Harvest season

Having just finished a market steak (Dr. Karen might be on to something about beef not tasting as good as it used to: this piece of meat had a texture that I have never experienced in grocery store steak. Like a good piece of sashimi: buttery texture and flavor, seasoned perfectly well with just a bit of salt and pepper before cooking, my teeth marks apparent on the side of the bone after I finished gnawing the last of the flesh off of it) I realized I haven't said much about the harvest this year.

We came as close as we ever have to using the oregano as it became available. The garlic harvest started as it usually does with whips back in late May:



And then just a few weeks ago we pulled a pretty good batch out of the ground:



I've already put in about 8 cloves back in the ground. Another 15 or so are sitting in a cup next to me as I type this. 2 weeks ago we made a massive batch of pesto (which I finished with my steak just now) with the first good batch of basil for father-in-law and friends. There's still about a half pound. This continues to be the garlic we found wild when we first moved in. Now the best heads have a nice stiff neck, purple skin, and produce about 6 large cloves each. I wish they were a bit more productive, but the flavor is excellent.

Around the same time the pesto was made, the first cherry tomatoes came on. 2 plants are producing about a pint a week now. And this afternoon for lunch I had my first two slicing tomatoes (Big Boys) of the year:



It's a bit late. I'm afraid the spring was too cool and I was too slow to get a good tomato harvest. I'm afraid the Santiams and Black Russians won't get a chance to ripen at all now that it's cooling off.

Well, that's the news from Yoo-Gene. I'm off to be the licensed driver for an immigrant friend who's practicing on a learner's permit.

btw: I had an audience the whole time I ate that steak:

Writing updates

So should I be giving you all the nitty-gritty about how the thesis is going? I've never written a 150 page paper before (that's my budget after a rough outline and one chapter worth of detailed). Actually, maybe my loyal readers (I'm not talking to you Ma) could offer practical advice on how to manage such a document. I sought the advice of my peers, but they didn't bite. We get stuck taking a one-hour-a-week 'thesis writing workshop', but it's mostly used to practice presentations. There's very little workshopping about actual writing.

So...discuss.

(and wasn't that a nice speech that Mr. Obama gave tonight?)

Happy blog anniversary

An old, old friend got in touch with me today and I sent her the url to the old growblog here. (Later on, L said such a reply is rude. 'Oh, hi. How have you been the last 20 years? Here, read my blog.' Sorry HH.) That made me click on the archive to see what it was I was saying back in the early days. By some cosmic coincidence, today is the 5 year anniversary of this here blog, online diary, travologue, rambling. And boy--I need to do a little housecleaning. Those IM icons haven't worked in months. The archives need a hierarchical menu.

So: 5 years. 432 posts. 2 jobs. 3 months in China. 3/4 of a geography degree. 1 darkroom. 2/3 of a fixed garage.

Hot!

We're having our second hot spell of the summer. But it's still pleasantly cool in the evenings.

I stayed late this evening to take advantage of the fast network speeds on campus (it's definitely noticeable when surfing Chinese sites) and as I was walking back from dinner admiring the quad in the setting sun I was once again struck at my good fortune: a dinner out; a pleasant campus to walk through; the opportunity to study and work at the same time (despite the overload); being able to eat out at the drop of a hat.

'Blessed' is a word that comes to mind. Or maybe just really really lucky.

Word is getting out about the newest map of Oregon from Dave Imus.

North Park exploring

And Hillcrest too! Yesterday a local librarian took my lament (that all food in downtown San Diego comes on the same Sysco truck) to heart and came back to me an hour later with a long list of places to explore and eat last night.

So I cabbed to the Hillcrest neighborhood and, not being hungry at her first recommendation (a lovely-looking Mediterranean place) set off on a rather epic walk. Up to University, across to 30th, and the back down to Upas. There, found via Google, was Zensei sushi. Ate at the bar, had a nice chat with the chef who made my dinner, and even got a free piece of nigiri at the end (because he said I looked "like a hamachi kind of guy." How could he tell?).

