Acme’s doing a re-imagining of its corporate vision and culture, and this morning we sat through our first session of “Quest for Excellence 2” training. They’d sent us the videos, and at the end of each segment we’d stop the tape and go to the phone for the discussion.

We made it bearable by staying in bed, watching the videos on the TV in our room, and having a phone each. It seems that we had a better AV experience than the rest of the team back in Chicago, who were watching the video streamed off a computer hard disk, and apparently suffered severe audio synching problems.

The phone conferencing system got back at us for this unfair advantage by making it impossible to hear the discussion segments reliably.

In the afternoon, Josh and Anna packed up their stuff, and we drove off to the Aladdin to meet Anna’s folks who were in town for a day or so.

The plan is that Josh and Anna will spend a night at the Aladdin with Anna’s folks, then (I think) Anna will be returning to San Diego with them while Josh flies to San Francisco for a few days to catch up with Derek and Teresa and friends.

(It gets more complicated later on in the month: Josh then joins up with Anna in San Diego, then later in the month, Derek and Teresa fly in to Vegas for a week, during which we all drive down to San Deigo for a few days with Derek and Teresa in tow. By the end of the month everyone should be back where they belong – that’s the East coast for the kids.)

Josh isn’t wearing a cast anymore after his tendon surgery, but he has limited mobility, hopping around while loaded up with painkillers (OK, it wasn’t that bad!). So I dropped L, Anna, and Josh off at the entrance to the Desert Passage shops, then went to look for a carpark. Before I knew what was happening, I’d driven down the exit ramp and out into the street, by accident. I was *trying* to find the Up ramp…

No worries, though. Round the block and in the other entrance, passing the hotel registration entrance (the right place to drop off passengers that are hotel guests, must remember that for next time) and back into the car park building. No-one need know that I did a bit of extra driving!

We met up with Marshall and Judy at Josh and Anna’s room, and decided what to do in the time we have before our dinner reservation at Tremezzo’s. Possibly some shopping happened, but I wasn’t there to see it because I decided to walk across the road and down the block to the Virgin Megastore at the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace to check out the comics situation.

I forgot the the Forum Shops are at the far end of the block, which made it a longer walk than I would have liked, but issue 3 of Miller’s DK2 was available so that made up for it. I also found a DVD of some Horowitz piano performances on sale which I snagged because I thought L might like it.

A brisk walk back in the hot sun got me feeling rather moist by the time I entered the air conditioned goodness of the Aladdin.

For very special occasions I am pleased to report that Tremezzo’s is a great place to sit and watch the Bellagio fountains and eat delicious Italian food.

We said our farewells to Josh and Anna, leaving them in the capable hands of Judy and Marshall, and waddled back to the car for our drive back up the valley.

Josh and Anna took our car down the road to the Santa Fe casino to spend some time (and money I expect) playing, while L and I worked.

This evening we had our Home Owners Association annual meeting, which was held in the living room of one of the model houses, which happen to be over our back fence. During the meeting we kept looking through the windows at the tops of the trees in our back yard, which were poking their heads up and waving at us.

The meeting was tedious, although we felt like we had to go because otherwise we have no idea what is going on and someone has to keep the board members in line. For a start, most home owners in the development don’t go (I guess it’s not important enough to them to remember) so it’s usually just the “active” people who attend. It’s important, though, because things can get voted on at the meeting that can affect everyone.

L and I have an agenda of our own, which is to get the street lights converted from gas (they’re on ALL THE TIME, produce heat, high maintenance, use expensive gas that the asssociation has to pay for – when they remember to put it in the budget) to low-voltage electricity (can be run off each house’s ‘lectrics, and put on a timer, etc…) but it’s been confusing for everyone because the board members keep coming back for quotes that have nothing to do with our proposal.

Bottom line: We found out the “approved” mechanism for getting an item on to the board meeting agenda, and we will prepare something in writing and present it to the board, because apparently this is all too complicated for them to understand.

We’d go ahead and convert the street lamp outside our house as a prototype so that people could see what we meant, but some people might get upset about that. See http://www.charm-lite.com/charm-lite/ for more information about the kind of conversion we’re talking about.

When we got back from the meeting, Josh and Anna had just arrived home (about 8:10pm) so we all jumped back in the car and drove to Montesano’s Deli and Italian restaurant for dinner (making sure to pick up a cheesecake for later desert) and also did some shopping.

I tried to get our car booked in to the Toyota service people yesterday, but they were pretty busy. So instead, it’s first thing this morning. I got up at 6:00am, and was out the door by 6:25, leaving L in bed.

It takes about half an hour to get from our house to the latitude of the Sahara, but this can depend a lot on the level of traffic and the route you take. OK, maybe that’s obvious… anyway, traffic was light and I pulled up to the service bay at the Toyota dealership on 6300 W Sahara at about 6:55, and although the service department doesn’t open until 7:00, there were three cars ahead of me already.

No worries, though. When the bay doors opened, and we filed our way into the depths of the service building, I ended up half in, half out of the building, but somehow this didn’t matter ’cause they gave me a number and told me it would be ready at about 8:15.

