Author: Eric

June?

It appears that it has been a long time since I last posted. Lots of things going on but nothing tectonic. What got me back onto the bloggityblog is I have been trying to eat better and less than in the recent past. This has been going on for a week now and it’s ok but I miss tasty things somewhat. I have discovered that a large tortilla has more calories than an entire crown of broccoli and that a single serving of peanut M&Ms is most of the way to a 4oz beef tenderloin. So, if you want to not be starving all the time you pretty much have to eat food-food and not deliciously-sugary-fatty-food. Which isn’t to say you (me) can’t still go to Mighty Fine on Sunday. You just have to plan around it a little.

My friend Bill (the only person who ever comments here /props) is getting married at the beginning of July and I’m going to be in the wedding party. Andy and I escorted him to Northern California for the ersatz bachelor party. We all flew into SFO on Thursday morning and spent the afternoon bumming around the touristy part of San Francisco including a visit to the Tcho chocolate factory. We bought some goodies and took the little tour which was both informative and mis-informative and which caused Bill to have to wear a beard net in addition to the hair net a photograph of which made it onto bookface. Thursday night we drove out to Fort Bragg during which I was car sick and gave dinner back to the nature from whence it came.

Friday was the wine day. Fort Bragg and Mendocino are near the mouth of the Navarro river which highway 128 follows through Anderson Valley. They make a lot of wine in Anderson Valley which mostly seems to focus on Pinot Noir. We stopped at Navarro, Husch, Handley, Tolouse and Roederer. All of them were friendly and most had free tasting although I suspect that was assisted by the fact that Andy can’t go 10 feet out his door without buying a bottle or six. I got four bottles of desert wine, a late harvest Gewürztraminer and a late harvest Muscat Blanc from Navarro and two bottles of late harvest Riesling from Handley all of which are delicious like the candy. Friday we also discovered that the following Saturday was the serendipitous 16th Annual Legendary Boonville Beer Festival so we stopped at Anderson Valley Brewing in Boonville to buy tickets. Then we drove back out to the 101 and into Healdsburg for dinner.

Dinner at Cyrus.
I’ll get this out of the way first. Dinner at Cyrus was the finest meal I’ve ever had. Not that I travel the world eating all of the most exciting Nouvelle Cuisine but I like good food and eat it on occasion. We had the eight course tasting menu with wine pairings which is actually more like 11 – 12 courses but that’s how they roll. They gave us each a copy of the menu including a substitution they made on the fly based on a conversation we were having with the waitstaff. Here’s a transcription:

Canapés
~~~
Amuse Bouche
~~~
Chilled Salmon with Ginger and Daikon, Snap Pea – Basil Broth
Riesling, Schäfer-Fröhlich “Grosses Gewächs – Felseneck”, Nahe, Germany 2007
~~~
Humane Foie Gras and Cherry Blossom Parfait, Barley, Sea Beans and Shiso
Tokaji Aszú, Királyudvar “6 Puttonyos”, Hungary, 2003
~~~
Black Sea Bass with Pea Sprouts and Asparagus, Lemon Verbena
Verdejo, Shaya “Habis – Old Vines”, Rueda, Spain 2009
~~~
Crispy Chicken with Miso and Morel Fondue
Pinot Noir, Williams Selyem, Sonoma Coast 2010
~~~
Spring Lamb Tataki Hot Pot
Cornas, Robert Michel “La Geynale”, Northern Rhône, France 2006
~~~
Artisanal and Farmhouse Cheeses Presented Tableside
Rice Ale, Echigo Brewing Co., “Koshihikari” Nigata, Japan
~~~
Goat Milk Panna Cotta with Rhubarb, Parsley-Lime Ice
Moscato D’Asti, Braida “Vigna Senza Nome”, Piedmont, Italy 2011
~~~
Yuzu Crémeux, Bergamot Meringue and Cream Cheese Ice Cream
Beerenauslese Cuvée, Kracher, Burgenland, Austria 2008
~~~
Mignardises

So we sat there and talked and ate and drank for something like three hours and it was awesome. The food was excellent. The service was also amazing. The staff would have, if we’d wanted, been content to let us eat and talk amongst ourselves. However, when we started asking questions and talking to them they had thoughtful things to say about the nature of the service they were providing, the restaurant and so on. At one point we were talking about the beer festival and wondering if they had ever done a beer pairing. So we asked the head waiter and the result was that they replaced the Pinot Gris in the upcoming cheese course with the rice ale and it was excellent as well. Anyway, if you’re in Healdsburg and want to have an awesome meal for all of the monies you should go to Cyrus and they will help you out.

Saturday we got up and derped around the house for a while and then drove back down to Boonville and attended the beer festival. It was excellent fun and they had ton of different brewers, mostly from the Pacific coast but I think there was an Austin brewer there and a few others from distant parts. The most interesting thing I had was a pomegranate cider and I also had Stone Vanilla Porter and a dark Saison that were excellent. Of course all the beer was good and the food was good too.

Sunday we drove north up the PCH looking for redwoods. We found a few including one that we could drive the car through and we spent some time walking along a river bank in the trees. Then Monday it was back into San Francisco and back to Austin and a good time was had by all.

