Wednesday: new year's eve

Which means lots of food.

See?

 Honey sriracha chicken wings, gochujang garlic pork belly, lettuce and rice for that to be rolled up, jar of green beans, scallion pancakes, and gyoza.

On a plate.

 Then, after giving up on trying to find a live feed for the west coast for nye, a game of uno.

I did not win today, either.

Red hot like pizza dinner.

Parmesan twists.

A very big pizza.

A plate with a slice.

Tuesday: while I'm thinking about it

Previously, we've done the Brazilian churrascaria thing in Austin at two different places. There are a few in the bay area, but tend to be either far away or far more expensive than the Austin ones. A bit of searching found Pikanhas in Richmond.

Before.

This place wasn't as good, and I think the scale of the place is the problem.  When the restaurant is large, any given waiter with meat is going to run out before visiting all the tables. This ensures that the meats are fresh, and that a wide selection are circulating. Without that scale, there's a lot of extra waiting, and the meats are less likely to be served at different doneness.

I didn't think anything was particularly bad for the meats, ignoring their significant overdone bias. The sides were kind of lacking, with awful fake tasting potatoes.

After.

I tweeted this, but I wanted to show the level of unlikely bad game results here as well.

Monday: often a lazy day is the best day

After being up far too late last night, and waking up comparatively too early, not much happened today.

Evidence of a local jerk cat was visible on a car in the lot.

Max and cheese, buffalo chicken soup, chicken tenders.

From Lola's, which focuses on the front of tenders. Everything was good, although not having eaten for eighteen hours probably didn't hurt.  I should also link that when I'm back to using my laptop.

I also can't do panoramas from random photos without my laptop.

In fact, other than work or work related things, there isn't much I can't do now on my phone, or on my tablet if I want a larger viewing area.  I guess blog links are far easier on the laptop.

Also saw this happy squirrel puzzle.

Sunday: a bridge and a party

This picture represents the dim sum I didn't take any pictures of. It wasn't bad, but the service was kind of "crappy in a way people might confuse with style". Plus they kept the steamers open all the time. This leads to cold, dried out dumplings.

 Then the thing I wanted to see at least once.

The bridge.

I am a fan of infrastructure.

Alcatraz through the digital zoom.

Downtown, past the palace of arts.

Alcatraz again, with Oakland behind.

 Next was a small party, but we didn't want to be the first people there.

So coffee shop time. Iced coffee is always the answer. Regular coffee can be really bitter or have of flavors. Although icing mutes good coffee, it promotes lesser ones as well. Unless I know the coffee is good, or I really want a warm drink (which I probably don't), iced is the way to go.

Also the party was vegan and gluten free. Nothing was bad, but sometimes you just need a bacon cheeseburger to end the night.

Saturday: why don't I have any pictures from today?

We had really tasty Mediterranean food for lunch. I do not see any pictures, which is a shame. Very yummy.

I have this one of Elsa and the panda bear.

And this one of the "seafood party" ramen.

Oh. That's right. The ninety hours of "The Mindy Project" ate up a large chunk of the day.

Friday: food, I guess

IKEA meatballs.

Day after Christmas ham.

Japanese Kit Kats that taste better after going under the broiler for a few minutes.

Thursday: More places should be open.

I would argue that this is a major reason why everyone should want to live in a diverse society.  Then you can be assured that not everything is closed on holidays.

Unfortunately, the curry place was not open today.  I was heading to the ramen place, when I noticed that the other kaiten place was open.

Genki Sushi.

Genki is not as good as KuruKuru.  They have a larger menu, but the prices are higher, and the quality is somewhat lower.  Still, it's not bad sushi, and it was open.

They do have little explanations that the food follows.  I do like that.

Poorly mosaicked set.

Not many links because I didn't go through my RSS stuff today.

• Obama should really use the rest of his term to do cool things.

Wednesday: I guess that qualifies as the most exciting thing to happen today.

Flipped version of the photo I took into my car mirror.  Let's use this as the reference link as it's probably not something to just directly google.

• I forgot that The Thin Man is technically a Christmas movie.
• Bunny.
• Bunnies, plural.
• They're decorative.

