weekend misc

The new machine is now on the network, sort of. (It can see the network but the other machines can't see it.) Dani named it "Hub2". Gee, how creative. :-) (Also inaccurate...)

Last night Dani and I went to a party to celebrate Larry's 60th birthday. (I had no idea he was 60 until we got the invitation; I was guessing mid-50s.) The party was very nice, and I got to see some people I haven't seen in a while (ex-Claritechers and SOs).

Alison was there and seems to be happy; the startup she joined (formed by two Claritech VPs) seems to be doing very well in the funding department. (They still need customers.) If David had actually let them do their jobs at Claritech, things probably would have turned out differently.

Mark was there. He seemed to be tired and worn down, but not nearly as bad as he was at the end of the Claritech thing. Things seem to be getting better for that group now, too. (Hi guys. :-) )

Services this morning were a lot smaller than usual because lots of people are off at a big UAHC convention in Boston. I've got to get to one of those someday; people always come back from them energized. (It's a mix of lectures, workshops, and services, with (among things) lots of singing. Oh, and reportedly one of the biggest collections of Judaica for sale in a single location.)

This afternoon I took a nap for a couple hours. At one point the "snoozons" were pretty heavy in the living room: Embla was sleeping on the couch, Baldur was sleeping on the other recliner, I was sleeping on a recliner, and Erik was sleeping on me. :-) But I felt a lot better after I woke up.

I have to figure out what to get my parents for Christmas. They are hard to buy for. In an unusual turn of events, I actually have some ideas for my father but not for my mother (usually it's the other way around). The only thing my mother has mentioned is something that would really be for both of them, and would also manifest as a gift certificate so they could pick out the item (they would have to). I don't like giving gift certificates, but maybe that's what I'll end up doing in this case. Dunno. At least my sister and her kids are still easy; the kids are still addicted to Nintendo-type games. (The new thing this year is something called a "game cube". I have no idea what makes it different from the previous generation of Nintendo machines.)

I also have to figure out -- soon, as it has to be mailed -- what to get my godparents. It's a frustrating situation: we have basically no contact, and I'd be happy to just end the gift-exchange thing entirely, but my parents think they would be hurt by that. But we don't really know each other, so every year we exchange generic gifts based on insufficient information. Sigh.

Tomorrow night is the first night of Chanukah. I'm going to make some latkes to take to Sunday dinner. Ralph and Lori get to figure out what goes with latkes. :-)

recent reading

This might not be of interest to anyone other than me, but hey, it's my journal. :-)

( I warned you. )

restaurant pico-reviews

We went to Aladin's Garden (on Forbes near Zeb's) a few nights ago. The food was good; the garlic soup was very good (and vegetarian). There are a lot of vegetarian options. The service was good after an initial snafu (that they were very apologetic about). Recommended.

Speaking of Zeb's, which is where Sweet Basil was, we ate there a few weeks ago. The food was good and the portions were huge; next time I will ask if I can order the "lunch" portion at dinner time. I had the blackened tuna and it was very tasty.

Tonight we decided to break in the entertainment book we bought last month by using one of the buy-one-dinner-get-one-free offers at an unknown-to-us restaurant. We went to Roland's Seafood in the Strip. I had the tuna (blackened, again) and found it underwhelming -- not bad, but mediocre. It was overcooked and the seasoning didn't have much zing to it. Dani had the surf and turf and said it was good. The service, though, was abysmal. We were there for about two hours, and it wasn't so crowded that the kitchen was just backed up. Our waiter kept disappearing; it took a long time to order, and then a while to get food, and it took a *long* time to get the check (and then get the error corrected, and then pay...). I'm in no hurry to collect more data points.