Stealing from another blog.

Once again, I’m going to steal part of this post from the Portland Burger Blog because we just went to Wildwood and had one of the better burgers in town. Man, was it tasty.

Before hitting the gym, though, I did “Helen’ at the gym: 3 rounds of 2 laps around the gym, 21 24kg kettle bell swings, and 12 pullups. The fastest I’ve done it in is 10:02 and today it took me 10:17. I blame Nadine for not posting it on her blog. I usually check it to see how much I can eat for lunch, and she’s been slacking lately. I figured we did a timed workout yesterday so we wouldn’t do another one today, but I was wrong. I did well enough, though.

In any case, let the review of the Wildwood burger begin!

I have to admit that I’m a bit conflicted when it comes to Wildwood. It’s been around for fifteen years at least and it used to be run by a guy who was a few years ahead of me in grade school. The food is supposed to be great, but it’s the kind of place where the rich people from the suburbs like to go. They’ve always had a reputation for a good hamburger, though, and I convinced several others to accompany me to try it. Sean, Erin, and I had the burger and Melissa had a salad.

wildwood

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but this is one of the best burgers I’ve had. I’m not sure if the Laurelhurst Market burger is that much better than this one, but I’d give it the edge because this one was a little salty for my tastes. But man, I’d hate to have to make a quick decision between the two. The picture doesn’t do the burger much justice and you can’t really see half of it under all the bacon they gave me on top of it. Above the bacon pile you can see the top bun with the grilled onions. The bun was soft and tasty and the meat was delicious, just the way I like it. They also had a garlic confit, but I wasn’t able to distinguish it amongst the other flavors. It was tasty.

We stuffed ourselves silly and they apologized for the time it took for the burger to be prepared. It wasn’t quick, but we didn’t think it took too long, but they comped us a couple of desserts to make up for it. One was profiteroles stuffed with a chocolate mousse with salty pralines. The other was a lemon semifreddo with huckleberry sauce. Both were delicious. In fact, Melissa thought she would like coming back just for the desserts. I have to say huckleberries are one of my favorite fruits and they really won me over with the lemon semifreddo.

The whole dinner wasn’t all that expensive, either, but I think you have to ask for the bar menu to get the hamburgers. In any case, it’s certainly a place I’d recommend.

I need to learn Spanish.

I have selfish reasons for learning Spanish. Some of the food we like to eat in Hillsboro is in places where they don’t really speak any English and I have a hard time reading their hand-written menus. I had something today, which looked like flat breaded steak (and tasted like it too) but I can’t remember what it was called besides “Especial de Hoy” which is the only part I understood. Man was it good, though. Beans, rice, tortillas, the meat, guacamole, and it was only $5 to stuff myself silly. I feel bad, though, that I’m going to their restaurant without knowing how to say, “Hello, how are you today? The weather’s getting cooler, isn’t it? Which would you suggest the or the ? Thank you, I’ll have the one you suggest.” As it is, she pointed at a picture and I thought I was getting fried fish.

That’s the way it goes at Ochoa Super Tacos for me. I point at something, ask what it is, they look at me with a confused look, I look at them with a confused look, and order it anyway.

I’m about to fall apart, I think. My little finger feels like I jammed it, my right hip flexor feels like it’s cramping, and they’re still making me do crazy things at the gym. Run around the building, 20x 20lb ball slams, and 20 jumping squats. I felt like I was sandbagging it a bit but I did get some consistent times and came within a second of a guy who can seriously outrun me. Still, my ass feels sore from the front squats (I should say “glutes” so people don’t get ideas, but it’s my ass) my shoulders are tired from a kettlebell press, and I think I mentioned my various cramps. No wonder my massage guy wants me to take up yoga or pilates instead.

50 Licks Ice Cream.

I have to be pretty careful about ice cream because as an Asian dude I have several superpowers including not being attractive to American women and lactose intolerance. The former has very little to do with the ice cream, but the latter does so I have to be picky about eating ice cream or milkshakes or whatnot. My sister told me that the 50 Licks guys would be working the birdwatcher group and if I didn’t try it, she’d kick my ass. They were standing around when I got home today, so I bought two little half-pint containers for $4 each. It’s pretty good and actually tastes like something. The carmel apple has distinctly carmelly tastes, and a little apple as well. It’s not as good as the Baskin & Robins in Japan where everything tasted just like what the label said it would taste like, but it was good. I’m not sure it was $4 good, but the quality and texture were excellent as well. I should stop being so miserly and just say I’m worth it.

