The Aerie
Yes, it's another insomnia journal. It's 1:40 a.m., and I have to be up at 5:30 a.m. So it's possible at this point that I'll just stay up all night.
I think this is all the fault of the Oceanaire Restaurant.
Now, before I complain, let me just say that very nice people have sent me to the Oceanaire several times. I cannot complain about the gift. News anchor Randi Kaye was kind enough to send my wife and I there after I spent a couple of fruitless days trying to get her DSL hooked up (Qwest was, as usual, clueless and useless -- I eventually tracked it down to a technical problem in the local junction, but Randi gave up and went Cable before it was resolved). And my business partner sent me there as well. So thank you, sincerely, guys, for the kind gifts.
But in three, maybe four trips, I have failed utterly to be impressed.
Now, okay, "fresh" seafood in Minneapolis is a very nice concept. And, really, you can't go wrong serving a nice piece of fish, piping hot, and not overcooked or overgarnished. A little lemon or a little oil, and that fish is ready to eat.
Oceanaire has this top-notch reputation locally, but it just doesn't do it for me.
First of all I have to admit the Snob Factor colors my views. Everyone in the place reeks of money and entitlement. Is it just me? If I met them in another setting would I think the same thing? I can't honestly say. But when I'm there, they do. From the crone with too many facelifts wearing her granddaughter's clothes, to the guy with the turtleneck and jacket talking about Armani with a martini in one hand, to the cold-eyed perfect young women, I feel out-of-my-social-class (I'm sure there's a Russian word for that feeling, probably proletevski bourgoisie or something).
But okay, beyond the Snob Factor, there's the setting. Review sites about the Oceanaire crow about its decor, but all I've ever seen are tiny, tiny tables, crowded together so closely that no two people can pass between them. Not that two people should be crowding past one another in a restaurant, but I mean, these tables are close. In circumstances like that, the line between "elegant restaurant" and "cafeteria" gets a little blurry for me.
Then there's the Rush: the place is frantic. The busboys clear your table as if their children are being held hostage for the china. I've had plates removed from beneath my active fork. One time the fellow was in such a rush he dropped a gravy-laden spoon into my lap, staining my pants. Worse, he didn't notice! I had to point the infraction out -- the female maitre'd offered to pay for dry cleaning. Who the heck wants dry cleaning, I want the guy not to drop food in my lap!
Okay, so we've got a crowded setting, Snobs, and a big Rush. Let's skip Prices -- we know some places are just expensive -- there's the Upsell I can't stand. Two glasses of wine, $25.
Knowing all this, we went there tonight because our nearly-year-old gift certificate was about to expire (And why should a gift certificate expire? They've GOT the money! Why would it matter if you didn't come in for 10 years: all it means is they'd have 10 years of interest on the money, and you'd have ten years of inflation reducing your purchasing power).
We deliberately ordered cheap, and the waiter made sure we knew he knew it. We didn't want wine, we wanted beer -- he was scandalized! No "beer list", he just recited the beers aloud. Fortunately for my diet they had Michelob Ultra, which is a "low carb" beer in the same way that America was a "kinder, gentler nation" under George Bush Sr. I ordered the soup and salad because, honestly, I wanted the chowder and salad. That these were two of the cheapest items on the menu was just a coincidence... really!.
But that's not why I'm up at two-frinkin'-ayam. I'm up at two because they slipped me caffeinated coffee.
It's hard to be sure, but I think so. At one point a very eager looking young man held forth a silver tureen and offered to fill my cup. I hadn't seen him fill any OTHER cups, and I asked, "Is this decaf?"
"Si!" he replied.
So, I'm wondering, maybe he didn't quite hear me, or maybe English isn't his first language, or maybe both.. but for whatever reason, I think he slipped me the Joe.
Combined with a thin slice of chocolate cake (after four days of moderately-intense Atkins-izing) and I think I may have Mr. Coffee Nerves haunting my sleep.
So maybe that will be our last time at the hoity-toity Oceanaire. The $70 we spent on dinner would get me a week of breakfast's at Al's. And while it's crowded, rushed, and most of the staff doesn't speak English real good neither, well, at least nobody there is snooty!
Ah, nothing is perfect. The new desk chair has a critical flaw: if I am sitting at my desk, and I turn around to stand up, the arm of the chair gets caught beneath the desk.
Since the desk is a door laid across a pair of filing cabinets, standing up out of the chair causes it to push my desk upwards, threatening to spill everything on the floor. And of course this will wear out the arms of the chair quite rapdily.
So the question is, will I learn not to stand up from my desk in such a quick fashion or will I destroy something first? More to the point, why should I have to?
Reading a lot of LiveJournals recently, mostly because I'm short of things to procrastinate on. Three words: mad bisexual drama. Practically everyone on there is a woman, and practically every woman on there is a bisexual, and practically every bisexual woman on there is polyamorous. At least, so it seems. They all seem to be 21, half of them are alcoholic or aspiring to be, and every one of them are dating the same man: the whiny, self-centered, screwed-up youngest-child-in-the-family, emotionally abusive coward that we all know or once were.
