Ode To A Risotto
It's easy to forget how good life can be.
I'm prone to waste time & energy dwelling on a lot of annoying little things... places I wish I could go to, things I want but can’t afford, the person I could have been. But there's times when I usually catch myself, even if for a brief window in time, and realize some of the little wonders my relatively short existence on this good green earth can bring.
And so there I was…outdoors on a rather chilly Tuesday night smack dab in the middle of a
tourist trap. I was a handful of bites into my seared ahi tuna on shrimp risotto when I caught myself in a moment of bliss…the tuna wasn’t as firm as I had expected (a bit more overcooked than I would have liked), but that risotto. It took me by surprise…I wasn’t expecting much out of this restaurant trying to recreate the European experience… but the smooth & soft texture (but not mushy!) of the risotto made for a delightful combination with the snap-crunch of corn kernels and the tender-pop of little green peas. The flavors blended beautifully. On top of that would be the sweet juicy morsels of tiny shrimp, adding yet another layer of contrast. Granted, I’m a sucker for risotto (and the late dinner made me a bit hungry) but I truly enjoyed the dish.
The evening was filled with wonderful conversations with my young cousin and her new husband about trips to Alaska & Whistler and life as newlyweds. And somewhere in between bites of my risotto and the occasional momentary bouts of laughter, I saw glimpses of the happiness that currently filled her life. Having known her pretty much since she was born, it was an amazing thing to witness.
I savored every last bite of that risotto.
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Buy A Prius, Please
Everyone, please,
please go run out and buy yourself a Prius. Or a motorcycle. Or a Smart Car.
Stop guzzling
my gas.
I want to still be able to drive a dyno-juice-consuming, ultra-high-compression, open-piped, normally-aspirated internal combustion straight six motor 20 years from now. Even if it'll cost me $100/minute to run...
Read this for more.
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Indiepop
I happened to stumble across
these old CDs. I'm totally diggin' the sound...time to do more research into the artists.
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Stripped
On my drive home from work on the 101 Northbound, I marvel at the huge hunks of four-wheeled technological wizardry all around me. People must find me a strange occurrence...a thirty-something Asian careening down the highway in a bona-fide death trap. Armed with a 17 year old air bag, bald and crackly-dry tires, blown shocks, loose steering rod ends and a hollow 2.5 inch thick door, they must wonder what psychopath dare blow by them at eighty-something in the number one lane.
So be it, I like it.
Life on the edge.
(Now if I can only figure out how to disable that pesky airbag)
All around me, folks are tootling around in cars twice as heavy and ten times as complex as mine. In-dash navigation systems. MP3 players. DVD players. Active restraints. 10 airbags. Active steering. Active suspension. Active braking. 50 cubic feet of cargo space. Full time four wheel drive with active torque-biasing differentials. Seven speed automatic transmissions. Rear facing cameras. Sonar-equipped bumpers. Cruise control with automatic distance control. Headlights that turn when you turn. Integrated bluetooth handsfree devices...
All
crap,
I tell you.
Useless features invented by genius marketing weenies to keep costs low and profits high, all the while maintaining the bigger, better, more advanced mantra.
No, I want basic. The stuff that matters: Good motor, good brakes, good suspension. Comfort be damned. I want to feel it shake, I want to feel the road rushing below me, feel that motor winding itself out straining to haul me faster. But most of all, I want to feel that
fear. The fear that you just don't get in an airbag-laden-ABS-equipped-dead-silent-luxo-barge until you've nudged the 100mph mark: "
Holy crap, I'm going way too fast".
Well, thinking about it now I suspect it's just me subconsciously seeking solace from all the clutter I've accumulated. For years, I blew my disposable income (and more) on stupid stuff. Stuff that I just don't have the time for anymore. And just imagine what it would be like with a wife & kids in the picture? Heck, I was just going through my mp3s the other night. Two hundred fifty freakin' gigabytes. It would take
years of listening 16 hours/day to be able to listen to it all. And that doesn't even include the 400 or so CDs sitting in the CaseLogic binders. And then there's all those random files that I've packratted away in various forms: old resumes, old school papers, old archived usenet discussions from college... And that's just two hard drives.