I’ve been watching more TV lately, and perhaps that’s rotting my brain. I don’t want it to be complete mush, but it could stand some softening up. It’ll keep me from thinking about weird things too much, like trying to get MMS working on my iPhone before the scheduled 9/25 announced date. That’s just what I need, an inoperable cell phone. It’ll keep me from obsessing about learning how to fix my drywall by myself, too.

This was not the night to watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

For some reason, I’m quite hungry right now. I felt kind of woozy at work today too. Perhaps I have a tapeworm or something. In any case, they went to Blue Plate in downtown Portland on one of the re-run shows and I’m pretty glad that it wasn’t there when I worked in the same building. I think I’d be HUGE if they were there. It’s bad enough that there was tasty stuff all over downtown but if there was fried chicken in the same building I don’t know what I would have done. As it was I only had to walk across the street to get to Huber’s, or around the corner to get to Aroy Thai or Rovente Pizza. And there was a teen modeling agency that did “head shots” with the girls in bikinis across the street. The engineering firm below us had binoculars on their window sills so you know they knew what was going on.

In any case, Blue Plate looks pretty darn tasty.

Wait, why did I get DirecTV?

I got this whole satellite dish mess because I wanted to watch football. I suppose I did that last night when I watched the Ohio State/USC game and the end of the Oregon State game. I got the NFL Direct ticket and I watched almost no NFL football today. The reason is because the DirecTV made me realize that I needed a phone line and network cable upstairs, and that made me realize that the mess the contractors left me with dangling phone lines was unacceptable, and so it was time for me to mess with the wiring again.

If you’ve ever dealt with a sysadmin or a network admin, you either get the guys who wire things up and leave them messy, or the ones who are constantly trying to rewire things to look right. Really, you can’t mess with it much if you want to keep your computers working. In any case, I’m just doing as little as possible but when there are a bunch of things dangling from their cords, you have do do something.

phones

It took all day. I went to my friend Greg’s house to get the scrap of plywood, but he didn’t have anything though he thought he did. We ended up working on his deck for a bit. I called another friend, Brad, who had some but the wrong size. We chatted with him for a while. I went to Home Depot for parts and, as usual, they have ALMOST what I need. I finally got home around 5PM and started in on the actual work. I finished around 10:15PM. I should probably sleep, or watch ESPN to see what I missed today, right? I really did miss Lou Holtz when I didn’t have ESPN.

Da birds.

It’s Friday night and I’m just watching TV shows off of my DVR. Or I would be if it wasn’t so screwed up. Somehow it decided to record LAST WEEK’S Warehouse 13 instead of THIS WEEK’S so I ended up looking for a showing of the right one to record. I missed the first few minutes. Good thing there’s the intarweb for that. Also watched Monk and Psych tonight.

So the birds going into the chimney is one thing, but the crowds are another. Having huge crowds in front of your house for weeks is just a big pain. I blame Dan Viens and his movie, but whatever. Anyway, time for a picture.

swiftwatchers20090911

My Fridays are usually quite dull and so it’s time for bed.

I’m not going to have any time to sleep, am I?

I was tired at the gym and yet I still managed to do OK on the timed workout. At least I’m happy with my time. I probably would have done better if I wasn’t dragging around and my nose wasn’t full of whatever it’s full of. And I’m not going to get much more rest tonight because I still haven’t started watching the football game on my DVR! And that’s the reason I got DirecTV in the first place!

I’m home late because MattyG dragged me to his favorite hamburger place, Holdens. I must say it’s a good pub burger, but I’m disappointed with it. It was overcooked (standard pub move) and it needed some ketchup. With the ketchup, it was great, but I’m not one for having to doctor up the burger. Give it to me the way you think is right, and I’m going to eat it that way. The meat wasn’t tasty enough to stand on its own. The fries, while tasty, had the nice crunch you only get from the frozen product. I mean it was all quite passable, but it was $12! I’m spoiled, but for that price I could be getting a Laurelhurst Market burger, or for a couple of dollars more a Yakuza burger. I think the Slow Bar burger was only $9 (I could be mistaken). If there is a rating scale of quality to price, this was a $7-8 burger.

holdens

Now that I’ve burned my bridges there, it’s on to something new!

So I thought I wasn’t doing anything.

