Garmin

I bought a Garmin nuvi 370 last year. It worked really well all year, as I gave it a pretty good workout (Los Angeles, Dallas, Madison, Minneapolis, Houston, Reno/Tahoe, Seattle, etc.). About 11 months later, it started to malfunction (couldn't pick up a satellite signal), so I immediately sent it back, to take advantage of the 1-year warranty. The new unit came quickly (they had shipped it as soon as I called in) but it was partially busted; the power button didn't work, so I could only turn it on by plugging in the car charger. One more exchange later (this time with paid shipping), I had a nicely working unit again. My conclusion was that Garmin has somewhat flaky hardware but good customer service.

why not diamonds?

I'm not so opposed to diamonds that I don't wear any, but I'm not a big fan, either. I've found myself explaining my position a few times recently, so I thought I'd write something down and get it all clear in my head.

Why not diamonds?

1. Diamonds aren't actually valuable. Gemstone prices are typically based on supply and demand. Diamonds are quite plentiful, which means that prices should be low. However, since many of the world's diamonds are controlled by the De Beers cartel, the supply is tightly restricted, resulting in inflated prices. Every time a new mine is found, De Beers tries to swoop in with a pile of money and buy it up so they can keep the newly discovered diamonds from flooding the market. There's also been some grousing about De Beers sabotaging efforts to create gemstone-quality artificial diamonds, but I don't know much about that. Anyway, the real value of a diamond becomes evident when the owner tries to resell it; as a rule he/she will be unable to recoup most of the original cost.

2. Many diamonds are mined in Africa, and thus have the chance of being "blood" or "conflict" diamonds. African diamonds are mostly mined in war zones and are often used to finance civil wars, in which thousands of people die. There is a process through which diamonds are supposedly certified as conflict-free, but it's unclear how reliable this certification really is. Australian pink diamonds are definitely untainted, but they're also hugely expensive.

3. Diamond popularity is based primarily on marketing. I prefer to form my own opinions as to what I like and dislike, instead of letting marketing campaigns dictate my preferences.

The history of diamond marketing is actually quite fascinating. In the 1930s, De Beers worked to establish diamonds as status symbols by giving large stones to movie stars and having them product-placed into movies. Eventually, they began to concentrate on marketing diamonds as required gifts in relationships between men and women. The famous "A Diamond is Forever" slogan was introduced in 1947, both to encourage consumers not to resell their diamonds (thus further restricting supply) and to convince them that diamonds were representative of eternal love. Before the 20th century, engagement rings were not necessarily diamonds; they were often sapphires, rubies, emeralds, or other precious gems. But, by the middle of the century, most American women were convinced that only a diamond engagement ring would do. De Beers then moved on to Asia, and by 1981, 60 percent of Japanese brides also received diamond engagement rings.

Having mostly won the battle for the engagement ring market, De Beers also embarked on campaigns for "eternity" rings, and more recently, three-stone "past, present, future" rings. The eternity rings were particularly clever; in the 1960s, De Beers was forced to purchase many small Russian diamonds, which were not suitable for the types of large-carat engagement rings that De Beers wanted customers to buy, so they had to invent a new product. Thus, "eternity" rings, just as expensive as engagement rings but using the surplus smaller stones, were created and marketed specifically for anniversaries.

reality check

I was a bridesmaid in a wedding yesterday. The bride rented out a gorgeous ranch in Glen Ellen for her extended family, and also invited us (the bridesmaids) to have our hair and makeup done there on the morning of the wedding.

I was quite amused by the following exchange between the (Taiwanese) bride and her mother, which occurred just after we finished getting ready...

Mother: You look beautiful! Like a Japanese princess.
Daughter: (annoyed) Mom! You're supposed to say I look like a Taiwanese princess.
Mother: But, there are no princesses in Taiwan. We have a president.

typing

This morning I kept trying to type "recourse" and it kept coming out "resource". I did this two or three times before finally getting it right. Drove me nuts.

I have a similar problem from time to time with people whose usernames are comprised of their first name plus their last initial. I get really used to typing something like "richardl" and it becomes nearly physically impossible for me to type "richard" without the trailing "l".

On the other hand, my fingers apparently know all sorts of emacs shortcut keys that my brain doesn't remember. People will ask me things like "How do you move the cursor to the beginning of a line?" and I have no idea, until I sit down at a computer and actually try to do it.

two puffs

I've always had bad eyes. When I was about two, an eye doctor decided I had a problem focusing with both eyes, and he gave me a pair of 3D glasses and put a red-and-blue screen on our TV, so I'd have to focus properly. I got glasses when I was almost eight, contacts when I was eleven, and over the years I've switched through four types of contacts (extended wear, disposable, "Night & Day", and now RGP) and lots of brands of contacts solution.

