Halcyon Repose

Brenden has been planning a trip to Europe to train for most of the summer. Not the first time for him, after all he has to keep up with his own training, and it hopefully won’t be the last. The only reason I bring this up, is that he will be spending 3 weeks training at various clubs in Paris, France. He managed to get himself setup in an apartment for his stay, and a few weeks ago he sent an open invitations to crash to anyone who wanted to come visit.

Now that is an opportunity worth looking into. I checked some airline sites, and the cheapest ticket I could get was for about $800 round trip. If I had thought about it a few weeks prior I could have easily afforded it in lieu of getting some upgrades for the car, but it was a bit too late for that. At this point I was more than willing to go into debt to make the trip, after all, it might be awhile before I would get another shot at Europe. Unfortunately I keep my credit card limits very low, and I didn’t have enough left on the cards for the purchase. So off to the bank I go to apply for a BoA credit card. I assume my credit will support it, and if I get it soon enough, I can still get good prices on tickets.

Fast forward to two days ago. A friend of the fencing center who is in the airline industry gave Brenden a ride to the airport, and Brenden dropped the fact that I was looking to go, assuming I could afford it. I then receive an email yesterday offering me a Companion Pass for my flight to Paris. This brings the flight to a very affordable $500 (give or take). This of course has me very excited, and moves this trip into the realm of “very possibly going to happen”. Hopefully by the end of the week I should have a schedule all laid out and plans in concrete. *Hope Hope Hope*

Early last week, I took a step towards bettering myself. I went to a Japanese market with the intention of buying something other than Japanese sweets. A week or so ago I got the urge to look up a curry udon recipe to see how difficult it would be (http://japanesefood.about.com/od/udon/r/curryudon.htm). Totally manageable, so I then started on the next and hardest part of my quest. I knew the ingredients that I needed, in fact, they were all familiar to me. Joe had introduced me to dashi once when he was in town when we made an oyakodon, and the curry I was well familiar with, even though I had never actually made any before.

My biggest fear was that I would get to the store, and I would be up against a wall of various colored liquids in a bottle as I vainly tried to figure out what the kanji for Mirin was. So I steeled myself and made the journey to Mitsuwa, where things were not as bleak as I had imagined. There was typically at least one brand of whatever I was looking for that had blissful romanji on the packaging, and the shelve tags were all in romaji as well. It turned out my biggest difficulty was in trying to decide what type of udon noodles to get. There had to have been over a dozen different kind of dried uncooked udon noodles, and I had no idea which were the ideal for my curry udon. After finally settling on a type, I ended up finding some frozen udon noodles in the freezer section, and seeing as how they were more immediately recognizable, I cheated and got a package of those instead.

I went a little crazy while I was there and got every thing I needed for my curry udon, plus some more curry for a possible night of standard curry, and some chicken and panko bread crumbs for a chicken katsu donburi.

I got home and immediately discovered that among the food that Joe had left me when he left the country, I had enough rice noodles and dashi to feed myself on donburi for the rest of my life (not quite but I did have a lot). I ended up making a donburi for myself, Kenny, and Kara that night. Kenny got the first batch since he has an aversion to onions, and as such he got to be my first test subject. He said it was good, but apparently the rice noodles were still a bit chewy. I realized that I hadn’t used any water, just soy and mirin, so when I made Kara’s and mine, I threw in generous amounts of water to soften the noodles (it wasn’t until later that I remembered that this is what we used the dashi for when Joe first showed me how to make it). The second batch came out well, I must say, even though I ended up scrambling the eggs in with everything too much, and there was no real juices left to soak into the rice. I still need to work on that bit, but it was still mucho tasty. I think a smaller pan will help a lot for when I decide to make some again.

Tonight I decided to try my hand at the curry udon. It was about 5pm, and I was trying to decide if I should cook something, or go to the gym. Seeing as how I was extremely hungry, the gym lost. So I ran to the store to get some potatoes and carrots for the curry, while I was driving back, I saw a cute girl jogging down the road. This sort of sparked some inner guilt, so I got home, threw every thing on the counter and went to the gym for a few hours. Upon returning I set about my project.

First up was the beef, which I had purchased earlier in the week. Into the skillet along with the onions and carrots. While they simmered I got out the largest pot I had, and mixed up the 8 cups of water required by the single package of dashi. In went the potatoes, curry, and the beef and veggies from the sauté pan. I brought to a boil, let simmer, and then added 4 servings of udon noodles. Added a little soy sauce (taste test confirmed this made a huge difference), and then I let it simmer for as long as possible. I should mention that the curry was about half an inch away from the top of the pot.. so this recipe will feed a small army. About 10 o’clock my hunger overtook me and I spooned out a bowl for myself and spooned the remaining udon into 3 tupperware containers which went into the fridge (4 servings on the nose).

