I've officially passed my last math class ever! Well, for my undergraduate career, at least. I feel like celebrating.
March 2004 Archives
I never really intended to use this site to write about my exciting day or rant and rave, but I'll make an exception for today. Not that March 30, 2004 was a momentous day in my life, unless you include seeing Finding Nemo for the first time—and yes, I was, in fact, hiding under a rock for the past 10 months. Rather, people start to wonder about a guy who posts pictures of flowers on his site. Repeatedly.
On to my day…
Whilst riding my trusty bike Vermillion to work today, a bug met its untimely demise by flying into my left eye. That's important, so don't forget. To work, left eye. Got it? Good.
Work was…work. I wrangled with PHP and wrestled with CSS floats until they sort of submitted to my will. Keeping me company was my esteemed colleague and co-worker Will (of DHS cross country fame). The conversation meandered from dog tags to Tony Robbins to Predator, the only film with two future state governors included in the cast. All in all, a fairly productive morning.
For lunch, I met up with my high school buddy Gabe at Hoa Viet. I ordered my usual (Roast Duck over Rice), and a coffee, which I knew I'd need to stay awake at work after such a big lunch. It was a little pricey for just coffee, but I didn't really think I had a choice.
Our waitress served the coffee alongside the entrées…the coffee grounds sat in a steel strainer over the mug, with water slowly sleeping through as we ate. After finishing my duck, I removed the steel strainer to find a disappointing half cup of coffee. Gypped. I took a sip.
Ay caramba!
It might as well have been a half cup of pure adrenaline. That innocuous steel strainer had created the equivalent of at least a quadruple espresso. $2.25 suddenly sounded like a bargain. It was so strong that I didn't want it pure (before you leave comments about me being a wimp, let's see you try to drink it straight.) I signaled the waitress and asked for some sugar. She gave me a funny look, but came back a little later with a shaker, speaking in Vietnamese. I gave her a "huh?" look. Another waitress came up behind me and explained that I needed to stir my coffee. Confused, I took a spoon and dipped it tentatively into the mug. It stuck. I started stirring, and discovered a thick layer of creamy sludge at the bottom of the cup—evaporated milk. My eyes widened as I realized that the cup before me had enough concentrated sugar and caffeine to power a small city.
So I downed all of it.
Needless to say, the afternoon at work went by in a blur…I remember noting at one point that my thumb was trembling uncontrollably against the space bar.
And, in a bizarre twist of fatalistic symmetry, as I rode from work and into the sunset, a bug flew into my right eye. How odd.
If I ever complain about living in California, please remind me about this picture.
It's almost
poetically tragic
tragically poetic
magically delicious
tragic in its poetry.
His oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood; When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay. On Christ, the solid Rock I stand: All other ground is sinking sand.
As some of you probably surmised, the reason why I was asking about scheduling and computer use was because I was considering writing a little scheduling program over spring break. That was before I started using Rainlendar, a nifty calendar that sits on your desktop.
It has little icons for upcoming events such as exams, birthdays, and appointments. The "to do" list is convenient, and it even pops up a window when you turn on your computer to tell you what you have to do today. I started using it this week, and the difference it's making is tremendous.
Went to Adoration tonight (that's why I'm back so late)…wow. I was kinda reluctant to go, initially, since I'm not really familiar with any of the performers and I'm kind of a cynic when it comes to a lot of Christian music.
I'm glad I did go. I appreciated that the focus of the concert was unashamedly on worship, rather than simply "Christian music." There were testimonies from performers (including an incredibly powerful one from the Newsboys' Peter Furler), and reading and reciting of the Scripture.
I'd never heard Jeremy Camp before, and I'm definitely something of a fan now…he sings a lot of the songs that we sing in Grace Alive! The highlight of his set was a testimony about how we need to worship in bad times as well as good times…a lesson that he became acutely aware of after losing his wife to cancer. He followed up with a spirited performance of his song "I Still Believe" and then finished off the set with "Take My Life." Later during the show, he prayed that people leave impacted by the Holy Spirit, rather than simply having had an emotional experience. I definitely liked that.
Rebecca St. James put on a solid show, but the Newsboys really took it home with an incredibly energetic performance. Overall, a great night and a good time.
This past Saturday, my away message said "attempting to make shrimp scampi & linguine." I received enough comments about that and subsequent away messages to post a belated entry on how it turned out.
I can cook. That does not make me a very good cook, much in the same way that my ability to drive does not make me Michael Schumacher. My culinary background comes from various occasions, starting from the age of thirteen, where I found myself in the position to cook for myself. My goals were simple: a meal that could be cooked quickly and that tasted good. Not surprisingly, I ended up doing a lot of stir fry with whatever I could find in the fridge. This was the situation on Saturday: my mom was shopping for groceries, so I offered to cook dinner. We had pre-cooked shrimp in the freezer, and I scrounged up other ingredients from our depleted fridge.
To be honest, I had no idea what scampi really is when I posted that away message. A subsequent Google search revealed that it was "large shrimp sauteed in oil or butter and garlic." That about described the scampi I'd had at Strings, which basically seemed to involve drowning shrimp in an obscene amount of oil. What I had in mind was a little different, and probably healthier.
While I put the shrimp in hot water to thaw out, I looked for veggies to stir-fry. The best find was a nice red bell pepper—the crunchiness and sweetness would be a nice accent to the shrimp. I grabbed some green onions and, of course, garlic. You can rarely go wrong with garlic.
After chopping the pepper and onions, I heated some olive oil and started stir-frying the shrimp. On a whim, I added pine nuts.
When it came time to add the rest of the ingredients, I immediately regretted not using a wok for stir-frying, as the pan I was using was too shallow to stir fry everything.
Still, I managed to only lose a piece or two of the pepper, which were perfect for tasting—as expected, they were nice and crisp, bursting with flavor. Everything smelled delicious already, and that whetted my appetite even more. I added some herbs to the stir-fry, then moved it to a different burner to simmer while I got the pasta going.
Contrary to what my away message said, we were out of linguine, but we still had some angel hair, which was just as good.
And, of course, I screwed it up. It doesn't matter what else I can do, I always screw up when it comes to making pasta. It was a package of fresh Buitoni pasta, and I left it too long. The angel hair ended up sticky and way too soft—it was so bad, I decided not to take a picture of the final product. The scampi tasted great, and some rosemary helped the pasta out a little, but altogether it was disappointing. Ah, well.
Things I learned this evening:
- It is illegal to ride a bicycle while wearing headphones on both ears.
- Riding with headphones, riding through a stop sign, and riding without a light at night each have a $122 fine.
- After resolving to end six years of not riding with a light (hey, I was a stupid teenager), the first night that you forget to bring your light will of course be the night that a police officer in a cruiser catches you committing all three of the above-mentioned violations at once.
- When said officer enlightens you about the finer points of the law, it's really hard to not look at that shiny badge on his uniform.
What a night. Thankfully, I got off with a warning.
