Irregular Verbiage

from the desk of Colin Nicholls

Page 35 of 61

Framed

Two things achieved today: Getting our mortgage in order; and framing my photographic enlargements.

First, we sent off our papers to the bank to get our mortgage refinanced. Rates had dropped so we wanted to take advantage of that. Thanks to Lisa’s quick action, several days ago we got a rate locked before the rates started bouncing back, and today we completed the paperwork and got it fed-exed off to the bank people.

It’s a bit of work to do the paperwork, but it’s worth it. The new rate is 2.75% lower than our current rate! The math works out in our favor no matter how we play it.

Secondly, a second visit to Aaron Bros Art Supplies, this time accompanied by my actual prints, and with Lisa’s helpful eye we picked out some frames and a matt board.

This evening I cut the matts to size and framed the pictures and they look great on our living room wall. I’ve always wanted to frame these.

I’m sure I’m not the only person fascinated by sunsets, and these photos were taken during two separate sun setting occasions: One set of a time-lapsed setting sun over San Francisco Bay taken from the Berkeley hills in 1994; and the other (Taken much later) is panoramic montage of a rather spectacular bunch of cloud formations taken during a blushing sunset from our back veranda at Carlysle Road in Auckland, NZ.

Harry Potter and the Art Supply Store

Here’s a tip: If you’re going to order enlargements from a photo lab intended for framing, make sure that you know what sizes are available in the cheap pre-matted frames before deciding what size reprints to do.

Yesterday we heard from Ritz Camera that our poster-size reprint was available. (The picture is one I took at Bethel’s Beach on Auckland’s West coast, shortly before sunset.)

So, this afternoon we drove down to Meadows Mall to collect the poster-size reprint from Ritz Camera, and then went to Aaron Brothers Framing and Art Supplies on Rainbow to look at frames.

I have to admit to being somewhat disappointed at the enlargement. The last time I did this, it looked really dark and rich. This time it was kind of washed-out looking – a completely different enlargement process I think. So we ended up picking out a simple frame rather than anything too fancy.

I also looked for possible framing ideas for my other (smaller) reprints, but found that 5×7 is much more common than 6×8. So, not sure what I’m going to do there. A custom frame? Expensive, and the pictures aren’t *that* good.

After that we saw “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” at the United Artists Theater (which inexplicably has turned into one of the Regal chain! Had we known, we would have used our Regal Customer Loyalty card and gained some cinematic potato points).

I enjoyed the film. I have not read the books, and I don’t know how original J.K.Rowling really is, but if the movies are faithful translations of the books, then she is to be commended for synthesizing an enjoyable fantasy world for which I am very happy to hang up my adulthood and immerse my inner child in.

Butterfly that Chicken

Taking advice from Alton Brown of Food TV network’s “Good Eats” programme, we grilled a butterflied chicken for dinner.

You need good kitchen shears for this – our “Tullen” snips were only just up to the task. Basically, you flip the bird on its front and cut the rib cage on either side of its neck, heading towards the tail. Then pull the backbone out (and save for stock). Then open the bird like a book and use a small knife to separate the breast bone and cartilage from each side of the breast meat, finishing up with the shears or a heavier knife to extract the bone completely.

When you’ve done that, the bird kind of flops flat without help.

You can push seasoning under the skin at this point.

We fired up the grill to medium hot, plopped the bird skin side down on the top and pressed him flat using a cake rack and a handy brick.

10 minutes later, we flipped him over and gave him 20 minutes on a lower intensity heat.

Conclusion: Very juicy bird. Took a bit longer to finish him off than I expected – the extra 10 minutes was worth it to ensure there weren’t any pink-raw bits. Lisa suggested using a thermometer next time, but I still prefer checking it out visually.

Is it better than pickup up a ready-roasted chicken from the supermarket? Depends if you have time. If you like a drier chicken (which I do) then the pre-cooked birds are definitely more convenient. However, juicy birds with presentation panache and custom seasoning opportunities are sometimes a very good thing.

Tickets and Chairs

Tickets for the YES show went on sale today, so we made use of our Saturday to get a number of chores done. Put gas in the car; drove down to the Hard Rock Hotel and got excellent tickets (third tier back but dead center at the front of the rail so no one will be in front of us).

