Diner Food

Greasy Spoon, Diner, Cafe, Caff.  All the same to me, a diner.  I’ve always been a big fan of the diner.  The food.. well I’ve never really had a bad meal at a diner.  You get what you pay for though.  Don’t expect gormet, but do expect good and cheap.  One of my few disappointments with the Raleigh area is the lack of really good diners to be found.  They can be found, but you have to know where they are and they aren’t just around the corner like they are in other places.  My diner experience started in college when after a nightly binge a trip to waffle house (the one on the far side of the highway with the two very nice butch lesbian waitresses) was a requirement.  I’ve even seen the sun rise a few times at that waffle house.  A trip to atlanta wouldn’t be complete without a trip to The Original Pancake House.  I practically lived at the waffle house in Auburn.  Anytime I’m in the mood for good cheap food I generally hit a diner.  Diners are a place of real people.  There’s no pretense to eating at a diner.  There’s generally no need to check the menu or see what the seasonal specials are.  The best waitstaff in the world work at diners, fast, efficient and generally real and friendly.  If you strike up conversation with a diner waitress it’s because she’s a nice person and wants to talk to you (otherwise she won’t) not because she’s trolling for a tip.  The diner is one of the few restaurants where you can actually just sit and watch the world go by, read a paper (as long as it’s not during the rush).

I revisited my diner love with a trip to Waffle House this weekend while the wife and kid were away.  3 eggs scrambled with cheese, raisin toast, hash brown (scattered, smothered, covered and diced) and a vanilla coke (it was afternoon so no coffee).

Digging a friends grave.

I dug a friends grave today. My oldest friend, my most loyal friend. I buried my dog today. First I had to end his life. They say it’s the right thing to do, they say it’s better to stop the suffering. They say the prognosis is bad. None of that makes it any easier to tell someone to kill your dog. They wouldn’t let me do it, but I was there, I held his head and told him I was sorry. Sorry I couldn’t fix him, I had always fixed him before, it was my job. This time I couldn’t. So I told them to kill him, I rubbed his ears and told him I loved him as he drifted away. Then I brought him home, in a plain cardboard box with a heart on one end. Then we dug a hole in the back yard, we did it ourselves. It was fitting. He was our dog, he was my dog, so I dug him his grave. He can take his last summer nap now. He was doing so well, acting like he was 2 again, we never new anything was wrong. I don’t think he ever knew anything was wrong till the end. In the dark we stood, even the cat, I thanked God for his gift. He taught me more than I ever taught him. I covered him myself, it took much less time than to dig his grave. A shallow grave, under some trees where he can see the whole yard. He used to love to sit and survey his domain. In our old house he’d sit at the high point like a king and just watch his whole yard, he sat above the house so I think he was watching over us too. I’m tired and sore now, I can’t even feel the physical side, the emotional drain has been too much. I’ve shed a lot of tears today, I’m shedding them now. My eyes hurt, my head hurts, my arms and my back hurt, but most of all my heart hurts. He was there through everything, he was always glad to see me, we never fought. He was my companion on long road trips. He was my confidante, he always kept the best secrets. He was my wife’s rock when I wasn’t around, he took her in and loved her as he loved me. He was her dog too. We were his people. I miss him so much. Now all the food that falls on the floor has to be cleaned up. The gate to the stairs doesn’t need to be left open so he can come and go anymore. I don’t have to feel around for him on the floor to keep from stepping on him when I go to bed.

He was my loyal friend. He was my oldest friend. He was my companion, He was my dog and I love him and I will miss him dearly.

Zoot MacLeod — June 8, 2008 — R.I.P.

My internets are lacking

The intrepid Captain Pickard sent me a link the Weezer video Pork and Beans which on top of being an excellent song is also an excellent video. However I immediatly felt slightly deficient in that I only recognized about 60% of the youtube references contained within. So I’m now trying to track down the videos for everything I’ve missed by not going daily to youtube.com or break.com.

On a side note ‘The Red Album’ comes out 6/3, I’ve already lala’ed it, but I might try out their mp3 purchase stuff just to see how it is. Depends a lot on their policies around DRM.

The fallecy of concatenation

Whenever I discuss configuration management with anyone that is new to the concept, and even some people that have been doing it for a while.  There’s one concept that comes up that I have to argue with people about incessantly.  It’s this concept of concatenation.  Basically what people want to do is have this stub of a file be global, this other stub only effect this particular subset of machines, this other stub affect this other subset, then finally a stub that’s host specific.

