suppenkuche

me and ronda went to suppenkuche today for dinner. mmmmm. yummy german food.

i had the pickled herring to start followed by some beef goulash, ronda had a salad followed by some sauerbraten. my pickled herring was not quite what i expected since it was one large piece of herring served on top of the sour cream, onions, pickles and potatoes salad. (normally i would expect it to have been cup up and mixed in.) but it was still quite tasty. it actually could have been a meal in and of itself since it came with a boiled potato and some salad, shredded carrots, and beets on the side. the goulash was tasty as well. the meat was very tender, the carrots were still firm, and the spatzle... oh man, do i love spatzle. the goulash came with a small side salad which was drenched in too much strong dressing for my tastes.
ronda enjoyed half her salad, she immediately cleanup the beets and wished there were more of them. her sauerbraten tasted good as well, not quite as vinegary as she would have liked it, but the meat was tender and still quite tasty.
they also had quite a large selection of beers on tap and more in bottles. ronda enjoyed an butten alt followed by maredsous abbey. i had a weltenburger dunkle, followed by a bottle of smoke beer that was on special. (it's just like having smoked ham stuffed into a bottle, a unique and powerfully tasty experience that is quite enjoyable once in a while.)
overall, we ordered way too much food. an appetizer and entree per person is way too much. (i did manage to eat most my food, but i though i was going to burst.) this would be a great place to go to drink german beers and have an appetizer, or go for dinner and just order an entree. but hey, we were checking it out.
also we were comparing it to walzwerk. to our surprise we recognized one of the waiters here from walzwerk. i talk to him and found out he works at both places and that walzwerk was actually started up by former suppenkuche employees. in the end, we decided that aside from the beer collection we preferred walzwerk. it's just a few bucks cheaper and in our opinion the food is just as good if not better.

random discoveries

so earlier today i was avoiding preparations for my vacation, and recovering from a just for you inflicted food coma, by trying to find a sichuan hot pot place in san francisco. in the process i managed to discover this web site. now i can look up all the information i never wanted to know about all the hole-in-the-wall restaurants that i love to frequent.

busy body

so i've been keeping busy schedule for the past few days. i actually spent three nights in a row out of the house.

me and ronda went to anup's for dinner on friday night. we met a couple of their friends, had tasty indian food, and sat around sipping drinks and chatting till after midnight. we talked a lot about food and as a result i have a few new restaurants i'm going to have to try. specifically new china delight, which supposedly has sichuan hot pot. (which i've been dearly missing since i left china. super spicy but also super tasty...) The other is a peruvian restaurant, estampas peruanas.
thur night i hopped on the 19 and headed into the loin. i first went the the old chelsea to get some of the best fish and chips i've ever had outside of ireland. after that i headed over to the night cap to visit an old high school friend, jenny, who was bar tending that night. she lives in sf but i usually only manage to see her a couple times a year. kinda sad... but regardless i had a good time hanging out and she seemed to be doing really well. i should have known better than to stay past midnight, but i didn't, and i finally got out of there some time after three in the morning.
wed night was also spent on a social tip. juju (who i recently went to coachella with) came over for dinner. ronda fixed up a nice spread of food and we sat around eating, drinking, and chatting.
three days in a row is an extraordinary amount of socializing for me, so to compensate for it i spent the entire day yesterday working. from about 11 am till 11 pm. then i watched tokyo fist. man those japanese got some wacky films. this one was pretty much all about self inflicted pain, lots of it, and would you like some mutilation with that pain?
today has been spent cleaning. i did laundry at the same place i always do it, the brain wash. then i cleaned up the computer room where we are continuing to stack up ronda's stuff. it's pretty darn packed in there. now i'm finally done with that and it's off to get some dinner.

running out of weekends

well, this past weekend i finally bought my airline ticket for my vacation. me and ronda are going to vietnam, cambodia, and thailand for two months. it's going to be quite the adventure. i've picked up insurance, gotten visas, and gotten all my vaccinations. i'm ready to travel. (oh yeah. i did pick up some books and maps and i have spent a little time reading them... but not too much. i do after all have 17 hours or reading time on my way over there. :)

past that, this weekend i was doing mostly tweaking my home server configuration. i set up everything to be able to be able to consolidate ronda's domain (nodarkthings.com) onto my server. this included apache virtual servers, sendmail virtual hosts, secure pop3 access, dns server configuration, blog software installation and config, etc. i still have to configure sendmail to allow her to use the machine as an outgoing mail server and then to change the root dns pointers for her domain. the joys of server consolidation.

three cheers for bitter beer!

it's 5:05 am, i'm drunk as a skunk, i just finished sending out work emails.

i love it when i've been working way too long... and drinking way too much... and then i send out emails at work telling my coworkers as much. (it's ok to send emails to your coworkers telling them you stayed up extra late drinking and typing so they could review your work while you sleep off a hangover... right? :) or course i've been listening to placebo at excessive volumes while typing and tipping back back pints... that might have something to do with it.
also... the pints have been very acidic. this latest batch of "pinky IPA" is not quite ready to take over the world. it seems very acidic and bitter (but not hop bitter.) i'm guessing too much gypsum and not enough flavor hops. better luck next time.
way to keep up this blog, eh? :)

anything worth doing is worth overdoing

no, i'm not just talking about blog entries. i'm referring to my slightly obsessive compulsive beer brewing hobby. today i managed to keg my latest batch of beer, Ralo Chocolate Stout. so far it seems to be coming along nicely with a fairly smooth taste. of course i'm planning on aging this one at least two months (probably about three due to my planned vacation) so i'll have to wait a bit longer to truly enjoy it.

i also finally got around to making all my my beer brewing text files available online. i probably should be using a spread sheet for some of this stuff but text files and vi are just so easy... well, feel free to peruse them at your leisure. i've put a link to them on my main page and you can also find them here.

burning clocks

i've been searching for more ways to kill time and since i'm out of new creative ideas i'm making a second go at this blog thing.

i haven't updated this blog in almost a year. but yesterday i got an email out of the blue from someone in ireland i haven't talked to in ages. this got me thinking about ireland again. i love that place. it also got me wondering how pete is doing. i was going to email him but then i discovered he has a blog. and damn, he actually updates it... regularly... unlike your's truly who has TWO blogs that never get updated. :( that sorta inspired me to try again with mine. so i'll see how long it is before i forget about this blog again.

musical desert daze

i went down to LA this past weekend to see coachella and visit my folks.

flew down on friday night and out early monday morning. had two nice morning breakfasts with my folks and then headed out into the desert past palm springs. got a really late start sun to avoid the heat and get some extra sleep. (since i would be driving back sun night and only getting 3 hours of sleep before catching a plane.)
i went with juju (since ronda was on the east coast watching horses.) luckily ronda had hooked us up with vip passes with was pretty nice. the let us into the vip area where they had comfy couches to relax on after standing and baking all day outside. they also had a hard liqueur bar, which while pricey, was well appreciated.
i spent most my time at coachella running between tents seeing some bands for only long enough to determine that they sucked. here's what i saw:
Sat: Raveonettes, Peretz, Snow Patrol, Keane, Jean Grae, Wilco, Cafe Tacuba, The Secret Machines, Bauhaus, Mercury Rev
Sun: The Bravery, Roots Manuva, Z-Trip, The Arcade Fire, Aesop Rock, Matmos, British Sea Power, Nine Inch Nails, The Blood Brothers, Wolf Eyes, The Faint, Black Star