Late January, 08

It's been a strange few days on the health front, but the life front has been great.

Ed and I spent a nice quiet day at home on Saturday and then he announced, "I want Filipino food for dinner." Suddenly I anticipated making adobo, but he said we were going out to a new place he'd found online. We actually have a pretty good Filipino place in town so I was a little confused. Seems Ed found a place that's got a pretty wide variety of foods with a Filipino core. No, they don't make Filipino fettucini alfredo, but they do have normal f-a on the menu. Apparently the chef comes from a commercial base and knows not everyone wants to eat 'strange grub'. From our standpoint, I eat a wider variety of Filipino food than Ed does.

Anyway, I've found the ultimate guy food. I had this same thing when we were in Vancouver and the better/fresher version at this restaurant really got me hooked. It's pork hock fried in a pan. Skin and fat remain on so you get 'chicharrones with tender meat'. Yeah, hard, crispy pork rinds with a thin layer of fat and about 1/4 inch of tender pork. That's it. No sauce, very little spice. (Seems like just a little salt and vinegar before frying.) This stuff makes bacon seem dull and I really like bacon. Really. (For some reason, I'm not worried about my cholesterol.) It's called Lechon Kawali.

So here's the strange part about the restaurant. It's in the 'eclectic' part of town (as Ed says). I say it's purely ethnic. Black, Mexican, Filipino largely. Obviously within the target market but not something Seattle's Birkenstock crowd will drive their Subaru wagon to. It's right next to a construction site. It apparently used to be a burger joint. Conversely, it's NICELY decorated inside (Huh?). And then, as we switch back to the odd, there are big TVs everyone can see while they eat. They play the Filipino channel and a horrible show called Wowowee (Wow Wow Wee). What a train wreck. Makes Sabado Gigante look like fine art. I honestly don't know a single Filipino who likes Wowowee. Really. It's trash. It's one of those things you watch because it's in your language. Sorry to put it this way, but it's immigrant garbage. Target marketed for people trapped in their linguistic ghetto. Somehow I remember some of that....... The place was paradoxical. Location and TV were horrible and detracted from the positives. The interior and food presentation were terrific. The tastes were wonderful. Service verged on 'apathetic teenage daughter'. I know we'll go back. The food was great.

And then came Sunday: Ed really needed to work with his mice. Sunday is a good day to do that because there's nobody in the lab. He can harvest what he needs and not be interrupted by other users of the mouse room and other facilities. He pulled a good solid 8 hours doing what he needed to do and eventually came home. In the meantime I had a very good day physically and spent most of it puttering around and then I rode the motorcycle a couple of miles up the road and then home again. Technically no big deal, but psychologically important and physically expository. Truly important to my mental health, self image, and confidence. Ed was quite pleased I'd ridden the FJR. The temp was only about 40 and he was worried I'd gotten cold, but feeling cold was the least of my concerns. Funny thing is, I don't remember the temp at all. It was a dry and sunny day and I was on two wheels. I was back in the land of the living. It made me a little emotional after I put the monster back on the center stand.

Monday:Nothing major.

Tuesday: I was supposed to see a doctor this morning about a problem with the "terminus of my digestive tract" (I'll leave it at that.) I arrived for my appointment only to discover it'd been cancelled by my referring doctor's scheduler. No phone call, no email, no contact. I wasn't happy but I didn't go nuts and have anybody slain. It apparently has been rescheduled for Thursday morning at 8:45. If the docs eventually do what I want them to do, I'll be in for a day of outpatient surgery with some recovery time. I just consider this issue to be a 'quality of life' thing I don't want to deal with any more. The problem is that I'm going to have to convince the docs to do something besides look, think, and wait. I really dislike these procrastinators.

Oddly, I'm as weak as a kitten today. My last labs showed I was becoming slightly anemic. I wonder if that's progressing.

So, we're staying active.

The worst movie on the planet.

First off, Ed and I don't agree on this review. Ed was perfectly satisfied with the film and wants to rent the second feature to this pig.

We rented and watched "Grindhouse - Planet Fear". It's a Rodriguez/Tarantino film. I dunno what these two were smoking and snorting when they directed.

It's a gore/slasher/high techish "homage" to apparently every movie ever made. It's shot in/for 2007 with digitized Super-8 film quality whenever the directors smoked a big enough joint.

Yeah, it's the equivalent of taking EVERY ingredient and EVERY spice and every "everything" in your entire kitchen (no poisons) and putting it in a giant pot for a long boil. Now force feed it to your family. What the hell did you just cook? Is it dinner? Technically I guess it has nutritional value, but why would you serve something like that?

Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Quite honestly, and without exaggeration, this was the worst movie I've ever seen. Train wreck bad. Look away bad. Leave the room bad. Turn it off bad. The only reason I watched the whole thing is because I genuinely couldn't believe it continued to be so bad.

Life proceeds

It's been a long time since I wrote anything here about us. It seems as if our lives just stopped some time ago.

Life doesn't stop.

So, some bummer stuff first. Nothing horrible, but not fun anyway.

We had some local flooding in the area about 45 days ago. It rains a lot in Seattle in the winter, but normal runoff handles the load under normal conditions. Unfortunately, it rained A LOT for a long period of time around here and we had some water issues. Two problems cropped up from this.

First, our drainage field filled up and water began to seep under our back door and flooded our downstairs. Yeah, downstairs is carpeted and finished. We have some damage and mildew. We're still trying to deal with it.

The second issue came from inexperience / inattention on Ed's part while driving his car to work. See, there was a sign about a mile down the road that said "Water over roadway." Traffic was avoiding the deep stuff in the right lane, but Ed just kept on driving.

BMWs don't ford water over 2 feet deep.

Basically, he sucked straight water directly into the engine. Hydraulic lock occurred. Pistons broke, rods bent, the crank probably twisted a degree or two. The car was toast. I think Ed learned a thing or two about the relative inexpense of comprehensive automobile insurance. He had none. The financial loss, while limited, was virtually total. Several thousand dollars were lost because of a puddle.

But that's the bad stuff. Into each life a little rain must fall. Literally.

The good stuff. We're still making progress on the house. It's obviously quite slow right now, but we inch along whenever it's possible. It'll get done.

Ed's career and experiments are going well. He can finally see the end of his data gathering and plan for the big number crunch / paper.

I went out to see my brother and his hubby in Dallas a few short months ago. It was good to be able to connect with them at their place, and I took the time to visit with some of my old motorcycling friends. It was nice to see the old guard and meet several new folks.

I had dinner with the two friends with whom I motorcycled into Canada. Wow, it looks like I haven't written about that. I should be shot!

See, I have two adventurous friends from Dallas who are long time motorcyclists. They decided they were going to ride from Dallas to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Yeah, that's 10,000 miles plus for each of them. Here's a link to the primer of the story.

Anyway, arrangements were made and we hauled butt from my house. 4 days, 1600 miles round trip, and some great scenery en-route.

Departure pic. Click to make it larger. From left to right, that's Tim, Brad, then me.

We had a good time on the trip. We also had a wonderful time at dinner with their wives, Tim's family, and another friend (female pilot, motorcycle racer, fun person.)

Anyway, I'll write more as I think of things and as life moves forward.