It's been 11 days since I posted? Oy.

I wanted to try Taste of India's buffet, but people were *waiting to be seated*. The place was full! Mandalay doesn't have a buffet any more, just $9 entrees. So I went to Siam House. I'd never been thrilled by their lunch buffet, mostly going when lyceum dragged me to it, but this was long before the post-Valentine's day reboot of their menu and kitchen, when I now really like their entrees. And I liked the buffet, too. Chicken curry was okay, pork curry was great, pad thai noodles were nice, other noodles were good though the meat with them wasn't quite to my taste, but I forget why. Tofu curry decent too. $9 including tax.

Bought the Dark Phoenix Saga collection, so I can finally read something I've known about and been intrigued since borrowing someone's Marvel RPG on the school bus in elementary school.

Yu Yu Hakushou 1 was catchy. Astro Boy 1 was ok.

Dinner at Bombay House tonight; they're still good at that. I avoid their non-tandoori chicken -- giant lumps of tastesless breast meat -- for their lamb; had lamb karahi tonight and it was quite good. Some garlic ginger onion dish. But! when we asked for extra rice, we got told it'd be $3.95. We've never been told that before. They claim they've done it all along. This seems suspicious, as we've always split our bills, and no one's ever asked "who gets the charge for the extra rice." They suggested it was spread around the party before, but you know, that takes a fair bit of math on the fly.

Totally unrelatedly, Kroger doesn't have corn tortillas -- not real ones, just pre-cooked shells. Bloomingfood's West does though, possibly their cheapest starch -- $1.89 for 36 tortillas, 1800 calories. Well, raw grain is probably cheaper.

We have a Thursday Doctor Who night, watching Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane... Red Dwarf for a while. Tonight we branched into Leverage, off DVR instead of DVD or Netflix online. We got exposed to commercials! I haven't seen commercials in years, except for ones in movies.

links:
* Facebook application scams: one, two. Maybe you shouldn't have been playing so much Mafia Wars.

* Better school lunches mean better student performance. Which implies most of us should be eating more vegetables, too.

* Divisions among American Muslims. It's almost as if they're normal people, with class, culture, and race differences!

* Health care: it's subsidies that cost, not the public option per se? Why is Lieberman nattering about blocking the public option to save the budget? Well, lots of insurers in his state...

* Krugman can't watch Fox Business.

* Europe's lessons on unemloyment, and India's job guarantee. (From Randy)

* Ten year old boy in Arkansas sits down for gay rights

* Lindsey Graham, highly conservative Senator, is censored by his state for being too compromising with liberals. One, two.

* AMA says marijuana could have medical use, should get more research

Catholic shenanigans: threatening to stop charity in DC over benefits for gay employees; fighting for anti-gay discrimination in adoption in Britain, a battle they already lost in Boston.

Irony
* The Republican National Committee has offered employees a health plan covering abortion since 1991. They say they'll stop though, now that Politico pointed this out.

Yeah, I'm still a slacker. Also I had a flu? last month, and seem to have pneumonia now.

Scholar's Inn on 6th and College has a new offering, "Euro sandwiches" on baguettes, for $3.50. I tried two today: the basil tomato mozzarella, and the ham and swiss. Both were hot, with melted cheese. I'm sorry to say I wasn't thrilled by either. They weren't horrible, but the former was nothing compared to a insalata di Caprese, and the latter... well, probably wasn't helped by (a) my not being the biggest fan of Swiss cheese and (b) coming right after the mozzarella. I couldn't tell (or didn't attend) if the mozz was whole fresh or part-skim low-moisture pizza cheese.

Still, a $3.50 sandwich is something to keep in mind. There's a third variety, but I don't remember what.

Also they seem to have half-priced bread on Tuesdays.


