Food

In my ongoing efforts to learn how to feed myself without a Visa card, I realized that my favorite food of 2008 - fish tacos - can be assembled at home. Yes, I have a $125k degree from MIT, and it took me until today to figure that out. Sorry to the kid whose spot I took.

I was particularly motivated by my new favorite fish tacos at Pacific Catch in San Francisco. Mitra suggested it because it appears on the screen of an iPhone in a commercial. The glorious avocado/tomatillo/Mahi Mahi tacos were the best I've ever had. So I tried my own version at home:


And as much as fried meats are my favorites (frying being my favorite method of cooking, and meat being meat), the fried fish was almost as good as the fried egg. I had lots of egg and bread crumbs left over from the frying exercise, so I threw those in the pan, too. Damn tasty. It's hard to go wrong with cheap, plain bread crumbs from Berkeley Bowl and a ton of cajun seasoning. That much salt will make anything taste good.



The backyard is doing its thing. That bee is pollinating our blackberries, which are just starting to come in. The second plum tree is in full swing, and the neighbor's pears (the ones hanging within reach of our fence) are oh so close. Fortunately (maybe), my okra is lagging behind Sam's everything. I hope I don't miss it whenever it starts putting out. But having pickled okra when I come back wouldn't be the end of the world.


I've wanted to blog this forever. It's the light over our stove. It means "light," but I always think "turning up the Hope" when I switch it on.

Six Puppies and a Funeral

In the continuing series "Ruth flying all over the country at random times," I spent the last last weekend in New England. After my unfortunate early exposures to the Green Mountain and Granite States (see: bruised kidney, sprain wrist, and class 2.5 ACL tear), I'm amazed how much fun I have when I go to Vermont and New Hampshire now. A brief recap will have to suffice, as my 3.1-year-old computer kicked the bucket just this side of its 3-year warranty.

1) Agri-tourism. Vermont is home to many food industries. MANY. In the course of my time there, Josh, T-Bone and I toured Ben and Jerry's and Cabot factories, as well as the King Arthur Flour factory store. Ben and Jerry sold out to Unilever, but admit it. Our Cabot guide didn't understand why "Maine sells cheese curds, but Vermont doesn't seem to like them." King Arthur Flour was like the world's largest Cracker Barrel. Regardless, Cabot was the best, because of the cheese sampling. Also, the Vermontan hair nets (pictures to come).

2) Puppies. There are lots of things I can handle - bad smells, heights, jet lag. I generally include "cute things" in this list. Babies? Please. Stop taking up the entire sidewalk. Kittens, are pretty powerful, especially with captions. I didn't think puppies would be a problem. And I did pretty well. But by the end of Sunday, I had picked a favorite puppy of the litter, and was resigned to carrying it around at all times. Until it peed on me. Thanks, Jayne.

3) Small towns. Saturday night, Josh and I walked from his house in Vermont to a bar in New Hampshire. The bar was alright (we both ended up seeing people we knew - strange), but on the walk back across the river, Josh pointed out a stairwell and bench under the bridge. My response: "It's a bridge! There are meth addicts under there!" Of course there weren't, and it was nice to see some stars.

Windy and Brief

Continuing the practice of only blogging about travel and pottery, I was in Chicago this week!

It wasn't the shortest business trip ever, but it probably was the one with the least amount of sight-seeing. Fortunately, my hotel had a fantastic 31st story view:

Flying in at 11:30 pm to O'Hare did not prevent me from spending twenty minutes to take the previous picture. I now fully understand the manual functions of my camera.

My company's Chicago office is in the middle of downtown, right on LaSalle Street, and my hotel was away 15 minutes walking on the Chicago River. I've been to Chicago a few times before, but the awesomeness of proximity wasn't lost on me. I don't know if I still want to live in the middle of a downtown like Chicago, but it's pretty fun to visit.

This is half of my favorite modern building in Chicago.

I did manage to spend some time outside of the office. My gracious corporate hosts took us out for a great happy hour, and lunch the next day in Grant Park.

We might not have as great a subway system, or as wonderfully tall a downtown, but the Bay Area still strikes me as a good metropolis to call home.

The view from our conference room is similar to:

BATMAN.

The other most meaningful part of my week was looking up courses in user interface design at Berkeley. The class I want doesn't seem to be available to non-enrolled students, and for a fleeting moment I considered applying for a Masters Degree in Computer Science and taking the prerequisite programming classes.

Then I remembered my quick nervous breakdown before the Intro. to Programming final freshman year and found something else to ponder immediately. So if anyone knows of a Masters program that lets you hang out with software developers, play with post-it notes, and draw pretty pictures without ever touching a line of code, let me know?

Driving South

The only upside to a long distance relationship is the excuse to take a fabulous long weekend every four to six weeks. The last two weeks were vaguely reminiscent of undergrad, workload-wise, but I sent off my last report from Oakland Airport, and immediately kicked off a much anticipated adventure south.

First, Maker Fair, which was cool, in theory. Big displays of do-it-yourself wizardry might just be less impressive after MIT. But hey, fire sculpture!


Then Josh and I hit the road south to fabulous Monterey. I'll admit, there was a lot of hype, and the first half day was good but a little underwhelming. But then we hit the road to Big Sur, and holy shit.










As if that wasn't cool enough, then Josh steered us to a beach full of seals. This collection of photos does not accurately convey the proportion of trip pictures that contain seals.








There was camping in Nacimiento, In-and-Out Burger, and a scenic drive through the central valley to a soundtrack of Spanish language radio stations. It was basically the most stereotypical Californian vacation, ever. And then I actually found five dollars.

