Home

This morning I woke up in my hotel room to discover that the electricity was out over most of the hotel. Fortunately I swam in the pool last night and showered afterward, because I really did not want to shower in complete darkness. Some of the lights in the rest of the room were working, so I was able to see well enough to get dressed and to finish packing my things. I had to walk a mile to Burger King for breakfast, once the rain stopped, since the hotel's restaurant could not serve anything more than toast and cereal.

After getting back to the hotel I decided to head to the airport to either use its Wi-Fi connection to work, or to see if I could get on an earlier flight home. I was pleased to discover that I could get on the flight that was scheduled to depart just one hour after my arrival at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport, and even better, my seat was in the exit row. The flight did leave about twenty minutes later than scheduled, but I still arrived in Minneapolis before 11:00 this morning. I did have to wait a very long time for my luggage though. It was eventually discovered to be stuck on the conveyor that brings it to the baggage claim area. I am glad to be home finally. Now I can actually get my project work done.

Afternoon at the Mall

Yesterday Emma requested that we go to Mall of America. As usual, she wanted to ride some of the rides at Nickelodeon Universe. I have been trying to get her to try more rides than just the Rugrats Reptarmobiles bumper cars and the carousel. She contemplated going on Blue's Skidoo, but would only do so if I rode with her. As Maximus was also with us, I couldn't leave him so she could go on the ride. Therefore, Emma opted not to try the ride. She did go in the Pineapple Poppers bounce house, which she had not done before. She enjoyed that and wanted to do it again. Unfortunately, our ticket was out of points. I still have not broken down to buy an unlimited daily wristband for her. I just don't think she will get our money's worth out of one yet.

After playing at the theme park, Max, Emma, and I met back up with Mel who had been doing some clothes shopping. We then had dinner at Cadillac Ranch, a bar and grill restaurant on the third floor of the mall. Dinner was very good—I had the A-1 Mushroom Burger—and reasonably priced.

Movie Night

Friday night, Mel and I went to a movie in a theater for the first time in over a year. The last movie we saw in the theater being Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe. My sister came over to babysit her niece and nephew, so Mel and I started our evening by having dinner at Olive Garden. I had a new dish from their Four Cheese Pastachetti with Grilled Chicken. Lately when I have tried different dishes from my typical choices at restaurants, I have been a little disappointed. This dish however, did not disappoint. I enjoyed it.

After dinner we went to the theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. I enjoyed the movie. It was not as good as the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but it was still good. And while it is difficult for us to get out to movies as much as we would like, I hope Mel and I can make it to another movie or two this summer.

Four!

This past Sunday was Emma's fourth birthday. Time really goes by quickly. I can not believe she's already four years old! She seemed to have a pretty good birthday. We went to Don Pablo's for dinner Saturday night with Aunt Rebecca. Because we were there to celebrate her birthday, Emma got to wear the birthday sombrero, and we got a free order of sopaipillas.


We asked Emma Saturday what she wanted to do for her birthday. The only thing she indicated the wanted to do was to go to Sunday School, so since Maximus was sick, he has thrown up in the car on the way home from the restaurant Saturday night, I took Emma to church while Mel stayed home with Max.


After we got back home from church and ate lunch, Emma opened the presents we got her -- two Zhu Zhu Pets and the Zhu Zhu Burgers Overpass. She had a good time with her new toys, but later in the afternoon she didn't seem to be feeling well and she fell asleep on the couch. Emma ended up going to bed early because she wasn't feeling well, and by the afternoon, she also was not behaving very well. She still thought she had a good birthday though.

A Visit From Bill

For the first time since we moved to Minnesota, my friend Bill came for a visit from Cedar Rapids today. He originally planned on arriving around 9:00 this morning with the hopes of using our Wi-Fi to take a test for an online class he is enrolled in. However things did not work out as planned. Because of flooding, Highway 52 was closed somewhere between Rochester and here. When Bill took the detour, he ended up getting lost, and I had a hard time giving him help since his cell phone reception was poor. Bill noticed that he was running low on gas, so he returned to Rochester to refuel his car. While there, he stopped by the Rochester Public Library to see if he could connect to the Internet there to take his test, but by the time he got logged in, he was late for his test. Bill finally arrived at the house shortly before 1:00, four hours after he expected to be here.

