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.

I hate smoking as much as the next person whose father died of lung cancer, but IU banning smoking from all of campus seems a bit much to impose on the addicted self-medicators. Not from all buildings, that's been done; from all property, even stepping outside the building.

http://becisblog.blogspot.com/
http://emergency.service.indiana.edu/

Hey, useful links I didn't know about.

Sahara Mart and Bloomingfood's downtown (and probably the others) have great Valencia oranges. I've been cutting them into sections and eating them, the way I eat grapefruit. Sahara Mart is cheaper -- 79 cents each, vs. $1.49/pound for things coming in at 3/4 a pound. OTOH, as usual you want to look out for ex-ripe produce at Sahara.

Runcible Spoon started offering burgers when I wasn't around. Not black bean burgers for vegetarians (though those are still there) but actual beefy burgers. They're okay, no special Spoonness, apart from coming on whole wheat buns. Servers don't ask how I'd like the patty, so it's come fully gray-cooked. Don't know if they'd do rare if I asked.

Turkuaz is never a bad answer to that question. I'll miss the place, if I ever escape Bloomington; nowhere else so combines delectable tastiness and cheapness and atmosphere. I saw a young woman and mother peering at the menu, earlier, and encouraged them to go in. "What's good?" "Pides!" But Eric and I went pricier -- kebab for him, and a chicken saute for me, which I'd never seen anyone get before. Tasty. Familiar -- probably the same meat as chicken on pides. But seasoned juicy meat never gets old, and the yogurt, rice, and beans go well.

Eric tells me that yes, chess does have named concepts beyond the inadequate set I know, analogous to the concepts I know for Go. Stuff *not* in the Complete Chess Course, despite the name.

Swing club callout was large as usual, overflowing Frangipani. There's a salsa club (new?) which probably stole Alumni Hall from us.

And there's an upright (or synthesizer? Yamaha) piano in the IMU food court now. I inflicted pentatonics on the staff. Because it's hard not to sound at least half-decent if you just play on the black keys.

I went to Mandalay Restaurant; the buffet is back. I think it's cheaper, $7.99 vs. $9.99. Didn't seem as good, but that might have been because I was there at 1:30 for a buffet which ends at 2; they were nearly *out* of most things (and what they weren't, I helped along.)

Ami, the white and red cafe nearby, has expanded to Real Food, specifically a Korean buffet. Saw what seemed to be the owner looking out, forlornly. Will have to try it -- hey, lyceum, we have a lunch schedule to resume!

On one side of Buskirk-Chumley used to be a truffle shop, long since replaced by Greek's Pizzeria. On the other, we now have Blu Boy, serving truffle like things. Shopboy wasn't sure if dark chocolate qualified as proper "truffle". I was just out from Mandalay, so didn't buy any yet.

CS Department Red Hat Enterprise 5, KDE interface, takes forever to log in. GNOME is faster. So is my TWM setup, not changed much since Caltech 1992.

The public library has a stand offering bike information and asking for input on their Plans.

Last night I bought and read Order of the Stick: Dungeon Crawlin' Fools (the first 120 strips) and Start of Darkness (Prequel of EEEVIL, and quite good.)

News I'm not linking to since it was Yahoo articles, which expire:
Sony has a sugar-powered battery.
"Out of body experiences" have been induced in the lab, though it read more like telepresence than "going into the light".
Japan is hit by smog, China blamed.
There's a billion light-year void in the universe, empty of light or dark matter, as far as they can tell.
A common kind of killer pneumonia causes bleeding in the lungs. It took them this long to figure that out?

And in conclusion, I need a Carthago delenda est, except meaning "Arcologies must be built" or "Weather must be controlled."

Anyone not seen it yet, or want to see it again? Because I haven't.

At Kerasotes east at 3:30, 6:30, 9:30, plus 12:30 on Saturday.

I went to Le Petit Cafe for the first time in a while. Good, though less ecstatic than before; highlights would be the pasta with pesto, and the dessert. But I left stuffed, without having eaten everything; I think it needs to be shared.

Does one tip at a place where the server clearly owns the establishment? I did, but it feels weird.

I went by the new Bloomingfood's for the first time. It's got a cafe, like Eastside. Looked decent otherwise; don't know if it has more than downtown, or just more space. More fridges, I guess, and including Traderspoint 100% grassfed milk! At $3.49/32 oz, making it twice the price of the last milk mentioned, and about 4x the price of normal milk.

I seem to have lost my sunglasses, which is very very unfortunate. I walked to a lot of possible lost/found places, but no luck.

I seem to have gained 6 pounds in the last 13 days, which implies an extra 1700 calories a day, which seems implausible.

I haven't done a restaurants review in a while.  Briefly: I thought the new noodle place on Kirkwood had a poor selection and a poor veggie pad thai, but I admit I was in a very bad mood when I went  Pita Pit made lyceum_arabica excited but what they gave me was a tasty but appetizer-sized pita, for almost $6.  Not impressed.

But today lyceum and I went to Mandalay's lunch buffet.  The location here is odd: it used to be a Burmese restaurant, then turned into Masala Wok, which was a cool name for Asian fast food but it never actually opened, and now we have Mandalay, another Burmese restaurant.  A bit pricier than I'd like, and the buffet is $9.  But it's *good*.  Fried rice is decent, the white rice is coconut rice, and very tasty by itself; there's a noodle and chicken dish which is bland but still tasty; juicy fried chicken chunks; curried chicken; something beef; nice fried shrimp; and a bunch of fruit -- melon chunks, strawberries, grapes -- for dessert.  Lyceum liked the cauliflower and had some soup, though I was less taken by the cauliflower.  The overall appeal was rather higher than that of Samira or Bombay House buffets, let alone Siam House's. 