The south of Spain

After an unexpected and sudden trip (sans the boy) to Cafe Capistrano I’ve now gotten on a Sangria kick. Capistrano does not have their liquor license, but does have their beer and wine license. So they make margaritas and sangria with wine only. The last time I made sangria it didn’t go so well, I loved it and proceeded to drink half of it, T hated it and wouldn’t touch it. I’ve been trying to find a by the glass recipe so that I can try different recipes without devoting an entire bottle of wine to each experiment.

It’s a daunting task because there are as many sangria recipes out there as there are bottles of red wine most of them call for adding hard liquor and soaking the fruit for several days prior to mixing. But they say wine is good for you so I guess I’m up to the challenge.

In search of…

My previous post about the ‘Perfect Manhattan‘ probably misled a few people. I’m in general not a fan of dry vermouth, hence why I like ‘The Haining’. I’ve always been in search of the perfect (note the lowercase ‘P’) Manhattan. Every time I’m out at a bar and I have one they are usually really good, in fact often times, so good they are dangerous. But yet when I make them at home I don’t get it right. I had suspected that despite ordering just a ‘Manhattan’ that I was actually getting a ‘Perfect Manhattan’. After having one there is a definite difference. So I’m still on the hunt for the right recipe for me. Sadly it’s actually hard to find Rye Whiskey here in NC (yay state run liquor). Traditionally when I’m out I generally order bourbon Manhattans but I’d like to try one with Rye.

Maybe I’ll take a more scientific approach this weekend and make a couple of small variations for tasting purposes. One of the downsides (is it really a downside?) to experimenting is that once you have 2 or 3 they all start to taste the same.

Adventures in vermouth

So tonight, adventures in vermouth continued with the 007 Vesper, which was ok and a ‘Perfect Manhattan’. Sadly the only bourbon around the house is Elijah Craig which is a bit strong for a Manhattan, also I was out of maraschino cherry’s so the garnish was missing. I’ve come to realize that especially with traditional cocktails the garnish is probably the most important ingredient. It makes the drink in a way the ingredients do not. I didn’t love the Vesper but I’m glad I tried it. Gin just offends my palate in a way no other liquor does.

I also found this today. Led Zeppelin and STP would be an awesome show, one that I would certainly attend if it was remotely close. T would love it as well as she’s bigger into Zep than I ever am or was. We’ll see if it ever comes true. It would be amazing to see them live.

The Haining

At the recent nuptials of the Lovely Miss Molly and Sir John, I had the opportunity to rediscover one of my old favorites. Vodka Martini, sweet, with a twist. Since that weekend I’ve been craving them like mad. So today after a long and especially frustrating day of work, I made a quick stop at the liquor store and picked up some Grey Goose (my vodka of choice) and vermouth. After a couple of tries (isn’t experimenting with liquor enjoyable) I’ve recreated the mix to perfection.

2 shots Grey Goose Vodka
2 shots Sweet Vermouth
long thin twist of lemon

pour liquids over ice… shake vigorously… pour into a chilled martini glass.
Rub the lemon peel around the edge of the glass (very important) twist and drop in.

Since I’m going magnanimously claim that I invented this variation (which I probably didn’t) and because I drank many of them at Molly’s Father’s expense. I’m going to name it The Haining in his honor.

A new look…

So as you’ve probably noticed miscellaneous.net has undergone some changes. For a very long time I was running this site (and my mail, etc) off of an old pc under my desk in my office using dyndns (and the fact that Time Warner almost never changes your lease). Well that old compaq (yes I know) finally died and rather than buy something new or salvage slightly newer hardware from work or some other place I decided (upon recommendation from john) to buy a VPS from slicehost.com. I’ve been pretty impressed so far. It took about 10 minutes to request, pay and setup my VPS. It’s Centos 5.1, which is fine I guess. I feel a little dirty using centos given my employment but fedora is too much of a moving target for me right now.

So I have a nice new server and I’ve migrated most everything as well. I updated to the latest wordpress and decided to find a new theme. I’m pretty happy with things as they are now, though I’d like to figure out why I have 2 meta blocks at the bottom of the page. Not sure where the second one is coming from.

What a whirlwind

So I’ve really let miscnet linger without much of an update for way too long. Alot of it has been that I’ve been busy. Really busy. The month of March had me traveling every single weekend except Easter. Florida for John’s bachelor party, Toronto with Dad for an all hockey weekend, then Kentucky for the Bowling Green Amateur Championships (which were a huge letdown this year). Plus there’s this whole Dad thing that I’m doing now that is really cool, but takes a lot of time.