I haven't even touched on the useless car parts I've accumulated over the years and all the other random stuff...a box of laserdiscs, golf clubs, game systems, old magazines...it just goes on and on.
Yeah, it's definitely time to slow down, purge and focus. Strip my life to the bare essentials:
A strong motor.
A good suspension.
A winding road.
A beautiful traveling companion.
And try not to blow past all the wonderful things happening in my life haulin' ass in the number one lane while talking on the cell phone.
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Jooolai
Woo hoo!!!
Wth the summer heat comes the summer activites...
July: MotoGP (I hate to say it, but Hayden won't win this year...I predict a dominating Rossi victory),
AIDS Walk and
Chevy RevItUpAugust: Trip to Australia & Singapore, Vegas bachelor party (yay-oh-yay)
And in other news...the big event is now a couple of steps closer to reality, with a church booked last week and Save The Date cards on their way to the apartment as I type. Next steps - find a freakin' photographer.
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It would be, it would be so nice
If we took a holiday...
Took some time to celebrate
Just one day out of life
It would be, it would be so nice
You can turn this world around
And bring back all of those happy days
Put your troubles down
It's time to celebrate
Let love shine
And we will find
A way to come together
And make things better
We need a holiday...
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Why I Like Ranch 99
- Frozen Durian
- StroopWaffels
- Rice crackers
- Dried Cuttlefish
- Black Apple Tea
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Only in America
My mom forwards me e-mails every now and then, things ranging from cute little jokes/anecdotes to try to brighten my day to religious stories to provide some spiritual solace. Today she shared a bunch of pictures, one of which I got a chuckle out of, so I thought I'd share.
I'm guessing it's a Photoshop job, but eh...whatever.
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Takes A Lickin'
And just keeps on tickin'...
Inspired by the creative transgressions of
one Texan restaurant, we decided to
embark on a project this past Friday night:
Hoooooieeeee! Tasty like a kick in the head. I can still hear the faint echoes of those delectable sounds of fat.
Dipped in fat.
Fried in fat.
Then dipped in fat.
Yummmm.
I was wholly disappointed at the fact that the only time that I'll ever do this in my life, I screwed up the country gravy recipe. The bacon really needs it, as the batter is a bit plain. And you need the gravy to offset the slightly salty flavor. It pays to not do things in parallel sometimes, or risk leaving your gravy on the burner and letting it burn...turning it into a thick concoction resembling mashed potatoes.
Another lesson learned: buttermilk was a poor choice for the batter...it made it too hard. I should've stuck with regular milk.
Hmmm....I wonder how it would've tasted if we used Crisco instead of canola oil? Or hell, if we deep fried it in bacon grease? I may never know...
But talk about meals on the cheap!!!
A pound of bacon for $5, buttermilk/milk for like $0.50 (you don't need a lot), flour for pennies, and a few more bucks for oil and you got a meal!
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I Need a Flush
Aaaaargh. People on the street must be laughing if they could see me through the office window...My head tilted to the right, hand slamming my ear, mouth yawning, trying to get that freakin' annoying sound out of my ear. Aaaaaaaaaargh!!!!
If only someone made a portable flushing unit that the professionals use in the hospitals. That was such a wonderful feeling the last time I got my ears cleaned...after the initial pain of a warm jet of water slamming against my eardrum the entire world was just pure clarity. The brush of my arm against my shirt, the sound of a strand of hair landing on the desk, the crunch of tiny pebbles underneath my rubber shoes...
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Miscommunication
So driving back up from San Diego on this past Mother's Day, Shirley was driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee rental on the 5. She had agreed to take the first half (I absolutely
hate driving through L.A. traffic, even with an automatic). The trip was pretty much uneventful until we reached the uphill portion of the 5 as it went straight up into the Castaics, just north of Magic Mountain. We were in the #2 lane, with a slower car up ahead in the #3 lane. Fast approaching behind that car was this red Buick SUV, and from my passenger vantage point I can see that she was going to have to make a decision: brake or switch into our lane. But, with the steep hill, our rental started to slow...so naturally, Shirley dug her toes into the go pedal, forcing a downshift on the automatic...VROOOM! The V8 blatted out a throaty roar and we picked up speed. I'm sure Shirley didn't plan on it (she's not an evil driver like I am), but by speeding up she ended up narrowing the gap to that slower car in the right lane, causing the Buick to have to abandon a lane change into our lane and hit the brakes.