Birthday!

Did you know: Kyle Reese is Chekov?

It was my birthday this week! After my 22nd birthday, I accepted that I'd had the best birthday possible (there was a band, cake batter flavored ice cream cake, full bar, light organ, and a diploma). I decided that being taken out to lunch at work and some weekend trip somewhere would be an acceptable birthday celebration for my adult life.

In short, I underestimated my East Bay friends. How did I meet these fantastic people so quickly?

1) A surprise party at my favorite bar, the Graduate! I was totally, completely surprised. The most amazing part was how comprehensive my friends were while self-assembling. Work friends, female friends, gay male friends - all the primary demographics were covered. I spilled my first drink on someone, and she immediately bought me a new one. A second person lent me a helmet, and a third escorted me via motorcycle to...

2) A sneak preview of UP at Pixar! I laughed, I cried, I self-examined. This movie is amazing. Go see it when it comes out. But our tour of the Pixar compound was cut short so I could get up early and fly to...

3) A Grateful Dead concert in George, Washington! Puns! Flying across the country for random concerts is the only way I see anyone from home anymore. In a true display of my divergence from Georgia, the highlights of this excursion to the Pacific Northwest were New England chowder, the Seattle Cheese Festival, and a guy singing Li'l Red Riding Hood on the street. I am such a proud yuppie.

Logos at their best.

It was a great birthday weekend. But the actual day wasn't until Monday. Work was worked, things were good, and I was on the fence about going to pottery or trying to find someone to grab dinner with. Of course, my brilliant co-workers had something planned all along. Together, we discovered my recipe for an excellent birthday -

4) Barbeque, pool, and singing Journey at karaoke. How did these people get to know me so well?

That's enough text. Here are some pictures of the canyon in central Washington where the Dead played:

The Allman Brothers.
See that guy in the bottom right with the tie-dyed peace sign shirt? The one with the long hair?
Yeah.

Next stop - pottery.

+37° 51' 47.88", -122° 13' 53.40"

Did you know: Google Earthquake?

Ok, that might be misleading. But apparently, typing "[location] earthquake" gives you results like these:

This is the third earthquake I experienced but didn't notice. The first, I was standing up outside when Sam came to tell me the fridge shook. The second, I don't even remember. This one, I was standing in my office building (16th floor), and someone asked me if I felt something. My response was something like: "No, I didn't feel anything, so are you coming to Star Trek tonight or not?"

Priorities, I guess. Also, Star Trek is amazing.

So mom and dad, don't worry, I'm still more likely to get bitten by a rapid hippie than die in an earthquake. Next time, check here before you wonder if an event in San Diego is close enough to destroy my house.

I shouldn't make that joke about rapid hippies. This weekend, I will attempt to conquer the Grateful Dead. Or at least see them play with the Allman Brothers in some gorge in Washington State.

Pulling a Julia Child

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I never know when it's a good time to blog. "What have I done lately?" The occasionally indistinguishable daily grind of cubicle life mixed and matched with a night of dive bars, pottery class, or a couch/blanket/Hulu don't seem meritous, or differentiated enough, to put on record. But then Sam blogs about drinking coffee and I stop worrying.

It's a blog cliche, but "It's been a good few weeks."

Lauren and I went to a beach in near our house. Ironically, we were wading in the warm water within sight of downtown San Francisco while Josh was backcountry skiing down some death slope in New Hampshire.

I worked a lot. Even over a weekend! *gasp*

And then I took my banked billable hours and a couple days off to go back to New England. As always, it was incredible.

For starters, the incomparable Zach lives here:

Maybe it was the red-eye, but the pull out couch in this apartment sleeps better than my full-time bed. I walked, shopped, and dined at my favorite places south of Houston. Lest we not blend in with the moneyed intellectuals, we even stopped by a forum at the Met. Nobel Prizes in Economics are a dime a dozen at MIT, and Paul Krugman tip-toed around real policy recommendations for any opportunity to pander to the pro-Europe, anti-Bush crowd, so I was more impressed by the sole fiscal conservative on stage. What have I become?

Satisfied with our intellectualism quota, we departed to the fine evening establishments of the Upper East Side. You know, north of our final destination. And on Manhattan. Brooklyn might be a thing White People Like, but I still feel more comfortable on the island. So it was with great grogginess that we awoke on the subway well south of our intended destination. It seemed like we'd taken the 6 all the way to Connecticut.

A long cab ride back and forth across the East River several times put us home at 4 am, and needless to say, I missed the 7 am bus to Boston. Thankfully, the eventual four-hour trip wasn't without entertainment. Our driver was hell-bent on enforcing his breaks, and the hipster to my right spend the entire four hours in an entertainingly heated/crying discussion with her fiance. Imagine my delight when the ever-level-headed Josh picked me up at the bus station, whisked me through a Chinatown bakery, and onwards to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Not only would I never hang up on him three times in four hours, but he made hearing "adamantium bullets" onscreen an enjoyable (if not serious) experience.

And now I'm back in disappointingly cold Oakland. I keep overpacking warmer clothes for Boston, only to come back to Oakland realize this is the city that's cold all the time. I feel like Charlton Heston at the End of Planet of the Apes sometimes. For the meantime, my "upcoming flights" folder is running thin. Next weekend I'm setting off to Washington State for what will turn out to be either a defining life experience, or an embarrassingly half-hearted attempt at one. I'm waiting on pins and needles to book my big summer vacation, and while waiting for circumstances beyond my control to align, planning the next four other vacations.