| Christmas road trip! |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|11:10 pm] |
I have roughly three years of updates to make. For now, though, I'll do yesterday. For those who don't know, I'm driving from Tempe to Galveston. It's about an 18 hour trek. I would've left Tuesday, but I-10, which is the main highway that goes from Arizona to Texas, was on fire all day.
A few interesting notes.
- I-10 was still partially on fire when I drove through it.
- It was snowing in Tuscon.
- I found a gas station in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico which asks the question "Can you roll your tongue?". I took pictures, simply because it made no darn sense
- I *HATE* El Paso. All of its gas stations are about 15 minutes into town with no easy way to turn around to get back on the highway. Also, traffic slows to a crawl in that area.
- You know what I hate more than El Paso? The 300 mile gap between El Paso and any bastion of civilization. Seriously. Once you leave El Paso, it's forest and darkness and a crushing lack of hope and praying that you have enough gas to get you to the stupid little town, which coincidentally is so stupid and small that it doesn't have its own gas station. Seriously, how do these people get groceries? Do they just live off the land? Do they have wood burning cars? Cause I see nothing for miles on end.
- The clerks at this Best Western are completely and utterly drunk. Quicktip - If you're nice to the drunk clerks and tell them it's ok that they're doing a Christmas party since it's Christmas after they spend ten minutes repeating themselves that they're having a christmas party and apologizing for it, they'll let you stay for practically free and share the beverages. If you're mean, they'll charge you extra and tell you there's no more smoking rooms available. Just something to consider the next time you're travelling during the holidays.
- Sidenote: The inn computer has everything disabled and runs slower than molasses. |
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| Food Pairings were actually a required course when I worked at StarbucksCorp. |
[May. 23rd, 2009|11:48 pm] |
I don't know why I keep doing this. It's something that I experience probably once a year. I always tell myself to make a note of it. I never do, then six months later it happens again and I'm surprised at myself.
Coffee tastes delicious.
Sushi tastes delicious.
Sushi + Coffee. Two great tastes that OH GOD THIS WAS A POOR CHOICE IN FOOD PAIRINGS. |
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| What's this? Update? Preposterous! |
[Dec. 7th, 2008|04:37 pm] |
sorry guys, I've at first been too busy with work to update, and... stuff. I'll catch people up when I head off to Texas for the holidays.
I've been reading Niall Ferguson's "The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World". It seems like a dry subject to most but it's pretty easy reading for me. I like this sort of thing, and here's why.
Allow me to introduce you to John Law. A Scotsman from the 1700's who has the honor of creating the world's first stock bubble. Con man, fast talker, gambling addict, convicted murderer, and prison breaker. He somehow, after escaping England, went to France and fast talked his way into the Royal Courts and became chief finance minister, where he successfully reformed the economy and set France back on track to being a prosperous nation.
The problem, however, is he's a gambler, and so had no idea when to stop. He kept giving himself more and more economic powers, issued more and more shares of his bank stock at higher and higher prices, and singlehandedly created the world's first stock bubble, which ruined the economy, sent inflation at to ridiculousl rates above what it was two years ago, caused widespread famine and poverty amongsts the peasants. What happened next was a little thing historians like to call "The French Revolution", which was a result of, you know, abject poverty.
Reactions to the event varied, but two are both well documented and hilarous.
A Dutch investor in his company, after seeing his holdings wiped out, spend a large sum of money to have plates specially commisioned in China. They had "By God, all my stock is worthless!" engraved on them in gold. Second best reaction one could have.
http://www.ideasfestival.co.uk/images/niall_ferguson_slide_presentation.pdf Page 19. Bernard Picart painted this in the aftermath and inexplicably this is the best image I can find of it. A naked Goddess of Fortune rains down flaming, explosive stock on an angry, now bloody mob as they flee the rue Ruincampoix (the equivilant of Wall Street). Meanwhile, a juggernaut drawn by Indians (from India) crushes an accountant alive under a huge wheel of fortune and two men duke it out in the corner somewhere.
I'd like to think if I had any sort of artistic talent, this is how I'd react after losing my shirt to a bubble. |
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| Witchcraft of the highest order. |
[May. 28th, 2008|12:17 am] |
[20:22] Ryou Says: ?
[20:22] NezumiChris: So one of the things listed to do to soften blocks of brown sugar is "put some bread on it"
[20:22] NezumiChris: I dismissed this as an old wive's tale.
[20:23] NezumiChris: My brown sugar was so hard it could kill a man. Now? After leaving a slice of bread on it for eight hours, it's soft and fluffy.
[20:23] NezumiChris: It's the devil's work, I tell you!
