On authentic culinary experiences

When in an exotic location, people often want to sample "authentic" cuisine. I laud this impulse, and often have it myself. Oftentimes, though, eating in a restaurant will only give one a tourist's experience. To truly have an "authentic" experience, one must attempt to eat what the locals eat. "How," one might ask, "does one discern what the locals eat without a professional guide, e.g. a restauranteur?" The answer, we have discovered, is quite simple. Simply visit a grocery store for a few hours and do some intense price comparing. Cover all your necessary nutrients. The absolute cheapest meal will be the most authentic. Dismiss nothing! While in Seattle, potatoes are the cheapest source of carbohydrates (Idaho being our neighbor) and proteins are all pretty much comparable (because the price of fish is still higher than other proteins, but you get my drift). edit: see comments for Seattle culinary controversy. In New Orleans, rice and beans are by far the cheapest staples to be found.

Fixed my iBook G4 optical drive (DVD/CD)

While this isn't in our mission, I thought I'd mention our experience with this computer and our trials and tribulations (and our troubles with tribbles).

We use a 12" iBook G4 that I received as a graduation gift in 2004. It has served me reasonably well, and I've been fortunate enough to know other iBook users who are less thrifty than I. As all iBook users know, the power cable is ill-designed, and I've had to replace that a few times (4) they don't make them particularly replacement-friendly, so I've had to purchase all-new power sources each time, even though it's only been the part that plugs into the computer that bent. Once, I was able to solder the end and got another few months out of the cable, but other times I just invested in the $30 generic brand power cord. My only tip for preserving your power cord (aside from "don't trip over it") is to save that little plastic cover for the end of the cord and store your power cord always in that when not in use. It seems to do a minor job of correctly bending a slightly misshapen tip back to its original working condition.

But all of that is digression from the important story of today. A bit more digression before we continue. About 2 years ago, I dropped this computer. It ceased to function properly. About 6 months later, the delightful Janeth Jones, a fellow Stage Manager at YTN, bequeathed upon me her non-functioning 12" iBook G4. Since I am handyman extraordinaire, I found ifixit.com, and put my hard drive in Janeth's computer. Everything worked beautifully until about 6 months ago when the optical drive (known to laymen as the DVD drive) ceased to function and ate Amelie's Lady in the Water DVD. We just used ifixit.com again... but I realized before we finished that the cord which connects the optical drive to the logic board (motherboard for PC users) was loose. I pushed it back in, and it works like a charm. The moral of this story is, if something is broken, especially your optical drive, check to see if it's plugged in before you take your computer apart. If we had known which cable was which (the orange cable is the one to the optical drive, it turns out) before we began, we could have just removed the RAM shield and pushed it in and saved ourselves about an hour of work.

A few Christmas pictures...

And since I'm still having troubles uploading pictures, even with my small success seen here, click here or copy and paste this link to see more Christmas pictures on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2361172&l=9a74a&id=10730011

Christmas in Wisconsin

We are satiated and content after two days of eating our fill of extra delicious food and visiting with family and other loved ones. Have a peek at our photo album of Christmas Eve on Facebook, for now, because I'm having issues uploading pictures to our blog.

More pictures are soon forthcoming, and longer blogs!

Birthday Fun

Look at that pretty cake. Brendan made that for me for my birthday. It is one of my favorite kinds of cake, ever since I went to Vienna--Mohr im Hemd. Sooooo good.

It was so pretty I just had to keep posing next to it. 

And then I had to eat it!!

And then I felt sat-is-fied. Yummm.....

Fun in the Snow

Brendan and Guy

+ Mariah

Apparently Brendan smells good

Guy says Happy Holidays to all

This is Zephyr

And here is Stina

Big ole update

Okay, it's possible we'll never finish filling out those bullet points. At some point it becomes more important to share what's been happening most recently. If we do fill out the rest, we'll post it in the original blog where they occurred, and we'll let you know in a new blog so you can go back and read some interesting stories.