Then we drove along Tropicana Ave to an Office Furniture place that sells Herman-Miller Aeron chairs to see if we can get a deal on two of them. They had a couple on display so we got to sit and see which size we liked, and how adjustable we wanted them, but there was a lead time for ordering and we thought we’d look around some more.

At Meadows Mall we camped out at Wolf Camera for an hour or so as they created a set of two Passport photos for me, and then I tried to get some good quality reprints of various photos of sunsets that I’ve taken over the years. Some of them are pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I’ve always wanted to blow them up and hang them on the wall.

The technicians were very helpful and tried different lightness settings and color mixes to ensure that I was happy with the results. This was good, but then they kept mis-identifying the negative numbers until I was as confused as they were. Took a while to get it straightened out.

Pat Metheny, Speaking of Now tour

Well, we’ve just got back from the Pat Metheny “Speaking of Now” concert at the House of Blues in Mandalay Bay. The House Of Blues is a good venue – if you have good seats. Unfortunately, ours were terrible. We deliberately chose seats from the upstairs price range because the last couple of times we’ve been to a concert there, the stalls/downstairs is standing only. Well, it turned out they’d set up folding seats on the floor, so that would have been fine.

Also, we must have bought our tickets from a complete drongo behind the counter because our supposedly more expensive seats were actually off to the side and we could only see half the band! The venue has these two big video screens, but even then you still only see what they chose to display on them at any given time.

The music, however, was excellent. That Pat Methany, he can play guitar. A whole other league of musicianship.

He played a variety of guitars, mostly his Ibanez signature model (http://www.ibanez.com/pm/) or one of his three (!) Roland GR-300 synth guitars which are practically antiques now. At one point he had a 42-string acoustic harp guitar which sounded astounding. I found a picture of it here (scroll down): http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/5886/met_stru.html.

I would write more about this concert, but I’ve just found this concert review on-line which says it all better than I could: http://halogen.note.amherst.edu/~astudent/2001-2002/issue19/arts/04.html.

Breaking News

I broke my office chair today. I leaned back and the metal support under the seat snapped in two. Looks like a fatigue fracture.

I’ve had it since… let’s see… university days. I’m trying to think if I had it at Grafton Hall dorm, and I think not, because desk chairs were part of the standard furnature there. Certainly the year after that, when I went flatting, I must have acquired it around then. So it’s over 13 years old.

Lisa’s office chair is probably older and has problems of its own, so we’re going to go chair shopping.

Buffets and Blues Tickets

This just in – YES are swinging back through Vegas on the later half of the second leg of their Summer 2002 tour. I’m astounded. This time they’re playing at the Hard Rock Hotel venue called “The Joint”. Tickets go on sale in the next few days.

I’d much rather they were in the studio recording a new album, but hey, even as a touring-only nostalgia band, I’ll make time and $$ available to go see Messers Howe, Wakeman, et al.

*

We noticed in the paper today that JW Marriott (formerly known as The Regent) has re-opened its buffet. The Regent used to have one of the best and cheapest buffets in town, but after they went bankrupt and I guess Marriott bought them, they’d closed for remodelling.

So, we decided that after Lisa’s chiro appointment this afternoon we would drive down to Summerlin and check out the new buffet, before heading home via the Mandalay Bay to pick up tickets for the Pat Metheny concert this Friday.

The news is not good. It’s cheap, but boring. Not recommended. On the other hand, we can confirm that the Irish Pub is still open, so perhaps we’ll take Josh there when he comes to visit in January.

Reasons to Moan and Rejoice

The paper this morning announces a Republican swing in the Senate. Well, President Bush got what he wanted. All we can do now is sit back and see what he does with it.

Also in the paper today: an ad for “Mars Music Closing Down Blowout Sale”.

Long story short: New keyboard in trunk of car.
Short story long: Full details here.

On the way home I bought 2 dozen bagels, posted some items of mail, and got my hair cut.

Craft Markets and Greek Stuff

Lisa has had the flu for the last couple of days, but she was feeling a bit better today so we decided to go out to a local craft market we saw advertised in the local paper. Actually it’s odd, because there’s another, much bigger craft market being held in one of the big function halls in town at the same time, but this one was nearby and you never know what you’ll find.