You would think I'd be used to going to eye doctors by now, but there's still one part that I hate: the glaucoma test. You sit and look at a little red light, and someone shoots a "little" puff of air into your eye. A long time ago the machine used to make a little noise right before it shot out the air, and I would instinctively blink, which would invalidate the test. One time it took me about five or six puffs per eye before they were able to get a reading. Machines have gotten better over time, so recently I've been averaging about three puffs. Today it only took two! Afterwards I was thinking it seemed like the amount of air has decreased since last time, but maybe I'm just all zonked out from my "non-drowsy" allergy medication.

transportation issues

Last weekend I performed the following sequence of actions:
- Took a subway from to Port Authority (A).
- Took a bus to Clinton, NJ (B).
- Got picked up by a relative who took me to her house in Asbury, NJ (C).
- Drove in said relative's car to Somerset, NJ (D), where I checked into a hotel and stayed overnight.
- Woke up at 7am and drove to Newark airport (E) to pick up an arrival.
- Drove back to my hotel in Somerset (F) to get dressed for a wedding.
- Drove to a wedding in Warren, NJ (G).
- Drove back to Asbury, NJ (H) to drop off another relative who had attended the wedding.
- Drove to New York City (I) for dinner, and stayed overnight.
- Drove back to Asbury, NJ (J) for lunch.
- Got a ride to Newark airport (K), where I caught a plane back to San Francisco.


I feel like things could have been arranged a little better, somehow.

culinary tour, part 3 (New York)

Finally, I ended the week in New York:

Bouley - I was determined to finally try Bouley this time in New York, since it's one of my sister's favorite NYC restaurants, so I booked a reservation to celebrate a friend's birthday. Unfortunately, I had not properly prepared for my visit, since I had had a normal sized lunch.

We started out with apple raisin bread and a baguette, which was soon followed by an amazing amuse; I can't remember any of the details except shrimp and some kind of jelly, but it was sweet and tangy and had great texture and turned out to be my favorite dish of the evening. Next up, my appetizer, the "Return from Chiang Mai - Chilled Maine Lobster, Mango, fresh Artichoke, and Serrano Ham with Passionfruit, fresh Coconut and Tamarind Dressing":

It was quite good except that the Serrano made it hard to cut, but not as awesome as the amuse.

After a selection of bread from the bread cart (I chose black & white pepper and pistachio, and preferred the former), I had "Tea-Smoked Organic Breast of Long Island Duckling with Vanilla glazed Baby Turnips, Oregon Porcini Mushrooms, Lima Beans, and Quince Purée" as my entree:

The duck was perfectly tender and the layer of skin and fat on top was delicious, but I only made it about halfway through the dish, since we were given a complimentary potato puree as a side, and I also wanted to save room for dessert.

Good thing too; first we were treated to a vanilla mousse in passionfruit coulis with espresso gelee, and then to a lychee ice cream and fruit sorbet. Those were followed by the desserts we actually ordered; a warm chocolate brioche for my friend, and a strawberry and white chocolate parfait for me:


At that point we thought we were done, but the waiter came out with a strawberry and rhubarb "gratin" with white asparagus ice cream, with a cute candle stuck in a raspberry, as a birthday treat:


Finally, we were served a selection of petit fours (which we had boxed immediately) and were sent home with loaves of Bouley's signature lemon tea cake:


Yes, mega dessert overload. My favorite was the lychee ice cream; the flavor was quite strong and it went well with the lighter sorbet. Sadly, I didn't eat the petit fours until I was on my flight home from Newark three days later, and half of the tea cake is still sitting in my kitchen.

Morimoto NYC - I really enjoyed Nobu, both in New York and Las Vegas, so I jumped at the chance to go to Morimoto NYC. Looking at the menu, the appetizers looked more interesting than the entrees, so we ended up ordering five appetizers, two entrees, and three desserts, for four people.