Tuesday: It's clear why everyone goes on vacation now.

It's because there's approximately zero incentive to do work.  Unfortunately I didn't take vacation until Christmas, which was probably a bad move.  I also realized today that I don't know what's open on Christmas for lunch.  There are a bunch of fancy expensive things open, but I think I just want something simple like ramen, since I'm flying out that night.

Today's lunch.

It's hard to see, but there was a cool pink tint on the bottom-peaks of the clouds as the sun set tonight.  

• I haven't had landjaeger in years.  I was actually thinking about it a few weeks ago.
• Dragon type is weak against fairy type.
• This is good news.  If this works correctly, it'll regulate uber out, and redirect the costs that would have been extracted by them to the drivers and passengers.
• Bunny.
• Phil Plait is better here.

Monday: Fucking strings in C.

Fucking strings in C.

• Foxes.
• Red pandas.
• Pika-car.

Sunday: Blah.

Burger for lunch.

And seriously, Fox?  Rerunning shows two weeks after you just aired them?  Why even fucking bother showing anything if you're going to be that lazy?

• This cat.
• This bear.
• This list is mostly wrong.
• There is no possible way a remake of Highlander would be anything but terrible.

Saturday: This was the plan all along.

It's just been delayed two weeks while I waited for my phone.  The plan was to get the phone that Saturday, and then go to the art museum on Sunday, and take comparison photos with the new phone camera.  Unfortunately Verizon sucks, and then it took a week to ship it, so it had to be this weekend.  Doubly so since I won't be here next weekend.

I thought I'd posted an image of this painting before, but I can't find it.  Anyway, here's "Cupid-like Angels Being Dicks to Birds."

Parvati's butt and Ganesh.  This is actually kind of funny if you know the story.

The bunny jars.

No tigers today, so this dragon is the Best Museum Animal today.

"Let's Guard!"

"Yes way!"

The original museum plan from two weeks ago had hotpot as the dinner of choice.  I saw this video around then, and it looked really tasty.  I looked online, and there's a place reasonably close that looked pretty good.  That continued to be the plan until I realized when I was nearly there that dinner time on the Saturday before Christmas was probably not the best time to go to Ward Center, as the parking can be tricky there in general.  I then thought about going to the kaiten sushi place at Ala Moana, but that's the same problem, just with the added benefit of not being as good as the one I go to in Kahala.  Luckily, I reached the pancake place, and that solved all the problems.

It turns out that I've been to the pancake place enough times that they recognize me.  I suspect that's because I'm not a Japanese couple on their honeymoon.  I'm not saying that's the only other people at the pancake place, but of today's guests, there was me, one other local guy, four honeymoon couples, one older couple, one three-generation vacation, and a mom-grown-up-daughter pair.

Since they no longer have the delicious calamari, I had to go with my backup meal.

Chicken fried steak, gravy on the side so it doesn't get soggy, potato salad because it's delicious, blueberry pancakes, because you don't go to the pancake place and not get pancakes, even if you're having dinner food.  Plus a big POG.

Idea totally stolen from the happy hour drink stand-up thing: POG mimosa.

Then I stopped at Nijiya next door to buy chocolate and CC Lemon, which I am super happy to have a steady source for.

I also saw these totally not Daniel Tiger cookie/candies, and crap, right under him are the snacks that Yotsuba was just eating in the comic I was reading a week or so ago.  I just now noticed that looking at this image.  Anyway, that's Shimajirou, who became popular on the internet when they found the potty training episode of his cartoon.  It's actually somewhat difficult to find a version that isn't "a parody," which in this case largely means, "pretty racist and also surprisingly sexist for no reason."

I also bought a "cute animal":

See?

 Let's open it up:

Oh!  A happy little bear!

 Unfortunately, Happy Bear is also a doughnut.

OH NO!  WHO DID THIS TO YOU, HAPPY BEAR!?

OH GOD!  NO!  BEAR!

 It turns out the villain was me the whole time.  And the ears are almonds.

Also I got a white kitty version for tomorrow.

