Saturday, September 10, 2005
Three word hotel review: This hotel sucks.
Ignoring the fact that they have no bathtubs (only showers), their staff seem to be dimwits, and it's currently filled with looters evacuees from New Orleans that insist on being extremely loud at all hours, partying in the halls, and sounding like they're trashing the rooms adjoined to ours, today the hotel ran out of water. There's a certain ironic humor to moving people from shelters with no water into this hotel, but it's definitely not cool if you're paying for it.
Yesterday (Friday) morning they slipped a zero-notice note under the door that there would be a water interruption for the day (as in on Friday). This morning — Saturday — we discovered that we had no water. No running toilet, no running shower, no pressure from the taps. Called the front desk and asked them when it would be back up and they told us 4 PM, long after checkout time. “They were supposed to slip a note under your door last night, I guess you didn't get it.”
Now, I'm not convinced that slipping a note under the door at 3 AM the night before a seven hour water blackout the next morning is acceptable given that the hotel surely has people who have business meetings and commitments that they're going to need showers for, to say nothing of the need to use the toilet. I asked the hotel what refund we could expect and they told us we could have “half off” for the affected day. Yeah, I'd have to say that no water pretty much makes a hotel valueless.
Anyway, don't stay at the Aristocrat Holiday Inn in Dallas, Texas.
Friday, September 9, 2005
I recently posted an entry in ModBlog on “extreme knitting” — I have to add here a picture of a sweater that namesofthedead (who's doing the suspension) made of the BME calm logo. I'm pretty sure she sells them, so if you want one (or something similar), she has my permission to make them with the official logos and you'll need to contact her directly if you're interested.
Oh, and I forgot to mention it, but
ModBlog is now over a month old! (And
Needled is something like three and a half months old now too, so there's an increasing set of modification blogs for people to read).
Friday, September 9, 2005
I think Avid believes that my entry on shrooms was not quite inspired enough in terms of my choice of picture, so he sent me this improvement.
Saturday, September 3, 2005
Sorry about the downtime, that should be all for now — still having some tech problems but with CT's help a complete scan and rebuild of the filesystem was done… I'm still very nervous about some things, and I think in October I'm going to fly up and deal with some hardware issues in person, but I feel secure enough that I'm not going to cancel my vacation (which very nearly happened).
Tattoo below by David at Waterproof Tattoos in Orebro, Sweden.
Please, God, just let me take a vacation without something terrible happening, just this once. I know I take your name in vain, oh, pretty much every single day, but seriously, lighten up with me or I'm making a full-on pledge to burn down Vatican City with the red dude down below… because I need to smoke me some pot in Amsterdam or I'm gonna go seriously crazy.
Saturday, September 3, 2005
At this point I'm really sold on using my coffee grinder to make fresh spice mixes… The flavor of sauces and pastes you can generate is so much richer (but without being overpowering) than you can get from the same combination of pre-powdered spices.
Today my mix was half cascabel and half guajillo peppers in a sesame seed and almond butter (all fresh ground from whole seeds and nuts) with a little salt and brown sugar — a further experiment in the hot and sweet sauces I've been playing with lately. It's on top of zucchini, garbanzo beans, fresh chiles, yellow peppers, and sliced broccoli stalk, fried in sesame oil, fresh lime, and fresh garlic for about five minutes. I ate it with a whole wheat bagel. Also, I had some chickpeas left over, so I made a little side salad with the spice mix, half a lime, and a touch of sesame oil. On the chickpea salad it maintained a lot of its sweet nutty taste that got lost in the stirfry.
When I write these entries people invariably send me very nice messages asking for exact recipes, or even flattering me with the suggestion of putting together a cookbook. Honestly though, everything I post on cooking is
really simple. I have no real knowledge on the subject and certainly no training — I just
do it because I enjoy it, and you can do the same. Cooking good food is really, really easy. Anyone can do it! Seriously, once you've tried a few times, you'll see how simple this stuff is and how silly it would be to post in-depth recipes of what I eat.
