Starry Wisdom

We all know what happened ten years ago today. For me it started with waking up to NPR, as normal, and hearing that the *second* World Trade Center tower had just crashed down. I felt like I was dreaming at first, but then I got out of bed and turned on the TV. And of course, yes, it was real. And that’s about all I am going to say on that subject.

Now, for today:

A little over a year ago I purchased the top flat in a approximately 100 year old two-storey Edwardian in San Francisco. One of the things you’re likely to get in a home that old is some old, painted-shut, double-hung windows. My flat as full of them, but over the past year I managed to get all but one of them open by cutting the paint on the inside of the sash. But one window in my living room would not relent to my assault, so I knew it was going to be the first window in my window repair plan – besides windows that were/are painted shut, there are some windows with cut sash cords, and other assorted problems. But the one in the living room was both painted shut and it was missing a sash cord, so it seemed to be a good place to start.

I actually began the project yesterday afternoon by removing the stops (the vertical pieces of molding the hold the bottom sash into the frame). Actually, the project began a few months ago when I bought some books on the subject, and started to assemble a series of tools and supplies for the job, such as: sash cord, finishing nails, a respirator, and a small pry bar. Anyway, removing the stop involves cutting the paint between the molding and the frame, then prying it out with a combination of a hammer, a pry bar, and a stiff-blated putty knife. Once the stops are off, it’s fairly simple to wiggle the sash to free it from the dried paint, and then it can be removed. I ran out of time yesterday, so I replaced the stops (they are held in place by a combination of tension and nails – I just pressed them in place).

This morning I took the stops back off, and then sanded off the excess paint on the edges, primed, and painted them. While waiting for the paint to dry, I replaced both sash cords on the window – even though one of them was already functional, the rope was in a sad state, so it was actually easier for me to remove and replace it. Here is a picture of the sash out of the window and one of the weights:

Also, this is what it looks like in between the windows, where the weights normally are:

Then it was a relatively process of replacing the stops, and repainting the trim – and that left me with a finished, operable window (sorry for how dark it is, but you probably get the idea):

All said and done, it probably took about five hours to get the window fixed, which included a couple of hours of waiting for paint to dry. I could probably do more than one in that time, and three in an hour or two more. I’ll probably fix the next two at the end of the month!

I finished the last post with me heading back to San Francisco, on July 11th. I had a four day workweek ahead of me before going on to my next weekend trip, but in the meanwhile, I went and saw the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.

The movie was pretty good, and I think I would give it about 7 out of 8 rabbit turds, on the rabbit turd scale. I think that as a whole, the two parter was quite well done and reflected the novel quite well. What was not great was coming home at a quarter to four and having to get into work by 9am the next day. Luckily for me, my next trip didn’t start until Saturday, because the next trip was vegas.

Las Vegas July 16-18

This was a trip to Las Vegas for my friend Steve’s bachelor party. I won’t say much about this, but I will show a picture of my dinner that saturday.

And then back to SF for another 4 day work week. It took me until Thursday to really recover from the weekend but the week did feature a trip to AT&T park to see the Giants beat the Dodgers, and to see Brandon Belt come back up to the big leagues with a Home Run.

And then Friday it was on to the final trip of July.

July 22-24 Lake Tahoe Camping

We went up to DL Bliss State Park on the shores of Lake Tahoe for our yearly camping trip and river float. The latter, well – it wasn’t much of a float. It was more of a river fiasco, truth be told. There was still snow on the tops of the mountain, and as that might lead you to believe, there was lots of water in the river systems. However, the river float is at the start of the Truckee river, where it flows out of Lake Tahoe, and this flow is controlled by a large dam. The dam was completely closed, because there was lots of water downstream, about two and a half times more water than one would expect. Unfortunately this meant that there was about 1/3 as much water as expected in the float area. The float was slow, shallow, and tedious. We didn’t even make it half of the route before calling it a day in a little over two hours. Our less was learned – if the commercial river rafting company is closed, don’t bother with the float.

We got back to camp a bit earlier than typical, and used the time to visit the beach at the camp site. This was fun, and we decided we wanted to come back again the next day before we left the area, which we did for a nice afternoon swim and lake float. This helped us avoid a lot of the traffic leaving the area, and as we were planning on stopping in Davis for dinner with Mackenzie’s sister’s family, it helped out our timing. We had a nice visit in Davis, but poor Orrin got stung in his foot by a bee. He took it well, was more annoyed than anything else at the problem. After dinner and some visiting, it was back home.