Well, that lady sure didn't appreciate the move...not one bit. We didn't intend to cut her off, but she misinterpreted the speed-up as some piss-off maneuver and began to beep her horn, yell at us, flick us off from behind...and when she passed us on the right, she "maintained international relations" (you know, the bird), allowing me to snap her wonderful portrait you see up above. With her young son in the passenger seat. On Mother's Day.
Kinda gives you the nice warm and fuzzies inside, don't it? Hope for mankind and children are our future, right?
And she followed us for miles... MILES. All the way to
Gorman. That's
thirty minutes, folks.
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Renewal
I absolutely love working on cars. There's something so relaxing about tearing apart something mechanical, tracking every screw, nut & washer and ultimately putting it all back together again. Not only that, but that tiny little victory dance upon seeing what was once broken start working again. Last weekend I was able to knock off some long awaited projects:
- Clear the Check Engine light on Shirley's Accord: replace EVAP canister valve...no return yet of the light after a week (knock on wood)
- Upgrade her out of the 90's with a real stereo that has an aux input on the front
- Replace plugs, distributor cap, wires, valve cover gasket seals on her car (there was a ton of oil in the plug holes)
- Fix broken speedometer on the red car: broken drive gear
- Fix that annoying MPG gauge on the red car that kept sticking at 20mpg: cracked gear, causing teeth to not mesh properly - shifted gear counterclockwise, works like a charm now!
- Replace all the seats in the red car with neat-o sport seats (the old ones were naaaaaaaaaasty! The previous owner tried to cover up 17 years of neglect with a cloth. It was gross.)
Now if only I can manage to keep the maintenance up on my aging body... I'm coming up on ten months of neglect now, and my feeble attempts at jogging are doing nothing to battle this ever burgeoning gut. And the
24 ounces of Prime Rib (with seconds!) earlier tonight isn't helping neither. It sure was damned good though!!! So now I'm down to only 7 months for me to look freakin' hot for the big day. If that's not motivation enough, maybe an 8x10 of my last pile of fat clothes will suffice (before they get hauled off to Goodwill).
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Sweet Nectar From The Gods
it's 2AM, I can't sleep, and I'm digging through my blogger account and realized that I had a few posts sitting in draft mode, one of them from 7/22/2006...
Ahhh, alcohol…you sweet elixir from the heavens.
What magical powers you possess: the ability to make all things right; the wonderful prowess to transform those preconceived notions from ugly to “do-able”; the innate ability to make a twelve hour flight zoom by in an amazing hedonistic experience of gluttony and wretched excess..
Here I sit, soaring through the wild blue yonder in seat 22H at some 500+ miles per hour, twenty-four thousand feet above solid wet ground, on my third glass of cabernet (some cheap Napa valley concoction chosen by some United Airlines desk-jockey). Thank God for business class upgrades and the requisite alcohol companions: 2 glasses of Dewar’s finest, 3 glasses of some aforementioned cabernet, and 1 glass of port; not to mention a tummy full of filet mignon,
crab salad, and some weird quiche thingy.
It seems like ages ago, but only 2 hours earlier I was standing in line at gate G98 dreading the prospect of being stuck in middle seat 43B before popping into line and inquiring about my standby upgrade status.
Spread on the desk in front of the incredibly busy employee, like lottery tickets to a mystical world, were the magical cards that granted access to a better life…
“Ah, yes…here you are.”
Thirty thousand frequent flyer miles was a small price to pay for the comfort and convenience of the plush pleasures that come with a business class upgrade.
Change… It’s interesting that last night’s dinner conversation at Meze’s centered on the whole notion of change. 2006 has definitely been a year of metamorphosis for me; taking quite dramatic leaps of faith in my life. Regardless of the pain I caused, of the pain I felt, and the multi-year repercussions of said actions, I don’t regret them…
“Everybody needs change to grow”
I wonder if years from now, when I’m old, gray and crusty, those unknowing people in my life realize the impact they’ve had on me. I wonder…
Wow…this liquor really hits hard at twenty four thousand feet.
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