new TV show, new band

I swear, I don't have an obsession with medical TV shows.

I do still watch ER, mostly out of loyalty, and I love Scrubs, but up until recently, I never felt compelled to watch Grey's Anatomy, mostly because the main character seemed so annoying, at least judging from the endless commercials.

Then, I was at my parents' house one weekend, and was flipping through their (newly repaired) Tivo. I wasn't really in the mood for Japanese period dramas or Food Network, so I put on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. It was really good. I think by the end of the weekend I had watched all of the episodes saved on the Tivo.

I still think Meredith is kind of annoying, and has serious issues, but the show is really more of an ensemble piece than anything else, and I like that. Oh, did I mention that almost all of the men are extremely good-looking?

Anyway, I managed to watch most of the second season during the summer when the reruns were on, and then when it got to September, the network started to promote the new season, and I discovered I really, really liked the music in the commercial. A couple days after that, I was watching a rerun of Scrubs, and there it was again, the same song, How to Save a Life by The Fray. Their CD is now in my Amazon shopping cart, waiting for me to spend $15 more to get free shipping.

musical diversity

Today, on the way to work, I was listening to 106.1 KMEL. Apparently they were doing some kind of Tupac Shakur retrospective (I guess he's been dead for ten years today?) so they played "California Love" and "How Do You Want It" back to back. Then, to my surprise, the DJ said that one of Tupac's favorite songs had been from Les Miserables, and he proceeded to play "Do You Hear the People Sing?". He followed that up with "Changes", which is one of my favorite Tupac pieces. Suffice to say, I quite enjoyed the radio this morning.

phonetic alphabet

I've been on the phone a lot recently making final arrangements for our Eastern Europe trip.

As a result, I've found that when I have to read a sequence of letters and numbers to a customer service representative, I'm wildly inconsistent when choosing names to clarify letters. For example, I've recently defined "P" as "P as in Paul", "P as in Peter", and "P as in Patrick". I'm not sure what makes me think of one name over another.

I was especially amused after I told one rep, "C as in Charles, W as in Walter, R as in Richard, B as in Benjamin" and just a few seconds later, she read back "C as in Cathy, W as in Washington, R as in Roger, B as in Brian".

After that, I went looking online to see what the "standard" names are, and found this site which lists the standard NATO and Western Union tables.

mmm...beef

Last year, 10 of us went to Le Cheval, a Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland, to try their 7-course beef menu. We had a good time, and the food was yummy, but the meal was not inexpensive.

Recently, we discovered Anh Hong Saigon, which also serves a 7-course beef menu, so yesterday, 12 of us headed over to Milpitas give it a shot. We ordered only 9 servings for the 12 of us, but added two dishes of beef carpaccio and two dishes of shrimp and rice, which turned out to be the perfect amount of food. The total bill came out to about $20 per person, and the food was just as good, although the restaurant itself is much more casual (it's located in a strip mall).

Le Cheval has other well-known dishes that I do want to try, and it's a nicer dining experience, but next time I're craving Vietnamese-style beef, I think Anh Hong will be the restaurant of choice.