Friday Five

The Excuse:

None needed!

The Week:

Brace yourself for this one – I was in Houston. Shocking, I know.

And at the moment I’m still here. Sitting in a Starbucks at the moment. Had a small snafu with my flight times. I was originally planning on being in my class until about 5p meaning I wouldn’t be able to catch the 6p flight out of Houston so I booked the 9p flight. Sure enough, the training center I was at was closing at noon on Friday, meaning I totally could have caught the 6p flight. By the time I found this out I had already been upgraded on the 9p flight and there were only middle seats on the 6p flight. It was worth it to me to wait the extra time.

In any event, I was more social this time around than last week. I was able to get together with a couple of friends on Wednesday and Thursday nights. Seeing friends while travelling makes the being away from home part much easier to deal with. My business trips become a mini-vacation in that aspect.

I also wound up in a corporate apartment this week. It’s always a mixed bag when I wind up staying in an apartment. On one hand it’s nice to have the extra space. On the other hand, all the extra space makes it that much more obvious that I’m all alone. Further proof that I could never live alone.

As a side note, I know that I’ve basically only been doing Friday Five’s. That will change. I have about 4 half-written posts that I need to finish off and get up.

The Exercise:

I at least got in two days worth. Slowly getting back into the swing of things.

The Restaurant:

On Thursday night I went out to an Italian place called The Grotto which is over by the Galleria Mall (for those of you familiar with Houston). It is a chain, and although there are only 2 it is owned by a much larger parent company. That said, I have to say I was very impressed with the place. Nice sized bar area when you walk in, a brick oven in the center for their pizzas, and a good sized dining area. As I had pasta earlier in the week I wound up going with a jumbo shrimp that was pounded flat, sautéed, and topped with crab, red peppers and a light wine/lemon sauce. Very tasty. It was served with some potatoes that were rather disappointing, but it didn’t take away from the main dish. The thing that really impressed me about the place is it’s very affordable despite it’s Galleria location. I’ll definitely be back.

The Travel Note:

When I fly I want to be as comfortable as possible. I prefer wearing cargo pants or shorts as the weather allows, but packing becomes an issue. I can get a week’s worth of clothes into my carryon suitcase, but barely. If I want to wear jeans on Friday, I need to wear them onto the plane because I can’t fit them into the suitcase otherwise. What I’d love is to be able to wear my pajama bottoms, but I can’t get away with doing that. I often see girls (college age and younger) at the airport in PJ’s – they can get away with it. I’m guessing if a 36 year old man arrived at the airport in PJ’s he’d be detained for questioning at the very least.

The Five:

1. I have never lived alone. I’ve gone from living at home to having roommates to being married. I have a friend whose philosophy is if you were meant to live alone at some then you would. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with that, but as I mentioned earlier I do know I was not meant to live alone.
2. I’ve brewed my own beer in the past. I did OK at it. Nothing overly fantastic, but good. It is one of the biggest things I’d like to start doing again if I wind up with a job that keeps me at home the majority of the time.
3. There is a significant chance I am the only person on the planet who owns both an iPhone and a Zune. I much prefer the Zune software and player to what iTunes/iPhone has to offer, but I will never go back to Windows Mobile ever again. So – two devices.
4. I have 11 states left to go until I get all 50. The 11 does include Alaska and Hawaii.
5. In the physical world I show basically no organization skills. My digital life, however, is very organized.

Friday Five

The Excuse:

None needed!

The Week:

So for a change, I found myself in Houston this week. Due to reasons entirely of my own doing, I didn’t wind up seeing any friends this week. For whatever reason, I really didn’t think about where I was heading until it was too late.

In fact, I had a very hard time in general remember where/when I was. Yes – when. After my last couple of trips took me to the Eastern time zone, I was convinced for the first couple of days I was still on Eastern time. Which almost caused me to miss the Inauguration speech. I knew it was at noon – what I failed to realize until the last moment was that it was noon Eastern, not Central. But fortunately I was able to get my class a break for anyone who wanted to watch the speech as well as take it in myself.

The Restaurant:

This week I found a place called Mint Cafe, a Mediterranean restaurant by the Galleria Mall. I’m pretty sure it’s a family owned place, but you can’t always tell. It is, however fairly new, which means that as of right now it doesn’t have a liquor license. To counteract that they do allow you to BYOB, and they have some freshly squeezed juices as well. (I went for the mango <insert Eddie Izzard reference here>).

For my dinner, I had a kabob combo that included chicken, beef and a seasoned ground beef kabob. All very tasty. It was served up with hummus and rice, although I swapped out the rice for a Greek salad – I appreciate any restaurant that will allow you to swap out sides.

All-in-all, a great find.

The Exercise:

I actually managed to find my way down to the fitness room twice this week. It felt great to get back in the habit again.

