Anxious Much?

One hundred and ninety five days left.

There's a conference next week in Austria and I'm starting to get anxious about my travels. The last time I went overseas, I didn't have a chance to get anxious...everything just happened so quickly. Suddenly, sometime during the 14 hour flight, it hit me that I was going to Japan. Freaked me out. I'm experiencing that a bit early with Austria.

Now that the anxiety is getting established, there's the issue of getting everything done on schedule for the conference. The paper and presentation are shaping up but I'm struggling with the punchline. A discussion with one of my profs today help significantly, but there's still the issue of getting that translated to slides, print, and words and staying consistent.

Not that it's related, but this week is New York's Fashion Week. I picture the attendees to be dressed similarly to those at the Halloween in West Hollywood. The goal, however lofty, is to be noticed. Here's a fantastic account of Jezebel's Sadie doing just that by carrying a large doll dressed like her. Enjoy.

Dinner in DC

M.L. and I got together for dinner while I was out in DC. We wandered around King Street in Alexandria for a while. I had wanted to try a new Irish pub, but we walked in and there were so many people and it was so noisy that we decided to move on. After walking for a little longer, we happened upon Restaurant Eve, one of my favorite places to indulge and sat in the bar to eat (to get a table, we probably would have had to call two weeks ago). Fortunately, we were immediately seated and ordered our glasses of wine.

The bartender told us about a couple dishes that weren't on the menu including a lobster bisque that was tempting and a hogshead burger that made her face light up. I had no idea what a hogshead burger was and her reaction was so strong that I decided to give it a try. M.L. tried the gnocchi appetizer. What I got was a lovely meat patty that had delicate red meat crusted with a light breading seared to perfection. It was a joy to eat. Very rich and flavorful. Plus, it came with perfect fries.

At the end of the meal, I asked for specifics about the burger. It came from the meat from the skull of a hog. Very, very tasty. Very, very unique.

Miami

We got back from Miami on Friday. We had a great time, including a couple days of "vacation", something we've not done for over six years. After Jeremy fenced on Saturday in Div. I (he placed 38/65), we had Sunday to Tuesday to relax. We spent some time by the pool Sunday and had a the steak dinner mentioned before.

Monday, we went to the Edison-Ford Winter Estate in Ft. Myers. My parents drug me there when I was a teen and entirely too cool for doing tourist-type things....until I got there and was fascinated with the grounds, especially the trees. It was still really cool. We walked the grounds, checked out the houses, and poked around in the lab and museum. This is the only place that I've been really impressed with the gardens, mostly because there's such a variety of plants and with an eye towards research. Other gardens are pretty, but they just don't fascinate me like this one. This all, once again, confirms my geekdom.

This is the Mysore Fig. Not the biggest one on the property, but still a large tree. The roots stick up for stability (and other reasons, I'm sure), but some on the larger tree are four feet tall.

Banyan Tree, yes, just one tree in this picture. It grows support branches as they're needed. Very cool. This particular tree takes up almost an acre and is the largest specimen in North America. It's theoretically a cutting from the largest one in the world.

We had P.F. Chang's carryout (with some drama-they got my order wrong two times!) and a bottle of wine for dinner. The wine was Ch. Lilian Ladouys, a 2003 St. Estephe, which had a really subtle fruity flavor, and a nice, soft mouth-feel. I would say that it's a typical 2003 Bordeaux, ready to drink now, but will be very good in a few years, too. I really enjoyed it. We actually let it sit for a couple days and it was still very nice rather than adopting that jammy flavor that develops when you let many other wines sit. It wasn't a particularly distinct wine, but would be a really nice table wine, a safe choice for most occasions and something I would be happy to have in my cellar.

The Lilian Ladouys label. Yum!

The Copa America is going on right now. We watched a bit of pool play while waiting for our carryout. On Tuesday, we found a little pizza joint called Archie's showing pool play for the tournament. They were also the only place open on the 4th, so we ended up going back. The atmosphere was great, with people cheering and excited about the games. They also had a convincing pizza rustico. I was pleased. I had a cheese calzone the second night and was surprised that they included a Gorgonzola, which sounded better than it actually was.