I am now in the middle of 12 nights at home, before heading to Redding this weekend to hang out at Mackenzie’s parents’ house with some friends (her parents are out of town). Unfortunately Mackenzie was out of town herself last weekend, to go to LA for her friend Melissa’s birthday. I skipped the trip due to all the traveling you read about above and the previous post. However, on the bright side, my friend Joan was in town from Toronto for a tech confernce. I got to hang out with her Friday night and Saturday, and wander around my home, San Francisco.

This July has been jam-packed with adventure. I was away from home every weekend this month, until this, the last weekend. As such, I didn’t have time to keep up with my bills (I managed to pay my cell bill on the last possible day), let alone my blog. But as I am home this weekend, I have had time to go through the photos I took, a pre-requisite to the blog post. So here we go on a recap of the month:

July 4th Weekend – Donner Lake

Our friends Tori and Steve invited us to their cabin on Donner Lake for the July 4th weekend. It was a great weekend, jam packed with fun and food (all the couples invited took charge of a meal to prepare for everyone. Mackenzie and I took Sunday dinner, for which we did a tacopalooza – carne asada, carnitas, and chicken tinga, served with all the trimmings -I should make a separate post on this.

We spent most of the time during the days on or by the lake. Tori and Steve rented a speed boat on Sunday, which the group took turns using, and on Monday, July 4th, they rented a pontoon boat, which we could all fit on. We spent a great afternoon out on the lake (which was freezing cold, no wonder, there was stills now on the mountains).

As Tuesday was a work day, and in particular I had to be in by 9am, we had to leave before the firework show at the Lake. However, on our way back to San Francisco, we stopped at Mackenzie’s sister’s house in Davis, to visit her family and go see the fireworks. Her nephew, Orrin, who was about 16 months months old, had fun with Angry Birds on my phone, and watching the fireworks.

This is the full gallery of photos posted from the trip.

July 9th Weekend – Chicago

I was home for only a few nights before heading to Chicago that Thursday afternoon for my nephew Milo’s second birthday weekend. Thanks to spending several days in Burbank for work earlier this year, I had a free flight on Southwest airlines, which I took advantage of for this trip. This meant, of course, that I flew into Midway, which is quite a bit farther from my parent’s house than O’Hare, but my parents graciously agreed to ferry me to and from the airport.

The fast paced nature of the month makes the early part of the trip hazy, but I know that on Saturday my parents had Milo at their house, as they do almost every Saturday. We had a fun playing in his sandbox, drawing with chalk, and playing with toys.

I thought Milo was his normal, light-hearted self, but my mom was a bit concerned as he had a bit of a bowel issue that day. We took him home to his parent’s, and then I went out to dinner with my parents.

This brings us to Sunday, the day of Milo’s birthday party. The party was to be held at his house, and his dad, my brother, was going to cater it, as he did last year, and the main course was to be smoke brisket. The plan was that my parents and I would watch Milo again during the day, as Keith and Sarah prepared for the party, and then he would take him back for his party around 3pm. However, I woke up to the news that my brother was violently ill, had slept in the bathroom, and was not able to make the food. Sarah, while not a cook, is a great super-connector, and she enlisted one of their chef friends to help her with the brisket, and other friends to help set up for the party.

Our morning with Milo was fun, although he did seem a bit off. He took a longer than usual nap, and we set out for him to be late to his own party. Things started to turn concerning right before we pulled up to the house, as Milo puked a bit in the car. Thankfully we were almost there, so we rushed him home, and his mom changed him, and as he seemed that he was OK, he was able to attend and enjoy his party.

In hingsight, maybe he shouldn’t have been eating deviled eggs, as he threw up again an hour or so into the party. I helped Sarah get him cleaned up and changed, and all the poor kid wanted to do at that point was watch his favorite TV show, “Martha Speaks”. Keith, who was still pretty out of it, took him into his bedroom and they watched tv together. So not only was Milo’s dad unable to attend the party, but Milo got knocked out of it too. I carefully washed my hands after getting him cleaned up.

At this point, I was roped into assembling my parents’ gift to Milo – a pretty awesome kitchen set. Despite the small size of this project, it was incredibly complex, and took over two hours to assemble. Milo came out, part way through, to supervise.

