Brain food

Our whole neighbourhood smells of charcoal due to a neighbour having a barbecue. Tanja's always a bit sickened by the smell due to too many charcoal chicken shops nearby to where she lived when she was younger. It raised a question in my mind, though. Why is the smell of charcoal/roasting things so arresting, even if we're not hungry?

Is it

a) the smell of charcoal and roasting brings to mind happy memories of eating, family, satisfaction, etc, so our brain jumps the queue and goes "charcoal=happy"?

or

b) the smell of cooked-down wood on fire breaks right through all the rational memory and hits our reptilian/Australopithecus centre of the brain and goes "Smell of smoke=fire=potentially dead=BE CAREFUL DUMBASS".

I lean towards the latter. In either case, the reaction is the same: nostrils flare, heads up, looking around. Evolved, ain't we?

Also, apropos of nothing, I want to post this bit from Warren Ellis & Ben Templesmith's Fell (all ownership theirs, fair use, etc etc, this is educational):

Ted, you need to make this at Mars Hill.

Winery

So. We've finished our tasting for our Hunter Valley trip. We visited sixteen wineries over four days (technically five days, but the first day we only went to one). We purchased a total of 7 cases of wine (give or take), plus an extra case for Tanja's mother (who gets a mixed dozen of wines from all over the Hunter, tasted by her personal experts, without having to leave her house, the lucky devil). We've dined at some lovely fancy (and also some lovely proletarian) restaurants and cafes. We tasted cheeses for the first time, coming home with some mixed sheep's-, goat's- and cow's-milk cheeses, and a new cheese knife set.

Some observations:

• Many of the fancy restaurants have changed their signs to read “Restaurant and Cafe” in order to not seem too intimidating or expensive.
  
• Many of the people operating the cellar doors seemed more eager to offer older vintages that weren't on the tasting list if you showed an interest. For example, if they offered a 2008 Semillon and a 2003 Semillon, and you said you preferred the 2003, they would likely pullout a 2001 or 1999 Sem they had under the counter. Tanja and I discussed this and decided it was either A) the financial crisis driving them to push high-end stock, B) that we simply showed taste beyond your average punter and they figured we were in the market for the older, more expensive, higher quality drops, or C) some combination of the two.
  
• Several of the wineries (specifically Peterson's Champagne House) seem to be geared towards the bus-loads of women on Hen's Night or Bachelorette trips. They have purple couches to sit on, are pushing their sweetest styles, have pre-mixed cocktail mixes or pink plastic martini shakers for sale, and, in one egregious case, sprayed bubbles from the ceiling. Yech.
  
• There were quite a few younger couples on their own like we were, and tons of Canadians and Americans.
  
• Lots of high-end cars on the road. At last count, two Ferraris (one vintage, one new), a Maserati, a Ford GT, two Porsches (one Carrera, one SUV), a supercharged and customised Ford F150, and a large number of BMWs and Mercedes (to be expected).
  
• Leaving your proper camera at home sucks, but frees you up from dragging it around or bothering your partner by making them wait for you to get a picture.
  
• Apart from the Champagne house, we tasted only one sparkling wine, and bought none. Go figure.
  

Standout wineries were:

• Keith Tulloch (the only place we bought a full case at)
  
• Margan
  
• Pigg's Peake
  
• Tower Estate
  

We visited all four of these wineries last trip(a year and a half ago) and bought sparingly. On the flipside, the wineries we bought quite a bit from last time impressed us with only two or three varietals, and sometimes none at all.

So yes! All done with the Hunter for a little while.

A Slice of Life

Last night, Tanja and I were watching our Comedy Comfort Food (alternating episodes of Seinfeld and Frasier) when we come upon the episode “The Note” where Kramer sees Joe DiMaggio at Dinky’s Donuts and confides in the gang that he’s “a dunker” and an incredibly focused one at that. I resolved then and there that I wanted to dunk a doughnut, having never been a dunker myself, as when I was in Canada, the Mecca of doughnuts, I never drank coffee and most of the doughnuts I got were sweet or iced, not the dunking kind (go run-on-sentence!).

 

So this morning, I get up, I do my morning putterings, I’m ready to go at 8, I start work at 9. Usually, if I’m leaving at 8, I walk, and arrive right on time. Today, I auto-piloted to the train station and arrived at work 30 minutes early (again!). So I decided I had time to act on the doughnut dunkings.

 

Unfortunately, it being the dead week between Christmas and New Years, I had to walk six blocks over to find an open coffee shop that wasn’t a Subway. Standing in line, horrible soft rock ballad on the radio. The middle-aged woman ahead of me was singing along and confided in me that she “used to listen to this in High School and had it on vinyl.”  I was all mentally sneery and above-it-all, until No Doubt’s Don’t Speak came on. Which is a song I listened to in High School. I had the CD thanks to my mother being the only person in the world to be a long-term subscriber to Columbia House CD Mail-Order program. You know, the 9 CDs for a Penny thing that everyone did, and then never bothered to do again? She did it for years and years.