Rather than wait in the waiting room watching morning TV, I went for a walk. The idea was to walk to a bagel cafe and get some bagels in preparation for Josh and Anna’s visit with us over the next week. I pretty soon discovered that I was further West on Sahara than I thought, and after an admittedly pleasant 20 minute walk East on Sahara, I did a 180 and came back again. Halfway back I realised that, exercise or no exercise, walking in Jandals/Thongs will give you blisters in places you don’t expect.

Also, it was already 93 degrees out, and I was wearing a black T-shirt, and feeling the heat. Argh. By the time I got back to the dealership I was sweating and limping. A drink vending machine mugged me for a dollar but I got away with a cold plastic bottle of Minutemaid Pink Lemonade. Practically inhaled it.

At precisely 8:15 the guy came back calling my name, and told me that everything was fine with the car, so no problems to worry about. Excellent. We still have brakes and everything. I paid up at the desk, and jumped into the car. Bagel Time!

As I was driving East on Sahara approaching the intersection of Valley View where Bagels-n-More are located, I realised I didn’t have my credit card slip. I remember the cashier lady offering to staple it to the invoice, and I said no, because I was going to put the slip in my wallet, as usual, but I didn’t remember doing that. So where is the slip now?

After maybe 15 seconds of internal struggle (bagels? Need credit card slip! But… bagels are right here?) I did the right thing and turned around and drove back to Toyota. Seems to be my day for doing 180 turns on Sahara…

I parked, and walked in to the retail section of the service department, and almost immediately noticed a small scrap of paper on the floor in front of the cashier’s desk. Indeed, it was the missing credit card slip.

So it all turned out okay in the end. And now the car will be all tuned up and serviced, so if Josh and Anna want to drive somewhere next week while we are working during the day, I won’t be worrying about whether the car will conk out on them.

This evening I discovered the trick to dicing fresh tomatoes.

I’m sure every chef worth his or her salt shaker learns this on day one, but for some reason up until now I either put up with tomato skin in my dishes or used canned tomatoes instead.

I’m sure it was one of Alton Brown’s shows that tipped the scale – that, and getting disciplined about using the knife sharpener on our blades before prepping the ingredients.

If you don’t have a sharp paring knife, you can forget using this technique. It doesn’t have to be super-razor-sharp, but dull just doesn’t cut it.

• Using a sharp paring knife, take your tomato and half it, down the axis, just like you would if you were halving an apple.
• Cut each half into four or more segments, whatever is optimum to keep the juices from leaking.
• Take a segment, and hold it on the cutting board so that it is positioned upright on the stalk end, like a half-moon, with the skin side away from the knife.
• Cut away any pithy white part remaining at bottom end of the wedge, but be careful not to cut right through to the cutting board.
• Continuing the knife stroke, pressing the knife blade flat against the cutting board, but with the sharp edge raised slightly. (Imagine you were spreading butter on a slice of bread with the dull edge of the blade.)
• Draw the blade across the cutting board (spreading the butter) and at the same time, roll the tomato segment away from the knife edge so that the cutting board forms a tangent with the curve of the tomato, the cutting edge being the point of intersection.

If the blade is sharpish, you won’t need any back-and-forth cutting motion, just slide that knife across the board, rolling the segment as you go. The newly separated tomato skin acts as a slippery surface for the knife to scoot along on.

It will take a little practice, but it’s great fun to flick those transparent tomato skins into the trash.

Knife Skills! Allright!

We had talked about going flying with Sherri this morning, but the weather was not accommodating this plan. So instead we packed our bag and in the afternoon, drove down to an Asian market called “Uwajimaya” (http://www.uwajimaya.com/) and browsed for bowls, green tea and pickled mustard greens.

That last item is something I’ve been looking for ever since reading a recipe for dry-fried long beans that called for “pickled mustard greens” for the authentic flavour. We couldn’t find them anywhere. Kim Chee kind of worked instead, but I’ve always been curious… we found them – several kinds – at Uwajimaya, sealed in plastic like, um, nothing I’ve seen before, really.

We had an early dinner at a chinese restaurant called Shanghai Garden, which featured brown rice – both fried and steamed varieties – and a number of fruity variations of “classic” dishes. There were a lot of dishes I wanted to try!

Sherri dropped us off at the airport at 6:00 in plenty of time for our 7:30 plane back to Vegas.

Even though it was overcast, on the climb out of the Washington area we had perfect views of Mount Ranier and Mount Adams, just gorgeous. They are serious hunks of rock. The setting sun rendered Mt Adams’ giant shadow as a perfect triangle pointing East. The camera was buried in the middle of our carry-on luggage, but I refused Lisa’s offer to extract it. Yes, Lisa, I regret it now!  I doubt we’ll have a view like that again. The other side of the plane got to see Mt Hood and Mt St Helens, but I think those of us seated on the left were better off.

For some reason, every flight we’ve made in to Vegas gets a little rowdy. We happened to be seated in the middle of a groom’s party, I think.

