All about food and TV.

June 21, 2004

My goodness it’s been warm in the last week. It’s like the Portland area was sitting in an oven sitting on the “warm” setting and then all of a sudden the knob got cranked up a few hundred degrees. It literally went from 65-70 degree weather up to 90 degrees or hotter. I don’t have a problem with the warm weather, mind you, since I now have a car that doesn’t bother me quite as much to drive in hot weather, not to mention having lost all that weight in the last couple of years has made me much more heat-tolerant. That and living in Wisconsin for four years really made me tough it out since it was so much more humid there. Honestly, though, I haven’t even used my air conditioning in my car yet, and I’ve foudn it just as relaxing to simply drive with the window down. I’m sure that AC will have its use sooner or later.

I’ve been really quite frustrated with my desktop computer lately. Well, my laptop, as well, but since it is currently without an AC adapater it’s hard to be upset at it. I’ll get to that later, though. But my desktop computer has been randomly crashing for the last few months, and I have absolutely no idea what’s causing it. The end result is that Windows itself takes a nosedive and crashes, then recovers from the error without having to reboot. The machine is 100% usable after a crash, but I lose some of the icons down in my system tray. The programs are still running, but the icons aren’t there anymore. Well, I have eliminated every single piece of software on my computer that might be causing the problem. Because I get the exact same problem on my laptop, it’s not hardware-related. But I finally decided that I’d had enough of it and so I formatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows from scratch. Guess what? Still doing it. My only conclusion is that is must be one of the updates installed for Windows, because as I said, I have managed to rule out everything else. I even replaced my antivirus program to see if that was causing it, but alas, it made no difference. Aargh! It’s insanely frustrating, let me tell you.

But my laptop is another story. Right now it’s completely unusable because I have no AC adapter for it having frayed the cord of the one I bought not eight months ago. It must be something about how I hold the laptop when I’m lying in bed that frays the cable so easily. I purchased a new one off eBay, but Fedex had the wrong shipping address for me likely provided by the guy I bought it from, and so it sat in a warehosue for a few days and now it’s on its way back to the shipper–who I can’t get ahold of, I might add. It’s pretty frustrating not being able to use my laptop. What I really have to do is just get ahold of that guy, but so far he’s incommunicato. I miss being able to lie in bed before I go to sleep and use my computer, or to sit on my futon and watch TV and use my laptop at the same time. Right now if I want to use my computer while watching TV I have to sit at my desk, and given the arrangement of my room it’s somewhat of a strain for my neck. Not painful, just annoying.

Thursday I went over to my Dad’s as I mentioned before and had dinner. Martin was there, so I was able to get my last paycheck from him, as well as crack open a couple of beers and try some excellent wine. The meal was almost overwhelming, but it was quite tasty. I’m not much of a wine afficianado, but I do know when I like wine, and I liked what I had. The rest of the meal was a leg of lamb, some fresh asparagus, and potatoes, plus a peachy-thing for dessert.

Speaking of good meals, last night my Dad came over for Father’s Day and we made a nice meal for him. We bought three Ribeyes from Albertsons, three ears of corn (but it’s not the summer sweet corn yet, unfortunately), and a coupel of red bells peppers a a big honkin’ Walla Walla Sweet onion that JUST came into season. So I spiced up the steaks, Heather grilled them along with the corn, and I sauteed the peppers and onion in olive oil (too much, unfortunately), rosemary, and thyme. What we ended up with for each of us was a very tasty steak on a bed of red peppers and onion with grilled corn on the side and a lot of McMenamins beer that we’d picked up to have while we sat around and chatted. McMenamins sells beer to go in huge mason jars, and my Dad had a couple of them sitting around, so I had him bring them over and we filled them up with a couple of kinds of beer. With that purchase of beer to go last night, that made for three days in a row going to one McMenamins or another and having beer. Oy. Maybe I need to cut down on my intake…well, after I finish the beer from last night so it’s not wasted. It’s probably already gone a bit flat, but I just want to finish them up if they’re still good. There’s not that much left, maybe a couple of pints. So when I get home from work today, methinks I’ll pour a pint or two and watch my tape of “ER” from this morning.

And speaking of TV (like how I’m bridging my subjects?), I’m glad that both “The Dead Zone” and “Monk” have started up again with new episodes. And even better, “Nip/Tuck” starts up again tomorrow night, so for the first time probably ever, I’ll be watching no new TV shows on the four major broadcast networks. That is, until “Law & Order”, “Scrubs”, and “ER” all start up again in the fall. But for now, I’ll enjoy the new shows that I have access to.

So another week begins. I’m still getting up at 5:15 AM daily, and in fact this is the beginning of week #3 in that experiment. This was the first week that I managed to haul myself out of bed on the Monday of the week, however. Last week I skipped both Monday and Thursday, but I’m going to try and make it all five days this week. Part of feels like I’m not actually getting anything accomplished and I’m not toning up or losing any of the weight I’d put on (it’s nott hat much, of course, but it’s noticeable), but I think that has to do both with the portion sizes I’ve been eating and with the amount of beer I’ve been drinking. Perhaps I’ll cut back on both and see what happens. Portion sizes? Easy. Beer? …not so much. But since I do most of my beer drinking while not at home (that is, either in a pub or at my Dad’s), all I’ll have to do is cut back on going out. Or cut back to one pint instead of two. Eh, I’ll see what feels right and go with it.

I hope everyone had a good weekend. With a meal like last night’s topping things out, I know I did. Catch you later.

Posted in Beer, Geekery, General