Television

Have you seen the new show The Glades? It started early this month on A&E and I really like it so far.

The show stars Australian actor Matt Passmore who plays a Chicago detective who was fired due to screwing his boss' wife. Bad move, eh? So he relocated to southern Florida and took up his bad boy ways down near the Everglades. Passmore does a good job in this role. He's very irritating and that's how his character is supposed to be. The love interest is cute as the dickens and a bit complicated since she's married to a guy in jail.

The reality shows on Bravo are closing in on the end. Work of Art (which I still like a lot) is down to the last 5 artists and on Top Chef, Andrea Curto-Randazzo's departure ---she reminds me of Sarah Jessica Parker in that an iffy face is combined with a hot body--- means that there's 10 left, I think, out of the starting 17.

Last night's episode of Top Chef got viewers all riled up due to a pea purée fight. Personally I think it was just the editors making it look like some underhanded skulduggery was going on---but on blogs and bulletin boards it looks like viewers ate it up. Maybe they'll reveal if the pea purée was really stolen on next week's episode. Right now they're saying that nobody knows which is obvious BS. *sigh* Top Chef is descending into the nasty basement of reality tv.

Patootie Pain

Work today was a pain in the patootie. A royal pain, at that. Three different crises running in parallel. It was truly a mess.

None of them were all that bad and could have been solved in fairly short order --- if only the other two crises would have left me alone for 40 minutes or so. Unfortunately all three took quite a while to solve because the other folk kept calling or Emailing me which forced each problem in turn to worsen while I was taking care of the most recent complainer. Yikes.

Fortunately days like this are very rare in my job. Was it a full moon day or something? I was sure glad when I got out of there at 5pm.

And after work I went on my second date with.... what name should we give her? Maybe Sybil. That's easy to remember. And this time we had a traditional "dinner and a movie" date. Dinner was Italian at Tarantini Restaurant not far from campus. Sybil had the Fettuccine Alfredo (only $12---gotta love it) and I had the Vitello Parmigiana ($17) and we had some excellent bruchetta as an appetizer. Lots of feta cheese on it and it tasted wonderful. I was going to have a bottle of wine and forgot all about it. I just remembered now. Oops.

Neither of us was wearing a watch and when we left the restaurant we turned our phones back on --- and it was 6:57pm and the movie was starting at 7pm. Oops! Fortunately the theatre wasn't all that far away and of course they put all that crap on first so we ended up walking in right at the start of the rolling of credits. *whew* The move we saw was Inception and it was pretty good. It also was pretty long. It just kept going and going and going. :-) Fortunately the acting was pretty damn good. The plot was a little twisty but I didn't think it was nearly as complex as the reviews would have you believe. And by a little after 11pm I was home. It is a work night after all.

The Taste of Singapore

I went on a date tonight, the first one in many weeks. And the first one to go well in months. Yes, months!

We met at a Asian restaurant in Southern Village named Merlion, which specializes in the cuisine of Singapore:

The vibrant, multicultural country of Singapore is home to an equally distinctive blend of foods from all across Southeast Asia. The perfect synthesis of the best of Asia makes Singapore a food paradise. Merlion Restaurant brings the authentic and unique flavors of Singapore to Southern Village in Chapel Hill. Come visit and find out why we call Merlion Restaurant, “Uniquely Singapore.”

This is what I decided to have:

Merlion Pineapple Rice
Rice stir-fried with Merlion’s aromatic spice blend and refreshing pineapple
cubes. Garnished with pine nuts, scallion and golden shallot.
With Vegetables or with Chicken 13.95

I liked but wasn't thrilled with the meal. Unmentioned in the menu description was the huge amounts of broccoli in the dish nor did they mention the heap of dried bacon on top. I HATE bacon. And yes, I realize I'm about the only person that does.

By the way, courtesy of Wiki, the Merlion is an imaginary creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish, used as a mascot of Singapore. Its name combines "mer" meaning the sea and "lion". That's a picture of one over on the left.

Fortunately my date more than made up for the lackluster meal. She was warm in demeanor and passionate about her work. It was wonderful to just listen to her. And so far she hasn't noticed how boring and contrary I am. I've got my fingers crossed!

Further developments, if any, to follow. Since I've not been very lucky in getting to the second date point---this might be the only mention. :-(

In case you want something to ponder over, where in 'ell would a merlion live? It seems poorly adapted to the sea and it certainly can't move around on land. I guess I'd understand it better if I knew more about the background of Singapore and the people there. Odd critter though.

Friday

This has been one long and very hot week. The temps have been hovering near 100 the past few days and might have hit triple digits once or twice.

Walking across our hilly campus today to drop this weeks worth of books off at the library got me soaking wet with sweat. It's brutal out there!

The books on the left are the ones I'm bringing back. I'm going to take out a few more by Karin Slaughter. I'd read two book by her before but hadn't remembered her name. Now I'm going to read her books more systematically.

Back to the weather topic: while I might complain about the heat, the pictures below are of people who really should complain. Construction workers and athletes that have to train outdoors.

I took the two pictures while walking across campus. The UNC football stadium is having some cosmetic surgery and this is a bad summer for it. At least if you're doing the work. I'm glad I was just taking a mile and a half walk. Doing real labor outside is just nuts.

kayaking

Just a few river scenes taken with my new waterproof camera.

Yes, no more cases of digital camera suicide for me. The days of kayaking mishaps and hiking sweat causing cameras to die early deaths are behind me!

The First to Table

Coming Along

Now I've got 6 Roma tomatoes that are ripe and nearly half of the grape tomatoes. My bell peppers, on the other hand, just aren't doing much. The beans are looking good but it'll be some time before I can harvest them.

Lunch

I had lunch today at a Chinese restaurant today. The Red Lotus in Chapel Hill.

A friend of mine had her 43rd birthday recently and instead of a gift, she asked to go out to lunch. So we did.

It was great for me since I don't get to go out to lunch very often. I have to park off-campus and as a result going out to eat isn't easy. Cry has a parking spot on campus so she can just scoot over to her car and drive away.

The receipt is funny. They ask at the bottom for customers to follow them on Twitter and Facebook. The world is changing too fast for me!

new toy--again

I have another toy. This time it's a kayak. A pretty yellow one.

I got it used off of Craig's List from Jeff, a guy who lives over in Burlington. I paid $550 for it which isn't a great deal but the yak is in good shape, almost new, and it is nearly $300 off what I'd pay for it in a store at retail.

If you know much about kayaks, then you realize this is a very inexpensive boat 'cause 14 foot long kayaks usually go for a lot more than $750-800. However this one doesn't have much in the way of frills and it's plastic all the way.

But it will float---or at least that's what Jeff told me. :-)

I hope to find out for myself tomorrow night. If I can get out of work early enough I'm planning on going to a Meetup paddle on Lake Jordan.

I sure do hope this thing floats.

In case you're curious, the first picture is at Jeff's house after we loaded the boat on my car. And the second picture is the boat on my rear deck. And my deck starts to look quite small when there's a 14 foot boat stretched across it. :-(