I feel bad for them, but what can I do? Not much. They display their pain, I comment on it and realize that while passing 41 has its downsides, not being 21 anymore has its upsides.
In other topics, absolutely CRAZY nutcase dreams last night. Fortunately for both you and I my recollection of them has dimmed significantly. Highlights include hiding in a dark corner from Agent-like killers, kissing the blond daughter of a Mexican couple, and trying desperately to call 911 after finding the corpse of a woman lying on the sidewalk, with her heart ripped out of her chest.
Well, enough procrastination has passed, there is now no longer significant time left to accomplish anything. Or so I tell myself. Head upstairs, catch "Contact" on DVD before it has to go back.
So I got a new office chair for Xmas from my in-laws. Really, they were very nice to get it for me.
I am a total pain in the ass to shop for: I either have everything I want, or whatever I want is so weird and esoteric that normal people can't find it. "A particular book or books by particular authors, at Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore (where a would-be thief recently got himself stuck in a chimney). A router - either a computer network router or a hardware woodworking router, either one. A 160GB IDE hard drive.
Is it too much to ask for a bestseller? Or a shirt? But no, I'm always asking for nonsense.
So when I finally got tired of repeatedly fixing the arm-rest on my existing chair (really, if I wanted to do it, it would only take a couple of right-angle brackets and a few screws, bolts and nuts, but I just don't want to), they jumped at the opportunity.
A chair! Why, he's asking for a one-word gift that you can buy at a store! Not since "a shirt" has a gift request been such a big hit.
So of course having received the unassembled chair, I sat on it for a few days. The assembly I mean, not the chair. Who wants to get into all that "tab A into slot B" stuff? Not me.
But finally I had to do it. My small basement office had three things in its limited floorspace: two half-broken office chairs, and a large box containing a working office chair. I couldn't move.
The one office chair with the loose armrest has already been described. All I can add to its description was that the five-wheeled base had these decorative wooden guards that slipped on top of the five thin struts. These fell off with regularity. I had also thought for a long time that both chairs were broken, because they intermittently would and would not recline: then I discovered that the height-adjustment handle pulls out and pushes in to allow and restrict the reclining feature. Operator error.
The other chair was a black piston-lift chair, very similar to the one my in-laws had gotten me. I'd found it upside-down in a dumpster, and after taking it home the problem became apparent - the piston had gotten bent and would no longer go up and down.
Otherwise it was in great shape, so I'd used it and the grey intermittently. But the black was stuck too low, and was uncomfortable after a while.
So okay, time to put the chair together. I moved both old chairs out (the grey to the children's computer, the black to my spouse), cleared about two hours from my schedule, gathered the band-aids, checked the number for 911, and practiced my swearing. I was ready.
In the end the chair turned out to be very simple. The piston simply rests in a pocket in the rolling base, and the chair rests on the piston. Works fine now, but if gravity ever gives out the thing will fly apart.
The tricky part was that the chair itself needed to be assembled: seat, armrests, and back. Still, it should be pretty easy: the front of the seat was labelled "FRONT", the cunning recline-swivel-rise bracket upon which the seat mounts was clearly labelled "FRONT", and the back was clearly labelled "FRONT". Each arm was not labelled "FRONT" but was labelled "LEFT" and "RIGHT." All I had to do was follow the instructions and I couldn't possibly go wrong.
First I mounted the seat the wrong way 'round on the mounting bracket, DESPITE the fact that the word "FRONT" on the one was on the opposite end from the word "FRONT" on the other. Of course, I tightened the bolts.
Amazingly, I got the arms on the correct sides of the seat on the first try, but I suspect this was because they simply wouldn't go on the other way.
I then put the back on facing backwards, and sat in the chair, before I realized that, no, it wasn't SUPPOSED to make me sit up straighter - that was simply the result of the back leaning the wrong way.
Then rather than deconstruct the whole chair (the assembly instructions were "put arms on back, mount back on seat"), I removed the back (leaving the arms on the seat) and flipped it around. To my complete amazement, this didn't break anything (yet... that I'm aware of...)
So now I have a nice cozy office chair: the arms stay on, the piston goes up and down, and it even spins nicely.
Nothing to it!
2004 was supposed to be "The Year With Less Death." I ordered it that way especially.
So I was very upset to receive an e-mail from Tanya. Her dog died.
Bella had to be one of the ugliest dogs I've ever seen, but she was a sweet dog and after Steve's death Tanya's faithful companion.
Apparently Bella got an ear infection that was misdiagnosed. By the time a vet got the diagnosis right, Bella required surgery: she didn't survive.
This is just wrong. I mean, how much shit needs to fall on her head? Just what's going on? Cripes.
Well, that's it -- that's all the death I'm putting up with in 2004. NO MORE.
Crap.
Well, today would have been my father's 68th birthday.
Sorting through my papers on my desk I came across a copy of the last photograph that I ever got of him, enlarged from a picture of him among people in the room during D's 8th birthday party.
He died December 26th last year, so this is the second birthday that he's missed.
At a year's remove I can't say that my feelings for him or regarding his death have changed much. I feel bad that I don't feel more about it, but... I don't. I feel worse for my mother, I know it's been hard for her to be alone.
