Robot Journal : Achoo! RSS! Sniffle. Steak. Achoo!

2/8/2007

Achooo
This is how my body works: I am sitting here minding my own business when suddenly I sneeze. Now, I sneeze normally... you know, as part of a daily routine.
Shits love to get all up in nose and tickle it and then BAM! Sneeze!
But, sometimes it's the "you now have a cold" sneeze which I do hate.
10:15am: Feeling Fine
10:16am: Sneeze
10:17am: OK, now I instantly have a cold.

HB Pony
Hope that baby got some cake, too!
:)

Bloglines vs. Google Reader
A while ago I went on and on about Bloglines which is a fine web-based RSS reader. I am of the thinking that software based RSS readers serve no purpose unless you are working offline a lot and then, well, they still don't work that well unless you love to just read teasers of articles.
Web based ones are the way to go.

I have been a longtime Bloglines user since they started in 1977 before computers and electricity was even invented. They have served me well.
But this week, maybe it's the crazy sneezing and snot in my head, but I am being to use Google's Reader instead.

The quick guide to what I like about Google Reader..
1. The interface with the keyboard shortcuts is next to brilliant. Very well put together.

2. I kind of like how feeds that have nothing new in them just don't show up. It makes my list of feeds a bit more manageable.

3. The front page summary when you first come in is handy. It shows you basically the newest posts from all of your feeds. Neat stuff.

I haven't jumped off the Bloglines ship yet, but Google Reader is an awfully attractive and sexy siren (and by "siren" I of course mean "web based RSS reader")

Crafty Stakes

Tuesday night I had dinner with the rest of my "department" and guests from overseas at CraftSteak. I like CraftSteak, even though I know they got spanked by the NYTs in their review and other people have grumblings about it - granted, I always go on someone else's dime, so I might reconsider this if I had had to pay the $50 for my 10oz. steak and the 2 bottles of wine and the other 2 bottles of champagne.

Our waitress had the sniffles. I already had them, so she didn't pass them to me (not that I would of minded - woo hoo!), but I wanted to walk her over to an empty booth in the restaurant, cover her with a blanket, and get her some hot tea.
Food service and sniffles equals hellish.

We started with the super seafood grand platter extraordinaire - which we emptied out quite quickly. There was lobster, oysters, clams, shrimp, crab meat, tuna sashimi (topped with a little olive paste), and seaweed salad.
Booya.
The clams all had a little too much shell/grit in them and the tuna was easily overpowered by the olive paste if you weren't careful, but it was generally all delicious as you might expect a big boat of seafood might be.
Our dining guests from across the ocean seemed to like it as well.

For the entr�e, I had one of their wagyu steaks - it was a cut that I am not familiar with... something to do with the shoulder. I had it medium rare - tender enough that I didn't even need a knife (although it was pre-sliced), marbly with that fat and the beautifully rare-ish colored meat. Flavorful. A bit crispy on the outside. Oh, and there was butter.
Pure joy.

Because I am a dork, I tired everyone else's dinner. One co-worker had a similar steak, but he had it well done (yea, I know) and it was fun/sad/tragic to taste my very medium-rare against his well done (I was happy to finish it and never to eat it's dryness again).

My boss had venison and I tried that for the first time.
It was a very attractive piece of meat (as my boss is (no, not really)) but was a much denser than normal beef steak was yet at the same time quite tender. It tasted somewhat like my grandmother's roast.

Great description, eh?

Another co-worker (the one reading this now and thinking "isn't he deathly ill at home?") had some sort of stewed lamb type of thing. Like, she had a whole lamb in a hot pot.
It was tasty, but for me, lamb begins and ends with the traditional rack of lamb and it's crispy outside and pinky inside and tasty bones to nibble on.
So, it was good, but too stewy for my liking.

If I can make one sure-fire recommendation for CraftSteak, it would be the monkey-bread for dessert which is tragically not made from monkeys or prepared by monkeys or shaped to look like a monkey. It's basically cinnamon roll meets sticky toffee pudding.
Simple. Plate lickingly delicious.
And fun to announce to the whole table.

"I'm getting monkey bread!" I exclaimed maybe a bit too loudly and excitedly to the table.

I suspect my boss was thinking, "no more drink for him"
I suspect our overseas guest were thinking, "no more le drink for grand home"

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