The appetizers:
- "beef curry bread - panko crust" - A bit too much like one of those beef curry Chinese pastries, for my taste.
- "wasabi noodles - chilled coconut broth, lobster, yuzu, basil" - Sounded cool in concept but the wasabi and coconut flavors weren't very strong.
- "spicy king crab - tobanjan aïoli, micro cilantro" - I think this was better than the king crab at Alexander's. Delicious:

- "yose dofu - fresh tofu prepared tableside, lobster ankake, dashi soy, fresh wasabi" - This was a really fun dish; the waiter poured some hot liquid into a clay pot and eventually it turned into really soft yummy tofu, which was eaten with a lobster dashi sauce.
- "kobe beef carpaccio - yuzu soy, ginger, sweet garlic" - We ordered this at the end because we weren't full yet, and it was an excellent addition. The beef was sliced super thin, and the top was cooked and the bottom raw. The sauce had almost the consistency of sesame oil, but was lighter and more flavorful:


The entrees:
- "duck, duck, duck - foie gras croissant, roast duck, soft duck egg, red miso sauce" - Definitely the most interesting looking entree; I'm not a fan of egg yolk and I'm not hugely fond of foie gras either, although I will eat it, so I stuck to the roast duck, and it was good, although unspectacular. It appeared that other people particularly enjoyed the duck egg:

- "braised black cod - ginger-soy reduction" - I stuck to my "no-cooked-fish" rule and didn't eat any of this.

The desserts:
- "tofu ‘hot & cold’ - soy milk soufflé, tofu cheesecake, maple ice cream" - The tofu cheesecake was yummy, but I liked the soy milk souffle even more; it was served with ice cream and the combination of hot and cold was amazing. Strongly reminiscent of tapioca pudding.
- "blood orange panna cotta - kuzukiri noodles, satsuma mandarin sorbet" - The "noodles" were yummy but the panna cotta was a bit too creamy and not fruity enough for my taste.
- "chocolate-hazelnut mousse cake - pomegranate gelee, green apple sorbet" - The combination sounded strange, a bit like the chocolate with lime at Charlie Trotter's, but it turned out really well; the chocolate was rich and not too sweet, and paired well with the tartness of the apple. It was hard to decide whether this or the tofu dish was my favorite dessert:

culinary tour, part 2 (Chicago)

After New Orleans came Chicago...

Blackbird - Upon arrival my first impression was that the decor was really sparse. I am a fan of minimalism, but I felt like the interior was so bare as to be uncomfortable. The food was interesting, but occasionally over the top, and the portion sizes were quite small. Things I tried:

- "crispy confit of swan creek farm suckling pig with fresh hummus, baby artichokes, preserved lemon and pork rinds" - My brother had this as an appetizer. The pork was actually shredded and reconstructed into a rectangle shape. It was fairly tasty but a bit too salty:


- "'scotch' quail and egg with fresh bacon, pomelo, marcona almonds, parsnip puree and american sturgeon caviar" - I ordered this appetizer not realizing that the egg would come as a whole yolk. The quail was good but I barely touched the egg:


- "braised organic pork belly with grilled spot prawn, boiled peanuts, sugarsnap peas, cornbread and gumbo consomme" - I had a bite of this off of my brother's plate; it was basically Chinese-style "wu3 hua1" pork but was cooked Western-style. I especially enjoyed the peanuts and sugarsnaps:


- "cable farm country fried rabbit leg and chorizo with wilted romaine, baby carrots, candied pecans and spring peas" - This was my entree. The rabbit was decent, but the chorizo was only so-so.

- "bittersweet chocolate pave with caraway ice cream, roasted pears and candied olives" - I felt like dessert was actually the highlight of the meal. The bittersweet chocolate pave was done very well; it was like a heavy mousse texture and was sandwiched between two flaky pastries. I liked the strongly flavored caraway ice cream, but the pears got overshadowed by all the other things going on in the dish:


Oberweis - After dinner at Blackbird we actually still had room for more dessert, so we headed to Oberweis. The ice cream was amazingly creamy, and there were several interesting flavors. My brother and I shared a (huge) double scoop of "chocolate caramel crunch" and "apple strudel". I liked the former much better than the latter. I was also intrigued by the "butter brickle" flavor but decided I'd had quite enough dessert already.

Fornetto Mei at the Whitehall Hotel - I had lunch here one day, and tried a variety of items: the "handmade potstickers" (pretty good for a non-Chinese restaurant), "seafood fried rice" (excellent, with large chunks of crab & shrimp), and a "sausage, grape, & goat cheese pizza" (sounds horrible but was delicious; an amazing taste combination).

