Sunday: I again didn't know what to get for lunch.

I'm beginning to think that I have french onion soup like once a month or so.

I nearly got another backup pastrami sandwich, but couldn't convince myself it was worth it.  The backup sandwich idea today was mostly a way to get both the soup and a side of mac&cheese, since they have super good m&c.

Instead of having food in my car, I took the super long way home by going up Tantalus.

Rainbow shooting out of Manoa.

The same rainbow again, from higher up at the lookout.  There's a second rainbow barely visible coming from the university.

Diamond Head to the airport.

• Local wolf.
• Kansas is stupid.
• As is this guy.

Saturday: Catching up on backlogs.

Which led to me sitting around not doing anything really productive until I was hungry.  I also didn't know what I wanted for lunch, so it's good that Julie did when I asked:

Yeah.  It's been awhile.

Then I got an ahi.

And they didn't have salmon kama, so I spent way too long trying to decide between that and ebi fry.

The sushi dude bumped the glove box too far, resulting in it accidentally rearranging all the dishes as they went around.

But sushi only makes you not hungry for so long.  So it's good that I went to WF to get some groceries.  I saw that they had calzones on sale, and picked one up for a later dinner.  The options were pepperoni and garlic/spinach, both of which sounded good.  However, spinach inside a calzone seems like it might be super soggy, so I did pepperoni.  This also led to the unexpectedly unhelpful conversation:

Calzone-a-teer: "Do you want this heated up?"
Me: "No thanks.  How should I heat it up at home?"
C: "Um...like a microwave?  Or an oven?"
Me: "Ok, then."

A lot of things at WF have "here's how to cook" instructions, so I wondered if these were like "350 for ten minutes."  It turns out the reheat instructions are "add some heat to it until it's sufficiently heated.  Or don't, whatever, we don't care."

Not bad, but the whole grain crust is a bit of a distraction.  It also didn't have any ricotta inside, which makes it more like a pizza pocket than a proper calzone.

• This is stupid, not art.  "Oh, but he's commenting on the transient nature of our internet-based world, and reimagining it in a permanent form.  This is totally art."  No.  He's doing the equivalent of printing out all his emails and selling that concept to people with more money than sense.  That's not art.  That's what old people do.
• Mark Evanier has written piles of comics, comic related things, television shows, and knows about 60% of all famous people who have ever lived.  Here he is talking about his favorite pre-cooked turkey product, because it's hilarious.
• Denny's.
• Kitten crash.
• This has been sitting in the RSS pile for days, and then today I heard that his son died.  Keep being the best Vice President ever, Joe.

Friday: "Damn it bird, don't go that way! Use your tiny bird brain!"

The bird had decided to walk in front of my car to escape my car, instead of away from my car.  Birds are dumb.

Hrm.  I'm assuming the jaggies are there because the ephemeris calculator has problems when the apparent speed is very fast.

• Why Agent Carter is cool.
• Squirrel.
• Yeah, because that sounds totally fine: "which includes their location at any time (even when the app isn’t running)".

Thursday: Why I bought my phone directly.

My phone decided to tell me that I used a bunch of data.

The majority of which by me reading RSS things.  Two gigabytes is not a sufficient level of data.  Neither is five or ten.  That's why I will keep my unlimited plan forever.  Fuck you, Verizon.

• I see.  So the TSA pre check thing is basically random.  Good job being randomly useful, TSA.
• Sailor Moon x Captain America.
• Hayley Atwell is pretty much the best at being a celebrity.
• WTF, 1930s?
• The first paragraph.

Wednesday: Back to work :(

The results of the mall shopping yesterday.  I'm not sure this is the final location for it, but it works for now.

The backup pastrami sandwich from yesterday.  The bread went a bit stale, but it was still yummy.

I had 210 things in my saved RSS feeds.  Now it's down to 173.  I'm hoping to cull it down by 10-20 a day until it's down to "things I'm actually saving" and "things I'm saving until Christmas, because I saved them last Christmas, and missed my chance to post them."  Maybe I should do a fake Christmas in July just to get those links posted.

• All squirrels are good.
• I assume they'll keep the products the same, because if people are buying Applegate, they're likely not just going to switch to regular products.
• I should rewatch Jonny Quest.
• Cool pictures.
• OMG, the 1940s, putting cheese on a burger isn't some sort of speculative culinary adventure.

Tuesday: Return home.

As told through a series of food related images.

Last night we'd planned to do "fancy dinner," but downgraded that to "let's just have nachos, because nachos are delicious."  That left pre-left-overs, which became fancy lunch.

These tomatoes were not quite as good as hoped.  Julie thought they had an odd texture, and I thought they were a bit more bitter than they should have been.

 Followed by the main:

Beans and potatoes partially cooked yesterday.  The pork loin was cooked in a brilliant "450, hot pan, season loin, splash of oil, 10 minutes, flip, 10-15 minutes more, rest 10 minutes" recipe that Julie found somewhere.

