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Many good things this weekend.
Apr. 21st, 2003 06:56 amSaturday morning, Sweetie had a baseball game, and had a really good time playing. The couple of months of weight training has been really effective for him: the first time he threw to 2nd base from home plate, he didn't realize how much stronger he is, and nearly threw it over the guy's head.
I wasn't at the game to see this. Sweetie playing baseball gives me a chance to do boring puttering-around things: some yoga practice, sorting laundry, taking my bicycle to the repair shop, exercise walk around the pond, and some time at the office to run some more tests to try to pin down the bug that has been driving me nuts. I came back from the office to find Sweetie in complete relaxation mode, snoozing on the sofa with the Red Sox on TV and a beer. Recharging his batteries so that he can go back and work at The Nuthouse on Monday.
We discussed the possibility of grocery shopping, and I flipped through back issues of Cook's Illustrated for inspiration. My reaction to most of the articles was that's interesting but no inspiration to cook the actual item discussed. But when I saw the picture of Kung Pao Shrimp-- a big ol' shrimp dripping with spicy red sauce-- I said ooo ooo ooo that's what I want. Sweetie is such a good sport about cooking for me, of course he'll give this a shot, so oyster sauce, rice vinegar and a bunch of other weird things go onto the grocery list.
I had expected that grocery shopping was going to be the closest thing to an exciting outing we were going to get on Saturday. No suspects parties, everyone forced to visit family for one holiday or the other, I guessed. Total surprise, then, when DM called to invite us over to eat greasy Salvadorian fast-food and watch Men in Black II at Todd's house. bounce bounce bounce bounce DM had already been to New York for Passover and back. Yay DVDs, we made a whole evening of watching the extra material on the DVD, and never did make it to the grocery store.
Sunday morning, as Sweetie and I looked for someplace to eat breakfast (there being-- gasp-- no coffee in the house), the police department called to say that my car had been recovered. We went to the tow lot to look at it. I am totally astonished. It wasn't taken for parts, after all. No, the dumbfucks who took it just wanted to ride around town a bit. One window is broken, the ignition is busted up, but otherwise it's intact. I had to leave the car at the tow lot until the insurance company and the leasing company straighted everything out, so I'm still carless, but I'm relieved to see that Li'l Putt-Putt isn't dead. She's outraged and wounded at how she's been treated for the past couple of weeks, but now I can rid my head of images of the bare bones of her double-wishbone suspension lying in a ditch somewhere. The tow lot attendant shooed us away from the car before I had a chance to reassure it nice sudsy carwash for you soon, and no more parking on the street. (What is it about cars that makes us think about them like people?)
Then we had lunch with MB, whom I'm going to have the lab hire for two days of contract programming. Not that I couldn't do the programming myself, but it never came to the top of my to-do list and if I volunteer for every bit of shit work that came along I'd never get any one thing done. So the lab had been retaining the original programmer on the project, who lives in North Carolina and is totally incompetent. I had been really cheesed off that the lab was paying someone that ineffective and stupid to make so little progress when they could be paying someone who could just get the whole thing done in a week-- like me, or-- if we assume for the moment that I only what to do *science* and not crappy little programming jobs-- one of many of my deserving smart underemployed friends who do know their way around a C compiler. MB sorely needs the work and agreed to the deal as it's been sketched out with the lab.
After the Red Sox game ended (with a nice home run by Nomar), Sweetie and I drove to the Wellesley branch of our health club. A nice perk of our health club is that we get to use affiliated clubs during off-peak hours, including all of the weekend. Even this one, an ex-country club in a very posh suburb of Boston. On most weekends, the swimming pool is probably crowded, but this weekend I'm guessing that lots of other people were trapped by family holiday obligations, as I got my own lane in the pool. Peaceful.
Finally, grocery store. Puzzling things: the Cook's Illustrated recipe specified things like "oyster sauce", but reading the ingredient lists on the various different bottles, this is not one standard thing. Different brands have wildly different ingredients. It seems that CI tries to be very precise and reproducible and claims to have found The Way to perfect any given dish, but how can that be when terms like "oyster sauce" and "hoisan sauce" are so ill-defined?