Let’s see, what else is going on? I bought and have played a fair amount of Diablo 3. Work is going along although I’ve had almost no time to work on any of my actual goals this quarter so I’ll be throwing myself upon the mercy of the court again as per recent history. I read 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I enjoyed it as much as most of his books. It has the same weird supernatural feel that basically everything I’ve ever read by him has. I didn’t find the climax particularly climactic nor the resolution very satisfying but the characterization was good and it was worth the time it took to read. I also read The Night Circus which was shorter and faster to read but was also excellent. One thing I don’t appreciate in my magical, fantastical books is dancing around the magic and this book doesn’t do that. I just started Reamde and it’s starting to go somewhere after 140 pages (really around 80 or so) so it meets my interesting-in-100-pages-or-fail test that others (including the whole System of the World thing) have not.

That’s about it for now. I have about 1 hojillion pictures that need uploading to the gallery but I’m out of gas for now so instead you just get a big ol’ wall of text. Cheers.

There and back again


I’m back home. I did the MS150 this weekend to challenge myself and raise money for the National MS Society which is important to me because of my sister. The wind was atrocious the first day but I managed to complete the 100 miles in spite of that. I didn’t manage to do it very quickly but at least I arrived under my own power. I met Rusty for breakfast this morning at the camp in La Grange and then we set out for Austin. Today was shorter and there was almost no wind so the only thing I was really fighting against was the damage I’d done to myself the day before. Rolling into the finish line is an amazing feeling. I don’t know if I’ll do it again next year but it was definitely worth doing once.

Thank you

I met my self-imposed fundraising goal for the MS150 today. Thank you to everyone who donated.

The weather is shaping up to be kinda crappy. It’ll be clear but with the wind going the wrong direction which sucks because 100 miles is a long ride into the wind. Oh well. So it goes.

wind

It’s the weekend before the MS and what am I doing? I’m sitting inside working. Why would that be? I should be out riding my bike for training. When I woke up at 7:30 this morning, the wind was howling around the house and when I looked at the weather it said 20-30mph wind gusting to 35mph. The two most painful bicycle experiences I’ve had have been in wind like that and I don’t really feel the need to subject myself to that again. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be about the same except also raining.

I guess if I’m going to get anything done to prepare for next weekend it’s going to have to be on the rowing machine. I think I’ll be fine for the event though. Especially if the wind is anything like it is today. If I have a 20mph tailwind next weekend it will be a complete piece of cake. If I have a 20mph headwind I’m going to have to draft a car or something because there is no way I’m capable of doing 100 miles into this.

I am getting some decent work done though and the “Tairora Cherry” is pretty fantastic so at least the day isn’t wasted.

spring


I guess it’s spring. The weather was surprisingly awesome this weekend. Highs in the low 80’s, almost no wind, cloudy and cool Saturday morning and then clear. I’ve been riding my bike more to prepare for the MS150 in April and the nice weather was a welcome change. I rode 100.5 miles over the weekend. Just under 68 miles on Saturday starting from home, up Reagan to 29, down into town all the way to the office and then back home. Then today just over 32 miles from home to Parmer, out to 3405 and back. I ran into Rusty doing his training out that way as well. I have a little sun burn just at the cuff where my shorts were from Saturday because I didn’t quite get enough sunscreen there but other than that I’ve survived and I also ate all the things so that’s nice. This evening, while cooking dinner, I noticed that my cherry tree is blooming. I’m pretty surprised because this was the most pathetic winter ever but we’ve been getting rain and I guess it wants water more than it cares about the supposed 1400 hours below 40 degrees it’s supposed to need to make flowers. The maple also looks good and it has a ton of the little seeds with sails on it too which is cool. The rest of the yard is a wreck but that’s to be expected after last year’s 9 month summer. Hopefully we’ll keep getting rain and we won’t have to worry about the entire state being on fire again this year. Fingers crossed.

The confusion

There is a woman named Emily. Emily doesn’t know what her email address is and occasionally she signs herself up for things with my email address. Today she decided it was time for me to join Mobile Facebook. However, that pales in comparison to the other person I’ve been confused with today.

Today is Darleen’s (probably) 31st birthday. How do I know that? Because my yard was flamingo’d in honor of the occasion. I called Flamingo Underground this morning to report the misfire but all I got was an answering machine and they haven’t called me back yet. I suppose if I were vindictive I would have just thrown all the flamingos away since it’s trash day but the website claims they’ll be collected tomorrow so I’ll just live with it for the time being.

Cricket

When I was freshly unemployed from Cypress I went to Flatstock at South by Southwest as I am wont to do. It was fun as per usual and I found some things to buy from a studio called Cricket Press. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them but after a while I got my new bedroom put together and decided that they would look good in there. Michael’s had a 70% off sale on framing a couple of weeks ago which is lower than they usually have sales so I had the prints framed.

I picked them up yesterday after I got home (more on that in a bit) and tonight I hung them up. I think they look pretty good.

Anyway, about getting home yesterday. It was a gorgeous spring day (February 23rd. You know, spring) and I need to put some miles on the bike so I decided to ride to work. That went fine. The ride home is a bit tougher it being more uphill than down and me having done 25 miles into work and a full day at the office already. So I’m going up the hill towards Kenai on Parmer and traffic is passing me but slowing as the light is red. A Suburban goes by and there’s a teenage girl, probably not more than 15, in the back seat with the window down, both hands on the window, head poking out barking at me. Like bark bark, arf arf barking. They go on past and stop at the light and I pedal by them and she’s still barking at me and then the light turns green and we cross for a third time, girl still barking. It’s been stuck in my head for the last day as it’s definitely the strangest thing to happen to me in a while. I got some mileage out of it on the bookface though so that’s good I guess.

The prints are here:
The Rabbits
The Foxes
The Cicadas
Lightning Bugs