Neither of us had eaten lunch yet, so we went to Ho King, a local Chinese restaurant for lunch. Afterward we stopped at Target, where I had a couple of things to pick up. As Bill enjoys comic books and comic book stores, we then went to Source Comics and Games in Falcon Heights. We went there because it is one comic book store in the Twin Cities that I know of, having visited there once before when I was in the area for a business trip several years ago. We then returned back to the house, stopping to buy a carbon monoxide detector at Walmart; the one we had in the basement stopped working today, so it needed to be replaced.

Bill left to return to Cedar Rapids around 4:30. He having quite a long day, with his very long drive here. Fortunately his return trip should go much better as Highway 52 has reopened.

Business Trip to Chicago

I am currently on a business trip to Chicago. I arrived yesterday afternoon after a rather uneventful flight from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. Usually on business trips we stay at an Embassy Suites hotel. This time though, the Embassy Suites was booked, so the people from my company are at the Marriott Suites near O'Hare, while our committee members are staying at the nearby Marriott. Now I don't want to sound like I am complaining about the Marriott suites. Quite frankly, I think the room I am in is the best hotel room I have ever stayed in on a business trip. However, I really miss the breakfast with the omelet bar and the afternoon manager's reception that  the Embassy Suites has. Oh well, since the after-work drinks aren't free, the company will just end up paying for them.

This is a nice hotel though. The room has two large high-definition televisions. The alarm clock in the bedroom has a docking port for my iPod. That is especially nice since I prefer waking up to music than to an obnoxious alarm. And with the iPod dock, I can listen to my own music. I always find it such a pain to find a radio station that I will like in a city I am visiting. This eliminates that need. The bathroom is also very nice. Besides the typical bathtub, there is an actual shower stall, and the shower head is actually high enough for me! There are a couple of drawbacks about the hotel though, besides the lack of free alcohol. One is the lack of wireless Internet access in the room. I have Internet access, but it is not wireless. The second is the fact that sodas from the vending machines or from the front desk cost three dollars. That's an outrageous price! However, neither of these negatives are particularly bad, especially since I can get reimbursed for my beverages when I submit my expense report upon returning home.

Now on to the details of what I have been doing while I was here. Last night, two of my coworkers and I had dinner at the Carlucci Italian restaurant that is located very close to our hotel. I had some great food -- flank steak, pasta, and lobster-stuffed shrimp! It was fantastic! The crème brûlée I had for dessert was good as well, although the flame went out before the alcohol on top was sufficiently burned. It was so big that I was unable to finish it.

Today was the first day of our day and a half of meetings. I am not going to go into detail about the meeting, but I will say that I definitely earned the drink I had with dinner tonight! Speaking of dinner, we went to Gibsons to eat. We wanted to eat in the restaurant itself, but without a reservation we would have had to wait until 9:00 at the earliest before we could be seated, so we ate in the bar instead. Finding a seat in the bar was almost as difficult. I noticed that three women at one of the tables were eating some cake, so I staked out their table waiting for them to leave so I could pounce on the newly-vacated table before someone else had the chance. While I was waiting for them to leave, I noticed that the men at the neighboring table were paying their tab. They ended up leaving first, so I procured a table for my group. I had a rib eye steak sandwich for dinner. A few of us shared some crab cakes for an appetizer. For the second night in a row, dinner was quite delectable. After dinner, we returned to out hotel where we had some desert at our hotel's restaurant.

After returning to my room, I spent a little bit of time working on a different project to which I am assigned before composing this blog posting and going to bed. I am anticipating that my committee will finish up early tomorrow, so I guess I will probably be spending extra time at O'Hare waiting for my 3:05 flight back to Minneapolis.

Time to Blog

I've been having a hard time making time to blog lately. I have some time now, so I thought I would write about our trip to Iowa last weekend to celebrate my grandmother's ninety-first birthday, as well as the birthdays of my sister and my cousin's wife. We drove down to my mother's home Friday night. I think this really messed up Maximus's sleep schedule. It took a long time to get him to sleep. Fortunately, this meant he ended up sleeping much later than usual.

