My Wii

I owned a Wii today. I had it for three whole hours. I offered it around for market price, but nobody wanted it and nobody thought I could sell it. I never even opened it.

So then I sold it on craigslist. I priced it at $80 over market to pay for my shipping and for my new game, and that's how you sell a Wii in 3 hours. And the buyer didn't murder me (yet - he could track me down). And I converted those profits into:

This game was the whole reason why I bought my xbox way back in April. The game was delayed for six months. It was supposed to be awesome, game of the year awesome. But you know what? Super Mario Galaxy >> Mass Effect, but Super Mario Galaxy requires a Wii.

Fancy fish and chips and some reindeer

Typical LA trip for me, some shopping, some Japanese food, visit Giant Robot store, stuck in traffic at Carlsbad, back home to feed Muffy.

This time we checked out another mall, The Grove. They took this 80 ft tree, killed it, stuffed its skeleton with ornaments and set up lights and stars and reindeer overhead. But don't worry, it's ok because it's probably beautiful at night and they've got all this fancy lighting and the children will be fascinated and maybe children > 80ft tall trees.

Since we couldn't eat at the Grove b/c it was absolutely packed with shoppers (they've got Fashion Valley traffic x2 but everywhere within a 50min radius), we headed off for Little Tokyo-but not the one that's downtown, the one that I can locate. If I'm ever lost in LA, I'm probably at the corner of Olympic and Sawtelle.

I really wanted to get a waffle. There's this great waffle shop in Ginza in Tokyo. The waffles are eaten like hot cookies there without any toppings or syrup. I think that shop is populated by all the gaijin + me but it does good enough business for at least 2 years. Anyhow, I thought this waffle shop would be like that . . . but it wasn't. First, they emphasized toppings. Second, it's soft and has a lot of egg in it rather than the harder texture. And worst of all, they lacked the vital ALMOND flavor, I had to get cinnamon and it's not even close.


Came back and fashioned fancy-ass fish and chips from Trader Joes frozen items. This costs about $4-5/person and you could add in veggies for almost nothing more. It takes about 20min to make b/c of the garlic fries. Can't say its particularly healthy though...

Rotting Tropical Fruit

Yesterday the school decided to give me money, because I satisfied the dual criteria of "generally good resume" and "lousy future job prospects." Approximately 50% of the school satisfies those categories, but I'm not going to say I don't deserve it because for once in my life I think I do. So now that we're going to possibly maybe but not really break even next semester provided we don't go on a massive shopping spree, we had to celebrate. And I celebrated by making TANGERINE BAVARIAN. I don't know why it's two colors...but it is...

I made the cake with the sauce and I actually did it correctly and the free trade sugar acted almost like normal sugar* but the dish was really disappointing! The recipe itself is just a glorified version of orange jello garnished with whipped cream only it's not deconstructed (Anthony Boudain tells me deconstructed food is in now). Tangerines are great by themselves but here with the cream and eggs emphasizing its flavor, it takes on that flavor of rotting tropical fruit. Now, I don't know if tangerines are tropical, but it's got a flavor a little bit like durian. In fact I'd call it durian light, it's even the same color and if you added in vanilla extract... It's light and creamy for about 1second, then the 8 eggs kick in and the aftertaste is sick sweet.

I think it's better with cranberry or pomegranate juice, skip the eggs, put in a crust, cut into little squares, top it off with rum. The sauce is gold though, but that's just orange flavored caramel. Oh another thing, the recipe takes longer than 25min if you skip the ice bath. And you need good kitchen gear. That's my experience with melting sugars - you need good kitchen gear or the sugar'll burn.

*Whole Foods free trade organic sugar. It tells me it's just sugar, nothing else, but it's sweeter than normal sugar. And when I heat it up it tastes just like high fructose corn syrup, it coats your tongue and stays in your mouth even after you brush your teeth. I may go back to mass market kill gorillas and small towns sugar.

*Free trade coffee on the other hand . . . store brand free trade organic coffee > Tully's > dunkin donuts > starbucks.

Tomorrow => attempt at roast beef w/ port sauce after 36hrs of dry brining.

Happy Post!!

My last few posts are kinda sad, so I thought I needed to post some happy things to even out the universe.

Negative: it rained a lot so I stayed home.
Positive: I saw the FUTURAMA movie!! And if you go to ilovebender.com, you can see more! They're going to make four movies over a few years.

Negative: it's really cold and I don't have central heat.
Positive: There's SNOW on the mountains! I don't know which mountains, but they're really high and really far and I suspect you can't usually see them through the smog.

Negative: I live next to the mall, the biggest and best mall within 30 miles, and the december shopping madness seriously hinders my auto-mobility.
Positive: OMG I'm going to save so much money!

Negative: The store doesn't sell basic juicers, but they do carry mango splicers and avocado mashers.
Positive: I'm going to gain a lot of arm strength. And wait till you see what I make: Tangerine Bavarian.

Facebook Meets Blogging

C sent me this article: How your creepy ex-coworkers will kill facebook.

In a nutshell, it's about how on facebook people can trace years worth of your social relationships, so even if you didn't talk to guy A for years and years, he can still find you and others can see you once knew him. This all seems harmless.

I'm clearly the least (financially) successful out of everyone who's ever graduated from my high school or undergrad, and everyone knows that. It bugs me sometimes so I make these online rants that I would never discuss in person. But I never post my justifications, the fact that I hated the laboratory, I won't sit in front of a computer all day, I refuse to put in the hours required in banking, hard work isn't my thing, yet people who I don't talk to on a regular basis will take what they read as reality and it influences their behavior towards me in the future. That's the part I don't like (why do I care?). Anyhow, I removed the link from facebook temporarily. I'm thinking C has a good point in keeping little to no online presence but I also think it's a part of the future so I'm conflicted.

Other important things I discovered during finals week...
1) organic free trade sugar doesn't properly dissolve for baking purposes

2) capacity for marriage is lower than that for making a will, which is lower than making a normal contract

3) banana republic online only lets you use two gift cards at a time so if you're going to give someone $150 worth in gift cards, you should put it on 1 gift card.