Sparkly
Walked into Sephora to look at their makeup brush selection on Saturday. Walked out with 0 brushes (they are hella expensive!) but 1 sparkly eye shadow/liner by LORAC (what does that stand for? why’s it all caps?) in Midnight Sparkle, cos at least it’s black so it’ll be more practical (than pink or blue or gold). Clearly I can’t be trusted to go into a store that sells sparkly things under nice lighting. Unless you’re trusting that I’ll be tempted by something and find a way to justify it (yeah ok, practical).
Also, seafood is good for lunch and dinner, and probably breakfast too. =) I should try that sometime.
Not Mr. Eko!
One day after mentioning Lost for the first time since God knows when, I read that Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje got arrested for a traffic violation this past weekend. Not you too Mr. Eko! He’s one of my faves! I hope it was a minor scuffle with the law, cos the Lost producers or whoever’s in charge have already shown their complete lack of mercy for DUI (Libby and Ana-Lucia), but no problems with other traffic violations (almost everyone else). :P
House is BACK!
Season premiere was tonight! Maybe I shoulda posted this yesterday, but whatevs, they must replay it sometime. Anyhows, it’s a great show, and I’m happy it’s back. Lessee, so now it’s Tuesdays on Fox at 8pm House, Wednesdays on Bravo at 10pm, then America’s Next Top Model on the new CW network (UPN) on Wednesday at 8pm starting September 20th, then Lost is back! on October 4th on Wednesdays 9pm. Sadly, 24 doesn’t start back up again until January. But really, that works out well for me because it’s on Mondays and I have class on Mondays. Plus Closer is on Mondays. And Psych starts again in January too. It’ll be a lot of tv all over again, just the way I like it. =) I just have to hope that baseball and whatnot sports don’t interrupt my regularly scheduled programming.
And Then There Was One
Today I went to the “Human Values and Ethics” class. Before the teacher even arrived, I asked someone to show me the syllabus cos I’d already missed the first class. There were like 3 different writing assignments! And some hella dense reading! It’s funny, I managed to pick two classes (“Intro to Philosophy” was the other one) which required reading Plato (no, not Play Doh, Plato!). Not that it matters! I walked outta the Ethics class before class started and went home. K messaged me all like, “Aren’t you supposed to be at class?” So I admitted I’d dropped it — I am a great example for her (she’s a college freshman this year). And I dropped the Philosophy class too. So outta 3 classes, I’m now only taking “Jazz, Blues, and Popular Music in the American Culture.” It only has 1 written assignment, but multiple quizzes and 2 exams, so I hope I don’t regret this. But it sounded interesting, too, and classes are on Monday so I don’t have class for 2 weeks almost! Oh yes!!! I sure can pick ‘em!
Chez Panisse
We went to Chez Panisse for dinner today. Or I suppose it’s yesterday now. We weren’t able to get reservations for the first seating at 6pm so we had reservations for 9:15pm. But that meant that we didn’t get out from dinner until after 11pm, which, youch! This is the second time we’ve been to Chez Panisse, but the first time with the camera. :D
We arrived and were seated after only a few minutes’ wait. Since it’s prix fixe, we didn’t have to decide anything, which is fine by me. I did decide to go for the wine pairings though. They then brought out little fresh radishes as an amuse bouche. Fresh radishes are spicy, did you know that? I know I didn’t. :p Anyhows, I think Yut liked them better than I did. Last time we were there we had olives as the random “small bite,” which I appreciated more than Yut, so I guess it all evens out. They also brought out two types of bread, one sourdough dark, and the other was the little yam shaped bread which was my favorite. Between me and Yut, we went through like 4 yam sized breads, which is a lot, but we couldn’t stop. Only we’re paying for it now. Btw, I’ll mention the bread over and over again, and I’ll call it yam bread, but it has nothing to do with yams, it’s just sort of shaped like a yam or sweet potato.
Heirloom tomato toast with aioli, pancetta, and farm egg
On the website, it’s described as “Chopped salad with heirloom tomatoes, bacon, and farm egg” which I think is also accurate since pancetta is an Italian bacon that’s cured but not smoked. Anyways, it tasted like the lightest thinnest sliced bacon ever. The egg was also perfect, with soft but not too runny yolk, and cooked whites. And the tomatoes! Yum, I love tomatoes anyways, but these had really good tomato flavor and also were like three different colors. Even Yut liked the tomatoes and he’s not a big tomato fan. And the little salad on the side had arugula, which I luuurve. I want to say this was my fave course, but it’s hard for me to judge this stuff, cos of course as time went on, we were fuller and fuller and it gets harder to appreciate things. Still this course had an advantage because (imho) Chez Panisse does this fresh perfect ingredients stuff better than anywhere else. Also this was paired with a white Northern Italian wine that was sooo delicious. I wish I remembered the name. I even asked the waiter, but I cannot remember now.