When it comes to chicken, I prefer dark meat. When my parents made fried chicken, I went for the drumsticks. Probably originally because it was easier finger food, but also because it was juicier and tastier than dull white breast meat. When I make fried chicken, I just get a package of drumsticks. Lots of restaurants specialize in breast meat though, not to mention fast food. Happily, not all. Siam House, which to my fallible memory seems to have acquired a much more interesting menu since Valentine's Day, uses a mix of white and dark meat in its dishes. I've enjoyed pad thai, mussamum, some sort of curry, and #42 garlic stir-fry. Though the cook refused to mix the rice and curry for me when I ordered take out for anime club, where I wouldn't have plates; the hostess gave me a big extra styrofoam box so I could mix in that. I didn't like their chai but then I've never liked chai, I was just looking for a hot drink for the sickness.

Z&C, the little Japanese place on Kirkwood, has I'm pretty sure dark meat in its chicken udon; as I got sick I turned to the udon+eel roll special a lot.


Chow Bar's potstickers were enh, not that tasty and pretty thick pastry. Pork and garlic wasn't bad. Chicken satay was good; chinese pork rice was goodish but short on sauce so the rice was bland.

So, for some reason I fell out of posting much after my trip. Partly the move, partly... I don't know what. Time to sync back up.

The West Coast trip: we last left me in the Bay Area, having one day left. Monday was indeed spent at the California Academy of Science -- a line to get in but not too bad, then another line to get into the rainforest exhibit. That was fun: lots of plants, lots of birds and butterflies, and one you're in you're not rushed through, you can linger on the walkways. The exit is through the remodeled aquarium, starting with walking *under* the rainforest 'river', then exiting into the main multitank area. The aquaria were always one of the nicer attractions of the CAS -- sharks and coral reefs and penguins and all -- though the panoramic swim-around tank is gone. Lots of other CAS stuff is gone too -- the earthquake simulator, the minerals case, the butterflies cases. Two wings are devoted to climate change and evolution, with a higher placard to thingy ratio than I feel is proper. The stuffed African dioramas are still there, with a few live reptiles.

Shinier, and I didn't get to see the spiffy planetarium -- sold out already -- but I'm not sure it all is *better*. Cafeteria was expensive -- $3 for a pork bun -- but possibly good -- it was a *really good* pork bun.

I managed to organize a dinner at Ton Kiang, a rare dim sum for dinner place in the outer Richmond. Or not so rare, there seemed to be another one right next to it. Before that, I walked Golden Gate Park a bit, homesick (SF taking on the role of 'home'); I also met a young couple who were camping across the US or something. The road through (JFK road?) has bike lanes I don't remember, really wide ones too, like 60% of the road. Dinner was good: Dan and Blake and Jacque and Yani and Wei-Hwa and mates.

A friend I'd been out of touch with for years had been out of town for the weekend, but met my "I'm leaving at X" gambit with "I work in Berkeley at 9 tomorrow, I could meet you at 7". A lot earlier than I'm used to but I weighed sleep against old friend for a decade and friendship won, and I'm glad it did, esp. as she's not a great correspondent.

Portland

Then off north, to my host in Beaverton, some suburb to the west of Portland proper, and reminding me a lot of LA though she didn't think so. Wide busy roads, malls, long distances, tres depressing. Nice to see her again though. Wednesday I went to the Portland Zoo, then explored downtown a bit -- train seems to run north of downtown proper, e.g. of the busy skyscraper district. I crossed the river on one of the bridges, came back for dim sum with my host. Thursday I trained straight east, to explore Portland neighborhoods a bit, then doubled back for a really awesome classical Chinese garden in Chinatown (with somewhat less awesome tea shop) and a brief (hour) pilgrimage at Powell's, before meeting heron61 in person for the first time.

The Zoo station was wacky-cool, lots of science-type decorations, including a long core of something, and wall engravings like Pascal's triangle.

Possibly my strongest memory is of Marinepolis Sushiland, a floating sushi (kaiten-zushi, trays on a conveyor belt) chain. Silly-cheap by my standards: the most expensive tray was $3, and you could get tuna or salmon for $1.50-$2.00. In a sit-down restaurant here you'll likely pay $3 just for tamago nigiri (egg.)