I wasn't at the game to see this. Sweetie playing baseball gives me a chance to do boring puttering-around things: some yoga practice, sorting laundry, taking my bicycle to the repair shop, exercise walk around the pond, and some time at the office to run some more tests to try to pin down the bug that has been driving me nuts. I came back from the office to find Sweetie in complete relaxation mode, snoozing on the sofa with the Red Sox on TV and a beer. Recharging his batteries so that he can go back and work at The Nuthouse on Monday.
We discussed the possibility of grocery shopping, and I flipped through back issues of Cook's Illustrated for inspiration. My reaction to most of the articles was that's interesting but no inspiration to cook the actual item discussed. But when I saw the picture of Kung Pao Shrimp-- a big ol' shrimp dripping with spicy red sauce-- I said ooo ooo ooo that's what I want. Sweetie is such a good sport about cooking for me, of course he'll give this a shot, so oyster sauce, rice vinegar and a bunch of other weird things go onto the grocery list.
I had expected that grocery shopping was going to be the closest thing to an exciting outing we were going to get on Saturday. No suspects parties, everyone forced to visit family for one holiday or the other, I guessed. Total surprise, then, when DM called to invite us over to eat greasy Salvadorian fast-food and watch Men in Black II at Todd's house. bounce bounce bounce bounce DM had already been to New York for Passover and back. Yay DVDs, we made a whole evening of watching the extra material on the DVD, and never did make it to the grocery store.
Sunday morning, as Sweetie and I looked for someplace to eat breakfast (there being-- gasp-- no coffee in the house), the police department called to say that my car had been recovered. We went to the tow lot to look at it. I am totally astonished. It wasn't taken for parts, after all. No, the dumbfucks who took it just wanted to ride around town a bit. One window is broken, the ignition is busted up, but otherwise it's intact. I had to leave the car at the tow lot until the insurance company and the leasing company straighted everything out, so I'm still carless, but I'm relieved to see that Li'l Putt-Putt isn't dead. She's outraged and wounded at how she's been treated for the past couple of weeks, but now I can rid my head of images of the bare bones of her double-wishbone suspension lying in a ditch somewhere. The tow lot attendant shooed us away from the car before I had a chance to reassure it nice sudsy carwash for you soon, and no more parking on the street. (What is it about cars that makes us think about them like people?)
Then we had lunch with MB, whom I'm going to have the lab hire for two days of contract programming. Not that I couldn't do the programming myself, but it never came to the top of my to-do list and if I volunteer for every bit of shit work that came along I'd never get any one thing done. So the lab had been retaining the original programmer on the project, who lives in North Carolina and is totally incompetent. I had been really cheesed off that the lab was paying someone that ineffective and stupid to make so little progress when they could be paying someone who could just get the whole thing done in a week-- like me, or-- if we assume for the moment that I only what to do *science* and not crappy little programming jobs-- one of many of my deserving smart underemployed friends who do know their way around a C compiler. MB sorely needs the work and agreed to the deal as it's been sketched out with the lab.
After the Red Sox game ended (with a nice home run by Nomar), Sweetie and I drove to the Wellesley branch of our health club. A nice perk of our health club is that we get to use affiliated clubs during off-peak hours, including all of the weekend. Even this one, an ex-country club in a very posh suburb of Boston. On most weekends, the swimming pool is probably crowded, but this weekend I'm guessing that lots of other people were trapped by family holiday obligations, as I got my own lane in the pool. Peaceful.
Finally, grocery store. Puzzling things: the Cook's Illustrated recipe specified things like "oyster sauce", but reading the ingredient lists on the various different bottles, this is not one standard thing. Different brands have wildly different ingredients. It seems that CI tries to be very precise and reproducible and claims to have found The Way to perfect any given dish, but how can that be when terms like "oyster sauce" and "hoisan sauce" are so ill-defined?