I’m sitting here, in front of my computer, clicking on windows like I’m over-caffeinated. I thought I was doing absolutely nothing but showing some sort of indeterminate compulsive behavior then I stopped to see what I was getting done. Turns out there’s all these software updates and I’m actually installing them. The copies from my NAS are slow, making my brain impatient, and I start clicking all over.

So what’s new today?

  • iTunes 9
  • iPhone 3.1
  • Firefox 3.5.3
  • CocoaNEC 2 0.6
  • Transmission 1.75b2
  • Google Earth 5.1.3506.3999
  • Nambu beta
  • various and sundry iPhone app updates

I’m also looking at all sorts of sites about sheet rock patching. The sheet rock guys said they were finished, and I’d like to fix some more stuff before the painters come back in. I’m watching videos, reading web sites, and remembering what a crappy job I did the last time I tried to do this on my own. I’m likely to do another crappy job, but it’ll wait until the weekend.

Other than that, I really have nothing, and I have to get back to my incessant clicking.

That worked out better than I thought it would.

I was going to watch my new TV tonight but I ended up watching some downloaded Japanese TV instead. It’s odd that I actually have something to watch. My DVR is probably filling up with more Food Network shows as well.

I had fried chicken and Greek fries (the 3-piece snack box) at the Mad Greek Deli again today. It’s one of the least expensive things on the menu and I love fried chicken. I was going to go slightly healthier: chicken souvlaki and a Greek salad, but they were out of souvlaki again. They didn’t skimp on the portions today and I was still burping fried food when I got to the gym. I thought the sprinting would kill me, but it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. I did fine and the chicken made its way down my digestive tract, not out the way I was fearing.

Speaking of fear, I found out my Sigg water bottle was lined with the scary plastic that I was trying to avoid! Well, I probably breathed in enough pthalates while I was getting my chemistry degree (as well as various and sundry organic solvents and chemicals that are used to cleave DNA for fun and profit) so the water bottle is probably the least of my worries. But there is a return program and I may take advantage of that. That is if I can remember after getting indoctrinated by the President.

I like holidays.

I’m not sure what I did today. Went to the gym, ate pierogi, made sure a wireless keyboard worked with my friend’s daughter’s Netbook, and watched some TV. It’s a holiday.

I am using my HD DVR to record ever possible episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (and Good Eats for that matter) and even after having a steak for dinner, the show made me hungry for some greasy food. I’m wondering if I’ll gain weight just by watching the TV. Ah, well, I’m not going to travel to many of the places he goes to, I’m sure (I’ve been to two, as far as I can tell) so I should be OK. Then again, I finally found and ate some pierogi today and it was pretty good. I may find a method of self-sabotage that doesn’t require any help from Guy Fieri.

Now I see why I like DVRs.

So I still have all those channels with very very little to see, but I’ve found TWO movies this whole weekend that seemed worth recording. Oddly enough, I’ve been way too busy to watch them and now I’m staying up late to finish watching them. No Country for Old Men was as good as I thought and now I’m watching Speed Racer. I never heard anything good about it, and it’s fantastic.

I was in the attic for most of the day, putting in another outlet, a network connection, and a phone connection, all so I can hook up my DirecTV upstairs. It’s ALMOST working. I just have to get the network working and I think I can get it going without too much trouble, but that’ll take yet another trip to the hardware store. Good thing I’m a guy and I like hardware stores.

Well, time to stay up too late watching Speed Racer. I needs me some more cheese!

My cough is almost gone!

You’d think I liked crawling around in the attic, but I’m really just trying to figure out how to get my DirecTV connected to the internet and a phone line. I had to go buy more crap to fish around in the walls and under the floors and I’m not even close to getting the wire pulled through yet. I have, however, spent way too much time but successfully modified my sister’s old wireless router to act as a wireless bridge so now the DirecTV DVR has an intarweb connection. Sounds like the phone line is the important part, though and that’s going to be a bit more work. Just a little more fiddling with my Harbor Freight push rods and I should have a phone line in the corner of the upstairs. So much work for something so silly.

At least I’m feeling a lot better, and I even bought a Rigid shopvac today. I’ve been wanting a shopvac for YEARS and a 9-gallon model was on sale at Home Depot for $20. They look the same as the $60 ones, but they’re a different color and cheaper. Weird. It’s a good thing I glance at my sale emails from time to time.