At 10:27pm on Saturday, June 6, 2009, my grandmother died of heart failure at the General Hospital in Penang, Malaysia. It came as a total surprise. My mom had just spoken to her the night before, and she'd been insisting that she could take care of herself just fine despite the reports we'd been hearing that she needed help.
I was uncertain about flying back for the funeral, but in hindsight I'm so glad I did. My mom and I arrived on Thursday, a day after the cremation, and we interred my grandmother on Friday.
While cleaning out her room, we found a clock that had stopped at 10:30. A strange coincidence.
We've been a little obsessed with Agricola of late, but that may change with our latest acquisitions: Pandemic and Small World. They're all very, very different games, and are quite fun and (so far) very replayable.
In Agricola, you play the role of a farmer(!). Danny introduced it to us (thanks Danny), and now the problem is that he always wins whenever we play with him. *grrrr* As far as gameplay goes, there're a lot of strategies/options, and every game is different. Even the number of players can affect the feel of the game, which is a nice touch that adds even more variety.
Pandemic is a cooperative team game where you play the role of members of the CDC, trying to find cures to diseases breaking out around the world. One up side of this game is that when Danny wins, the rest of us wins too. Although so far, we win just as often as we lose. This game is easy to learn, but not easy to beat.
And in Small World, well, you basically try to take over the world. It's Risk-esque, without all the annoying dice rolling, and you can win even if your army gets decimated. OK, so maybe it's not like Risk at all. But still, a fun game. I can't wait to try it out with more than two players as C and I have only played it a couple times so far.
I should point out that we also got Dominion in the same shipment, but honestly, it's been eclipsed by the others. While Dominion is also a fun game, the past few times I've been given a choice between Agricola and Dominion, I've gone with Agricola. However, it definitely cannot be beat if you're looking to play something fast. You can easily play 3-4 games of Dominion in the time it takes to play a single game of Agricola
C and I went to Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks over Memorial Day weekend and spent most of the time either sleeping or hiking. Lucky for us we were blessed with great weather. Not too hot, not too cold, and clear blue skies throughout.
In Sequoia, we hiked a 6 mile trail that took us from the General Sherman Tree to Moro Rock. Once we stepped off the paved path after the first mile or so, it was as if we were in our own private world as we rarely saw anyone else. My favorite points of interest along the way were Founders' Grove and Crescent Meadow. The giant trees were a sight to behold, but I could probably have spent all day in that meadow; it was just such a serene place.
In Kings Canyon, we did a 10 mile loop that took us to the aptly named Mist Falls. This trail was fairly crowded and were never alone for long. There was always someone coming or going (mostly going, since we started late). Still, the hike was relatively enjoyable, although if we didn't know better, we'd have said we were in Yosemite.
After 10 years of faithful service, it's time to retire my rollerblades to the great dumpster in the sky. I tend to prefer the lace-free models, and after the third clasp broke, they just weren't usable any more.
Even worse, none of the major manufacturers make lace-free models anymore. Boo! I have, however, managed to find a pair that has vestigal laces which I can just ignore. Yay!
I've recently discovered Sirlin's blog on game design and one line in a recent post jumped out at me:
"We were cautioned that we all suck too much to do this and it's mostly an issue for high level play."
Ah yes, I'm quite familiar with this, especially when the game is StarCraft. For an interesting read, check out his discussion on flux.
Now that we're more settled in and spring has arrived, we're starting to decide what to do with the yard. One thing that C's been clamoring for is a vegetable garden, so I spent a couple weekends building a planter box out of a couple wooden pallets. We got some free compost from Sunnyvale, some plants from a nursery, and we're now in the gardening business. We're starting with rosemary, thyme, mint, basil, tomatoes, and a couple Chinese vegetables I can't identify.
The box is 3'x3' and is based on the ideas behind square foot gardening. We'll see how well it works...
I was in NYC over a month ago and I'm still dreaming of a meal I had there! What I wouldn't give to have another pastrami sandwich from Katz's Deli. The juiciest, most delicious pastrami I've ever had. Mmmm...
Tried my hand at making ice-cream over the weekend. For my first solo attempt, I thought I'd try something a little different so I took a basic vanilla ice-cream recipe and added a twist: after heating up the cream, milk and vanilla bean, I steeped a couple bags of Mighty Tea's Marrakesh mint green tea before continuing on as prescribed.