 

Also, while waiting, I finished watching Burn After Reading on my iPod. Really didn’t like it. Haven’t disliked a Coen Brothers movie this much since my first viewing of Raising Arizona (I don’t count Intolerable Cruelty or the Ladykillers, both of which I saw but had no strong feelings about).

 

Got my coffee, walked to work, picking up 6 hot cinnamon doughnuts on the way. Got to work. I dunked one in my flat white. Heavenly. It’s like French toast tasted when you were little. Or Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal (part of a balanced breakfast).

 

I shared the joy of hot cinnamon doughnuts and dunking with various people around the centre.

 

Happy New Year.

 

Lucas Brown | Team  Leader - 42

Day 2, Mountain Time

So this morning was Father’s Day, and upon giving Tanja’s father a bottle of imported French Calvados (apple brandy) that I suggested and picked out, it dawned on me: I think I like giving people well-chosen presents more than I like getting well-chosen presents.

Does that make me some sort of pinko-commie?

Thinking back, though, I’ve always like giving presents, even when I didn’t have much money. At university, I got little things for my various friends (despite being taken aside by one of them, and being told I didn’t have to “buy their love.” Which was totally not the point). I knew that most of them were equally as not-well-off as was, and a little something would brighten their day.

So yeah. When people say “Don’t make a big thing out of my birthday”, it just gets me planning. I’ve even, marvel of marvels after some very rocky starts, gotten halfway decent at choosing things for Tanja.

I know some psychiatrist would be able to pick this apart, saying that I equate possessions to love, but that’s totally not it. I like the look on people’s faces when they open/receive something that is suited for them and that they didn’t expect.

Man. I am a pinko-commie.

God doesn't want me to have the wireless interwebs.

That must be it.

I got a laptop from my dad in February. It came with a little plug-in wireless reciever card for Wifi. He used it at his room to get the 'Net from the cafe across the street. I've never used it because no one has Wifi near our place, but I saw signs that Kelly's Pub and Cafe Anise in Newtown both offer free wireless broadband through uConnect.

So yesterday, when I went to get my medical certificate, I dragged along my laptop in my backpack. Went to the doc, picked up some groceries, then went to Kelly's. Ordered a drink sat down, located a powerpoint to plug in my laptop and realised I'd left the cord at home. Without the cord, I have a grand total of three minutes of battery life. D'oh. So I drink my drink and go home.

Today, I'm going to get Codril and some cold cuts and I think "Ok. I'm going to bring my laptop again, this time with cord handy. Got my Codril, get my cold cuts, go to Cafe Anise, the cafe where Dad used to use it./ Sit down, order a cup of T2 lemongrass and ginger tea, plug in my laptop. Which doesn't turn on. I check the powerpoint. As I'm doing so, a waiter goes by and says "Oh, that powerpoint's broken. And the other one has stuff plugged in. So we don't have any free. Here's your tea, by the way." I drink my tea. It's not great. I leave.

I go back to Kelly's. I plug in. I turn on my laptop. It works. I order a lemonade. I search for networks. I see uConnect. I hit "connect". Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. "Could not connect. Please check if network is available." I hit refresh to update my network list. UConnect is gone. Search again and again. Suddenly, I see another unsecured network, with a gibberish name. Any port in a storm, right? "Could not connect. Please check if network is available." Bugger. So I think "Meh. I can't get it. I'll drink my lemonade and read some Deadpool comics I've got on Cdisplay." So I read for a bit, finish the issue I was on, and, just on a whim, try to connect to GibberishNet again. "Acquiring IP address." What? Now? It's working? "Waiting for network." Holy crap! "Connected." Whaa!!! I open Explorer. "Cannot display page." What? I look back down at the connection. "Little or no connectivity. Signal may not allow internet access." Then, as I watched: "Disconnected. Acquiring IP address."

Repeat ad nauseum for another 10 minutes. It doesn't connect again.

So I'm blogging from home now.

Stupid technology.

Blech.

I've always thought that if you're sick on time you have off (like summer vacation when you're in school) you should get days in lieu. Of course, it doesn't work that way. After waking up on Saturday with what Ted insisted on calling a "golfball-haunted throat", I graduated into full-blown cold as of Sunday. It's now Monday and I took the day off sick. However, since I have Tuesday and Wednesday off, I need a doctorb's note. I just hope I'm better by tomorrow. I don't want to be sick on days off!

Adrian's off for NY, and he probably won't blog while he's there because frankly, he has no drive. probably a nihilist or something.

Ted, Pete, and I had The Good Practice on Saturday, throat notwithstanding. We learned a new White Stripes song. We're slowly building a nice little repertoire. Never going to update the MySpace again, though, unless we can record something. *glares at Ted*

Oh, and for the first time in my life, I'm drinking tea. Yesterday it was chamomile with honey and lemon, and then I went to T2 and purchased some Vanilla Slice loose tea. I swore I'd never go down this road, but coffee just dried out my throat too much.

*sniff*