Then Monday, the day I was to go back, I woke up at 7am to my mom telling me that both her and my father had gotten violently sick. Bleh, I thought, and went back to sleep, to be awoken by some thunder a bit later. It turned out that the thunderstorm knocked out power for my parents’ house along with a few hundred thousand other houses. This was the second time his summer my parents had no power for more than a few hours, and after the last storm my dad had gone out to buy a generator. I helped him (well did most of the work) to get it set up and running so that they could have power for the duration of the outage (which turned out to be about 24 hours more). However, I also got picked up by my brother to spend the day with him and in theory get a ride to the airport. But since Milo wouldn’t nap, and ended up running errands with the two of us, and Sarah was also Ill, I took a cab to the airport from their house, instead of subjecting Milo to another long car ride. Oh, while I was there that afternoon, we put together my present for him, a push bike, and I played ball with him in the house.

This post has turned out to be quite long, and since I promised I would post something tonight, and need to watch true blood, I will leave this as TO BE CONTINUED.

I am lame and haven’t had a chance to post as I’ve been traveling every weekend in July. I’ll post a recap after I get back from this weekend, and also hopefully some other ‘interesting tidbits’. But let’s be honest, most people who come to this blog are reading the pine mouth post!

My friend auriplane recently (yesterday) released her first flash game, Snailiad. I helped play test it a bit while it was under development a couple of months ago, and I think it is a great game. It’s a platformer, reminiscent of Metroid, done in an 8-bit style. Fans of old NES games should find a certain joy in it, but I think it appeals to about anyone with any interest in video games. Please give it a try, and rate it – 5 stars if you think it deserves it. Also, please review it if you have the time, with either praise or criticism.

Mackenzie and I went to Chicago earlier this month for my friend Nancy’s wedding, and also to see my family. It was planned for a pretty short trip – fly out on Thursday evening, and return to San Francisco Sunday Afternoon – but more on the travel schedule later. We met my friend Erin at the airport, as we were flying out on the same flight, and sharing a rental car for the first day or so.

We were flying American, which meant we went to the newly reopened Terminal 2 at SFO. The new terminal is fancy, and it seems fairly upscale in the concessions. We decided to grab some food and a drink at the Cat Cora lounge, as it was something new and different that we heard about. The cocktails were good, albeit pricey (but hey, it’s in an airport) and the food was OK. Definitely better than the last few restaurant meals I’ve had, but that’s not saying much. I’ll probably try one of the other venues next time I fly from Terminal 2 after work and need food, however.
The 6:30PM flight got us in to ORD around 12:30AM, and it took about an hour more for us to get our luggage, pickup the rental car, and drive to the hotel.

The next day the three of us met up with my old friend Scott and his fiance Kira for lunch. They were staying at the Hyatt Lodge at Hamburger University, which was couple of miles from our hotel. We met them there, so we could check out the McDonald’s campus area and the unique hotel. It was interesting, but I haven’t had a chance to post pictures yet. I am a slacker… After we decided that lunch choices at the hotel were not sufficient, we went over to the Oakbrook Mall, which was about midway between our two hotels, to find food. We ended up at a place called the Clubhouse, which was basically like a Friday’s dressed up as a fine dining restaurant. Well, that is not exactly fair, since the food was pretty good. Also, the portions were astounding – my lunch portion of Chicken Pot Pie was the size of a dinner portion out here.

Yadda, Yadda, Yadda, it was time to get ready for the wedding. I wore a suit for the first time in well over a decade (I actually bought a suit for the wedding), and took the occasion to go all snazy, and wearing a pocket square. Since, as I said I was too lazy to post my pictures from the trip, here is a photographic proof, from Facebook:

The wedding was a delightful affair – low key, because that’s how Nancy rolls. My friend Scott was her ‘Man of Honor’! It took place at the Mayslake Peabody Estate an Tudor revival mansion from around the turn of the Twentieth Century.

While there was a breakfast planned for the next day, related to the wedding, we could sadly not attend. We had to get Erin to the airport for her flight, and then we planned to go to my Parents house to spend the day with them and my nephew Milo. I feel that was a pretty good win, since he’s super cute. And there are no pictures, not because I didn’t post any, but because I didn’t take any. But we had a good time going out to my parent’s local hot dog/gyros place for lunch with him, and then running around the mall. While he napped in the afternoon, Mackenzie and I went to visit my 94 year old grandma, who recently fell and hurt herself and was in a rehab facility. It was great seeing her, and I love her dearly, but I wish we were able to visit her at her house.

For dinner on Saturday my parents took Mackenzie and I out to Wildfire, which is a steak/seafood restaurant that I had been to a couple of times before and enjoyed. Even though it is a chain, and part of a giant restaurant group (Lettuce Entertain You), I can recommend it as a place for a tasty, not terribly expensive dinner. I will say that they definitely know how to cook a steak in the midwest!