[20:23] Ryou Says: I KNOW!
[20:23] Ryou Says: I tried it once
[20:23] Ryou Says: That's some kind of crazy magic or something
[20:24] Ryou Says: I refuse to accept that as the work of real science
[20:24] NezumiChris: I don't believe in Bread Gnomes, and neither should anyone else |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 17th, 2008|04:07 pm] |
....did anyone else in Arizona get a flier in the mail for Vemma energy drink? I'd post a picture of it, but the flier is already a screencap of a website which was then printed, then scanned, then copied and scanned again for good measure. You know, in case they missed any pixels the first time around. For god's sake, man, it even has a "click here to see how it compares to the competition!" The attached buisness card is nothing more than poorly cut card stock. And on top of all this? They want me to purchase through my "Back office"
What?
Do they want me to clandestinely purchase energy drinks without my place of employment being aware? This whole ad screams "Someone found a bunch of energy drinks that fell off the back of a truck" |
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| ¡Ay carumba! El panda gigante! |
[May. 4th, 2008|03:17 am] |
Sometime two weeks ago.....
Two Saturdays Ago
So after much prodding and poking by Chinese James I went to the Chino Bandito with Nick and Joyce. We ended up going to the Chandler location, which is kind of hidden in a strip mall in a little hideyhole area. I never would have found it alone. Here's a picture of their mascot.
http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd41/nezumichris/img014.jpg
As you can tell, it's a panda with a handlebar mustache, wearing a sombrero and bandoleir of pistols. This was the only time you could take a picture of it, because at any given moment that panda was CRAWLING WITH CHILDREN. It's like there was a kidlet infestation on that thing. Maybe the panda hasn't had his shots recently, I don't know, but that panda has a serious kid problem. Maybe wearing one of those high pitched flea collars will help. It's a stone statue, with hard concrete floors supporting it. And it's not like they were climbing just for the sake of climbing and like sitting quietly on the hat. I could get behind that. Sometimes as a kid you just want a better view. No, they were climbing and screaming and jumping and walking oh so precariously on the rim of that hat they a light breeze could knock them over and they'd loose at least five teeth and you *know* as soon as that happened some soccer mom would initiate a lawsuit even though they sat there watching the kid climb and did nothing other than polietly ask the kid to get down like ten times and ARGH CONTROL YOUR KIDS!
......ok. So, that asides.... to be fair, this was a sort of kid friendly place. I guess. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against kid friendly places, I just sort of wish they'd warn you. There werre lots of little ones running around. Some were unattended, most were not but the ones who were really made up for it on volume. For some reason there were also large prints of kids posted up on the walls, and all in all it gave the impression that this branch was trying to be the next Chuck E. Cheese but wasn't really sure if it could pull it off so was just sort of testing the waters with a "solid rock panda above concrete floor" attraction before fully commiting to buying the ball pen.
As far as food went, I actually enjoyed it. It wasn't a true fusion resteraunt, but instead was either Chinese, or Mexican, or Jamaican. I had the Jerk Chicken on rice and was pleasantly surprised with how spicy it was. Asides from that, there's a surprising lack of information to report. I'd go again, but I'd like to try out the Phoenix location. I'm given to understand that it's more of a true hole in the wall type place, which I tend to enjoy.
Two Sundays Ago
That sunday I worked for a rather long time. However, after work we went to Ranch Market, which... oh god... it's about the size of a Super Wal-Mart, but is filled with nothing, NOTHING But awesome Mexican Goodness. They have in-house cheese makers, butchers, fishmongers, a tortilla assembly line, a juice factory, a homemade ice cream factory, and most importantly, an inhouse bakery that serves gingerbread pigs. As soon as I saw them I jumped back and did a little victory spin. Oh man, those things are so great. I loaded up on about $20.00 worth of mexican pastries. The best part about this place was that they have a roving mariachi band. Seriously. Not only is it roving, but when it's not stationary it goes into Stealth Mode. You heard me. A Stealth Mariachi band. You could be minding your own buisness in the frozen foods section, all is silent, and then out of nowhere a bloodcurdling "AI HI HI HI!" followed with the loudest rendition of La Cucaracha on the planet. Good times. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 30th, 2008|04:38 am] |
The key to making a good grilled cheese sandwich is to not use so much buter that it makes the bread a soggy mess, and also to not have the skillet on so high a setting that the butter and portions of bread fill your apartment with acrid smoke.
Just saying. You know, for future reference. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 11th, 2008|04:56 am] |
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I *was* going to make a pie.... I'd seriously like to know how I managed to lose not one but two cutting boards. |
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