Birthday Food

Generally speaking, Cathy and I avoid really fancy restaurants. The ambiance and attitude of some of those joints make us expect the food to shoot magical rainbows and mini-unicorns directly into our brains and, unfortunately, it never happens.

Despite this, we've developed the habit of checking out some of these places on her birthday, and this year we went to Charlie Trotter's. The food was good, although there were certainly no lasers or mythical creatures flying off the plate. However, the most interesting aspect of it all was that we sat at the kitchen table, a single table that Trotter's has inside the actual kitchen. This time around, I geeked out and took some photos - however, the lighting was mixed and I was using a slow lens...do not prepared to be wowed.


View from the table. It's great because we get to watch our food get prepared, see some techniques, and interact a bit with the chefs. Being able to learn a bit more about food and cooking while eating is a nice bonus. Plus the dining room decor was reminiscent of a vomiting antique rug (at least from what I saw).

Anyway, there was a lot of food. There's no menu, they just "spontaneously" make you food - which basically turns out to be their tasting menu plus a couple made specifically for our table. It came out to a lengthy 15 courses. Some of them:


Maine diver sea scallop with fingerling potato, foamed parsley, and veal heart...


Deliciousness with Oaxacan mole sauce...


and Meyer lemon sorbet with black sesame. Sidebar: my brother used to have a Meyer lemon tree in his backyard.


A somewhat ridiculous but amusing part of the experience was that we each assisted a chef in plating a dish, as Cathy is so expertly doing here. She was asked to plate one of our desserts:


Claudio Corallo chocolate truffles with red wine cherries and thyme.

Good food, good fun.

Chicago Geysers

So when the weather gets even remotely better around here, something I do for fun/exercise/training/exploration is to take long urban hikes. This usually means a 15-ish mile wandering walk through the city with a 10-15 pound backpack (containing sandwiches and photography equipment). I took one such walk a couple weeks ago on a sunny but chilly day and it was pretty routin for the most part. Most of my photos were more pointless than usual. However, at one point I got close to the lake and I heard these loud booming sounds. Upon closer inspection, I realized that the booms were waves from an uncharacteristically brown Lake Michigan that were slamming into the corrugated sea wall and blasting geyser-like columns up to 40 feet into the air.


I wish I could have put something along the boardwalk for scale since it's hard to understand how huge it really was, but: (1) there was a solid sheet of ice covering the whole area; (2) the waves were unpredictable; and (3) anything on the lower section would have been immediately sucked right into the lake from the receding water.


Wall of water.


There was a serious wind rolling off the lake and as the "geysers" erupted, the mist was being pushed into a chain link fence up on a small hill. Although it had not been cold enough deeper within the city for ice for some time, it was cold enough by the lake for the mist to totally envelop the links in solid ice. I imagine the whole fence was a solid block of ice at some point before the sun came out.


Frozen links.


Absolutely epic. It was an amazing find, and the fact that it was totally unexpected made it that much better. I spent at least an hour watching the show as I enjoyed my morning sammich, and since it was so cold/icy/misty/inherently dangerous (and a weekday), I was the only one there - which also made it that much better.

Poe on Read/Write Errors

My old law school laptop, which lacks a monitor and several keys, had long ago been relegated to television computer duty. There and in that capacity, it and its OEM parts have since served me faithfully and assiduously. One night, however, while riding the wild waves of the internet, I suddenly heard it. A low, dull, quick sound...much like the sound a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. It was the clicking of the old laptop's hard drive's heart, and with each reboot the click grew louder, louder, and louder still.

The old drive's hour had come. I unplugged the beast and, using no more than a screwdriver, hastily removed its drive and examined the corpse. Yes, it was stone. Stone dead. I placed my hand upon the drive and held it there many a minute. There was no click, for it was stone. Stone dead.

This hard drive would trouble me no more.


Read some Poe recently. Click of death. Busted Hitachi.

We seem to have bad luck with hard drives.

(blank)

Magnifying glass

Winter -> Spring

We've had our first episode of purely enjoyable weather (for me at least) and my appetite for hiking/backpacking/camping has officially been whetted. At this time last year I was busy dealing with events that were a bit more life-altering, so it will be nice to be on the opposite end of the spectrum now. So far I've already got a couple long weekends worked out in my head and I've had my eye on Pictured Rocks, the Smokies, or maybe something completely new...

Still, I'm surprisingly sad to see winter go. I like how the distinct seasons require me to change my lifestyle, hobbies, priorities, and all sorts of other things. I'm not sure if it's an innate enjoyment or just a way to make good out of bad, but whatever - the distinction is irrelevant as long as I'm deriving a benefit. Either way, I will miss watching Quentin burrow and breakdance in the snow - until next year I suppose.


Sad to see you go.