… however the food I had was just "ok". What was worse, is that the place felt like some kind of strip-mall restaurant you’d find in Beaverton. Having mentioned the Great Balls of Fire, they took down the "Wall of Flame", which Brian and I had worked so hard to get on. Hrmph!

All of that said, it was a fun time, seeing "the crew" (along with several people I didn’t recognize, Miranda had an army of her friends there… we damned near took the place over!). Happy birthday Miranda!

Categories
Beer Food Technology Work

The Big Recap

Yes, it’s been a bit, mainly due to the house guests mentioned in my last post, and my new toy. I won’t recap the whole thing, as Kelly did a good job of that, but here’s some bits from the last few days:

Friday: The BBQ at Snooks place was fun, though I was feeling a bit ‘out of it’ from the work week, so I don’t remember feeling massively social. My brain just needed some "switch off" time I guess. I did however have an excellent hamburger. Along with the other food items Kelly mentions in her post, Snooks had also picked up some patties from the Sapphire (raised naturally, containing a mixture of spices other veggies, and about two inches thick) which he grilled to perfection.

Saturday: Went to Ground Kontrol with Sean (one half of our house guests) and Brian, and got our classic arcade on. I had fun playing some old pinball machines, including this very old Star Trek machine. After a few hours, we went over to the infamous Low Brow Lounge for some beers. Afterwards we met up at Khun Pic’s for dinner, which was, as Kelly mentions, fantastic.

Sunday: Sean, Brian, Snooks and I spent a few hours at Mash Tun while the baby shower thing was going on at my house. Had a blast playing pool, throwing darts, and drinking beer. After that we (minus Brian) went to Kennedy school for a bit, and were met there for dinner by the ladies.

Monday: Worked all day and then went home. Kelly brought me some delicious spicy mac & cheese from the Montage though. Spent my last night with Sean out in the garage, chatting away, sipping on beers, and listening to music. Went to bed WAY too late, but oh well.

Today: Said my goodbye to Sean (his wife was still asleep by the time I left the house) and worked all day. On the way home Kelly met me at the Mash Tun for a quick pint, before arriving to a relatively empty house. Had a fun time over the past few days, but I’m pooped. 🙂

There you have it, all caught up. Also, I’ve been playing a lot with my new Mac. It’s been running great. I got Windows XP installed on it (on a second partition) and it runs great. Also tried out VMWare Fusion, allowing me to run my Windows apps (from the second partition) inside of the Mac desktop. Pretty slick! I’ve also been able to narrow down the crashing issues I mentioned previously. There is something very specific happening with the OS X drivers for the new WiFi hardware this new machine has. At the office, when I enter the range of one of the two WiFi access points, I get the crash. Also, while at the Mash Tun, something about it’s access point won’t let me connect, though while booted into XP, I was able to connect. It’s become apparent that it’s the OS X drivers, and I’m sure that Apple will release an update for it sometime soon. But until then, my WiFi may be a bit spotty depending on where I am. Kind of sucks, but it doesn’t outweigh all the other benefits of the machine. I’m still very happy with my decision. 🙂

Categories
Beer Food General Work

Weekend Report: Backyard edition

Been a very busy week. So let me start off with…

Monday (Memorial Day): as Kelly wrote, my friend Jenn threw a big BBQ / Housewarming. I was there far too late and had far too much beer (from a keg of IPA from Pelican Brewery), but it was a blast. Though I paid for it on…

Tuesday: the final push week for a development cycle at work. The company has engaged in something known as a ‘release train’ model, whereby every 6 weeks the company will release a new versions of it’s products. In this model there are three weeks of development followed by three weeks of quality assurance testing. This means that at the end of the dev. cycle, the developers begin work on the next release, while supporting any bugs that QA finds. So basically, development and QA happen at the same time, just for different releases. Since we’re just now getting on this model, it’s been hectic. ANYway, it was a mad rush to try and get everything done by the end of the week. Fast forward to…

