It’s been a pleasant weekend. The weather is hovering in high 70s, low 80s with very little humidity. I ended up filling my mp3 player with podcasts yesterday and spending 3 hours tending to my gardens. Afterwards I cut up a bunch of fruit we had around the house and was feeling so domestic that I baked a loaf of banana bread (used this recipe, it’s quite good). I then spent the rest of the afternoon with my nose in a book. Lovely.
In the early evening I headed down to Lansdale to hit Vidalia Marketplace for a few beers. I ended up with sticker shock, they’d increased the prices on all their beer 10% or more since I’d last visited! Apparently they realized what a gold mine they were sitting on. Please PA government dudes, take a hint and take us out of the alcohol dark ages! I picked up a couple lambics for myself and some pilsners for Michael.
Speaking of beer, after a couple exhausting weeks of work and hot weather, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner down at Ortinos Northside. They recently redid their beer menu and added several beer coolers so now they actually have most of the beers on their list. Shocking. I ended up taking up the suggestion by
The essence of wonder is a unique and masterful blend of strong malty ale and authentic Belgian Kriek. Our philosophers deduce that this powerful marriage of cherries, roasted malts, and dark chocolate will only achieve more wisdom and coherence as it broods in the dark recesses of your cellar.
According to the label on 2004 bottle of it that I enjoyed, they actually use Lindenman’s Kriek. Oh nice, but this was no girly beer. This was a malty Belgian with a kick-you-in-your-throat strength of aged fruitiness that bordered on a liquor flavoring. I loved it, but just like with the Allagash I had a couple weeks ago I think I’ll plan to share the next bottle I get. It was pretty awesome with the mussels and pasta I enjoyed as an entree.
Anyway, for dinner on Saturday Michael grilled a couple salmon burgers, which were surprisingly fantastic. Michael picked them up fresh at Landis (yes, like the cycling guy, Landis is a big name in PA) and when he inquired about ingredients to make sure they weren’t made of crazy preservatives the seafood fellow assured him that it was all natural ingredients. Cool. After dinner we watched Daredevil+Rifftrax (Rifftrack?), good stuff.
Other misc stuff:
The cup of coins on the roll of toilet paper thing has been successful to ward off Simcoe’s destructive advances so far. She only knocked it over once, and that was over a week ago. I think she’s even afraid to go into the bathroom, which is fine with me, as long as I don’t need to keep the door closed forever I’m happy. I’m still not claiming victory though, and I suspect this is one of those training exercises that will go on for a while, coins > scared > remove coins > attack after forgetting about the coins > coins > scared…
A fellow I know from PLUG recently brought up the suggestion on list that Philadelphia host the 2008 KDE aKademy. I’m not a KDE user, but seeing such a conference come to the States would be cool, even better if it came to Philadelphia! There are a lot of hurdles to overcome, but the guy who is heading up the effort has a lot of time to spend on it, so I’m pretty confident that a team of us could pull it off. I’m holding off on my involvement for a while though, I really don’t have the time to put much work into such a thing. Perhaps after we’re confirmed as the location I can make the time.
Much IRC dramaz over at #deep13. Rob posted yet again about how dead the channel is, and then made the executive decision to shut down the channel. I objected, because quite honestly I was pretty pissed that after all the work I’ve poured into the website and the channel over the years some Grand Deep13 Ruler would have the power to end it all at his say-so. Maybe I am just hanging on to something that’s dead and should just give up, but it’s so sad to see a channel that’s been around for a decade be forcefully shut down even when it still has regulars, ya know? Probably I shouldn’t care at all, #13thHour is my real home, we talk about MST and Rifftrax more there than in #deep13 anyway. Yeah, I convinced myself, I don’t care about #deep13 anymore, I’ll be handing in my keys to the website today.
And fun news, Michael and I went to see the new Disney and Pixar film Ratatouille on Thursday night. I had my reservations, I never even ended up seeing Cars because so many friends said it was lame, and I feared the golden age of Pixar had come to an end. I’m happy to say that Ratatouille changed my mind! This movie was a delight! Clever, funny, original. You should go see it.