Jeremy fenced in Div. IA on Wednesday. We were done early enough that I was able to get to the pool for some more sun and reading.

I fenced in Div. IA on Thursday, I wasn't in as long as I would have liked, but was fairly pleased with my day. A group of us went out to dinner Thursday night at a little Cuban place, which left a little to be desired in the area of service. The company more than made up for the shortcomings of the restaurant.

Oh. Right. One more thing. We took advantage of the concierge services of the hotel and ate dessert in the lounge almost every night. Our good host, Edgar even saved me some chocolate goodness one night after hours. The desserts were amazing. Here we have from foreground to background, a flan, a chocolate mousse and Ganache mini-cake, a little chocolate tart thingie, and carrot cake. We also had, at some point, cheesecake, tiramisu cheesecake, and blueberries. Wow.

It rained.

Written on Sunday...posted significantly later so I could add the pictures:

Jeremy and I are in Miami for Fencing Summer Nationals. He fenced in Division I on Saturday and did a bang-up job. After his tournament, we went out to dinner...errr...lunch...errr...whatever meal falls at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon. The important part is that we went to a place around here called Novecento. It was really good. Started with a Caprese salad that had some (obviously) homemade mozz, which I really appreciated. I had the eggplant ravioli and a glass of non-descript pinot grigio. Towards the end of the meal, it started thundering. We decided to take advantage of the short, mid-afternoon-Florida rain to have another round, but ended up sitting for another two hours waiting for it to stop pouring. Jeremy and I started taking random pictures with our phones (yes, see below) and taunting the waiters while they were trying to poke the tents with the ends of brooms. Physics seemed to escape them. It was a lot of fun. It's been a really long time since I've sat outside, under the protection of a large umbrella watching it rain unrelentlessly. People looked miserable. I was delighted. No place to go, nothing to do. Heaven.

I don't think you can actually see the rain very well, but it was coming off the canvas in a steady pour.

Funny pic with the strange self-portrait function of the camera.

Walking back to the hotel after the rain. It evidently rained hard enough that the city drainage couldn't handle it.

Red Meat

Written Sunday night, about Sunday's meal....posted when I could:

Tonight, on Jeremy's request to have steak, we went out to dinner at Morton's Steakhouse. It's right across from our hotel (trans: within stumbling distance.) We started with cocktails, J with a bourbon, me with a vodka martini. We quickly progressed to dinner and wine. I chose the 1996 Faustino I, a Rioja that I've had before. I also chose the small rib eye. J chose the fillet Diane. Both our entrees went well with the wine. Before we were allowed to chose our dinners, our waitress wheeled out a cart, complete with cuts of beef and a live (!) lobster to explain the menu. She mentioned and described every dish on the menu from memory before handing a paper copy, and the wine list, over to us for perusal at our convenience. After seeing her wheel the lobster out for the dog-and-pony show a few times, we finally asked about its well-being. They had it sitting on a cart, facing the wall. We were assured that it would be dinner to someone very soon, but in the meantime, she would be happy to turn the critter so that it faced the crowd. This made me feel a little better, as it had more personality that way. I thought it was a dummy lobster until she had picked it up during her menu recitation. It took all I had to not break my interested-menu-driven-poker-face when she picked up the lobster while she was describing the menu...and its little legs went wheeling around!! I had actually looked at the little beastie and determined that it was *not* alive, but some plastic thing that was convenient for menu descriptions earlier. The waggling legs did not convince me to have lobster, but more convinced me that it's one, true skill was tap dancing. Unfortunately our hero-lobster didn't have a chance to practice his skills. We asked later. He was dinner for the people across the aisle from us. They hadn't requested him, specifically, but had ended up with him. Such a lively thing. C'est le vie. The wine was spectacular.