I must say, while it was not the best curry udon I have had (Shin-Sen-Gumi’s has kick ass curry udon if anyone is interested), I will say it was better than most I have tried. I can imagine that left-overs will be even better after everything gets to soak up the curry for a few days. All in all I will say this was a big success. And of course I have overcome the hurdle of the first try. I won’t be as hesitant to try cooking some again, and I have a couple of ideas on what I will do differently next time. All in all, it is a pretty cheap meal considering how many people it feeds. After I get finish polishing off the left-overs, I think I’ll pick up some more chicken and try some chicken katsu curry. Yum!

People never check to make sure the water bottle is empty at the water cooler.

So things are finally starting to cool down here in Southern California, much to everyone’s relief. Sure 90 degree days and 80 degree nights aren’t bad, but when you have no air conditioning, you have the fan on full blast, and you are still sweating buckets while trying to go to sleep, it can get rather annoying. I didn’t want to spend any time upstairs in my room, so it was out and about in the sunshine trying to keep myself from remembering how hot it really was.

An old fencing friend was in town this week. Whenever he comes in we all go to Louis’s restaurant and indulge ourselves in good food, good friends, and some good wine. This time was no exception and while I spent more money than I actually had, it was worth it.

Assuming we get a bonus at work, I am seriously thinking about a motorbike. Something small to learn on. Of course this means I will have to go take the motorbike training class, and spends lots of money on protective gear, but the end result will be some transportation that will help mitigate the gas consumed by my monster of a Mustang.

Music – Once More with Feeling — Buffy

Ed has been MIA from the house ever since he got engaged with his girlfriend and she got her own apartment (and 56′ TV), and Kenneth is out of town for work (if you can call going to a gaming convention work, I am sure it is, but on a different level than most people are used to).

I figured I would lean back and chill all weekend, but after one night of chlling I started to go stir crazy. Today I had planned to wash my car, and also my roommate’s car, just to be a nice guy, but as I was cleaning up a pile of cat vomit (gotta love my little rodents) I went to flush it in my roommates’ bathroom, and I noticed how entirely and utterly nasty it is in there. So I decided to change plans for today. I’ll still wash my car (and hopefully get a chance to get to the beach for some rollar blading or biking) but I am also going to clean their bathroom (and mine while I am at it) top to bottom. Since Ed is gone, that means I can leave the life and death of the bathroom to Kenny, since he is the only one that will be using it. I can understand the frustration of sharing cleaning responsibilities on a shared bathroom, so Kenny will get to start with a clean slate (haha).

A total list of things I am hoping to get taken care of today while I am at it:

Clean bathrooms
Empty Kitty Litter box (poor kitties, I have neglected their box for a week)
Vacuum
Clean cobwebs from the ceiling (gogo extendable vacuum wand)
Wash Car
Laundary (whites, colors, and linens)

I finally got some back logged pictures put up.

Jeremy’s Bachelor Party

Jeremy’s Wedding

and

Brenden’s Birthday

all lined up for your viewing pleasure. Everyone on the right side of the hallway please. No pushing no shoving.

So the rain is finally over (for now), unfortunately it looks like it will return in full effect next week. Hopefully this weather will rain itself out by the time my parents are able to come and visit.

It was nice and sunny though, and for some reason my mood was pretty bleak. Now that Daylight Savings time is upon us, I actually get out of work while the sun is still shining (yay!). I was looking forward to a taking a nice long drive, probably south on the PCH towards Laguna and maybe a bit beyond. My plans were foiled by Jess when she called to see if I wanted to do dinner.

We had originally made plans, but when she asked if I wanted to hang out with her and some of her friends at a Karaoke bar, I declined. I was more in a pensive mood, and hanging out with a bunch of peeps that I hardly know… wasn’t really something I was looking forward to. Apparently dinner with her was still on though, and while big group outing was not looking like fun, one on one time was definitely doable. No matter how bad of a mood I am in, hanging with Jess helps me forget for awhile… at least until I drop her off and things come crashing down on me again.

So we hit up Shin-Sen-Gumi’s, where she rarely gets to visit since she is normally working during the evenings, and pigged out on ramen and gyoza. I then dropped her off at the Karaoke bar, but seeing as how no one else was there at the time, I stayed so that she would be unable to spend any time drawing and instead had to spend her time being social.. mwuhaha.