Friday: barely got everything done for a 4pm demo to the company. Following that, the company held a big happy hour bash. Since the company has gotten so big, it’s been decided that once in a while each department sponsors a happy hour, complete with a small budget for whatever it is they want to do. This first time out, the engineering department got the task, and decided to go with the theme "ice". The break room windows were blacked out, there were blue glowing things (both to wear, as well as set around the room), buckets of dry ice pouring vapor all over the floor, and images cycling on the big TV of glaciers, snow-covered mountains, and Vanilla Ice. Hehe. It was pretty fun, and I didn’t get out of the office until a bit after 7:15pm. Waited a painful 40 minutes for a bus to arrive and finally made it home a little after 8pm. Kelly and I sat in the back yard for a bit before I grilled up chicken (both real for me, and fake stuff for Kelly) and ate dinner. Then I fell asleep on the couch shortly after 11pm. This leads me to…

Saturday: Woke up just before 8am and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I shuffled downstairs, made coffee, and though of all the things I was going to try and get done today. Once I had a cup ‘o joe in hand, I went upstairs to my office and sat at the computer to read some news for a bit. Well, I got heavily distracted (mostly with this blog) and didn’t end up doing anything I thought I might get done. Oh well I guess, it was a fun nerdy day. You might notice one new feature of the blog, there’s now a ‘Random Image’ sidebar item that’s pulling images from my new photo gallery software (Gallery2). One thing I was trying to figure out was how to more tightly integrate that application with my blog. I’m a bit frustrated with one of the blog plugins (it’s not working quite as well as I want it to) but that led me to do all kinds of other things (more behind-the-scenes) to the blog software iteself. Still tinkering, but thought I’d write a bit here before I lose myself in nerdiness again. I’m finally sitting outside (now that it’s not so damned hot out), beer in hand. Ahhhh.

Other interesting tidbits: It’s been hot this week, very hot. It hit 90 once already, and it was still May at the time. Even today the temperature was about 13 degrees F above normal. We basically went from winter to summer with only a couple weeks of sprint-like weather inbetween. *sigh*. InfoWorld posted a positive review of the product I’ve been focusing on for the past several months. Also, as of next week, I’ll have been employed at SuperSweetCo for a year. Man how time flies!

Categories
Entertainment Food Movies

BBQ and Arcade Fire

Yesterday I spent most of the day doing general maintenance: cleaning up the house a bit, returning bottles and cans and doing some grocery shopping, going to Gartner's for some delicious meat products, and doing several hours of yardwork. That meant that I was exhausted and crashed early after watching some TV. That turned out to be a really good thing.

Awoke at 8am, tried to fall back asleep but couldn't, so I got up and made coffee and some breakfast. I cooked up eggs and some english bacon that I'd picked up the previous day, which wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but still decent. I spent most of the morning tinkering around on the computer, killing time before going to my friend Sean's Memorial Day BBQ / Birthday / Housewarming in Washington. Had a great time visiting with old friends, meeting new folk, and of course, hanging out with my buddy Sean and his family.

Just before 9:00pm Kelly and I decided to head back to Portland, wanting to get home somewhat early. About 10 minutes into the 35 minute drive back I get a text message from a coworker asking "Are you here?"… this coworker had picked me up some tickets to the 'upcoming' Arcade Fire concert about two months ago, and given them to me last Friday… and all of a sudden, it occurs to me that the show (which I thought was tomorrow) was tonight! Oh shit! Kelly and I drive as fast as we dare into town, rush to find a parking spot, and run to the venue. Fortunately we arrived shortly after Arcade Fire took the stage (missing only a couple songs). Whew!

The show was incredible. There were ten people on stage (there are eight core members, the other two were touring members), a few of them changing roles throughout the show (keyboards one song, drums the next, etc). A prime example was founding member Régine Chassagne who played the hurdy-gurdy one song, sang beautifully on In The Backseat the next, and then played the drums for a few songs before going to the keyboards. They sounded fantastic, and it was probably one of the best shows I've seen in a LONG time. Damned near a religous experience, between the sonic power from the band, and the mood of the crowd. Just incredible. If you haven't heard of them (much less seen them live) I highly reccomend you check them out. Hallelujah!

I'm just glad I'd gotten a full night's sleep before this day & night, since I'd mistakenly thought the Arcade Fire show was tomorrow. This means I can hopefully have a nice, relaxing evening at home before going back to work on Tuesday. Hooray!