But my dad was never a Ward Cleaver type. He wasn't particularly affectionate, he didn't play a very large role in my life except as an authority figure when I was a child. We didn't do stuff together, and we didn't talk much - mostly because we disagreed on a lot, and he could get pretty rude when one didn't agree with him.
I thought that maybe a year out I'd feel something more, or different. But I regret to say that I don't.
I guess I feel bad for him, that he got screwed out of some kind of retirement by the forces of fate. I feel bad for my mother that she's alone. And my sister seems real upset about his being gone.
But me? Once or twice I've missed him - like going to my sister's for her kid's birthday and expecting to see him there, only to remember he was gone. Or once or twice when something noteworthy came to mind, but I couldn't mention it to him.
But mostly.. the grief has been underwhelming.
I'm disappointed and I wonder what that says about me, rather than what it says about him.
Wow, that was tiring.
The family plus our family friend Debbie gathered for a "Lord of the Rings" marathon. Starting at noon yesterday we watched the Extended Editions of the Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers, followed by a trip to the theater to see The Return of the King.
The experience was rather overwhelming. By the end of the day I didn't care whether I saw another Hobbit again!
So D's long-delayed 9th birthday party is underway. His wish? Rollerskating and sleepover!
So we've got a half-dozen nine-year olds loaded and rolling widdershins round the tinny pop-music may-pole.
And now it's time for the hokey-pokey! A woman with a perfect Minne-sow-dah accent is making live announcements: somebody needs to can this lady's voice in case the Farrelly Brothers decide to make a Fargo sequel.
Meanwhile my older boy L is stalking around in skates that make him taller than his mother. I guess we'd better get used to the sight of him looming over her.
Daughter G is aloof from the boyish proceedings, preferring to practice with "Drawing: The Head and Figure" by Jack Hamm. And her seventh-grade friends wonder why she can draw so well..
A slice of pizza here costs $2.00: a whole pizza from Cub cost $1.66. But if it keeps this place in business, more power to 'em.
Didn't remember that Dave Arneson was going to show up at Professor Barker's last night. Very interesting visit. Half the night was spent at desultory Tekumel gaming, but about halfway through Dave began to expound upon his relationship with the Prof.
Carefully complimentary, Dave scolded Phil for not working harder to recover from his broken hip while simultaneously crediting him with creating the first and best role-playing game (his terms).
I got home late, got to bed at 1:45 a.m., but then I'm up again at 5:30 due to difficulties. Today will be wierd. First I'll head off to the gym, then I have to go to my Aunt Marian's funeral. After that, I have to get ready for D's long-delayed 9th birthday sleepover. Immediately followed that tomorrow, we start our 12-hour LOTR movie marathon!
So off we go...
So last night we learned how to make lefse. It seems I'm a natural.
We got to Terry and Kathy's place a little after 6:00 p.m., and she greeted us with "Good, you're just in time to rice the potatoes!"
Yes, sure! And after that, why we'll broccoli the carrots! And rutabaga the pears! Why we'll verbize ANY vegetable with another - we're THAT kind of wild and crazy people
Turns out that "ricing" the mashed potatoes involves pressing them out through this Play-Doh kind of device that squeezes it into thin strings. The strings break up and the result looks like... rice. The idea I guess is to seine any lumps out of the potatoes.
Everyone took turns ricing, then my manly muscle was put to work mashing flour into the riced potatoes, which turned the whole mixture into a kind of dough... as well as my arm.
Kathy then did some magic with condensed milk and oil, and a few minutes later we were rolling balls of dough.
Each of these was pressed with a rolling pin on a floured cloth until paper thin. Then they were spread on hot iron griddles until they assumed familial resemblance with their cousin, the tortilla.
At this point Kathy took down a long, flat, slender stick and slipped it under the middle of the lefse, and gracefully turned it over on the griddle.
A few minutes more, and the steaming hot Norwegian potato tortilla was laid gently on a platter beneath a cloth to keep it warm.
Buttered, filled with something sweet, and rolled up, it was absolute heaven!
The process is slow, about the same speed as making waffles. But with one roller and two griddles, the steady flow of paper-thin lefse turned into a formidable pile in about an hour.
In addition to the lefse we ordered pizza from a very confused and frustrated pizza joint (all of the employees wondering, doubtless, what karmic price they were paying to be working these jobs on New Years eve). We played card games (Fluxx, Apples to Apples, and Elixir -- all highly recommended although Fluxx is my favorite). Finally we finished the evening with fireworks and wine as the clock struck 12.
All in all, very nice.
All the best to you and yours in 2004! "Now with less death!"
(2004 may not be for everyone, please check with your doctor before 2004. Side effects of 2004 can include increased grey hair, expanded waistline, wrinkling of skin, and enlargement of children. As 2004 continues your income and libido may decrease. 2004 can cause mood swings, including extremes of happiness and sadness. 2004 is a sedative, and will cause you to sleep for approximately one hundred and twenty days. On the other hand, you may find yourself awake for two hundred and forty days. 2004 occasionally cause constipation, particularly towards November 2nd. If 2004 results in severe swelling of your bank account, contact me immediately.)