I'm pretty surprised with the results, because the flavor of the tea really came through. So much so that the mint overpowered the vanilla, which was a bit of a disappointment. I like the idea of using tea to flavor food and will have to try it again.
We were driving home on Alma when I saw a guy with a baseball bat breaking a car's tail light. After a bit of indecision I called 911 and reported the incident. It was in broad daylight with lots of other cars on the road, so this guy clearly did not care about witnesses.
Twenty minutes later I get a call back asking me to confirm my description of the guy. Apparently they'd found him, and the car was his! The cops said that he'd been "unhappy with his car".
I guess that's one way to work out your frustrations with your car...
I've been playing with our water heater's temperature setting over the past few weeks, seeing how far I can turn it down while still producing enough hot water for our needs. The goal is to save energy, since we don't really need to heat and maintain scalding hot water. Unfortunately, our water heater has notches instead of actual temperature readings, so I've been slowly turning it down a bit at a time.
Loos like I turned it down a bit too far last night and I had to suffer through a cold bath. Brrrr...
I've been using Grand Central for a couple years now and was a little disappointed when Google apparently just forgot that they bought Grand Central in 2007. Looks like I was wrong as they've finally taken the wraps off the new, Google-integrated reincarnation: Google Voice.
My account hasn't been upgraded yet, and I only found out about this via an NYT article, but I'm anxious to see how much things have changed.
Today's our second wedding anniversary, and it's time to once again take stock. If I were normal, I'd probably be doing this on the first of January, but I just don't find that time to be particularly conducive for reflection.
We celebrated the same way we did last year, very low key, with some wedding cake and a nice hot latte at Barefoot. We've been going back to Butterfly Cakes for mini one-tier versions of what we got from them for the wedding.
All in all, things have been very good for us in the past twelve months despite the general economic meltdown. In our second year of married bliss, we managed to:
I wonder what this year will bring? It is highly unlikely (alas!) that we'll be doing much more traveling. We've only been back in the house for a few months, and we've been focusing on making it a home. The furniture buying spree that started in December has sort of tapered off and we're working on giving everything that "lived in" feel...
Some personal goals for the year ahead: I want to make some of our own furniture; I want to become a better photographer; and seriously now, I want to be a little less sedentary than I've been to date.
Happy New Year, everyone!
The optimist in me thinks that the year's off to a great start with above average reports of snow at Tahoe and Obama's imminent inauguration, but the cynic in me sees more of the same for the near future: more Economic Devastation! Sectarian Violence! And Rabid, Ignorant Anti-intellectualism! But here's to hoping I'm wrong on this.
Peace and Love,
-Mark
Oh. My. Gawd. Dish Network is seriously just an immense pain in the ass. And I don't care how nice the service rep is, but when customer "service" basically revolves around them telling you (nicely, of course), that they're going to screw you over anyway, what's the point?
While we were remodeling, they refused to let me suspend my service because I had an 18-month service commitment, and you cannot put your account on "vacation mode" until you're done with whatever commitments you might have. So that meant that I had to pay for six months of service that I could not use. WTF?? Breaking my commitment would have cost me more, so I didn't exactly have much of a choice.
So now that I'm no longer within my 18-month commitment period, I should be able to do this "vacation mode" thing, right? Sure... But I still have to pay $24 a month. Again, WTF? What part of temporary suspension of service do they not understand? I don't care if I'm paying less, I shouldn't have to pay anything at all. $24 is almost half my normal bill!
I don't know if the other companies handle this any better, but I can tell you that this crap has me ready to switch as soon as I see a better deal. DirectTV, the sooner you come out with a your new TiVo unit, the happier I'll be.
While I technically spent closer to four days in London, I really only had three full days there. And what wonderful days they were too! I was apparently very lucky as the weather had turned (for the better) just before I arrived and remained sunny and warm for my entire stay. I was also fortunate enough to have been able to crash at a friend's condo in Canary Wharf. Sandra's building is right on the Thames and she has an amazing view...