He was really surprised when he found out I was a tourist. But he totally got it when I told him about the flavor of the Sysco truck clinging to everything I ate downtown. Still, I guess North Park is not a neighborhood that most visitors make it up to. That's too bad: it looks diverse, affordable (unless those little houses are deceptively expensive), and fun. And well served by the bus I took back downtown.

Sweet suite!

Thanks Sheraton.

Because I was such a late arrival Friday night, the hotel I’m staying at was completely full. So the upgraded me to the Governor’s Suite. If Arnold does stay here, he enjoys 3 bathrooms, 4 balconies, 2 large flat-screen TVs, and a king-size bed. If he comes often, he has probably learned that the refrigerator doesn’t get very cold, so he should bring home his leftovers if he has seafood.
Speaking of which, I had a lovely spaghetti dinner at Mona Lisa last night in San Diego’s Little Italy. Very nice, with a ton of vegetables mixed in with the prawns. Bell peppers, carrots, and zucchini. Even with the cream in the ‘pink sauce,’ it was probably a pretty healthy dinner. The cannoli was to die for. It was made to order, so the pastry was still very crisp. And the filling was soft and pillowy.

Everyone in San Diego seems to be loving life (except for the complaining Aussies at the table next to me in the faux-Irish pub yesterday). At dinner last night, being a solo diner I sat at the bar. A series of giddy parties came and went as I went. Every single one of them struck up a conversation: it’s her birthday; what are you reading?; how’s that cannoli? Granted, everyone was half- to three-quarters sloshed, but they were all happy sloshed. Even the bus drivers glad to see you—the opposite of most big cities where someone who doesn’t know the system (is my trolley pass good on the bus? Do I swipe it or just show it?).

I snuck up to Balboa Park for the weekly organ concert. Dreamy. The park is the city’s museum campus, and I knew there was a photography museum, but I wasn’t expecting a triple cultural attraction that speaks directly to several different parts of my personality:



(For those of my loyal readers who aren’t my parents, yes, I was a train geek growing up.)

My one complaint about the Sheraton is that the interweb isn’t free in the rooms, so I have to go downstairs to the lobby to post this and research a dinner location. I’m writing this up with my feet up on a deck chair enjoying my harbor view. So, I’ll enjoy that for a bit longer and then head down. As always, click on one of the photos to see the whole day’s worth.

(a bit later)

I assume the reason they make you go to the lobby to blog (check your email, google restaurants, etc.) is because some hi-tech business major figured out that they are X% more likely to sell you a beer for $4.50 than they are to sell you an hour in interweb access for $11.50.

This keen observation also made me remember that the San Diego convention center has a net-nanny web filter installed. While the Chinese government won't let you see websites about Tibet, San Diego won't let you google brew pubs

San Diego GIS fun

At the ESRI User Conference. The opening session of the education conference was this morning, and the international user conference will start Monday.

They gave a very nice brief demo of features for 9.3 this morning in between a few marketing pitches about how great they are and how much they do for us. The highlight though was the keynote and an ESRI manager giving talks about their own work using GIS for historical research. Oddly, I edited a review of Anne Knowle's Placing History just yesterday. Charlie Frye gave a warm up talk about using GIS to trace his own family history research about revolutionary New England.

Erik Steiner, among others, got a nice shout out from Knowles for his work on mapping the Holocaust.

Wrote down a bunch of stuff, so expect more as the week goes by.

On the 'visiting a new city' front. I won on the lunch front. My first instinct was to walk into a schwarma stand. My second was an Irish pub across the street. I started in the pub, but the couple next to me was complaining loudly to their waitress, and to the manager. The people on the other side was their before me and hadn't gotten their drinks yet by the time I started to consider leaving.

I had finished my schwarma before those other folks had gotten their food.