Followed by some mall shopping (pictures tomorrow), and another game of Pandemic (which we lost due to an outbreak chain reaction).  At this point I had reached the "pre-flight nervous" stage, and so we headed for the BART station I could take to the airport without having to switch trains.  This worked well, and is probably the best solution for rush-hour timed flights.

I had a TSA pre-check mark on my boarding pass, which is a wonderful thing.  Remember how flying used to be, back before everyone collectively lost their minds?  Pre-check makes things work like that again.  Dump your luggage on the belt, take off your coat maybe, and then walk through the metal detector and pick up your shit.  No belt fuckery, no shoe fuckery, no useless piece of shit backscatter fuckery.  Just "I'm going on a flight, but it's cool, I'm not a criminal," stuff like it should be.

Then I had to walk to a different area of the terminal, which made me worry with "we will soon have food and art in this part of the airport" signs.  This was unnecessary worry, as the SFO airport deli has a location right next to the gate I was flying out of.  So I got a hot pastrami and swiss on rye.

I later got a cold pastrami and swiss on rye for the plane, but never ate it.  I guess that's lunch tomorrow.

Final story before the day-blog deadline:  While boarding, I heard some commotion behind me.  A couple was arguing, because she'd gotten through without any trouble, but he'd been stopped because he had tried to scan her boarding pass.  Throughout the entire trip down the jet bridge, he kept harassing her with statements like, "why did you scan my ticket?  That's my ticket, and you should have scanned yours instead."  This ignores the main point that they were both on the damn jet bridge, and so the gate agent had clearly sorted out the problem.  This continued into the plane itself, where they were stopped in the aisle next to where I was sitting.  "Look, I'm right, and you're wrong, face it baby."  He then made the tragic mistake of looking to me for support of his side.  Looking to me, the person who silently wished death on his entire family if it would just make the jet bridge quiet.

"Nobody fucking cares."

"Yeah, see," picked up the wife to the surprise of Jimmy Jackass, "nobody cares who scanned what."

Because no one does.  You're on the plane.  Find your seat and shut the fuck up.

Monday: memorial day

I forgot to take a picture of any of the food, so I'm just putting in the pandemic board from last night.

Sunday: San Francisco zoo

Animals!

Lemurs!

A kind of monkey!

Peacock!

Penguins!

Macaw!

Any easter!

Polar bear!

Kangaroos!

Red panda!

Red panda!

Red panda!

Red panda!

And then pho for dinner.

Saturday: mostly food

This past melt was made wrong.

This pizza was tasty. And the sports gotta won.

 Then I tried to do draw a panda day. It didn't turn out well.

But Julie's "cut a panda" was good.

I tried again later, and it's OK.

Friday: Inca cola doesn't taste like I was expecting

Also that restaurant is bad at restauranting.

Thursday: airports suck

Wednesday: The best thing to do before leaving on a trip.

Finding surprise bits of glass.  With your foot.  In a place that never stops bleeding.

The good news is that having proper insurance means I can drive miles to the hospital, get it glued shut, and go home after sitting around for three hours.  Why are people fighting against affordable health care for everyone?

• I guess there's a new burrito place.  I should try it out.
• I didn't notice this guy, but that's kind of cool.

Only two links because I'm tired and don't feel like finding more.

Tuesday: Best way to show something.

While eating lunch today, I saw Chris Hardwick tweet about St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg.  I saw the image, and thought to myself, "I think I've been there."

It turns out I was right.

Cell phone pictures of photos in an album taken with a crappy camera.  With labels printed from and Apple 2e.

It's somewhat surprising how much better Hardwick's cell phone camera is compared to actual film.

But this was twenty years ago.

Also, sorry I stole the room key, Ramada Park Hotel.  I seem to recall we were in a hurry to continue to the next stop.

• That's why the movie made no sense.  You were supposed to watch the 26-episode tv series, and then play a video game on the Sega Saturn before watching it.  As it is, it looks like a senselessly dark and gritty sequel to a hilarious show.
• I don't think I'm going to vote for Keith Kaneshiro next time.
• I'm beginning to think Alameda is like 90% ice cream places.
• Unfortunately there are no issue details, but I really hope these are from a bunch of different ones.
• I downloaded my digital copies, but I don't want to read it digitally when I have a real copy somewhere in the mail.
• I did not know this.  Why wasn't this covered as part of US/World history?  This seems like a really important thing.
• Now I want an "Adventure Team" knock off toy.

Monday: Damn it, United, you don't need to send me two emails a day until my trip.

Especially since most of these emails follow the script, "Wouldn't X be nice?  You can buy X for $MONEY!  Click here to learn more!" with the added constraint that X was free two years ago.  Go fuck yourself, Jeff Smisek.

"Guys?  Did anyone bring anything other than a sword?"  "I brought a tiny boat with more skeletons!"  "Me too!"  "But, like, oars?  Or a map?  Seriously, doesn't anyone know where the hell we're going?"  "I bet we're going to stab people!"  "Yeah!"  "I brought Jormungandr!   Wait, that was probably a mistake, I think."  "I know who I'm stabbing!"