I get curmudgeonly in the presence of people getting excited about visiting Partytown, USA, but Lisa sensibly reminds me that they ultimately pay for our roads. Hmm. I hope they all have a great time.

The cats were fine when we got home. Kami was waiting for us, and Karma was outside by the mail box by the time I ducked out to collect the mail. Both of them were unusually bouncy, so I guess they’re happy.

Interestingly, one food bowl was completely empty, the other three appeared to be untouched. Maybe they were planning on eating systematically from left to right?

I sleep in until 11:30, then coax Walt and Sherri’s espresso machine back to life for a coffee fix.

Lunch

A change of plans today. Instead of driving into Seattle with Walt and Sherri for a pre-show dinner, we go out for lunch at a place in Issaquah called Sushiman. I remember coming here a number of years ago with L and Sherri – I think that was probably my first trip to Seattle. If memory serves, at the time Sushi and I were not on speaking terms, and therefore I think I had beef udon soup instead – it was still pretty good.

But today, Sushi and I have an ongoing relationship, and therefore I was looking forward to getting intimate with some raw fish for lunch.

Possibly as a consequence of the whole north-western Puget Sound proximity thing, the sushi offerings are heavy on the crab and salmon accents. This is not a problem – it’s great. During lunch we develop the diversionary tactic of eating sushi: You say, “Look – a moose!” and when everyone at the table turns to look out the window, you pop the oversized sushi in your mouth before it disintegrates.

After lunch we check out the nearby Gilman Craft Village (http://www.gilmanvillage.com/) and also Boehm’s chocolate factory, which is unfortunately quite close to some major road construction, a massive on-ramp. (http://www.isspress.com/isspress/back/041702/new.htm)

It helps if you have maps

During the afternoon we make plans to drive in to Seattle for the concert. Walt prints out some maps, we go over the route to take, and after a quick tutorial on the care and feeding of Walt’s car, L and I are ready to venture into the unknown and drive into town!

After almost immediately turning the wrong way – the freeway on-ramp was on the left, not the right – we recovered and made our way East on I-90. No sign of the gasoline fire from yesterday, thank goodness. No Mariner’s Game traffic to make driving more difficult than it had to be. We were lucky. I-90 turned North and merged with I-5 without problems, but we soon discovered that we were in the rightmost lanes and the exit we wanted was on the left(!) and, oops, we’ve passed it already. L grabbed the map printouts and after rejecting a few possible exits we found ourselves heading for the Canadian border without our passports.

OK, it wasn’t that bad. We exited the freeway somewhat north of where we needed to be (i.e. just off the edge of the maps we had) but using the skill of guesswork we navigated back streets until we recognised a major street name and snaked our way back to a parking building, one that we figured was located nearby to the Paramount Theatre.

The three other people accompanying us into the parking building elevator were also waving Yes tickets.

No-one seems to want to talk to us from work this morning, which is good, because we’re preparing the house for our 3 day absence, backing up our work to alternate machines, and shutting down the electronics. I’ve set the VCR in the bedroom to record “Good Eats” but that’s the only activity going on while we’re away – not counting the cats, of course, but I don’t really think that they could as “activity”.

Speaking of cats, rather than put them in a cattery for three days, we’re leaving them at home with extra bowls of kibble and lots of extra water. We’ll leave the thermostat adjusted to keep them comfortable, which means a little warmer than usual.

We wanted to feed them a tin of wet food this morning, instead of their usual time at 6:00pm, but Karma wouldn’t come out from his hiding place behind the TV. The more you call him, the more he thinks something is up and won’t budge. It’s about the only place we can’t actually force him to move from.

He came out eventually, and the cats got their breakfast. They’ll have to survive on kibble until Thursday night. It’s not really three days, more like two nights.

*

It was an uneventful flight. Sherri picked us up at the airport, and on the drive out to their house in Issaquah we had to detour because of a fire on I-90. Sherri said there was a big column of black smoke and lots of fire engines, some of them from Boeing. Parts of the freeway had been shut down as a result.

This evening we watched “Chinatown” after a fantastic meal of pan fried salmon and roasted vegetables.

It was windy outside this morning, which is typical, because we were planning on spraying the diseased tree while the air was cool and still. And it’s neither.

Mid-morning I went out to check on the trees to make sure they were still standing vertically, and I noticed a dog huddled between the wall of our house and the air conditioning units. He seemed pretty unhappy, bleeding from his foreleg and with raw patches on his nose and ears.

He had a chain with a broken end, and looked kind of neglected. I gave him some water but I don’t think he drank any. That’s a worry, because it was 90° outside and he must have needed some.

We called Animal Control and they came and took him away. The control officer said he was a “Mixed Chow, about 4 years old – still a puppy really. The raw patches are fly bites.” He’s gone to the Lied Animal Shelter.

Waah.

We’ll put some notices up on the mailboxes and see if anyone knows anything, but I really don’t think he is from around here.

In the afternoon, PC Club rang up to say that the Twins were ready. That was quick! At around 4:30 we drove down to pick them up.

This evening and tomorrow we expect to be installing software and transferring files. We’re going to call them Castor and Pollux.