I also had Burmese ice coffee, which didn't come like standard Thai ice coffee.  The coffee was in a tin thing on top of the standard tall glass, dripping into a small pool of condensed cream, with the final liquid maybe being 1/3 of the glass.  Then there was a whole bunch of ice.  So it felt less than the usual amount, for $2.25, though Thai ice stuff comes with so much ice it's hard to really compare.  it certainly tasted good.

Oh yeah.  Near the end,  I overhead some women talking, and it seemed like I heard "he's a very religious person... steals a bunch of sodas".

I knew it was supposed to rain, so I went to the Catan tournament with my umbrella. But when we left -- what the hell? I've never seen that before, that mix of of slush and water, not straight from the sky; it was like when the slush was melting a week or two ago, with deep pools in areas which can't form pools like that in pure rain. I'm guessing we got a *lot* of sleet/slush, which accumulated enough to form dams for the water which melted somewhat later. Umbrella provided some protection and I didn't fall, even wearing my most slippery (well-worn) hiking boots. But I couldn't avoid getting soaked as I approached Lindley.

Amazingly, when it stopped I guess it stayed warm enough that the dams melted and all the water drained away. Though some sheltered sidewalks still had slushy covering -- of course, some areas (shaded sidewalks) never lost their thick ice in our warm spell.

Came in 3.5 in the tournament -- tied for third on points but the other guy had an actual win. But I got a free entree coupon for Stefano's, which more than paid for the entrance fee. Free salmon! Well, discounted salmon.

I'd been thinking of next Sunday evening, but lyceum can't make the evening, and that turns out to be Super Bowl day anyway, so I'm guessing a bad idea?

Had chicken fromage at the crepes cafe here.  Cheeses were good but the chunks of white chicken were.. chunks of white chicken.  "Here's your daily protein ration."  Dry, tasteless.  One thing about Qdoba: their chicken chunks are soft flavorful.

After the hot chocolate adventures of the fall, I had some tonight at the Runcible Spoon. Bleah, kind of thin or something. Probably like SoMa's. I asked the server how it was made and if I heard right it's basically heated up chocolate milk, not even something using Hershey chocolate syrup let alone high class powders. Back to iced tea for me, for a cheap drink there.

An Italian restaurant here in town, part of Ethnic Restaurant Ground Zero, which I'd never gone to because I hardly ever go to Italian and French restaurants[1] or European ones in general[2]. But a girl I've met dancing works there, and encouraged me last night to go. "I'll serve you!" "It's expensive!" "Nah, you get a lot of food." So tonight I went -- before she got there to start working, herself, oops, though she chatted with me later anyway. But it was good. After staring at $18-21 entrees I discovered $12 pasta, which normally is part of [1] but due to recency effects looked good, and ordered penne bolognese. This was a dare on my part, because my family makes a heavenly tomato meat sauce, thick and rich and meaty and spicy, and almost all other red sauces seem thin, sweet, and bland by comparison.

First free bread came, fresh and hot which should be good, but I think they use less salt than I would because it tasted bland even with salted olive oil or modest amounts of butter, though being drenched in melting butter redeemed it. Not as bland as the "I can't believe it's not matzoh" one gets without any salt, but close. The lass said the cooks are Mexican and something, and may go overboard in countering their instincts. Though, no salt?

But the bolognese itself was good, thick and rich and meaty. Probably had no cayenne in it but I'll accept heat as a quirk of my family. I ended up eating it all, despite the "food for two" warning last night, on the grounds that I'd not eaten that much earlier, but when I left I realized how distended I felt, though the bread I did eat probably contributed. $15 including tax and tip, for what could have been two meals, or dinner for two. Not bad!

[1] "Why not?" asked the lass. "Because they tend to be pretty expensive, particularly so for pasta."
[2] "I grew up with 'eating out' meaning ethnic food. And I don't like to eat out for things I can make myself." Not that I could really make many European dishes to order; it's a psychological thing. But I can make pasta with various sauces...

Anyone else in town?

Jenny and I went today to La Charreada, 1720 N. Walnut, and I now know that there are other good Mexican places in town besides El Nortenyo. I had a chicken tostaguac, open tortilla with shredded chicken and cheese and guacamolde, plus rice and beans, and it was excellent, though I didn't specifically note the guacamole. Jenny's been there before, and I think said they own a Casa Brava elsewhere in town.

I think it took 11 minutes to bike up there, though 15 to get back.

Also, there's a new place at 17th and Walnut, where the Mongolian BBQ American Chopstick used to be. It's "The Nomad Cafe", and I saw words like "sushi", "buffet" and "steak", so who knows what it's like. Not sure if it's even open yet.

Whatever one might say about the management of Deer Park (past landlord) and Cedarview (current), I've liked the maintenance people when they come; they seem friendly and they've gotten the job done. This comment provoked by John coming today to do something about the A/C he'd installed for me some monthers ago, it being cold and wintry now. I'd hoped for sealing, but he took it out. I whimpered a bit about floorspace, since I don't have much, and he offerred to put it in the basement until spring. Awesome!

In other news, I was a bit behind in prepping for my section's lab, doing a buffer overflow attack on the class robot, but I got it now. Cool. Hack hack hack...