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Friday June 22, 2001
"Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux." Voltaire, L'Enfant prodigue
we have temporarily lost the video portion of our program
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create There is a part of my business that can be very satisfying. It's the creation part. Most of the time in this business, whether you are in a staff job like mine or have to fling code as a maintenance programmer, is spent in basically bureaucratic effort. Typing, compiling, documenting, presenting, teaching, looking up information. But sometimes you are thinking about a new way of doing something. New to your head anyway. And it is thrilling. I think the brain even throws endorphins in these cases. I don't get enough of this feeling. And I got some today. I also succeeded in offloading some boring stuff. That's good, too. So I felt good at the end of the day. Like it might all be worth while. I have a nagging worry or two or three. But I just put them aside. I took FFP's car for maintenance and a recall fix. "You were just here!" the service guy protested. "Different car," said I. So SuRu had me for the lunch time and she decided it would be nice to eat and then look in a shop or two. So we went to Edge City and I ate a tasty vegie burger and she a hamburger. This is my favorite fast food. Above Schlotzsky's even. We wandered Restoration Hardware where I hadn't been in a while. They are like a museum a little, quite fun. We didn't buy anything. Then we looked in the bookstore a little. I read some parts of Dreamweaver/Fireworks books and a business book called Slack and SuRu looked at magazines. We didn't buy anything. FFP and I had been talking about going to some restaurants we haven't been to in a while. So he made a reservation at Si Bon. We got there early, about 6:30. The place isn't very romantic with the sun blazing outside and the traffic on Lamar. We shared some carpaccio and then had salads. Forrest got the Caesar. They made it tableside which is good for him ("more garlic," "lots of anchovies," etc.) but the young girls seemed selected more for their beauty than their flair at mixing things. Still, it's amazing to find a restaurant gutsy enough for a raw (or lighty coddled, looked raw) egg. Peter O'Brien is a bad boy and not afraid of anything or anybody and it shows in his restaurant. (He wasn't cooking this night, but was leaving when we came in to go home and be with his new child. Bad boys are often great with children.) My salad was their special one and was simple and tasty. For entreés we both had the duck in salt dough. I thought it might be like a beef wellington only duck. They said something happened table side and the staff raved about it. The duck breasts showed up encased in dough shaped roughly like a mutant duck. The gal slit it open, extracted the breast and put it on a plate with some cherry sauce and flan. The dough duck was decapitated and the head decorated the plate, too. The dough wasn't really edible so it wasn't like Wellington where the pastry and duxelles and the meat juice makes something so good you good toss the wonderful beef inside and still enjoy it. The duck breast was pretty good, though, very juicy from having cooked inside this dough.The Robert Bruce Petit Syrah was tasty (they were out of the more reasonably priced South African wines they listed on the wine list) and I finished it while FFP had a lemon tart and we both had some French press coffee. The clientale seemed decidedly UT sociology professor in Hawaiian shirts until we were leaving when some very rich and sophisticated friends of ours arrived. Go figure. At home we watched
the The Maltese Falcon. Twice, I think. I missed the ending both
times, dozing. But I found some cool parts to appreciate like the shadows
in Sam Spade's office and the great acting (or is it just the unique look?
no it's acting, too, I think) of Peter Lorre. |
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