On Saturday we had lunch at the Colony Inn in Amana. Lunch was terrific! The mashed potatoes and gravy were delicious, and the Swiss steak I had for my entrée was quite flavorful as well. We then returned to my grandmother's house where we later had a small dinner followed by cake and ice cream.

My mom, sister, Mel, Emma, Max, and I went to the Other Place in Waterloo for pizza on Sunday before returning home. The drive back went pretty well except for the last half hour or so. By that time, Max had woken up and was tired of being in his car seat. He wasn't shy about letting us know it either. I hope we all survive our trip to Iowa next month for a wedding reception. That trip is going to be much longer than the one we took last weekend.

Surgery and Recovery

On Thursday I had my gallbladder removed. And as I was not going to be able to eat from between midnight prior to my surgery until after the procedure was completed, I decided that I wanted to have a large dinner Wednesday. So Mel, Emma, Maximus, my mother, including my mother, who came to visit to watch Maximus, my sister, and I went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. I thought that was a good place to go since their portions are notoriously large. However, I ordered an item off of their specials menu. Those entrées are not as large. Nevertheless, I still had plenty to eat. Around nine o'clock that night, I had my last food prior to my surgery, half of the cheesecake that I had brought home from the restaurant.

Thursday morning, after taking Emma to daycare, and doing some shopping at the grocery store and Target, Mel and I headed to the surgery center. I was a little nervous. Prior to this surgery, the only surgery I had had was having my wisdom teeth removed. However, the fact that this surgery was routine did help to ease my nerves a bit. I figured that the chances of something going wrong were very remote.

Upon arriving at the surgery center, the nurse prepped me for surgery, putting an IV in my hand. I really hate needles, so I wasn't looking forward to that, but it wasn't too bad. The anesthesiologist came in to ask me a few questions, and then the surgeon stopped by to tell me that he had another laparoscopic cholecystectomy to perform before mine, so he would be in good practice when it came to mine. After waiting for an hour or so, I was wheeled into the surgery room. I seem to remember them saying something about the operating table not being long enough, but that is the last thing I recall before waking up in the recovery room. When I came to, I apparently was trying to sit up, because I seem to remember the nurses yelling at me to not sit up. After being observed for an hour and a half or so, Mel and I went back home.

I actually felt pretty good initially after my surgery, although I did take some generic Vicodin upon returning home to ensure I continued to feel all right. I also had some crackers and Jell-O to eat once I got home since I was so hungry, but didn't think a full meal would be advisable. I didn't have much pain at all until I laid down to go to bed. That hurt quite a bit, but taking ibuprofen and more Vicodin helped. I ended up going to sleep fairly quickly.

Yesterday I felt fairly good and ended up eating a good lunch and dinner. Staying medicated helped to keep pain away, although my right shoulder felt stiff most of the day. In fact, I felt well enough out that Mel, Maximus, and I even went out for a little bit. I didn't feel much pain at all yesterday until I tried to feed Max and ended up stretching in an uncomfortable way. The next real pain I had last night was when a joke on truTV's World's Dumbest made me laugh. It was very painful when I laughed, but I couldn't stop! I had to get up and leave the room, because just watching the clip on the show kept me wanting to laugh.

I seem to be recovering just fine from my surgery. Later this morning I will be able to remove the dressings from the four incision sites. Then I will get my first look at where the surgeon inserted his tools.

Robin Hood

Since my mom was in town to visit us and to attend my sister's orchestra concert this weekend, Mel and I decided to take advantage of her as a baby sitter so the two of us could go to dinner and a movie by ourselves. We had a nice dinner at Don Pablo's followed by viewing Robin Hood. We both enjoyed the movie. I do not know how this story compares to what has been written in the past about Robin Hood, but I enjoyed learning of his origin, at least as far as this film was concerned. I suppose I could do a little research, but I am now wondering if Ridley Scott is planning on following this movie with another featuring Russell Crowe as Robin Hood.