So far, everything was going as planned, but a snag was about to enter the story. at around 4:20AM on Sunday my phone rang. I picked it up and there was an automated message from American Airlines telling me that my flight was cancelled and we were rebooked on a flight that sounded like it was about half hour earlier – but instead of going nonstop ORD-SFO, it was to have a stop at DFW. That sounded like a drag, but, the only other choice I had was an earlier flight that same day, also through DFW, but at least it was a more convenient time for my Dad to take us to the airport.

When I woke up, I confirmed when the flight actually was, and it was the next day (Monday), not the same day. I called the airline and saw if there was anything we could do, but we were screwed. So not only did we have to fly with a connection, we had to burn another vacation day. It’s a good thing that we were staying at my parents and didn’t have to worry about accommodations!

And there were some bright sides to this, too – we would be able to spend some extra time with Milo and my brother and sister-in-law! We had already planned to have brunch with them, but we got to have dinner with them too, and be with Milo until his bedtime – which was super cute, as he showed us his artistic renditions of his family with crayons! (he is only 22 months old, so they were very abstract). For tracking purposes, I’ll say that we had brunch at The Portage in Portage Park, Chicago. It was a good brunch, and they had an all you can drink Bloody Mary bar – my parents were there so I could only drink two, but still not bad! And we did carry-out pizza and salad from perennial favorite Lou Malnati’s. So yes, our extra day was put to good use – we also saw Bridesmaids in the afternoon, during Milo’s nap time, which we enjoyed quite a bit.

So now we get to Monday, the day we were supposed to be back to normal – and we leaft for ORD at around 8am. Our flight was at 11, but a bit of extra time isn’t so bad. We ended up taking off about 20 minutes late due to some service issue, but we had enough time between flights in DFW that we weren’t worried. We got to DFW, took the train between the terminals of our two flights, and grabbed a sandwich to take on the plane with us – and then we got to the gate and found out the flight was delayed. And the delay kept going up – it turns out that someone had flushed a coke can down the toilet, causing a vacuum leak. But it took them something over 3 hours to figure this out. Well, eventually we took off, and got back to our flat around 9PM, pacific time. That’s a 15 hour travel day – to something that should have been about 6 or so hours, if we had been able to take our original flight, or the NONSTOP flight that I payed for. Oh yeah, we also weren’t able to sit together on our flights. Needless to say, I sort of hate American Airlines a lot right now.

In other news, we went strawberry picking at our CSA’s farm in Dixon, CA yesterday and it was deliciously fun.

Ok, I realize it’s been more than a month since my last post. Maybe I should look into doing another month of postings – otherwise, I never do anything.

I have been a bit busy and have a couple of post ideas banked up, including a trip write up from my recent trip to Chicago for a wedding.

Everyone has some comfort food or other – something that makes them feel comfortable, and likely reminds them of happy times during childhood. Unfortunately, just because a food is comfortable, doesn’t mean that it’s easy to make – especially when it’s holiday dinner type food!

Growing up in a family of Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jewish descent, holiday dinners (save for Thanksgiving), were composed of more or less the following:

• Gefilte Fish
• Chicken Soup with Matzah Balls
• Braised Brisket
• Kugel or Kasha Varnishkas

The first is easy enough to get out of a jar, as long as you eschew the stuff actually labeled Gefilte, which is mostly carp, and mostly terrible (and I think why the food has such a bad name), and go for the stuff labeled “Whitefish and Pike in broth”. I’ll admit, it may be an acquired taste, but we’ll get back to it later.

The rest of the items pretty much require some home cooking – although I do know of at least one place in the area that serves proper Matza ball soup. The problem is, it is the sort of cooking that requires making a lot of food, not food for one or two people. You can’t braise a 12-16oz brisket for two people, and you can’t really make much less than a gallon of proper broth for the soup. So I was in a quandry, how can I get a hold of such foods without traveling back home for a holiday. Oh – I could host a holiday dinner myself.

Earlier this year I came up with the idea of hosting a Passover dinner. Not a Seder, since those are long and can be kind of dull, but a dinner in the spirit of the Seder, with a few of the oddities, but not the retelling of the entire Passover stories. The four glasses of wine? YES. Me being me, I kind of delayed scheduling it until two weeks before passover began, when I was sitting at a wine bar with Mackenzie and some friends. We were discussing a planned Easter dinner, and the realization of the overlap between Passover and Easter hit me. It was time to schedule, and it turned out that Monday April 18th (Tax day) worked for people’s schedules, and also happened to be the first night of Passover. So dinner was scheduled.

