Monthly Archives: September 2008

Maxwell Returns

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While we were in Singapore, our cats Tiramisu (Misu) and Mochi were taken care of by our friends Jane and Tony then my parents while Maxwell was cared for by Isabell and Jason. Jason is one of the docs I worked with and when he heard of my difficulties with finding a caregiver for Maxwell, he and his wife offered to take him in. I am extremely grateful to them for taking good care of Maxwell and welcoming him into their home. Apparently, Max didn’t like their other two cats very much but got along great with the humans! He’s always been more of a *people* cat.

Now Maxwell is back with us. He does not like Mochi and Misu very much but even before, he only tolerated them so this isn’t too different… except for more hissing! I hope he’ll adjust okay but he seems to enjoy his old toy, Nanook the beanie baby.

He’s becoming an old man, already 9 years old!

Birthday at Conduit Restaurant

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http://www.conduitrestaurant.com/

We went to dinner for Virginia’s birthday at Conduit Restaurant on Valencia St in SF. They very nicely accommodated our party in the cellar in the back of the restaurant. It was a bit warm inside but they are in the middle of installing ventilation.

We had cocktails and appetizers as we waited for the birthday girl since they had gone to Marine World in Vallejo to relive a bit of their childhood.

I ordered their “Nouveaux Noyeaux” made with Ketel One vodka, prosecco, stone fruit, and lemon. It had quite a bit of alcohol and I couldn’t really find the “stone fruit” flavor.. but that may be because I was looking for a melon-like flavor since I’ve heard cantaloupe called stone fruit before. But now I find out that stone fruit usually refers to peaches, plums, and the like with seeds.

I only photographed a couple of their appetizers but we ordered most of them on the menu. Here is the fig appetizer with blue cheese and argula. This was really light and delicious. The figs were very delicate but yummy.

Here is the hamachi appetizer which I don’t really remember, wasn’t as mouth watering as the fig salad even though hamachi is my favorite fish for sashimi…

We also had the watermelon, tomato, and cheese appetizer. Who knew watermelon and cheese could go well together? We also had the beef carpaccio which was pretty good as well.

After the birthday girl arrived, we ordered our wines.

One white:

One red:

I ordered their halibut roasted with summer squash and smoked tomato. The piece was a bit small for me but left me enough room for dessert so that worked out well 😀

Ron had the grilled salmon with lobster mushroom and hearts of palm. The salmon was a nice sized portion and the lobster mushrooms were very nice. It’s orange and is a bit crunchy and also soft.

After our dinner, we were all treated to delicious cupcakes! Virginia had one candle to make her wish.

We almost had enough for 2 per person.

This is a red velvet cupcake with white icing and sprinkles.

This is a lemonade cupcake with pink frosting. The straw is more of a decoration than a utility, no lemonade to suck up 🙁

Another red velvet cupcake but with chocolate frosting.

The yummy moist inside cake:

Afterwards we went for a drink closeby at Nihon, a Japanese whisky bar. We’d been there one time before but thought it’d be fun to try their other drinks. They have whisky cocktails, champagne cocktails, and LOTS of types of whisky. As cocktails go, I’d recommend the lychee mermaid and ginger indochine. I don’t know enough about whisky to say much…

A word of caution, the lounge gets busy in the evening so you may have to stand for a while before getting a seat on one of the couches or tables. They serve food upstairs so you can make a reservation for dinner.

A fun evening…

Conduit Restaurant
280 Valencia Street
San Francisco

Nihon Whisky Lounge
1779 Folsom St @ 14th St
San Francisco

International Talk Like a Pirate Day 2008

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http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

Jokes courtesy of Piratejokes.net and originally heard from our crew of our scuba/snorkel trip in Maui:

Q: How did the pirate learn to read?
A: “Hooked” on phonics!

PIRATE STORY #1
A pirate walks into a bar and the bartender says, “Hey, I haven’t seen you in a while. What happened, you look terrible!”
“What do you mean?” the pirate replies, “I’m fine.”
The bartender says, “But what about that wooden leg? You didn’t have that before.”
“Well,” says the pirate, “We were in a battle at sea and a cannon ball hit my leg but the surgeon fixed me up, and I’m fine, really.”
“Yeah,” says the bartender, “But what about that hook? Last time I saw you, you had both hands.”
“Well,” says the pirate, “We were in another battle and we boarded the enemy ship. I was in a sword fight and my hand was cut off but the surgeon fixed me up with this hook, and I feel great, really.”
“Oh,” says the bartender, “What about that eye patch? Last time you were in here you had both eyes.”
“Well,” says the pirate, “One day when we were at sea, some birds were flying over the ship. I looked up, and one of them shat in my eye.”
“So?” replied the bartender, “what happened? You couldn’t have lost an eye just from some bird shit!”
“Well,” says the pirate, “I really wasn’t used to the hook yet.”

PIRATE STORY #2
So a pirate walks into a bar, okay, and swaggers up to the barkeep and demands a glass of rum. I believe his exact words were “Your rum or your life, dog, what’ll it be?”.
And so the bartender, being a reasonable fellow, makes no complaint but simply grabs a large glass, a bottle of fine dark rum, and begins to pour. And while he’s waiting for the glass to fill (this being, as I said before, a large glass) he sizes up the pirate, having never seen a real honest-to-God pirate before.
This pirate is in full pirate gear. Gold earrings, patch over the eye, a big filthy white blouse covering his swarthy chest, tattoos everywhere, all of it. But protruding from his pirate trousers is the unmistakable form of a steering wheel.
Well, the bartender sees that the glass of rum is just about topped off, so he passes the glass across the bar to the pirate, who nods curtly and takes a huge swig of the rum. Slapping a dubloon on the bartop, he turns to walk away, when our bartender’s curiousity gets the best of him.
“Wait, one second. What’s up with the steering wheel?”
And the pirate turns back and fixes him with a beady glare from his lone eye. “Arrr, I don’t know, but it’s drivin’ me nuts!”

ARRR MATEY! Have a good International Talk Like a Pirate Day!