The first day was spent walking along the south bank of the Thames, from Tower Bridge in the east to Westminster Bridge in the west. Right by London Bridge I stopped at Borough Market, behind Southwark Cathedral, where every stall had something tempting to try. In the end though, I decided to take Sandra's advice and got a chorizo sandwich from a store that specialized in Spanish products, and was not disappointed.
Continuing on, I poked my head into the Tate Modern. Modern art normally isn't my cup of tea, so I wasn't too surprised that the pieces that really caught my eye were the few that didn't fall into that category. Meredith Frampton's Marguerite Kelsey is just amazing in the way it captures the light. It's something you have to see in person to appreciate since no picture on a website can do it justice. I also really enjoyed Seydou Keïta's photo portraits.
Once on the north side of the river, I immediately headed for the TKTS booth on Leicester Square, where I managed to pick up a ticket for Rain Man. To keep myself occupied before the show started, I walked through the National Gallery. I just wish I hadn't gone through it chronologically. There are only so many biblical paintings I can take in at a time, and that's pretty much the only subject for much of history. A much better idea would have been to start in reverse, where (for me at least) the major attraction is: the Impressionist rooms with works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Gauguin, etc. And don't forget Seurat, one of my favorite painters in this school; I'm much more fascinated with pointillism than "true" impressionism.
As for Rain Man, I thought the play was pretty good. It followed the movie pretty closely with Josh Hartnet playing Tom Cruise's role and Adam Godley playing Dustin Hoffman's. Josh Hartnett was over-acting at times, but Adam Godley was dead on.
After the play, I managed to get a seat at The Ivy, supposedly one of London's favorite restaurants, where I had the richest shepherd's pie I've ever had. After the late dinner, I headed home. It'd been a long day and bed was calling...
Day two started off much slower and later. I left Canary Wharf a little after noon and took the ferry to Waterloo. On my way to The Ivy the night before I'd spotted L'Attelier de Joël Robuchon right next door and had made a lunch reservation there. I decided to sit at the bar, which surrounded the open kitchen, so I could watch them prepare my dishes. I started with an wonderful breaded and fried soft boiled egg on top a bed of raisins and pine nuts that was absolutely delicious. For my main course, I had lamb cutlets with fresh thyme that was good, if a little dry at parts. Finally, for desert, I had a Calvados warm souffle, cider vinegar panacotta and peanut ice cream trio.
After lunch, I headed to the British Museum and marveled at it's amazing Great Court as much as the exhibits on display. I was particularly amused at their side of the argument over the artifacts from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece, since I've been there and have heard their version as well.
When they finally kicked me out, I made my way to Picadilly Circus, where I hung out for a bit before heading to Kensington to meet Sandra and Pete for dinner with a few of their friends.
Day three was a Sunday, and I started by attending the Sung Eucharist at Westminster Abbey. The choir was wonderful, and I liked the rest of the service as well. I haven't been to a call and response service in a long time, and I liked the interactivity.
After that, it was a mad rush to get to the Globe Theatre on time to catch the matinee showing of Burial at Thebes, an opera based on Sophocles' Antigone. I couldn't leave London without watching something at the Globe, and this was my only choice as I'd missed the regular season. I thought I'd try something different and got standing tickets, which allowed me to get close to the stage, close enough to touch the actors! The opera itself was enjoyable. I think I definitely prefer it as an opera instead of a play.
After the opera, I headed to the Victoria & Albert Museum, which seems to be where they kept anything even remotely related to the decorative arts or design. It also turned out to be one of my favorite museums so far. It had a little bit of everything, but not so much that you got tired on any one subject. My favorite rooms were definitely the huge cast courts. Housing those casts indoors only emphasized how enormous those structures really are.
When the V&A closed, I headed to Hyde Park, strolled down the Serpentine and continued until I eventually ended up at Buckingham Palace. From there, I caught the Tube to meet Sandra and friends at The Narrow, a Gordon Ramsay pub. I tried the lamb liver and game pie appetizers (I'd missed lunch!), and for my main course had the braised ox cheeks and mashed neeps. The first two weren't terribly impressive, but the ox cheeks more than made up for it -- tender and succulent and delicious.
And that pretty much brought my whirlwind tour of London to a close. I wish I had more time to spend there and would love to go back.
A great big congratulations to Danny and Emily, who got married yesterday. Finally! Their wedding was an absolute blast, and classy from beginning to end.