It was being held in the parking lot of one of the newer strip malls – Craig Road Marketplace. We’ve driven past it a number of times, and each time more places seem to be open for business. We’ve seen “opening specials” advertised, and interestingly it seems to have a different collection of merchants than the usual cookie-cutter strip malls that seem to be the standard template. The only thing in common would be the Albertson’s Supermarket and a Bank. Instead of BlockBuster Video and China King III, we have “The Honey Tree” – a Greek diner (!?) and Sushi Ko, which also does Teppan Yaki. And a big surprise: a Goodwill store where we could donate clothes, records, or whatever (not that we have much of that kind of stuff left…)

The craft market was, I guess, the usual: paintings, jewelry, candles, pottery, glass sculpture, a hammer-dulcimer artist – and a wood carver.

We’ve been looking for something to hang on our bathroom wall to keep our balancing whale toy company, and the wood carver had some cool pieces, including a realling interesting one we kind of fell in love with: a branch with lizards crawling around it. Ok, it sounds kind of gross when put like that, but it’s actually charming, and we fell in love with it.

With that task accomplished, we had an early dinner at The Honey Tree, using one of our opening special coupons culled from the weekly coupon book that comes in the mail. The idea of a Greek Diner sounds a bit suspect, but we can now report that the food was cheap, good, and seemed to be relatively authentic if you chose from the greek part of their menu. We will probably go back some time.

Entertaining on Halloween

We returned to the vet at Creature Comforts, this time with both cats, determined to see some progress. Karma gets a clean bill of health, and takes his immunization shots with stoic grace.

Kami finally relents and provides a urine sample. We did find out something rather interesting: She doesn’t pee in a cup, per se. They palpitate the bladder until they feel that it has something in it, then they go in through the side with a needle, just like taking a sample of amniotic fluid from a pregnant mother.  

Anyway, she’s clear. We fixed it. Kami gets her shots too.

*

Michael and Roslyn Rychter flew in to Vegas yesterday on their way to England, and tonight we’ll be entertaining them here, so there’s a little bit of food preparation to do. We decided to try marinated chicken kebabs on the grill.

Our mint plant is doing really well in the herb garden, so Lisa picked out a recipe that involves marinating the cubed chicken pieces in chopped mint and garlic, then skewering them with slices of red onion interleaved with whole mint leaves, then grilling them while basting them in lime and lemon juice.

Later in the afternoon we arranged to pick them up at 5:00 at the Paris hotel & casino where they were staying.

*

With the skewers all prepared and the rice cooker activated, we drove off into town. North Rancho Drive was chock full of traffic crawling the other way, and the northbound lane on 95 was also sluggish. Hmm. Didn’t look good travel-wise.  It *was* rush hour, but even so, the traffic looked heavy. We debated changing our plans and finding a place to eat in town.

After parking at the Paris car park, and meeting Michael and Roslyn in the lobby, we decided to risk the traffic and head back to the house. The 95 exit was still more-or-less blocked, and I basically missed the off-ramp anyway, not quite on purpose but traffic was really clumsy so I didn’t try terribly hard to correct my mistake. North on 15 it was! This is a pain because it basically heads North-East and although we’re North of the city, we’re more West than East. However, recently a segment of the 215/Beltway has opened up that connects 95 to 15, heading East-West right across the northern part of the valley, so I figured we’d head North on 15, then head back West on 215 and exit on Decator which is basically right at our doorstep, relatively speaking.

This plan would have worked well, except that traffic on 15 North was also crawling. Lanes merging, off-ramps full, and I was usually in the wrong lane. The traffic didn’t clear up until just South of the 215 off-ramp.

A small concession: The view of the Las Vegas city lights spread out on our left as we headed West on 215 was pretty cool. Michael and Roslyn graciously said so anyway.

Dinner worked out really well, with the kebabs taking 10 minutes on the grill, the rice cooker didn’t mind keeping the rice warm for an extra 30 minutes or so, and Lisa’s greek salad was very delicious.

We had a great time talking to Michael and Roslyn, and they had a great time observing all the little costumed groups of kids who knocked on our door demanding treats. The quality of costumes was pretty high this year, and everyone who came to the door deserved a treat.

And so we dropped the Rychters back at their hotel, said our goodbyes, and drove home again. Another busy month has gone by, filled with various traumas and excitement. How lucky we are!

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