In looking up the hotpot place above, I found this place as well, which has higher ratings.  Unfortunately they're not open for lunch tomorrow, so I guess that plan I just came up with isn't going to happen.

• Pokemon Cafe.
• Princientist.
• First, Batman:TAS has the best art.  Second, where do you think Selina goes to buy sheets for her circle bed?
• That's brilliant.
• Ok, let's break this one down a bit.
• Why would you go to a pig for your dental work?
• Don't you eat other stuff than meat that you might need teeth for?
• Is is smart to taunt your pig-dentist with the fact that you enjoy eating his relatives?
• I can't think of any meat that is sufficiently tender that you wouldn't need teeth to eat.  I mean, that's kind of why we have teeth.

Wheel of Fortune "fuck you" words.

bib     big     bigwig  bob     bobby   bog     boggy   bogy    boo     boob    booby   book    boozy   bop     bough   bow     box     boy     bozo   buff     bug     buggy   buoy    buy     buzz    by      fib     fig     fix     fizz    fizzy   fob     fog     foggy   fogy    fop     fox     foxy   fuzz     fuzzy   gig     go      gob     goo     goof    goofy   gook    goop    guff    guppy   guy     gyp     hi      high    highboy hip     hippo  hippy    ho      hob     hobby   hobo    hog     hoof    hook    hookup  hooky   hoop    hop     how     hub     hubbub  hubby   huff    huffy   hug    huh      hypo    if      iffy    ivy     jib     jiffy   jig     job     jog     joy     jug     kiwi    kook    kooky   of      off     oh      oho    ow       ox      oxbow   pig     piggy   pip     pixy    poi     poky    pooh    poop    pop     poppy   powwow  pox     pub     puff    puffy   pug    pup      puppy   pyx     quip    quiz    up      vivify  vow     whiff   whip    whiz    whizz   who     whoop   why     wig     wiki    wiz     wok    woo      woof    woozy   wow     yip     yogi    you     yuppy   zip     zippy   zoo

For the final round of Wheel of Fortune, they automatically give you RSTLNE, and after watching for a bit, it seems like most people choose CDMA as their other letters.  These are the words you can make without any of those letters, with proper nouns, abbreviations, single letter words, and things like "uh" removed.

"BIG GOOFY FOX"

"FUZZY KIWI ZOO"

"KOOKY HOBBY"

Friday: Whatever.

See, I said I got pizza last night.  I even brought some in for lunch today instead of going out to get something.

I also hid $20 in an old notebook in case I forget my wallet again in the future.

• Wow.  This is either criminally stupid, or just regular criminal.  The number of people who should be going to jail in this case just keeps going up.
• Phil Plait is wrong.
• I guess this guy died, and made lots of money writing calc a book?  I went to look up the book I used.  It's here.  Free.  Or you can buy a copy for $50/volume, still less than the $250 amazon is wanting for the dead guy's book.  Or you can buy used copies on amazon for $4.  If I ever have to teach something, I'm going to be sure that any required texts are either free online, or readily available in the "taco bell receipt" price level.
• I saw this deal today too.  So now I own a digital cloud copy of Fellowship of the Ring that I'll probably never watch, but whatever, it was free and I don't actually have to download it if I don't want.
• This I might pay for, though.  I have a lot of Playstation 1 games that I either never finished or would like to play again.  $4 seems like a small price to be able to do so.

Thursday: Oh, for fuck's sake.

It looked like it was going to be a totally normal day at work today until I was getting ready for lunch and after thinking about what to get, decided to see if I had any cash so I could go to the sushi/not sushi place.  That was when I discovered that not only did I not have any cash, I didn't have my stupid wallet.  I could have gone home to get it, and then pick up something for lunch, but I decided that I probably had enough food in the office anyway.

Probably.

And then I ordered a pizza when I got home, so it all worked out ok in the end.

• Yes, that's just excessive.  Unless you knock it over, and eat it with a knife and fork.
• Those look good too.  They are open on Saturdays, so being inconveniently in downtown isn't so much of a problem.
• The squirrel in picture two.
• Rilakkuma.