Los Angeles

Just as SF let me take BART out of SFO, so I got to take public transit out of LAX, without insane bus rides. Actually, I recall Fanw's sister would take 2.5 hours to bus from Westwood to PCC, so I wonder if the train was any faster -- I took 2.5 hours, free shuttle to Green Line, to Blue Line downtown, to Red Line to Union Station, and finally the Gold Line to my stop, with a longer than guessed walk to my crappy motel. I'd been warned this was slow, vs. Flyaway shuttle straight to Union Station, but I wanted to try the pure transit experience. On the Green and Blue lines I was generally the only Anglo in sight, the others being blacks and Hispanics with a sprinkling of Asian.

The Westway Inn was weird. Claimed visitors not only needed permission but had a $10 charge per visitor. To discourage parties (across from PCC?) or prostitution? Typical crappy motel heater/AC unit, the ones with no hard temperature setting, just "hotter" and "cooler". OTOH, whee, way more spacious than Japan, and maybe even than the Motel 6 I was in here one night last winter, when desperate for a good night's sleep. Two rooms! Fridge!

As for time in LA, well, probably not too much to say in public; I got to see friends. John; John and family; John and family and friends, followed by Sarah and family (movie: "Moon", then remodeled Griffith observatory); new person off RPG.net, followed by another dinner gathering, aerolyndt and monty00 and K and others; finally a ride to LAX with aerolyndt.

I seem to be good at drawing together diverse interesting people in dinners, should do that more often.

Back

Of my housing choices I went with option #1. Laundromat is probably 6-7 minutes away; I'm been cycling clothes through the shower so have put off finding out for sure. Apartment is poorly designed in lots of ways, but the current landlord seems aggressive in fixing what they can. I'm finally off 2nd street! Been lazy about unpacking, though. Close to Bloomingfood's and the farmer's market, annoyingly far (12 minute walk) to Kroger's. I finally got lots of heirloom tomatoes here; not sure if they've gotten more popular or if I was better about getting to the market through August and September. Peach season seemed to end early, peaches were still around for a while but not as good.

Reading

(before trip) Gene Wolfe, book of the New Sun.
(after trip), 1491 (expansion of the article), Globalization and Its Discontents, Making Globalization Work, The Chinese Lake Murders (A Judge Dee fanfic by the translator.)

Links

tooth_and_claw assured me that my link dumps are appreciated, so I'll try to resume those. A couple of months worth will take some filtering and organizing, though, so not tonight.

Food

Someone's birthday dinner brought me to McAllister's tonight, a deli in Eastland Plaza near Border's. I had pastrami on rye with havarti, dark mustard, lettuce tomato onion and roasted red bell peppers. It was really really good -- juicy pastrami? $6.41.

Bombay House has $5.99 lunch buffet now, a big drop from the $11 during the school year. Despite the tandoori chicken last time having no actual tandoori flavor, I went back. My first impression was that the chicken was still pretty bland. This impression is pretty vague, because it was quickly swamped by the smell of chicken I would throw away rather than cooking. Mild, but present. I told the waiter, he said the chef said it was fine, I was offered another piece, which still smelled bad. I pigged out on vegetarian dishes and left. I swallowed a piece before the taste and smell really hit me; if I get sick in the next couple of days, I know where I'm placing the blame.

Bloomington Transit (the buses) had resisted taking an atheist ad, but has capitulated before a court case.
http://inatheistbus.org/2009/07/27/campaign-prevails-against-bt-in-free-speech-lawsuit/

* Sahara Mart has sun-dried strawberries in the bulk section. They're pretty good.
** ETA: though given their gumminess and color, I suspect sugar and sulfur dioxide additives. Pure dried (e.g. freeze-dried) strawberries should be darker red. No brand, but some stuff online has strawberry flavor added as well.
* Domo seems to have turned into Ami, long AWOL from Fourth Street. Rumor is that Domo lives, somewhere... don't know where. Gain a Japanese restaurant, lose a Japanese restaurant?
* Is Leela the most useful Doctor Who companion ever? Discuss.
* Anti-noise earmuffs: useful again.
* Did Darwin Get it Right?, John Maynard Smith. Nice collection of essays, somewhat dated. A bit amusing to read old thoughts on sex, before parasite theory or the handicap principle. He has a nice paean to Dawkins's reason and clarity that I should type in.