The Travel Note:

Over the months that I’ve been travelling, I’ve forgotten many an item while on the road. I’ve lost, among other things, a coat, a fleece and two pairs of pajama bottoms. Now I can add season 2 of The West Wing to that list – forgot the sleeve in a seat back pocket. I’ve filed a claim with Continental, but haven’t heard anything back yet.

The Five:

Have I mentioned recently that I am always looking for ideas for my Friday Five? If not, well, I’m looking for ideas.

In the mean time, here’s five miscellaneous facts or thoughts:

1. Karin mentioned the other day that Roscoe will be turning 5 this upcoming March, which means he’ll have been a part of our family for the last 4 1/2 years. I now understand parents who say they went to bed one day with a newborn in the house and woke up the next morning getting them ready for school.
2. In all my trips to the south, I have never tried sweat tea.
3. People often ask me if I miss snow. I miss the fun memories of snow – watching it fall outside, playing in it, etc. But I don’t miss the realities – shoveling, digging out cars, traffic, scraping a car twice a day, etc.
4. I used to have hair that went about half-way down my shoulder blades. Every now and then I miss my long hair – except during summer.
5. This will come as a surprise to nobody, but I love gadgets. I once had a TSA guy say my computer backpack was a portable Best Buy.

Friday Five

The Excuse

Two weeks in a row! Go Me!

The Week

There are weeks when I get to go somewhere cool, see interesting things, and hang out with people that I like. Then there are weeks like this when I have to go to DC and hang out with Abram.

All kidding aside, it was a fantastic week.

My class was in Arlington, but through the magic of Hotwire I wound up staying at the Hyatt by the Capitol Building. While I had a bit of a commute, the location of the hotel was fantastic.

Abram and I were able to hang out quite a bit. We watched the Giants game and the Chargers game on Sunday (and neither of us want to talk about those games.) We took in the Georgetown/Syracuse game on Wednesday – great game, great atmosphere if not a close game.

The weather nearly did me in. I mentioned before when I visited Morristown, NJ that I could see myself living in the Northeast again. My very wise wife reminded me they have winter out there, but I was not going to be deterred – I could handle winter again. Yeah, not so much. It only got down to +20 at its worst when I was out and about and I thought I was going to freeze to death. I think we’ll be staying in San Diego, thank you very much.

The Exercise

Yeah, huh.

The Restaurant

I managed to find a small sushi joint just around the corner from my hotel named Momoyama. Upon walking in (to what appears to have been an apartment at one point) I was greeted by (I'm assuming) the chef's wife and co-owner. The place is very small (21 chairs by my count), and there was one table taken and someone sitting at the bar. The waitress directed me to a table, and then pointed me at the TV. She changed it to ESPN without even asking.

She pointed out the specials - $9 for a "tuna boat", which came with a handful of different items involving (oddly enough) tuna and salad - as well as happy hour - $2 beer/saki and $1 nigiri.

I started with the tuna boat, which had a couple of small rolls as well as two pieces of nigiri. The spicy rolls had a good bit of kick to them, which was nice. Everything was very fresh and very tasty. I moved on to a couple pieces of nigiri to take advantage of the happy hour (which the waitress was polite enough to tell me was ending momentarily) - red snapper and yellowtail, both of which were great. I finished off with an "Orange Roll", which contained krab and avocado and was wrapped with salmon - again, just fantastic.

The bill came to $25 – a steal at twice the price!

The Travel Note

My class was over in Arlington but as I mentioned I was staying in Capitol Hill. As a result, I wound up riding the Metro every day during rush hour – read: times when damn tourists^[1] shouldn’t be on the train. I learned that people apparently don’t grok the concept of how a subway system works.

I had to nearly shove a group of people out of the way who had stopped at the end of an escalator – Ummm… These stairs are moving and I can’t stop.

There was a brief outage of service, so there were many people waiting to get on trains when they started back up again. When this happens they run one right after the other. But sure enough there was one guy who was going to catch the train I was on – everyone else be damned. We were packed into the train, but he leaned against the door demanding we shove in even tighter rather than wait. Finally, he was able to shove his way onto the train after a good 3 minutes.

And finally – my personal favorite. There’s a good 2-3 warnings they’re about to close the doors before they actually do. After the second, the guy standing next to me decided this would be a good time to stick his head out the door to look around. Sure enough – he got his head caught in the doors. I would feel sorry for him if, well, he didn’t stick his head in the doors.