My Last Full Day in Philly

Today was my last full day in Philadelphia before returning home from my business trip. We were able to wrap things up a little early today. This gave me the opportunity to do a little sight seeing. I took a cab to the Liberty Bell. After visiting that sight, I wandered around the area for a little while, visiting the tomb of the unknown Revolutionary War soldier, and walking by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the United States Mint. Also during this walk, I stopped at the Independence Hall visitor center where I got a free ticket to tour Independence Hall.

At 4:00, I took my tour of Independence Hall. It really isn't much of a tour as there are only two rooms in Independence Hall, the courtroom and the room in which the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution were signed. That's not to say that the tour wasn't worth it. The tour guide did an excellent job describing what happened when the Second Continental Congress met there.

Later this evening, my colleagues and I all went to Misconduct Tavern for dinner. I had some really good homemade macaroni and cheese there. In addition to the variety of cheeses in the mac and cheese, I had them add grilled chicken. It was yummy, and not too much food. Tomorrow morning I have a few things to finish up for work, and then I will be headed to the airport to return to Minnesota.

Whose Cuisine Reigns Supreme?

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog entry, Monday night, after my colleagues and I arrived in Philadelphia for our meeting, we went to dinner at Morimoto, the restaurant of Iron Chef Japanese Masaharu Morimoto. In ordering dinner, I had to choose between ordering a specific item from the menu or omakase, in which the chef prepared a variety of dishes of his choice. Wanting to get the full experience, I had the omakase.

The first course of my dinner was hamachi tartare with fresh wasabi and osetra caviar.

The next course was whitefish carpaccio seared with hot olive and sesame oils, yuzu - citrus soy, finished with shiso, ginger, mitsuba, and chives.

 The third course was sashimi salad, mixed greens, yuzu vinaigrette, shaved bonito.

After the first three courses came the intermezzo, a palate cleanser, almond-spearmint soda.

Fourth came the first of the hot courses, black cod miso with su miso mustard.

The fifth course was pan seared duck breast and foie gras with port wine glazed ginger reduction.

Next came the chef's selection of sushi. I do not recall what they all were but one of them, the one shown on the top left, was tuna, and the sushi at the bottom right was octopus.

The dinner concluded with desert. For desert we were served chocolate strawberry bavaroise and white chocolate shiso mouse.

Each of these dishes was fantastic, and they were all very tasty! I have been trying to pick a favorite of the courses, but such a decision has proved to be impossible. Everything was so flavorful and delectable. I am not likely to return to Moromoto Restaurant any time in the future, so I will savor this visit.

Cheese Steak!

Last night my colleagues and I had dinner at Moromoto Restaurant in Philadelphia. I will be blogging about that, but that will have to wait until I get the menu of what we had to eat back from one of my colleagues. In the meantime, I am going to write about today's meeting and dinner. The meeting which I facilitated today went very well. We made a lot of progress at getting finished what we needed to work on. I am very pleased with what we accomplished.

This evening, a couple of colleagues, a few of our committee members, and I all went to get cheese steak for dinner. I got cheese steak from Geno's Steaks while a couple of the people in our group got their cheese steaks from Pat's King of Steaks across the street. Our cab driver said that he prefers Geno's, which it why I chose that for my dinner. Geno's is the restaurant which was controversial a few years back for having signs up in their windows telling people that this is America, so they should order in English. I was certain to place my order in English as I didn't want to anger the employees. Besides, I wasn't sure how to say "cheese steak" in Klingon. I had my cheese steak with onions and Cheez Whiz. It was good, but I also had a taste of a sandwich from Pat's. I think the meat at Pat's tasted better, but I thought the cheese was better on Geno's. That could be because the steak sandwich from Pat's had provolone instead of Cheez Whiz.

Aaron Doubles Down

For weeks I have seen ads for the latest fast food monstrosity, the Double Down from KFC. And while this creation appears very unhealthy, I have had a strong desire to try it. I am going to resume watching what I eat in an attempt to lose weight once I return home from a business trip, so I figured this was my only opportunity to give this "sandwich" a try. Before I continue, I am not sure if I can really call the Double Down a sandwich, despite the fact that KFC does use that term. In its definition of the word sandwich, Merriam-Webster makes it pretty clear that sandwiches involve bread, something that the Double Down is lacking, unless you consider the breading on the deep-fried chicken breasts to be bread, which I do not.