Charlie Trotter's - I'm a slacker of a sister and don't buy my siblings birthday presents very often, so I took the opportunity of being in the same town as my brother (for once) and took him to Charlie Trotter's for a belated birthday dinner. We had a 9pm reservation but actually had to wait a good 20+ minutes for a table, which would have annoyed me except that the hostess treated us to complimentary sparkling wine (I think we had four glasses) and a kitchen tour. The food was mostly excellent, although like at Jean Georges, I started to get sick of foam. Some of the desserts were also a little over the top, with too many flavors that weren't super well integrated. Notable courses:

- "Four Story Hills Farm Poularde with Sesame, Thumbelina Carrot & Elephant Garlic" - The poultry was flavorful, tender, and generously portioned:


- "Saffron Risotto with Orange, Parsley & Picholine Olive" - This was actually a substitution from the vegetarian menu; I requested it in lieu of a cod dish, and it ended up being one of the highlights of my meal:


- "Roasted Squab Breast with Hazelnut, Pearl Onion Marmalade & Cocoa Nib" - This dish was less memorable than some of the others. I continue to be not a huge fan of foams (I like texture!) and I think I expected more cocoa nib. The squab itself was of course, perfectly done:


- "Millbrook Farm Venison Loin with Tortellini, Dried Plum & Salt Baked Rutabaga" - I liked the accompaniments very much, but the venison itself was unremarkable in taste. The dried plum was especially yummy.


- "Venezuelan Chocolate Custard with Kaffir Lime, Grilled Cactus & Agavero Jelly" - Both the chocolate and the lime mousse(?) were delicious but the pairing was a bit odd, and I couldn't tell what the cactus was without looking at the menu:


- "Okinawan Sweet Potato with Sweet Stout & Vanilla Bean Marshmallow" - This dessert wasn't listed on our menu so I'm guessing that this is what it is (it's the closest thing on any of the other menus). Anyway the marshmallow part was amazing; perfectly gooey but not sticky, slightly caramelized on top but not burnt, and just the right amount so that it was satisfying but didn't make me fill ill. The purple part was good also but didn't make as much of an impression:

culinary tour, part 1 (New Orleans)

I seem to have embarked on a culinary tour of America over the past week. Well, a few parts of it, anyway. Here are the highlights from New Orleans...

Galatoire's - I think every single restaurant guide for New Orleans mentions this place. We ordered the "Galatoire Gouté" appetizer, which includes shrimp rémoulade, crabmeat maison, and crawfish maison. Surprisingly, the shrimp was just okay, and my favorite was the crawfish; it was done with a pink creamy sauce. For my entree I had crabmeat "Saint-Pierre" which turned out to be crabmeat and veggies served in a thin, tomato-based soupy sauce which was just sour enough for my taste, but might have been too sour for some.

Cafe du Monde - Also really famous, the branch on Decatur is open 24/7. The first time we ate there was for breakfast, and the beignets were yummy but I made a mess with the powdered sugar. The coffee with chicory was really subtle; it wasn't until I dipped one of the beignets in the coffee that I really noticed a difference. The second time, we stopped by around midnight after some drinks, it was much less crowded, and the beignets were noticeably better; light, fresh, and so hot they burned my fingers.

Mmm...beignets:


Le Salon at the Windsor Court Hotel - As part of a bridal shower event, we had afternoon tea at Le Salon. The ambiance is charming; there are lovely flowers up the walkway, the lobby is well-decorated, and there is live music. The service was excellent, and the tea is among the better teas I've had. The scones in particular were amazingly delicious; I polished off both the walnut and the fruit one, even though they were quite large. I'd ordered the Royal Tea, which typically comes with some salmon sandwiches, but when I pointed out to our server that I didn't like salmon, she substituted two extra caviar sandwiches instead. Score! The teas themselves were pretty good too; I especially liked the "four fruit" special. The desserts were fine too, but I was getting pretty full by then, so I may have enjoyed looking at the cute swan-shaped cream puff more eating it.

Tea time!



Felix's Restaurant & Oyster Bar - After the super-girly afternoon tea experience, we thought the best thing for dinner would be to go somewhere that we could get a pile of crawfish by the pound. It was surprisingly hard to find a restaurant fitting that description in the French Quarter; we first tried Acme but were told the wait would be 45 minutes (at 8:30pm!) and the crawfish were $9 per pound. We finally ended up across the street at Felix's, where we got a pound and a half for $12, with corn and a potato. The crawfish was decent, but it's hard to beat home-cooked, and I definitely could have used some more corn. Afterwards we stopped by a daiquiri bar; there are tons of them all over Bourbon Street, but this one had a huge variety; we tried Mango Madness, Texas Margarita, Strawberry, and others. We did not try the 190 Antifreeze, made with 190-proof rum.