Link dump.
* War Before Civilization
* Someone's thoughts on D&D 4e
* Planescape Society of Sensation. I thought it was cute.
* Steampunk theme for Firefox
* transgender bank commercial in Argentina
* Dealing with bugs from Mars
* DEA: better to live in agony than risk taking too many opiates.

* The prime minister of Japan has problems with kanji. So do many Japanese, apparently. I say this not to make fun of them but to say "maybe your system is too frigging complicated".
* History and growing abuse of the filibuster
* Won't let me expand my business? Have a sex shop
* Krugman on rent control and how the more economists actually agree on something, the less the world listens to them.
* 2007 letter on land tax
* Med schools and Pharm money

* The Mormons, not having violated the apolitical conditions of their tax-exempt status enough in California, are opposing civil unions in Illinois
* More homophobia in North Carolina
* Creationist War on the Brain

akashiver and I went for dinner there. They're having a special: a combo of almost all the entrees, 12-23 (the last 3 meat entrees are special and not included.) $30, for enough for two -- actually, we both took boxes of leftover, though we'd also had the kategna, injera (bread) permeated with spicey butter. All the meats seemed good. Chicken dishes come with a hard boiled egg, which makes me think of oyakudon, and poultry not-kosherness. (Is kosher, but seems like it shouldn't be, under the "insult to injury" principle.) I liked the yogurty kale, probably #15 Goman Wat, but she didn't; neither of us liked #13, basically kale. I think the shiro (chick peas) was okay, and the red lentil pastes bland. Curried vegetables and salad were standard decent fare.

Oh hey, you can substitute rice for the injera it's all served on, if you were avoiding gluten but thought the dishes themselves might be safe.

You can practically skate out there. And I see no indication that tomorrow will be warm enough to dismiss it all or likely to cover it in snow. Bleah.

Akashiver and I went to El Norteno for lunch today (Japanee was closed; Grazie looked unappetizingly expensive). She had a chicken mole dish, sincronizia or something; I had arroz con pollo, cheese chicken and guacamole. Both were good, though mine was more exciting with some of the free salsa added. I took half home, so 1.5-2 meals for $8.22.

Clementines are back in season, though my current batch doesn't seem quite as good, and the rind doesn't fall off as much as it did last year; I'm having to actually peel, though it's not terribly onerous. Maybe later...?

( O Canada! )

Went to vote at the Curry Building. Whoops, 30 minute line, and that's with like a dozen voting booths. Will try again some other time, with better preparation like water bottle and book. It's open 8:30-6, 1-5 Sunday.

al-Qaeda supporters endorse McCain, hope for an attack that will make more likely his victory, and thus ongoing war and drain of US resources.

Like any soccer mom, Palin had $150,000 spent on her by the RNC buying luxury clothing.

London buses to carry atheist ads.

Racism: not dead yet.

* Propane depot explosion in Toronto (Youtube)

* lyceum and her boy and I went to Mandalay for non-buffet lunch. Mandalay fritters: made with red beans, decent, not too special. I had fried rice with Burmese sausage; also decent, a bit bland, but it wasn't marked as spicy so I'm not surprised. They had chicken with mango pickle; I got to try the chicken, which was quite tasty. I also had Burmese iced coffee; what's unusual here is that the ice comes on a place, with the glass starting with a small layer of condensed milk and a small layer of strong coffee dripping down from a small maker. So you get to see how little liquid there really is in these things... I only added a bit of ice, so I got it pretty strong.

* Then she took me to Lowe's since both of us have lost the spare copies of my housekey. There'd been griping about 3 million keys all looking the same. They have rubber colored things you can put around key handles to distinguish them, though she says they die. They have key tag attachments which you can use for labelling, though they take up room. They also have key blanks with fancy patterns on them, so she now has a camouflage key, and I have a spare tie-dye key. Also, both keys worked beautifully, unlike the ones I had made at the Kirkwood hardware store (which was closed on Sunday, thus Lowe's.) Now to just avoid losing my bright new spare...

* I've borrowed saganhawk's eee for the trip. It came with Xandros Linux, which seemed like a poor version of Windows XP. It now has Ubuntu on it, which makes me happy. I've finally figured out how to make the top and bottom panels go off the desktop. It took me a year, and Googling, to discover right-click -> Properties on the panel. I feel stupid; *everything* has right-click Properties.

