flow

Wow it's been a while since my last update.  I haven't been terribly busy with work but I have been keeping busy with other stuff.  I did get one business trip to DC where I managed to make one outing to Ben's Chili Bowl, one of my favorite spots in DC to get a couple of chili half-smokes.  Oh so good, oh so bad.

Notwithstanding the indulgent eating that is de rigeur for the holidays, I've been trying to exercise more, ride my bike, take more walks and do more time on the elliptical.  It's helped me lose maybe 8-10 lbs.  I'm going to try and keep it up with a target of losing about 15 more.

Still getting a lot of use out of my new iPhone 5.  The camera on the iPhone is decent but not awesome.  I get a lot of lens flare or reflections but maybe that's just poor technique on my part.  Anyways I do find myself using it out of convenience a lot more than the Nikon DSLR now.  I've been snapping away lots of pics and even started doing little videos.  Nothing worthy of the cinema or anything but it's kind of neat being able to hold the camera in places you couldn't normally squeeze your head, like under the car.  I also finally made some use of the Kensington phone/iPod suction cup mount I bought a long while ago, and mounted it in the windshield. Holy crap maybe they don't make the one I have anymore but why is it $149 to buy it on Amazon??  Trust me I did not pay that much.     Kensington Dash Car Mount for iPhone and iPod

Since things have gotten pretty quiet at work, I decided to take an extended time off from the office... I basically told them, I'm taking December off, I will see you in January.  And then added a week in January to top it off.  I have 37 days off starting tomorrow, which sounds pretty epic.  Helps me burn off a big surplus of vacation days I had banked.

So what am I going to do with all that time?  Hopefully a lot.  I need to make a list so I can remember to do everything and set some goals, but generally... a bunch of car stuff.  Go driving.  Go for bike rides.  Go for hikes/walks/runs.  Take more photos.  Listen to music.  Watch movies.  Play games.  Go shoot my guns some more. Exercise and lose weight.  Eat some good food (but not too much).  Cook dinner for wifey.  Bake some pastries or cookies.  I suppose somewhere in there I will have to do some holiday shopping (gag).  Wow I have a lot to do!  But for now, I'm going to bed.  Tomorrow is the first day of my vacation.

UPDATE:  I've started a  new blog to specifically cover this 37-day vacation.  Check it out at 37DaysOff.

homemade

Mmmmm ... tonight V. made my favorite noodle soup, and the namesake for this blog, cha siu tong mein. Sure, eating out is nice, but sometimes you just wanna sit at home and attack a sumptuous meal with no regard for manners or decency, knowing no one will see you...

aromatic

My coworker just came back from China and brought me this. Mmmm this might be the only non-vegetarian potato chip I've ever seen.

adaptation

It used to be called Cluck University and then University Chicken, and now it's changed names once again. I pulled up today on my way back from a business trip to Monterey to pick up some spicy buffalo wings from my favorite wing place in Santa Clara and now the place is called Smoke Eaters?

Personally I think it's a horrible name but I had to go in and see if the wings were still the same. I asked the server when they changed and she said about a month ago. The menu looks different but has essentially the same offerings as before. The wings are still called wingers and there are still different levels of hotness for the sauce, but the highest level of hot is now "Inferno" instead of "Global Thermonuclear". Maybe the change makes sense; probably only the older customers will remember the classic reference to the old Matthew Broderick film WarGames.

Anyways I took a box of 10 "Nuclear" wingers home and dug in. Still the same sweet and tangy hot sauce, with a good dose of spicy heat. Too bad the name stinks. The weird thing is, the Chicken University website is still up and lists the Santa Clara location, so I'm not sure if they changed all of them or if just this one changed. Seems like they still serve the same good ol' wings though so I guess I'll still drop by from time to time.

cutbacks

So, 6 months have passed since I hatched the grandiose scheme of investing my money and having the dream of someday driving a V10-powered auto.   And unless you've been living under a rock (which I sort of was for a while, but even I've managed to notice), you know now that the financial and investment world has seriously gone down the drain and, almost to add insult to injury, the price of gas has shot up to $4 and even $5 a gallon for a while, making both investment in stocks and the purchase of any kind of gas-guzzler appear to be very foolish ideas.  But who would have known?  I'm sure there's someone out there that could say "I told you so", but I'm no genius and surely did not see this coming.  Needless to say, I haven't made it big and bought my retirement mansion in the Bahamas yet.  Nor am I driving a Bugatti Veyron or even a humble V10-equipped M5.  Instead I'm lamenting the demise of my WaMu shares and dusting off my trusty 4-cylinder powered MR2 to try and save some scratch at the pump.

