RIP

I have been a little -- how shall I say it? -- lax about cooking for the past month or so, so I discovered just yesterday that my poor rice cooker got all smashed in during my latest move.

It was a model I had owned for quite some time -- the only rice cooker I've owned, actually, and my mom ordered it from Taiwan for my first summer away from home, I believe, after my junior year of college.

It's the only brand I ever saw in my parents' house, and pretty much everybody in Taiwan has a rice cooker made by Tatung, which is one of those Asian conglomerates that manufactures a wide, seemingly haphazard line of products. Their massive headquarters is not far from one of my cousins' houses, so I saw the building quite a bit when I was in Taipei earlier this year.

Anyway, when I went online to look for a replacement rice cooker, I found several models, but the one I wanted seemed to be available only -- oddly enough -- through a site that sells primarily computer equipment. And they were out of stock. So, since I still had some credit at Amazon, I went there and, after some very thoughtful research (read: looked at a couple of pictures and read one oh-so-helpful user review), I settled on a Panasonic, a decision my mother would certainly Not Approve Of if she was here. And if buying a Japanese rice cooker was not bad enough, she would Doubly Not Approve Of my selection of an electronic model.

But if I'm going to break from tradition, I might as well go all the way, right?

I just hope my experience with this thing is better than the one I had with those high-tech toilets.

They're media professionals

Whenever you move to a new city, you kinda hope the local TV news will be better than it was where you moved from. But it's not. In fact, it's pretty much the same everywhere. The graphics are just prettier and the wardrobes fancier.

But the local NBC affiliate came up with a gem the other night (via Break)


News Anchor Cant Stop Laughing At Model - Watch more free videos

What be this demon contraption?

It has been 20 years since I've worn glasses, so I was a bit lost when I went to the mall yesterday to finally fill the prescription the eye doctor gave me last month. I had been planning to wait until September, when my vision benefits at my new job kick in, but I decided I wanted to be able to see instead.

Anyhow, it seems there have been some vast improvements in glasses technology since the last time I was bespectacled. For one, these things don't weigh anything. Especially not compared to the paperweights I remember wearing, or even the sunglasses I currently have. Also, it seems like high-end designers have taken over the manufacturing of eyewear. Or at least they've all licensed their names to whoever actually makes glasses.

I generally don't shop at stores where everything has Prada, Burberry, and Ferragamo labels, but that's where I found myself yesterday. (Maybe I went to the wrong place? It was LensCrafters, which I always figured was your generic mall eyewear store. I'm so confused by this new world.)

My sister recently told me that when my brother-in-law started wearing glasses several years back, his first observation was that Philadelphia was an extremely dirty city. My revelation wasn't quite at that level, but I did find out that, hey, the type on the news scrolls at the bottom of your TV screen is actually pretty sharp. Who knew?

Not quick enough on the draw

Twice in the past two days I have cursed myself for keeping my cell phone in my pants pocket while I'm driving.

Yesterday, there was a perfect opportunity to illustrate the point that if you're a business, you have to be a teeny bit careful of who you decide to blow off as a customer. There used to be a saying about picking a fight with someone who ran a newspaper, because you didn't want to get into it with someone who bought ink by the barrel.

I guess the updated version of that is: Don't go toe-to-toe with someone who owns one of those instant-sign franchises. I was driving down the main drag in a suburb just outside D.C. when a bright green sign in a storefront caught my eye. "[Name of humongous national bank here] is a ripoff," it read. "Close your account now!"

I'm not sure that people make their banking decisions based on large signs in storefronts, but dude certainly gets the message across that way.

Then, today, I was behind your standard redneck pickup, appropriately festooned with American flag, NRA, country music, NASCAR, etc. stickers. However, it also had prominently displayed one of those 01.20.09 bumperstickers. Which leads one to wonder: Just who's in that 29%, anyway?

My new business: Food at Local Restaurant

My hometown has one big indoor shopping mall. Actually, it has zero since the mall was built outside city limits. This loss of tax revenue has been a sore spot with some in the community for decades, and methinks it's part of the reason the city relented a few years back and let the likes of Wal-Mart and Lowes build stores in town after years of resisting that type of development. They've also allowed some lovely strip malls -- the kind anchored by a Barnes & Noble with a Chili's on a pad in the middle of the parking lot -- to appear.