The Five

One of the my favorite recent trends with DVDs is for TV shows to be released in that format. It’s great for someone like myself who travels and needs entertainment on a plane (I find TV shows work better on a plane than movies), as well as being able to watch shows we had missed before. Here’s the 5 shows I find myself watching most commonly on DVD:

1. Dexter – A Showtime series about a serial killer. Yeah, it’s a tad disturbing and morbid, but it’s such a great show. Watch two episodes – if you’re not hooked I’ll be amazed.
2. The West Wing – I loved this series when it was on the air. It’s great to be able to go back and rewatch the series. It’s also amazing how timely the show remains.
3. SportsNight - I’ve mentioned in the past how much I love this show. They recently came out with a 10th anniversary edition of the DVD set which my wonderful wife was kind enough to buy me for Christmas. I thoroughly enjoyed the different cast interviews as well as watching some of my favorite episodes again.
4. House – The show does have a bit of an everyplot, but it’s not the medical part that really interests me. It’s the exploration of human nature and societal demands that intrigues me.
5. Animaniacs and Pinky & the Brain – Cartoons produced by Steven Speilberg in the mid 90’s. I don’t watch them nearly as often as I’d like, but I still get a good chuckle out of them.

^[1]An inside family joke

Friday Five

The Excuse

Starting out the year on a good note and posting on time.

The Week[s]

As I mentioned in my last five, I was signing off for the year. I spent very little time in front of the computer over those last two weeks and it was remarkable. To answer the common questions:

Yes, Christmas was very nice. Karin and I saw How The Grinch Stole Christmas at The Old Globe on Christmas Eve, which is a long running San Diego tradition. (The play just recently made it to Broadway for the Christmas season.) For Christmas Day we went over to Liam’s house for a very pleasant dinner.

New Year’s Eve was spent in Vegas. No, I’d rather not expound on that.

This week was spent in Dallas. I was attending a “boot camp”, which meant some late nights and as such I really didn’t get out of the hotel room much at night. I did still make it over to La Joya, my favorite restaurant over here, but beyond that it was mostly just staring at 4 walls.

The Restaurant

I’m going to go back a week for this – Mon Ami Gabi in the Paris hotel in Vegas. Outside of this place there is no patio dining on the strip. And this place is just perfect. First the location is right across the street from the Bellagio, which means you get to see the fountains while dining. The food is very good (I don’t know about great, but very very good), and for the location extremely reasonable. They’re a French steakhouse of sorts. Their normal steaks are flank steaks, but the filets they do are amazing. Next time you’re in Vegas I highly recommend stopping by here.

The Exercise

The biggest reason I’m keeping this section here is to motivate myself. I figure after typing out that I didn’t exercise enough times that I’ll eventually get up off my arse and get back into the gym.

The Travel Note

Many cities have passed ordinances that require a cabbie to have showered within the last decade or so. I can tell you I’m 100% in favor of these. Nothing makes the eyes water faster than opening a cab door and getting punched in the face by a combination of BO and Old Spice. Fortunately it was a relatively short cab ride.

The Five

As I mentioned last year, I’m really not one for New Year’s Resolutions. But, just for kicks and giggles, here’s 5 things I’d like to do more of in 2009 (not necessarily resolutions).

1. Lose 15 pounds. My main goal is to really get my weight to start with a 17 rather than a 18, but I’d like to sneak down a little further just to give myself a little more room.
2. Read more. I did pretty well (for me) this year. I am about 1/3 of the way through Bourne Supremacy[1] and have 2 books lined up that I’m really looking forward to reading.
3. Stay connected with the blog. I go in spurts here, and I’d like to be a tad more consistent. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what constitutes a “post worthy event”, but I still want to blog more.
4. I’d like to take a continuing education course – preferably a history or politics course.
5. Spend more time with friends. Being on the road constantly makes it very challenging to stay connected with friends, especially when I’m trying to balance time between friends and some alone time with Karin. But I think I can do a better job there and I want to.

My Favorite Christmas Story

15 Christmases ago^[1] I was in Duluth. At the time I was working as a short order cook^[2], which meant I had to work Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas. All my friends had homes elsewhere, and as such had gone home for the holidays leaving me by myself. I’m fairly resilient and wasn’t overly concerned about being by myself for Christmas.

On the morning of Christmas there was a knock at the door. In my groggy state, I stumbled on over to the door to be greeted by a member of the older gay couple that lived across the street. They had noticed I was alone and wanted to know if I wanted to come over for Christmas dinner.

Dinner was of course fantastic. They had a couple other friends over. I wish I could remember all that was served, but I do remember being warmly welcomed into their home, having great food, great wine, and trying cognac for the first (and frankly only) time.

What I find so special isn’t simply being invited over for dinner. After all, we’ve all done that for friends. It was the fact that they were strangers who simply didn’t want to see someone be alone for Christmas. That dinner will always hold a special place in my heart.

^[1]You know you're getting old when you start dating stories beyond a decade.

^[2]People often ask why I tip so well - work food service for 3 years and you'll understand.