And while I'm not necessarily packing my things and moving into a cardboard box just yet, surely this is a great time to be rich.  With all the economy in a tizzy and gas prices shooting up it's crazy but you can find some really sweet deals on some automotive hardware.  It's all about supply and demand, and right now it's a buyer's market like nobody's seen in quite a while.  If you're in the market for a Mercedes S-Class or a Ford F-150 truck, it's on like Donkey Kong.  For everybody else, though I think we're going to be finding ways to cut some of the excess fat from our monthly bills.  All of sudden my $95/month cable bill has moved from simply silly to outrageously ridiculous.  I think I can do without 200+ channels that I don't really have the time to watch anyways.

Last night I was having dinner with J.T. and we tried out a new restaurant, San Mateo Prime.  Which, as you might surmise, is in San Mateo. The prime rib there was decent and certainly enjoyable but not quite up to the standard of House of Prime Rib up in San Francisco. I'd say that in terms of ranking, HOPR > Broadway Prime > San Mateo Prime. But it was pretty sobering to see that even at prime time dinner hour on a Friday night, the restaurant's tables weren't full. The waiter commented that business has been slow and they were even lowering the prices of wine offerings in an attempt to drum up more business. Food for thought indeed.

contrast

It took all night, but I was actually able to finish this 24oz. can of Amp!

pequeno

Tabasco in an 1/8 oz. size! Ain't it cute?

duality

Now I'm not a particularly big fan of football, but when one of the partners that I work for invites me to play in the office's newly formed flag football league, I found myself having a hard time saying no. To be honest, I haven't played flag football since high school, and I didn't fare particularly well then either. But you know what, it's moments like this that slap you in the face and make you sit up and pay more attention to your own health and well-being. But when we took to the field for the first time on Friday, the slap in the face was more harsh than even I imagined. Out of shape and with no athletic skills or conditioning, I found myself gasping for air after only a few plays and eagerly self-benching myself so that others could get a chance to play. Oh, man am I out of shape. My elliptical machine has really built up a fine patina of dust over the last few months from disuse. The guilt is starting to take its toll on me, so I think I'll be popping some fresh D-cell batteries into it (yeah, seems kinda silly that an exercise machine couldn't be self-powered, right?) and putting it through its paces soon. Maybe next week's game I can actually stay on my feet and not collapse from exhaustion.

But as they say for every force, there is a corresponding opposite force to keep things in balance. And so with this renewed pledge to exercise and get into shape, comes a desire to stuff myself silly in the most extravagant way possible. And so I have reconvened the Carnivore Club, a ragtag collection of similarly meat-centric folks who take no shame in eating as much food as they can, to return to the fantastic Brazilian steakhouse Espetus Churrascaria in San Francisco. If you're a meat lover and haven't been to a Brazilian steakhouse, you have to try it. You know how you go to a normal steakhouse, order a steak, and while it tastes great when you first dig into it, by the time you're finishing it the meat has cooled off and it's not so tasty anymore? Well at a churrascaria, you get smaller slices of beef off a large skewer fresh out of the kitchen and brought right to your plate, so every bite is a nice hot and tasty experience. I can't say enough about it and I can't wait to go back there next week. But I leave you with a few Carnivore Club Rules, or in the spirit of Pirates of the Carribean, they're more like guidelines.

Rules of Carnivore Club

#1. You do not talk about Carnivore Club.
#2. OK, you can talk about it a little but only when recruiting others.
#3. If someone says “stop” or turns over the red card, the food stops coming.
#4. One man (or woman), one plate. Nobody shares from their plate.
#5. You finish what’s on your plate. Unless it’s nasty.
#6. No soup, no salad. Unless it’s got meat in it.
#7. Dinner will go on as long as it has to.
#8. If this is your first night in Carnivore Club, you have to eat.