To make a long story short, I spent the day before making food – making stock from a chicken (alas, I couldn’t find a stewing hen, so a big roaster)(As a side note, I’ve been making a lot of stock in the past couple of months, and freezing it. However the stock I’ve been making is the sort from a cooked carcass, and while good, is just not the right sort of Matza ball soup), and braising the brisket. I also made Charoset, a passover dish made of apples, nuts, wine, cinnamon and sugar, but that was just a few minute endeavor to save time the next day. The real important thing here is that both the soup and the brisket benefit from a night in the freezer. In both cases it makes it easier to remove excess fat (save the schmaltz for the matza balls!), and for the brisket it makes it tastier and juicier – plus it’s a lot easier to cut a chilled, cooked brisket.

The night of, I came home from work a little early, and got started right away chopping the vegetables (carrots and parsnip) for the soup, and preparing the matza kugel so I could just put it in the oven at the right time. Meanwhile, Mackenzie made some chicken liver pate – not exactly the chopped liver of my youth, but still delicious stuff! Timing was tight but everything worked out.

As to the food, all of it being my first attempt, I was quite pleased with the results. The gefilte fish was enjoyed by everyone, despite me being the only person there who had eaten it before. The soup with matza balls was popular – even though I forgot to add some salt while I was heating it up – but this was easy enough to adjust at table. The brisket, well, I think I could have let it braise a bit more. It was tender, and tasty, but it wasn’t as tender and fork edible as I would prefer. That didn’t stop 8 people from eating over three quarters of a 5 and 1/3 lb brisket. There was just enough leftovers for everyone to have a slice or two for lunch the next day, along with some of the braised (and super soft) carrots and potatoes.

I’d offer recipes here, but I didn’t really have any, save for the kugel. I asked my mom and she basically gave me some stories about how to do the brisket and charoset, which are both pretty simple mind you, but very imprecise. If anyone is dying for any information, I’ll provide it.

I’ll close with this question – what are your comfort foods, and are they easy to make or do they require pre-planning like the ones I listed above?

I’ve been traveling since last Saturday – first I was in the florida, with Mackenzie for her cousin’s wedding/a family get together. And then, Tuesday evening, I flew to Chicago to see my family.

Wednesday I spent time with my 94 year old grandma, and today I got to spend time with my 21 month old nephew, Milo. My brother brought him to my parents house, and then the five of us went to the Kohl Children’s Museum. The museum is full of things to entertain kids of various ages, and while Milo is a bit young for a lot of the things there, he still has fun. In particular he seems to be obsessed with the Potbelly Sandwich Works room, which is a food service simulation, where kids can make sandwiches from rubber food shapes, work fake cash registers with fake money, and etc. Milo adores putting the fake food in baskets and playing around the back of the counter. He actually kept himself entertained for a good 45 minutes or so there!

We left right around museum closing time, then brought in dinner to my parents house. Milo didn’t want to eat his dinner, while my dad and I were out getting food for the adults, but he shared his dad’s al pastor torta and rice. We then watched a bit of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and then, since it was almost bed time, my brother put him into pajamas before taking him home.

I haven’t written a movie review in a while. Well, it’s time for one. Today’s movie is Mystery Team. The movie is by the comedy group Derrick Comedy, which is notable for their online comedy shorts such as “Bro Rape”. The most well known member of the troupe is Donal Glover, who you may know as Troy Barnes on the fantastic NBC Comedy show Community.

The group, which features 3 actors a director and a producer, self produced the movie on a tight budge – something you can notice if you look for it while you watch the movie, but it doesn’t distract from the story. The basic premise is that three friends were young neighborhood detectives (think Encyclopedia Brown) and have never group out of solving mysteries involving which kid stuck their finger in a cooling pie. They are ridiculed by the town, but when the opportunity to solve an actual mystery – the murder of the parents of a young girl who is new in town, at least of them jumps on the chance to prove their worth to the town. The fact that the little girl’s older sister is played by Parks and Recreation‘s adorable Aubrey Plaza doesn’t dissuade them in the least bit.

Mystery Team is currently available on Netflix streaming, and I recommend giving it a watch. The movie rates a full five out of five on the rabbit turd scale of yore!

In the meanwhile watch the trailer (the G rated version, you can fin the R rated version if you’d like.):