* Border's has a new kind of Lindt truffle ball, light blue wrapper. I thought it said something like Bruciellatta, wikipedia says Stracciatella which doesn't fit. I'm full of fried rice, so haven't had mine yet, and didn't ask lyceum what it tasted like. (edit: whatever it's called, it's white chocolate with little colored bits in it.)

I've now been to the misnamed-in-prior-post Ethiopian restaurant, twice.

Visit 1: I had yebeg wat, lamb curry-stew with yogurt on injera, with sides of curried vegetables and a sweet salad. It was all excellent, though I made the mistake of eating all my injera and felt overstuffed for the next several hours.

Visit 2: I decided to try a bunch of appetizers. Kategna, injera with seasoned butter and yogurt; this was as good I remembered from the Red Sea incarnation. Only $2.50, but possibly best split with someone, since we're talking 6 pieces of bread and fat. But tasty pieces!

Then Yemshimbra Assa, my first big disappointment in Ethiopian food, though an IDS reviewer disagrees. It was described as "chickpea pastry", but what came out was a giant lump of chickpea paste, with no detectable seasonings. Not like falafel, more like a big lump of yellow play-dough. It came under a decent tomato and onion sauce, and mashing the balls into the sauce made it tolerable, but, blah. It came with hambasha, some sort of bread, which was pretty bland too. The review suggests having them together, which I did not think of.

Third was Siga Sambussa, a meat pastry appetizer. Given the name, I anticipated something like a samosa, the Indian dish which made it to East Africa probably quite some time ago. What I got was externally identical to a small egg roll. Internally, there was a bunch of meat, not particularly seasoned. I've come to think most egg rolls are pretty crappy, unless they're Vietnamese, and this was no exception.. It also comes with hambasha, and the sweet salad (sweetness probably from mango) which along with the Kategna was the highlight of tonight's meal.

Both meals ended up being $17 including tax and tip; I took home half the kategna, most of the hambasha, and a bit of chickpea ball.

Puccini's has a website, which is not the URL printed on their receipts.

My review list will be updated soon, possibly just by linking here.

Other food news: I made my first 100% rye sourdough. As far as I can tell it didn't rise at all, doorstop yay. It's at a nice level of sourness though, so it's a tasty and somewhat soft doorstop.

When I first came to Bloomington, we had Ethiopian food. The lunch food wasn't as good as my memories of San Francisco, but it was decent, and the spicy butter-soaked injera was heart-stoppingly good. But then it turned into our third Thai restaurant, and I was sad.

But it's back! I heard last night we had Ethiopian now as part of Puccini's, the Italian restaurant at 4th and Dunn. I confirmed its presence tonight, by the name of Ashenga's. Dinner only I think, with $13 entrees, but hey. My Secret Waitress Contact told me the owner of Puccini's was actually the owner of Red Sea, having started with that, moved up to Italian, and now moved up to both.

Haven't eaten there yet, since I'd just had pasta and clams at home, but I anticipate doing so soon...

As a side note, my IUCU ATM card seems to have been deactivated, which I found out by trying to use it. WTF? And it's a Friday.

Lyceum and I went to Basil Leaf for lunch today. "Asian Fusion" restaurant with Thai focus near 4th and Grant, next to Casablanca. We had the $9 buffet which was quite good. Selection was small but fresh -- they have teeny tiny serving bowls. I had fried rice, tofu curry, ginger pork, something chicken, and chicken Thai spice salad; all were quite good. The tempura was meh. Lunch and dinner entrees seem to be about the same price, and entree soups include Udon and Pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup popular in the cities. I'd happily go there again, while I'm always reluctant to go to the Siam House buffet.

I should walk around before deciding to have more servings. I can go from "not stuffed" in the chair to "omg what have I done?" a few minutes later on foot.