Crawfish by the pound:


Court of Two Sisters - For brunch the next morning, we ate in the courtyard at the Court of Two Sisters. The setting was very cute, and the food was fine (I've never been a big fan of omelets, which were a big deal there), but for me the highlight was definitely dessert. I had second servings of the Bananas Foster, the whisky bread pudding, and the Crepe Suzette. Yum.

Jazz Fest - As I mentioned before, there was lots of scrumptious-looking food at Jazz Fest, but I was too full to eat more than a little bit. I had some crawfish beignets (very good) and a boudin (eh), and eyed a mango freeze but decided against.

annual wedding count

Amazingly, I'm going to my first wedding of the year tomorrow. It's in Warren, New Jersey, but is an afternoon wedding, so I'll still be able to get back to New York in time for dinner.

This year's wedding count is currently at eight, so it looks like last year's record of eleven will stand.

The final tally, for 2007:
- Charity & Mark: February 17th, in Stanford/San Francisco, CA
- Jane & Bert: April 8th, in Beverly Hills/Pasadena, CA
- Justin & Jennifer: April 14th, in Dallas, TX
- Ann & Duong: April 21th, in San Ramon, CA
- William & Kimara: May 12th, in Lanesboro, MN
- Ingrid & Christopher: May 27th, in Verona, WI
- Kathie & Steve: June 2nd, in Carmel Valley, CA
- Angela & Perkin: June 9th, in Menlo Park/Redwood City, CA
- Wen & Mehmet: June 24th, in Los Gatos, CA
- Priscilla & Travis: July 7th, in Seattle, WA
- Joe & Margie: September 22nd, in San Francisco, CA

birthday partying in New York

I remember now why I was always so tired, that summer when I worked in New York.

I was able to arrange my schedule this week so I'd be in New York for my high school friend's birthday, which was awesome because we hadn't hung out for more than a couple of hours since college, which (sadly) was a very long time ago. I arrived from Chicago after 10pm on Wednesday, but my friend was still at dinner, so I had to call her and get her to talk to the doorman into giving me her spare key. I'd been lounging on her futon watching the game (Pistons vs. Magic) for about twenty minutes when she showed up. Apparently the party had started without me, because both she and her other friend were still pretty happy, having just come from a sushi bar serving good sake.

Anyway, we ended up staying up until 1am or so, watching reruns of Gilmore Girls and chatting about tons of random stuff: her hot gay roommate and his relationship with his fragile "of-course-I-can-turn-him-straight" ex-girlfriend (and how growing up in the Bay Area teaches you that gay men stay gay), why educated women our age hate Hillary, all of the potentially underage men she danced with in Jamaica (I anticipate my own Jamaica trip later this year will be much less eventful than hers apparently was), and what happened to all those people we mostly hated in high school.

The next morning, I was conveniently able to walk from her apartment to our new and gorgeous New York office in Chelsea. My friend took the day off (it being her actual birthday) and came to visit me for lunch, and then went off to some spa appointments before meeting me for dinner. We ate at Bouley, where the food was amazingly delicious, and they served us about five desserts, most of which were free (I told them it was her birthday). (More about the food in a later post.) We were so stuffed that we ended up walking back the entire way from Tribeca to Chelsea, trying to work off the food. We met up there with lots more people who were gathering in her apartment. After a couple of glasses of white, we cabbed it to Cain, where we ended up having to pay a $20 cover charge for a lame open bar which only served vodka...no rum, no tequila. We had a pretty good time anyway, but by 2am it was getting really crowded; I was pretty pissed when someone ran into me and made me drop my champagne. Soon afterwards we decided to head over to Tillman's, which was much more chill and more importantly was about a block from home. At some point we decided we were hungry and ordered some food: a steak sandwich with a bean salad, plus a mac-and-cheese, both of which were surprisingly good. I think we ended up getting home sometime before 4am, and I went to sleep soon afterwards, but not before chugging two bottles of water.

I was able to drag myself out of bed this morning at 8:30am, and was at work by 9:30am, but I'm certainly very glad it's Friday. I don't operate well on four hours of sleep, and I'm going to have to bus it to Jersey tonight.

first time in Chicago proper

Like many people, I'd been to Chicago many times before, but I'd never left the airport, so this week marked the first time that I'd actually visited Chicago, the city.

