San Francisco

I’ll be headed to San Francisco next Wednesday for a seminar for work. I barely know the area, but my hotel is on Powell (don’t know the cross-street).

Anyone know some good places around there for lunch and/or dinner? Nothing fancy, just good food and pleasant atmosphere.

Blending Marbles

This is one amazing blender.  I wonder how dull the blades are after this? And how painful would it be to inhale the glass dust?

Twins in my Eggs

I had eggs for breakfast today. Three of them. Until I cracked the third egg to find this (lower left egg).

This one is a first for me…

Learn to Make Pancakes

Sort of…the folks on the other side of the pond (in the UK, for clarity) do some stuff differently after all.  Lemon on your pancake?

Day After Disneyland

I had a good time at Disneyland yesterday.  I took a couple of photos with my phone and sent them to my flickr account (more links in the lower end of the sidebar).  I love that I can send photos from my phone to an email account that will suddenly appear on my blog and flickr site in a few minutes.  Pretty damn cool.

Anyway, I got to do some stuff that I hadn’t done before.  Namely taking an unadvertised tour of the second apartment in Disneyland.  One is above the fire house on Main Street that is still used by Walt Disney’s family on occassion and no tours go there.  But there’s another in New Orleans Square above Pirates of the Caribbean.  It’s now the Disney Gallery where you can see lots of concept art for the lands over the last 50 years as well as a good deal of concept art for the ride underneath.  Pretty cool, but the gallery was first intended as an apartment for visiting VIPs to stay.  From that perspective, it’s a bit cooler.

The exciting part was being able to go out on a balcony that’s usually locked and see a crowded Disneyland from a relatively secluded area.  Each night, 20 people are allowed to view Fantasmic from this balcony for $59 a pop.  To sweeten the deal, an all-you-can-eat dessert part is part of the package.  Not too shabby and it really is the best view of Fantasmic you’ll get anywhere in the park.

We also ate lunch/dinner at the Blue Bayou.  I’ve never been there nor had a Monte Cristo sandwich (I still want to say Monte Christu for some reason when I talk about that sandwich).  It was delicious, but the big surprise was (not the check) the dessert.  I had to take a picture of the cookie boat and was a bit surprised that others had as well.

All in all, it was a good day.  I even decided to go on Star Tours at the last minute knowing that I’d be alseep on the ride home just as the migraine was kicking in.  I still felt a little weird, but not nearly as weird/poor as I have the past few times.

Diet Coke and Busting Myths

Tonight at 9:00 the Mythbusters will be doing stuff with Diet Coke and Mentos.  I’m not sure what the myth is (it’s pretty well established that you can get a cool effect by combining the two).

Regardless, if you know where I live and want to stop by to watch with me, come on over.  Everyone gets kicked out at 10:30 though.  I need to sleep more.

Redlands Growth

This are moving a little too fast for my taste in the development of Redlands.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the new shops and places to eat. But I wonder what will happen to State Street now if such places arrived. The Gourmet Pizza Shoppe is a jewel. State Street Deli offers a better sandwich than any place I know. The Frugal Frigate has always been able to get the books I want (though I admit to ordering on Amazon as well). Caprice Cafe, Betty’s Burgers, The Farm, all of these are run by our friends and families. Some aren’t the quality of atmosphere of a PF Chang’s, but that’s why I like to go there. It’s local and feels like home without being pretentious and has their own style of high class and upper crust without needing a brand name to make it happen.

I’ll welcome new places to shop and get goods. The different restaurants will also add some options for dining and I won’t deny that they’ll bring business our way. But I’ll think them not worth the cost if the local, family-owned places we have now are forced to close thanks to their presence. If we could take this a bit slower, but not so slow as to do nothing, and make sure the local business won’t suffer more of a hit than can be expected, I’ll be happier about new places opening.

It really does have to be Diet Coke…

That isn’t much of a control, though.  Different volume of liquid, for one thing.  And they changed the Mentos by chewing them first.  Still, very cool, even after the many times of having seen this done over and over and over and over and over and over and over…..

That International Flavor

Found a nice quiz about how various countries do table/dinner manners. Pretty interesting, some of it, though the one about China wasn’t true when I was in Chinatown. Then again, every time my plate was nearly cleared, my host piled more food on it. Since I thought I had to finish everything on my plate or insult them, I ate an unhealthy amount of food that night.

Enjoy!