It's progress, I guess, and makes life a tad more convenient for folks, but it's sad to see that my town is becoming indistinguishable from your garden-variety suburb.

Anyway, the Pyramid Mall -- so named because the name of the parent company was Pyramid, and not because it was some Vegas-type theme shopping center -- was sold a few years back, so it's no surprise new management has finally gotten around to changing the name of the place.

From The Ithaca Journal (Here's the full story, in which the reporter writing about retail does not know how to spell J.C. Penney. And, yes, of course I blame the writer and not his editors.):

New signs going up in coming weeks will read “Shops at Ithaca Mall” as the management team at the mall attempts to build a stronger attitude of community.

It could be worse, I suppose. They could have gone with "Shoppes at Ithaca Mall." Come to think of it, that would be better, as it would read more like the name of a shopping center and less like a Jeopardy! clue: ANSWER: What a bored Ithaca teenager does on a Saturday afternoon. QUESTION: What is "Shops at Ithaca Mall?"

Now *that's* customer service

Because people I know continue to insist on reproducing, I've been spending a fair amount of time in toy stores and baby clothing shops. Today, I discovered a wonderful toy store in Georgetown while out with a friend.

It was so wonderful, in fact, that we kept the poor clerk there a half-hour past closing time. He was too polite to say anything until we headed for the exit, at which time we also realized the woman in the store who had been offering suggestions probably was his wife/girlfriend/whatever who was trying to move things along, and not just a chatty fellow shopper.

Anyway, the store was filled with those awesome, high-quality toys from Germany and France, and let me tell you, they're not afraid to include that quality in the price tag. There was a toy car that had an actual working hydrogen cell in it, and the box proudly proclaimed it to be the world's smallest hydrogen-powered car. The clerk noted that most people who bought that particular item were middle-aged men, and it wasn't likely those cars were going to any kids.

I did find a couple of interesting items from one toy company, though. Well, not exactly the toys themselves, but the packaging.



As far as I could tell, this is made by a Thai company. I just found the description "Ethnic Family" amusing.


This one, however, caused me to do a double-take EVERY SINGLE TIME I saw the box. Maybe it's just me. But at a quick glance, what does it look like is going on to you? No? OK, it's just me.

Carry on.

Life in a warehouse

Some of my things were delivered to my condo yesterday. I say "some" because there was no way to wedge all of my belongings into this place. So now I get to pay to store a bunch of stuff that, in reality, I don't really want anyway.

The lesson: Get rid of your big, bulky stuff before you move. I should have done that before I moved down here, but I decided to go on vacation to the West Coast instead. Oh well. At least these movers didn't box and ship actual garbage to me, as the movers who hauled my stuff from Portland to Connecticut did.

In any event, I'll be spending the next several days getting my life unboxed. And rather than make small piles of boxes throughout the two rooms of my condo, the movers apparently decided it would be better (or funnier) to make a few really tall stacks of boxes in one room. So if you don't hear from in the next, say, six or seven days, please look into it, as I'm probably dead under a heap of my own assorted crap.

Oh. My. God.

I spent most of today going two July 4 gatherings -- brunch followed pretty much immediately by an out-of-this-world barbecue. (To top it off, the cafeteria at work was serving barbecue, too, so I had another helping of ribs for dinner.)

So the last thing I want to think about right now is more food, so of course I stumbled across (via the latest "Top Chef" recap at Television Without Pity) the MEAT CAKE.

Happy Fourth!

Not even a pot to do something or other in

The moving company that took my stuff from Connecticut to Virginia claims it is swamped right now and is having trouble setting up a delivery time. So, as of this afternoon, I will be waiting until next Monday to be reunited with my things.

Lucky for me, the place I bought was being shown as a model, and I opted to buy some of the furniture. So I've been sleeping on a couch that isn't really meant for sleeping but is reasonably comfortable. It's also a good thing it's summertime, as I have no sheets.

The bigger problem turns out to be eating, as I don't want to go out and buy a bunch of dishes, silverware, etc. because I like the stuff I have just fine. So I've been making do with two plates and a frying pan, though I did break down and buy silverware service for 4 because I was too lazy to go find a place that sold it by the piece. But I have been reduced to drinking only from bottles and cans as a result of having no glasses.

I tell ya, it's amazing how much you miss something as mundane as a cereal bowl or saucepot.