I was staying with my brother, and he lives in a pretty convenient area (south end of Gold Coast) so I was able to walk to lots of places: the Magnificent Mile shopping district, our Chicago office (somewhere in River North), and from there to Millennium Park, Lake Michigan, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

As I was walking around, I discovered I actually quite liked the way the city felt. I was lucky with the weather; the first two days were gorgeously sunny, at a temperature of around 70 degrees, and not too windy. The last day, it poured rain for several hours in the morning, but then cleared up beautifully by lunch.

Anyway, the buildings are somewhat reminiscent of Manhattan in that they are sharply vertical and have a lot of largeness and presence, but everything is much cleaner, and there are parks and boulevards lined with flowers (lots of tulips) everywhere. Streets are wider and everything looks newer than on the East Coast, but Chicago feels like a real city, compared to Los Angeles (which is basically just an overgrown suburb), or San Francisco (although I love it, it's small in both area and population).

Chicago is busy but not hectic, and it has character but isn't dirty. Pedestrians jaywalk in orderly fashion, people hang out in sidewalk cafes and restaurants after work, and both taxis and subways are convenient and accessible. I definitely wouldn't mind going back for another visit sometime. (Especially if it were for free.)

babysitter, nanny

Two weekends ago, I babysat for the first time in about fifteen years; for the baby of a friend of mine. It was a pretty short night; we arrived around 6:00pm and the kid was in bed by a little after 8:30pm.

I was fascinated by the new diapers; apparently nowadays boy babies and girl babies have different diapers, and regardless of gender all of the diapers have cute cartoons printed on them, and the sticky tabs are much more usable than before and don't get stuck to random parts of the diaper.

Baby bottles, bathtubs, and high chairs are also much more complicated (sophisticated?) than they used to be, and I'd never actually used a diaper genie before. I think I used to just wrap poopy diapers in plastic bags, but honestly it's quite possible that I just used to throw them in the laundry room wastebasket. Anyway, things went pretty well, I think; nothing unexpected happened, the 10-month old "baby" was quite well-behaved, and he actually fell asleep when put to bed.

A couple days later I was at another friend's house for a BBQ. She has a 4-month old daughter, but with two grandmothers visiting and a live-in nanny, she was very much able to focus her full attention on hosting the party. In fact, between bouts of changing and feeding the baby, the nanny managed to make delicious Shanghai-nese "shou mai", cook several other authentic dishes, and clean up the kitchen area.

Afterwards I was thinking, forget the baby, I should hire a nanny for *me*. I could use some home-cooked Chinese food, clean laundry, and a spotless house, too, not to mention more practice speaking Chinese.

Jazz Fest

On my last day in New Orleans, several of us headed over to the Fair Grounds to check out the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, aka Jazz Fest.

I've never been all that clear on the difference between jazz and blues and soul and funk and gospel and so on, but after spending some time in the different stage areas, I concluded that I was most fond of the performances at the blues tent. The sound reminds me of the hip-hop and R&B that I'm more familiar with, but it's a bit more mellow. In fact, although I was definitely enjoying the music, I nearly nodded off a few times while listening to Guitar Slim Jr. and Kenny Neal.

In addition to the music, there were lots of interesting arts & crafts type displays. The people at one booth were making a quilt signed by people attending Jazz Fest (they had last year's quilt on display), so we signed a square or two. Another sold jewelry made from the scales of (some pretty scary-looking) garfish.

Of course, there was also tons of Cajun & Creole food: crawfish bread, all kinds of po' boys, etouffee, BBQ, jambalaya, and the ever-present beignets, with lots of catfish and crawfish in everything. I limited myself to some crawfish beignets and a "boudin" link. Coming from San Francisco, I've always associated "boudin" with sourdough, but apparently in New Orleans a boudin is a pork and rice sausage. Interesting, but not my favorite; I felt like the rice diluted the taste of the pork.

We had to leave around 3pm in order to catch our flights, but it was starting to get overcrowded anyway, so I wasn't too bummed about leaving; by then, we'd already had three or four hours to enjoy the good food and good music.

mmm...biscuits

My flight to New Orleans yesterday went through Charlotte, so I arrived at Charlotte/Douglas International at around 6am. I'd only had about 4 hours of sleep on the plane, so I was more sleepy than hungry when I got there, but I was amused by the name of Bojangles' Famous Chicken 'n Biscuits and it seemed popular, so I grabbed a steak biscuit. The steak part was so-so; I think "steak" was a code word for beef sausage, but the biscuit part was fluffy and delicious. And, in the end, it was probably good that I'd eaten; after polishing off the biscuit, I was able to get another 2 hours of sleep while waiting on the floor next to my gate.