We've had lots of storms this year. My laptop's spending more evenings turned off and unplugged. But the last few days we've gotten not just lots of lightning and thunder but torrential rains, and flooding. I still think Bloomington as a whole is flood-proof due to slopes and height above real rivers, but slopes mean various dips which are floodable. LJ community photos, and student paper photos. I hadn't even noticed Wednesday's excitement, not having left the house much due to rain, sore throat, and little intrinsic reason to go out, but I've seen the alluvial deposits -- yes, the gravel banks are thick enough to qualify, though my rusty geologist fu thinks there's probably a better name -- and now we're getting a bunch more rain, current 1/3 inch an hour, thougrh I guess that's not near Wednesday's peak of 1.5 inches/hour and 2.32 inches total for the day.

So, how about that weather control?

I travel! I go to Boston! Flight at 12:17 Thursday, returning 5:34pm following Friday the 14th. The Bloomington shuttle can serve me, but involves catching it at 8:40am Thursday for a 10:30 airport arrival, and waiting till 6:40pm on return, to get into town at 8:20pm. I figured I'd ask if anyone could help shave my waiting times, especially on departure.

Ami is the cafe that opened up among the restaurants on 4th street, with the white and red decor. Started off as pure coffee, developed a Korean lunch buffet, and now has a full Korean dinner menu. I tried the buffet today. $7.50, or $7.95 with tax.
Notable: seasoned egg 'cake', beef, salad furnishings
Decent: spicy pork and broccoli, potato pancake, vegetable noodles, fried rice
Eh: chicken, with or without sweet and sour sauce. Dry and bland. Also, the two soups available, one of which resembled egg drop soup. These weren't bad in the way of cheap greasy Chinese buffet soup, more that they had a flavor I didn't like. I think I've encountered this with Korean food before, though the brown soup also made me think of menudo (with genuine tripe!) I had in a Mexican restaurant in Kentucky. But maybe it was just excess cabbage. Anyway, I got a feeling more of "not for me" than "lousy".

There's a new cafe in town, which opened just a few days ago. Rachael's, 3rd and Lincoln, right across from Turkuaz. I haven't eaten there yet; I just dropped by today, en route home from lunch. The person there said she's still getting food up to speed, with breakfast and deli coming, but that she's got "good coffee" -- Brown County, same as Tallent and Blue Boy (chocolate place next to Buskirk-Chumley) use, and hot chocolate made from chips and milk, which gets my attention.

Huh, I'm reminded I haven't been to Neannie's since I first went, nor Soma in a long time. Or Django ever.

Huh, I just found that the farmer's market has been open from 8-1pm this year, not 7-noon. Effect of Indiana going onto DST, I assume. The Oct/Nov market is open 9-1 instead of 9-noon. Produce is mostly squash, some boxy tomatoes, and greens I don't eat. My usual grass-fed beef sources weren't there, but a new one was, Padgett Farms. Lots of egg sources but I've got over a dozen in the fridge. Honey, elk. Also a soup tasting on the side, with samples from various restaurants or inns (like the Grant Street Inn; can you go in there to dine?) I didn't see any locals I recognized, though a girl at the tasting looked a lot like mrs_feltner back in her brunette days.

Last night I finally went to Baked. I feel my cookies weren't as good as Insomnia's, but it's not a controlled test -- perhaps butterscotch chips weren't such a great idea. Insomnia doesn't let you specify your own cookie types or get nuts. It does let you buy *one cookie* as opposed to a meal's worth.

( Boring board game gloating )

Walking up Walnut tonight, I found, between 7th and 8th, "insomnia cookies". A cookie place, open from 4pm-2am, making deliveries after 8pm. Cookies and brownies, basically. I had a chocolate chunk cookie for $0.95, and it was good chocolatey gooeyness. Been open a week, I asked if they were still decoration since it looks very industrial -- warehouse-high ceiling, big steam pipes, black walls -- and she said yeah, the owner's looking for artists to pretty up the place. Don't know if that means murals or hanging art or what, but hey.

Japanee, formerly Japonais, I'm pretty sure formerly had a parking lot. Now it has Japanese-ish wooden outdoor seating.

I've usually been disappointed by the savory crepes at Cafe et Crepe, but tonight's chicken fromage was pretty good, and the other SFDG attendees liked their dinners as well.

Random thought: "I owe you a phone call" is not, in the end, a substitute for actually making the phone call.