I can't believe I missed this

Yesterday, while the rest of you were celebrating or ignoring Columbus Day (and I was enduring a bomb-scare delay at the Oakland airport), we totally missed out on National Kick Butt Day.

Now that I think about it, it's too bad they didn't arrest anyone at the airport, because how awesome would it be to take down an actual bomb-toting terrorist on National Kick Butt Day?

"Look kids ... Big Ben ... Parliament"

Because they let some French dude design this city, there are traffic circles all over the place.

Remarkably, they work pretty well at keeping things moving considering they were designed with slower modes of transportation in mind.

And I'm sure I'll eventually get tired of the European Vacation dialogue that runs through my head every time I get stuck in one of these circles, but for now it's an appreciated moment of levity.

Our combustible subway system, however, is a different matter altogether.

0-for-3

To the right you see a plate of shrimp scampi with linguine, which is what I wanted for dinner tonight. I ordered it at a Maryland outpost of a restaurant I have liked for many years. I did not get to enjoy a plate of shrimp scampi tonight, however.

Instead, I was first served a plate of chicken with linguine, which the bartender (I was eating at the bar) immediately recognized as incorrect and whisked away.

Several minutes later, someone I did not see (I was watching TV) put a plate of fettucine alfredo with shrimp in front of me. I hadn't eaten anything all day, and it was hot and tasty, so I dug in. A few bites in, the bartender wandered past and, noticing I was eating the wrong dish, insisted on taking the plate away, ignoring my (somewhat feeble) protest that it was fine.

A few more minutes (and one free pint) later, he returned triumphantly and set a third dish in front of me with a flourish. It was shrimp fra diavolo with spaghetti. But at this point I wasn't going to give any indication that anything was off, and I just ate my food.

I should note that everything was very good, just not what I ordered. And the bartender certainly gets at least a B for effort. The kitchen, on the other hand, might need a wee bit of a refresher.

Party time at work

My company is celebrating its 25th anniversary this week, and as part of the festivities today was Free Alcohol Day. (It was marketed as a reception that followed the monthly staff meeting. Whatev.)

The decent beer went pretty quickly, so I was stuck drinking Corona. And, yes, I am the type to criticize free beer. But there were a couple of things worth noting:

1. It's nice to have your boss stop by your desk to make sure you've had a chance to have a beer with your work.

2. While we were offered popcorn with our Free Alcohol, the corporate types who work on the other side of the building had actual food with their Free Alcohol. Boo.

3. As I pointed out to some co-workers, we really should be allowed to booze at work every day, considering they sell beer and wine in the lobby gift shop. Or maybe that's supposed to be for the drive home.

I may have inadvertantly solicited something I did not mean to solicit

I have flown through the Minneapolis airport many times.

I have used a restroom at MSP many times.

I do the following every time I use an aiport restroom: place my roller bag directly in front of the stall door, because I have been in far too many stalls where the lock does not work, and I'd like my privacy while I take care of business.

So, I was quite surprised when I read this passage in a story on Idaho Sen. Larry Craig by The Associated Press:

After a man in the adjacent stall left, Craig entered it and put his roller bag against the front of the stall door, "which Sgt. Karsnia's experience has indicated is used to attempt to conceal sexual conduct by blocking the view from the front of the stall," said the complaint.

The complaint said Craig then tapped his right foot several times and moved it closer to Karsnia's stall and then moved it to where it touched Karsnia's foot. Karsnia recognized that "as a signal often used by persons communicating a desire to engage in sexual conduct," the complaint said.

Ergo, I will remember to never, ever tap my foot in a public restroom.

Random update

August in Washington is slow enough that when I called the VW dealership recently to make a service appointment, they asked me if I could come in as soon as possible. (They wound up keeping my car for two days and extracted an obscene amount of money from my wallet, but that's another story.)

Anyway, the politicians and their staff, lobbyists, hookers, etc. are out of town for the time being, and we're even getting some sorely needed rain. I would have appreciated it a bit more if I hadn't had to drive home the other night in one of the biggest downpours I've ever seen.

Plus, I had one of those everything-starts-to-move-in-slo-mo moments when some d-bag, who had been stopped at a red light, decided he couldn't wait a second longer and began to pull into the intersection at the exact moment I was cruising through at about 35 mph. After taking evasive action -- and avoiding, in hindsight, what would have been a pretty gnarly collision -- I was dumbfounded enough that I just kept driving.

On the other hand, I've been looking for an excuse to get a different car. On the other other hand, I could probably do without the lengthy hospital stay.

More toilet humor

The manufacturer of those high-tech toilets I was so enamored of earlier this year has a marketing campaign aimed at U.S. consumers.

If you can make it past the flash intro -- in which the implied, though probably unintentional, message is, "Hey, these people are talking out of their asses!" -- the site is oddly engaging, considering it's all about toilets.

And I know that's two posts in a row referencing the toilets. Sorry, but that's the most interesting thing going on in my life at the moment.

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?