random bits

[cellio]

My fourth-season Blake's 7 DVDs came last week. In this season they have a new-to-them ship with a computer named Slave. I don't think I had previously noticed that the computer addresses Avon as "master" but the others as "sir". I wonder if Avon threatened it. :-)

Sunday night we joined ralphmelton (birthday boy), lorimelton, and mrpeck at John Harvard's in Monroeville. Dani and I ordered a beer sampler to explore the options; we got the smaller one, which is five five-ounce glasses (your choice of beers). They deliver the sampler on a placemat with a key (so your glasses go on specific places on the mat); I hadn't noticed that the list was ordered from less to more hoppy/bitter until they lined ours up on one side of the sheet. :-)

Tonight's dinner was almost a case of "grandfather's axe": I followed the recipe on the can of coconut milk, except that I used chicken instead of shrimp and broccoli instead of asparagus and onions instead of bell peppers, but it's still the recipe on the side of the can. (Verdict for next time: needs spices; try ginger.)

Dani and I talked about making reservations for an upcoming SCA event (war practice) tonight and we both realized that we're going entirely on inertia. Neither of us is actually drawn to this particular event this year; we're just running on auto-pilot. So we might not do that. Don't know yet. (It was actually Dani who pointed this out; I've become less active in the SCA and am being careful not to influence him in that direction, but he's feeling "eh" about this one on his own. We were just at an event a couple weeks ago, and that seems to have satisfied us both for the nonce.)

At the shabbaton I talked with someone who's currently taking private Hebrew lessons, and she suggested that we share a lesson slot and pair up as partners. I think she's more advanced than I am and I pointed this out, and she said that's fine. We'll probably start this after the ulpan. (Different teacher. She doesn't like the one I'm currently taking classes from and she says her tutor is much better.) This should be quite helpful, and if not, I can drop out and she can go back to what she was doing.

Comments

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I really liked that beer sampler system; we tried it at a couple of brew pubs, and thought it was a very civilised way to sample a range of beers.

In fact, one thing that struck us on our last trip to the States was that the beer had got much better, and the coffee was worse (or maybe we're just drinking it stronger than we used to...).

[cellio]

It's now a lot easier to get beer that isn't as overwhelmingly popular as Bud, Miller, etc. I don't know how much of this is better distribution channels for smaller breweries and how much is an increase in pubs that produce their own. (The former might fuel the success of the latter -- once people have better exposure to a wider variety, they might be more inclined to patronize the local brew-pub.)

When I was in college I think I could name about six types of beer. The first time I walked into a local restaurant with a twelve-page beer menu I was pretty surprised. :-)

I don't drink coffee, so I can't comment on that. There, too, we seem to have more variety in the ready-to-drink variety; while it's been easy for a while to buy beans (or, if you must, ground) in a variety of types for home brewing, I suspect the rise of Starbucks et al has helped attune people to the idea that coffee comes in more than two varieties ("regular" and "decaf").

I could, of course, be completely wrong on all of this; I'm speculating, not asserting knowledge. :-)