So on the way home, I didn’t go for a long drive like I wanted, but I did get to turn up some thumping rap music and drive really fast. It scares me sometimes how fast I will be going in the new car. I’ll pick up speed, barely hit the gas and when I look down I am going way over the speed limit. Scary… but strangely exhilarating in that masculine sort of way…

Music: Prozzak – Cruel Cruel World

Why my music choice this evening? Prozzak is who we have to thank for the likes of Gorillaz. Prozzak was the first animated band, and the two animated band members, Simon and Milo, became a big success on the internet scene. I can remember downloading their videos back in the day, and when I found their first album ‘Hot Show’ in a discount bin in a CD store in Atlanta, I had to grab it. It has been an album that I always manage to come back to, and tonight, Simon’s quest to find love (the overriding theme of all of their albums) along with the name of the band seemed to fit my mood.

So if anyone needs it to rain, just let me know, and I’ll wash my car. For the past 3 Sundays, I have washed my car, and every single Monday it has rained. It rained most of last week, not really clearing up at all till Saturday afternoon. I checked the weather before hand this time, and even though I saw it would rain today and tomorrow, I just couldn’t go another week with my car dirty.

I am still all giddy about my car, but the sad thing is that I got into my old Integra to move it this weekend, and I realized that it doesn’t feel like my car anymore. A very sad moment, take my word for it.

I know I haven’t taken the time to write up the whole car story yet, nor have I posted the pictures that I have already uploaded to my webserver.. my only excuse is Oblivion.. and it is a darn good excuse at that.

I have decided that I really need to take the time to make some adjustments to the look of this site. I like how clean it is overall, but some things, like the color scheme and the graphics, need a slightly more masculine feel to them. I also need to update the back end of the website, not that it will be visible to anyone but myself. These are both lofty goals, and will both sit on my plate for many more weeks to come I am sure.

I am still waiting on my car. I got the call at the end of last week that it was 1-3 weeks away, and of course the closer it gets, the harder it becomes to wait. I went in yesterday to start the approval process for a car loan at my credit union, and I found out that my credit isn’t bad, but I don’t have a lot of it. In fact I was told that my credit rating was on the borderline on what they accept. This started me thinking, and I realized that not only did I have to have a co-signer for all of my previous cars (except my current one, but it was used and $8K is more like a small loan than a car lease), but that this car was going to be twice as expensive as any that I owned before. Thankfully I got myself all worked up over nothing, because I not only got approved for my requested amount, but a little extra… Just in case.

So I know I have the money for the car. I have already purchased a new suspension for the car (the one thing the Mustang’s are weak in), and a short shift kit to decrease the throw in the gear shift. It all comes down to how much longer I can hold out. I wonder if anyone offers a short-term cryogenic freezing process….

Last weekend was our annual executive meeting for the center. Of the four executive members, three of us don’t get paid for keeping the center up and running, so we make plans once a year to treat ourselves to a night/day out. Last year we went to Magic Castle where we had a blast, and this year we rented a limo and took a trip to Temecula for some wine tasting.

Now I have always been under the impression that California had good wine, and that Temecula would be sort of the low end of the spectrum. I must say I was very pleasantly surprised. I had some wonderful wines, and visited a few vineyards I would highly recommend. The one that sticks out most in my head is Stuart Cellars. They don’t mass produce their wine, and they only sell their wine at the winery, but I was blown away by their wines. I might be new to the whole wine lifestyle, but I can already tell the difference between an $8 bottle of wine and a $18 bottle of wine. The wine I had from Stuart Cellars was an even bigger improvement. I even joined their wine club, which means I will get bottles delivered directly to me.

Beyond the wine tasting not a lot more has been going on. The one other thing worth mentioning is that I put a new car on order. I am so excited, but it will take another two months before my new baby is delievered to me. I can hardly wait…. It is just as well, it will be well into March before I will be able to afford the car, but after hearing how long the special order process was, I decided to go ahead and get mine started..

Yay excitement! The only question now is to go with the racing stripes or ditch them. I have ordered them all ready, but they are aftermarket installed at the dealer, so I can back out at any time. One part of me drools over them, the other more pratical wonders how many cops per week will ‘notice’ my car.

I actually had a night free, and I actually spent it working on getting the Wedding Pictures up. It’s amazing!

I think I like the thumbnail albums better than the text links. While I don’t get to write up any witty remarks (I sometimes like to think of myself as sharp), it does come out looking better overall.