A Journal of My Mid-Life Crisis

6 December 1998 - Food, Gadgetry, Music and Disappointments

Food: My Boulder restaurant reports have become more or less obligatory. I go out to eat so rarely in Los Angeles (aside from grabbing lunch at Togo's or at Wu's Kitchen in Westchester every now and again) so it's weird to feel like such a restaurant expert in another city. Anyway, I had three nice breakfasts - raspberry pancakes at Le Peep (a special), a Mexican omelette at Walnut Cafe, and a sort of hash brown casserole at Turley's. The first two are standard places for me. Turley's is a place I'd meant to try for a long time, especially as it is also very close to the hotel I stay at (The Regal Harvest House) and opens at 6:30 a.m., making it suitable for days of early meetings. The food was nice, but the service was slow. So I really do need to get there at 6:30 if I have an 8 o'clock meeting.

I never managed to go out to lunch. In fact, two of the three days of meetings, I didn't manage to get lunch at all because I was off at side meetings. And the third day, I just ate at the cafeteria. As for dinners, one night was a reception so I made dinner out of assorted hors d'oeurves and a glass of Fat Tire ale. But the other two nights I went out. Since I flew in on a later flight than most of my colleagues, I didn't try to synch up with them and went to The Royal Peacock alone to eat their vegetarian thali. It's a bit pricy as Indian restaurants go, but I do still like the food there. (And, with the company paying...) The other night, I talked Mary Joan and Penny into trying the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. The building is interesting, as it was crafted in Dushanbe, Tajikistan (a sister city of Boulder's) and shipped over in pieces to be assembled on site. The food was reasonably good - at least, the North African eggplant dish I had was quite nice and the other two seemed to like the lamb kebabs they ordered. One minor disappointment was that they have rooibos tea on their menu but they were out of it. (This is a South African thing; it's herbal but tastes fairly similar to real tea.) I really should look at some mail order sites on the web to see if I can get it in the U.S. at all.

Gadgetry: John is looking at Palmtop PCs and has been emailing everyone he knows who he thinks knows about computers for advice. Actually, he is in love with the Psion 5, which actually does look like a pretty nice machine. In the process of looking at some info for him (and, to be fair, I had already been contemplating a palmtop but not doing serious research on it), I've realized that I need to revise my list of toys to buy. Of course, getting a decently modern computer to replace my little 486/33 laptop (which doesn't even have a CD-ROM drive and has a laughable 340 MB hard disk) should probably be a higher priority. But here are things I want:

• a palmtop, possibly the HP 660 LX, maybe the next generation Psion
• a color gameboy plus the gameboy camera
• a new camera, with zoom
• a digital camera
• a portable DVD player (Panasonic's is over $1200 though - ouch!)
• a GPS receiver
• a zip camping stove (these are the ones that burn stuff like twigs and pine cones

Music: One of the cool things about being away from my CD collection for so long is getting to rediscover things I hadn't listened to in ages. I've noticed I have a lot of stuff that falls into a category I don't have a name for. It's sort of vocal jazz, I suppose - The Cats and Jammers do get sold as jazz, but The Bobs tend to be marketed as pop, Pierre Bensusan as New Age (he is, though, just marginally in the category as he is better known as a guitarist), and The Chenille Sisters as folk. Anyway, regardless of the category, I find this stuff very soothing to listen to.

And then there's the more upbeat stuff, mostly worldbeat and Cajun. Breathes there a person with soul so dead that he or she can listen to Wayne Toups and not even move his/her head?

Disappointments: I realize that all of these are minor things, but I've had a number of disappointments this week:

• The teahouse was out of rooibos tea.
• I finally found out when Iron Chef (a very funny Japanese TV program) is on in Los Angeles but they don't show it with English subtitles here.
• The cost of going to the Bay Area is well up - even Southwest's fare was on the high side. This would not be a disappointment if I thought Robert appreciated that I am willing to spend my money on spending time with him.
• I am still addicted to playing nethack.
• I have not magically become immune to the common cold. Ah-tchoo!
• The kitchen elves have not finished putting contact paper on the cabinet shelves for me. You'd think that there should be a shelf elf. But I will have to do it myself.
• I have not won the lottery. Then again, I am not sure that counts as a disappointment, since I don't buy tickets either.