• I wasn't sure, but a google reverse image search pointed to the Prose Edda, so that answered some of the questions.
• Orangutan + Tigers.
• I count two "it's the Avengers," three "probably, because I'm interested in the characters," and two "sure, this is important Avenger build up stuff, but I'll wait to see if the reviews are any good first."  So one, maybe two movies a year look interesting.

Sunday: Well, that was a choice, I guess.

Earlier in the week, I saw this story on Consumerist, and it made me think of Chili's.  This combined with a random reference in a youtube video gave me the idea to see if their improvements really did much.  To start, a fun direct quote:

Bartender: I'm sorry, sir, but we're out of apple.

Guy: Ok.  I'll just have a regular martini, then.

My brain: That is not how an apple-tini works.

Let's have an appetizer:

White spinach queso.  The spinach is not white, the queso is, and it's also pretty short on spinach.  I was expecting a Mexican inspired spinach artichoke dip.  This was mainly just a sheet of cheese.  The edges were melty, so you could scoop with chips, but after that, it quickly just became a graveyard for chips.  It wasn't bad, but it was basically just cheese.  You can't fuck up cheese.  The pico and guac weren't terribly great, though.

 And a burger with this fancy "egg-wash":

Ok, it's clear they're trying to pull something like the Counter does next door.  This is certainly better presentation than their previous use of the plastic molded platforms (now used solely for the chips, it seems).  It's also not a terrible burger, either, but it tries too hard.  "Here, we put a bunch of bacon on it!  And some panko-breaded onion rings!  And real lettuce and tomatos!  We make our own pickles!  We have our own special sauce that totally isn't just the same thousand island everyone uses!"  Yes it is, Chili's.  No one likes thousand island, and why would you put that on a burger that also comes with bbq sauce?  That's just going to be a sloppy mess.  It was a sloppy mess anyway, even after scraping off that thousand island and the pickles.  It was cooked nicely, with a decent medium that had a lot of juice.  But the overall feeling is still, "we're trying too hard on this thing, so you don't notice that our menu is all over the place."

Plus they have a robot thing that annoying blinks things at you when you're trying to watch your phone.  You can't actually order from it, you can reorder drinks from the bar only, and it still kind of feels weird to check out at the table and just walk out without talking to anyone.  It's almost something useful, but isn't really.

• It's thirty-two seconds long.  It is worth clicking through to watch the movie.
• Yes, exactly.
• The last gif.

Saturday: I productively did nothing today.

But I did get pancakes.

And a pork chop.

• Poor little monkey doesn't understand lemons at all.
• I don't know why I pinned this comic this morning, but I don't have a third link otherwise.  Probably for the Jean Grey pun.

Especially so since I decided I didn't like the second link.

Friday: Which is worse, no pizza or bad pizza?

I felt like pizza for dinner.  A few weeks ago I went to the usual pizza place by work for a Friday pizza dinner to take home, and it was super crazy crowded, they were nearly out of all pizzas entirely, and all the new pizzas they were making were for take outs.  So I thought I'd give that other pizza place a second chance, a year+ since I last ate there.  I contemplated them also being out of pizza, leading to the title conundrum.  I settled on "no pizza" as always being worse, and went to see what I could get today.

This.

Tl;dr: it's still bad pizza, and they're still doing just about everything wrong.  This explains why they were not super crazy crowded, despite having a massive parking lot.

Here's why it's bad:

1. Note the mismatch.  They don't do the double slice strategy, so it's just a hodgepodge of what slices they have available.
2. One type that was available was "chicken ranch."  Go fuck yourself.
3. I'm not a fan of their sausage, but this is really not something I could claim was bad.  
4. Ditto with the fact that it was cold by the time I got home.  I chose to drive home with it, so that's not really their fault.
5. The fact that the crust was burnt is.  They've tried to switch to a double-bake method, but they're still using the warming rack.  So they bake the pizza fully, dehydrate it in the warming rack, and then burn the bottom crust with a second bake.  It's like they actively hate pizza.
6. Still more expensive than Bostons.
7. And I think I am going to blame them for the cold pizza.  When I did the last Friday pizza dinner from Bostons, I got home with warm pizza.  Not blazing hot, but warm and soft.  It helps that they have a much thicker crust.  This was in the eighth of an inch range, which is simply too thin.
8. Very little sauce.  Particularly on the cheese slice.  There was sauce at the point, and none by the time you got to the crust.  This is probably part of the reason the crust burnt: there's nothing else to warm up, so you just cook the crust more.

And earlier in the day, I took pictures of my Sunshine Buddy, because it was dancing.

Dance!

And from a different part of the full images, the sunshine through the trees:

Leaves!

• Tiny squirrel friend.
• Tired commuter coyote.
• Squirrel Girl.

And I know that the script is probably already written, and this is incredibly unlikely to ever happen anyway, BUT:  the Avengers Infinity War would be so much better if they had Squirrel Girl in it.  They probably can't let her just defeat Thanos off screen, but it'd be great to see her just solve some problem other heroes were going to do but couldn't because they were intercepted.  It looks like I'm not the only one thinking this, too.