Pan-fried local petrale sole with almonds and parsley
The crust on this fish was so yummy and crunchy, but the insides were really moist. However, we think it was cooked in butter like you’d see on the Food Network — a lot! Plus the almonds! Well we’re just guessing. But after a few loaves of bread and butter, and the aioli from the previous course, this was almost too rich. Still, some yummy fish, really fresh, no bad fishy taste or weirdo dirt taste or anything like that. By dirt taste I mean that taste that farmed fish has sometimes. I don’t know how to characterize it, so I call it the weirdo dirt taste. :D So okay, I tried to be all critical analysis there, but to be honest, we ate every bit and then used the yam bread to clean the plate. Anyhows, I suxors at this food criticizing stuff. I mean, I just love food and eating, what can I say? :p
Grilled Wolfe Ranch quail with succotash,white corn polenta, and onion rings
The quail was good, nicely cooked, really juicy, but I dunno, not special like I couldn’t imagine it done this well elsewhere. Like I would say the petrale sole was more special in that sense. We thought the onion rings were a great example of onion rings: really light batter (almost like tempura), really fresh and sweet onion. The polenta was polenta, not much flavor in and of themselves, good with everything else. The succotash was really good too. I liked the soft cooked beans with the sweet corn flavor and zucchini(?) crunch. Yums!
Flavor King pluot tart with mascarpone cream
This was like pluot preserve (the ridges are pieces of pluot I think) on a flaky phyllo-like crust. Sweet but not too sweet, with a good tart taste. I enjoyed this a lot, especially because we ordered a little French press worth of coffee. Very smooth and good.
Overall, I would say that the food was really good both times we’ve been, with some really amazing parts and some parts that are more like normal levels of good (which is still really good). The service was better last time, the waiter was just nicer and seemed more on top of things. But anyhows, it was lovely. Especially for a Tuesday night. :)
Flickr Geotagging
Them flickr folks just launched a new thing: geotagging. I just spent hours geotagging some of my photos, especially the ones I took at various restaurants, which is a bunch of them. I know, I know, I dunno what’s wrong with me either.
But it was just so neato! :) Look at this, now I can tell it where the photo was taken based on the latitude and longitude and you can click on the map link for a map of exactly where it was taken.
And not only can you look at where each photo was taken, you can look at the locations of all geotagged photos:
Sadly, I mostly take photos in the Bay Area and the DC Metro Area. I’ll have to go back further in time and geotag my Hawaii pictures so the map isn’t just two locations; Hey, 3 is better than 2. :p
But I like this one even better:
It’s a hybrid version zoomed into the Bay Area.
Okay, so I’m like a crazy ad for flickr now, but I just thought this was such a cool feature. Or anyways, I had fun with it. :)
Start of the Fall Semester
Was yesterday. Which I totally lost track of, even though I’ve been meaning to pick a class for the whole summer now. I’m always in the running for the Best Procrastinator title. Anyhows, I didn’t figure out that the semester started yesterday until today, whereupon I signed up for 3 classes. Unfortunately, I missed the first class of one of them already, but that’s ok, it’s mostly about picking up the syllabus and whatnot anyhows. Today’s class was Intro to Philosophy, which omg has 3 critical analysis type writing assignments 3-4 pages long each and 1 group presentation with another small paper basically self-analyzing the presentation and group work. Which is 4 papers. Which is scaring me. So, unless this is the bare minimum, I am probably going to drop this class. Because I fear writing. I am a complete wuss, I know, but what the heck, at least I account for it before it’s too late to drop the class. Which deserves some credit, right? Yes yes, thank you thank you. <curtsey> (It’s all about having low expectations.)
Answers
Yesterday I watched the season finale of So You Think You Can Dance? (don’t click on the link if you don’t want a spoiler). It was a great show, I’m sad it’s over. This season, I would’ve been pretty much okay with any of the final four winning it all, so I didn’t have to vote. :D (What? I like voting! :p ) But I made the mistake of watching it and reading Yahoo! Answers on the side. They must broadcast it at different times for different timezones cos partway through I started noticing these questions with headings like, “I can’t believe ___ didn’t win! S/he was the best! Who did you think was the best?” which kind of gave away who won. Not that it matters much, there was lots of cool dancing and stuff, still an entertaining show, but I know not to do that again!
I don’t know why, but the last few days, I’ve been obsessed with Yahoo! Answers. It started out innocuously enough, I went now and then to read the questions, especially that one day that Bono asked about world hunger, and in general cos some of the questions tend to be funny. Like the other day, some dude asked why he didn’t have a girlfriend, only he posted it in the Computers & Internet category! BAHAHAHAHA!!! But a few days ago, I started answering some of the questions, just to try it out, and also cos I’m an awful know-it-all, it’s a personality defect, I can’t help myself. But then I found out there’s points! And if you get 250 points, you make level 2, and then you can rate individual answers! Or something. Anyhows, now I spend a lot of time reading random questions and answering some. I have only 1 best answer rank though, and it was a question about a video game, and really Yut answered it for me. The question was: “A long time ago, I have played a game on a very old nintendo system. Probably super nintendo or so. I remember this one game where the character ( you) can dig a hole in the ground and trap an enemy in there and if you fall in, the hole would eventually seal up and you would die. Brown and red was used the most I believe with a black (?) background. Can anyone help me name the game? Thanx in advance.” Can anyone guess? Well, I knew it wasn’t Dig Dug, which was a bunch of other people’s guesses, but I didn’t know the actual game. Yeah it’s pretty sad that I only managed one best answer and it wasn’t really even mine. :p