But now I'll start with now and work my way backwards until I start to lose track of days. Today is Wednesday. Brendan and I arrived in Wisconsin this afternoon around 12pm. We had planned to spend the day in Chicago with Brendan's parents, but his mom is just getting better from a nasty flu-bug she got over the weekend, so we got on another train to Milwaukee where his dad picked us up. This is the view outside their house:

Snow! Glorious snow! It's really beautiful here, and we're told it might snow another 10 inches or so the day after tomorrow. Today we're taking it easy after a night on the train.

The train trip was quite fine. Leaving New Orleans by train is heaven for bird lovers. It goes through marshes, wetlands, swamps...I'm not really sure what the difference is between all those, but it goes through one or all. What I'm trying to get at is there are cranes, herons, various types of ducks, and it's such a treat to see all those birds. The cranes, especially, were everywhere, sometimes congregating in groups of twenty or more. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that.

Brendan did try to take a picture of the mist at one point. You couldn't tell where the Mississippi met the sky. But by the time we got the camera out and ready, we were no longer right on the water. But you can still see how misty it was:

Well, you can sorta tell how misty it was. On Monday we didn't do very much. On Sunday we had brunch with Jocelyn and Nate and their upstairs neighbors whose names I've embarrassingly forgotten. A little later on Sunday we went to a Couchsurfing potluck and met a bunch of really cool people, and got to know a bit better some we'd already met. We talked a lot to a fellow hitchhiker and he showed us pictures of various signs he's used to try and attract rides. This inspired us to take a picture of our most recently used hitchhiking sign:

On Saturday spent some time internetting, and on our way home we talked to Jocelyn to see what she was up to for the evening, and she invited us to join her and Nate for a tacky Christmas sweater party later. We said maybe. And then we remembered how we want to start saying yes! to things, or at least yes. About a week earlier, we had turned down an invitation to go into a halfway-house and see what it was like and as soon as we walked away from that opportunity, we realized we should have said yes. We miss out on unknown opportunities when we say no. This trip is our chance to say yes more than ever before, because we don't have any obligations or work schedules. To sum it up perfectly and serendipitously, as we just read this for an upcoming book club meeting, "Unexpected travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God," from Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

So we decided to say yes! to the tacky Christmas sweater party. But Jocelyn and Nate weren't going until about 10pm and it was only about 8pm or so. And then Michael called. Michael is a couchsurfer we met playing tag football last weekend. He decided to stay in New Orleans an extra day and wanted to know if we wanted to meet him in the French Quarter. We, of course, wanted to say yes. So we did, and we decided that we might still make it to the party later.

We met Michael by Jackson Square and began walking towards Bourbon Street. On the way we visited a beautiful art gallery, with pieces that sold for over $150k. We spent some time discussing what we liked best and finding out the prices from the friendly and helpful curator, and then we went to Bourbon St. Our first stop:

Lafitte's claims to be the oldest building used a bar in the United States. The tall man next to Brendan is Michael, and the two outer gentlemen just happened to be nearby and when invited to be in the picture they enthusiastically joined. Suffice to say the rest of the night was somewhat debaucherous, yet fascinating. Mingling with all the drunk people on Bourbon St. is more enjoyable when one is also drunk, at least for me.

As the night was winding to a close and we were keeping Michael company waiting for the streetcar, we were chit-chatting and the word "couchsurfing" came up. A young lady standing near us asked if we were from New Orleans and we found out she is a couchsurfer as well, here visiting her sister. So our couchsurfing circle widened, and we were able to see her and Michael again at the potluck the next day.

On Friday evening we had the second installment of a World of Darkness roleplaying game Brendan is leading. We've made some new friends through this and they are delightful people as well as delightful role-players. My character turned into a werewolf!

And this is where my memory starts to fade and days run together. We probably rehearsed last week, and we probably spent some time at CC's checking our email, and we probably walked a lot. The delightful usual.