When I ordered this composite of meats and cheeses for lunch, I actually felt a bit of embarrassment for ordering it. I was worried that the person taking my order would judge me for my willingness to eat this fat-laden conglomeration. I got over that and took the item home, along with my order of potato wedges, and Diet Pepsi. Yes, I ordered a Diet Pepsi with this. Some might think that there was little point in ordering a diet soft drink if I was already planning on subjecting myself to this wad of meat, but I didn't want to add on one hundred more calories than I needed to.

Since this sandwich contains no bread, eating it was somewhat messy. Yes, it did have a paper wrap with which I could hold it, but that only lasted so long. Eventually the amount of remaining chicken was reduced to the point that I had to discard the paper, unless I wanted to eat that as well. If there had been any doubt in my mind about how much fat was in this item, the greasy feeling left on my fingers took care of that. Looking at the Double Down, I was expecting to really like it. After all, I do love chicken breasts, bacon, and cheese. The Double Down did not live up to my expectations however. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't the orgy of flavors that I expected either. It was simply adequate. Now from previous experience, I know that my local KFC isn't one of the best ones out there. We have gotten some less-than-terrific food from them before, but now that I have tried this culinary atrocity, I will never eat one again. Maybe I will try the grilled variety. Okay, I don't think that it necessary either.

While the media would have us think that KFC's Double Down is a crime against humanity, destined to kill us all, nutritionally it isn't really any worse than a lot of what fast food restaurants offer. According to information I have found online, the Double Down has 590 calories and 31 grams of fat. Now if I were counting Weight Watchers points, this would have been about 15 points. I am estimating this number as I do not want to dig out the Weight Watchers points calculator. Besides, I don't think it goes that high. While that is a lot of points, it's hardly record-breaking. In fact, Mel was looking up the points for Dairy Queen Blizzards tonight, and several flavors of large Blizzards have over 30 points.

So let's compare the Double Down with chicken items from other leading fast food restaurants. The Premium Crispy Chicken Club Sandwich from McDonald's has 630 calories and 28 grams of fat. From Burger King, the Tendercrisp Chicken Sandwich has 800 calories and 46 grams of fat. This appears to be significantly less good for the eater than the Double Down, yet it does not seem to garner the same publicity. Finally, let's look into the nutritional information from a chicken sandwich from Hardee's. Their Big Chicken Fillet Sandwich has 710 calories and 38 grams of fat. All three of these sandwiches should be more of a concern than the KFC Double Down. I guess the Double Down's lack of bread gives it the appearance of being more gluttonous than these alternative fast food chicken choices. Now that I have looked up these other sandwiches, I think I may strike them from my future fast food choices as well.

Update (4/22/10 3:37 PM): I may have to reconsider what I said about the calorie and fat count of the Double Down. Here's an article that says KFC has grossly underrepresented these numbers: http://cityrag.com/2010/04/kentucky-fried-bullshit-2/

Happy Birthday

Today was Mel's birthday. Before doing anything for her birthday this evening though, we took Emma to the doctor for her three-year check-up. Emma is growing just fine. She is 39.5 inches tall, which places her at the 95th percentile for height. She is definitely going to be tall!

After the doctor appointment, we all went to El Loro in Eagan for dinner. Mel was going to have a large margarita and I was going to have a smaller one. Thinking that she may end up buying a second margarita later, I thought we should order a pitcher of margaritas. As I was driving, I didn't get to drink to much of it, and not wanting to waste a drop of margarita, Mel ended up drinking the vast majority of the pitcher's contents. We had a really good dinner, but Emma did not seem to interested in the food which she had ordered. She did like eating my rice, so maybe next time we go to El Loro, we should just get a side dish of rice for Emma. Sure, it's not a well balanced meal, but she gets plenty of nutrients throughout the day.

When we returned home from dinner, Mel opened her birthday presents which included a Minnesota Twins T-shirt, the DVD of New Moon, and Buckyballs which I had purchased with the gift certificate I had won from ThinkGeek.com.  We then rounded out the evening with some cake, which I baked, and ice cream.