Just a Few Hours Until Game Time

And this is how I'm gonna get ready for this evening's media slam at Hideout.

Congratulations

Sometimes watching the two of them together makes me fear for diabetes (I kid) but Scott and Erin are a perfect match. They're like one of those couples you refer to as one word; scottanderin, if you will.

Erin announced on her blog yesterday that they're getting married in the fall. It makes one hope that everyone could find the happiness the two of them share.

Leisurely Thoughts

New Glarus, WI - Greetings from "Little Switzerland." The beer is cold, the air less so.

I'm up here just gathering my bearings and catching up on some overdue things. One of them is finishing reading this week's New Yorker. It has a killer piece on Alinea's Grant Achatz and his battle with oral cancer, a story which has been covered exhaustively locally but is only now starting to break out nationally. It is a killer article worth the read.

In the process, author D.T. Max manages to humanize the usually reserved Achatz, a chef who rarely shows emotion but who constantly elicit them from his guests from his carefully crafted meals (a question I asked in my own interview with Achatz from last spring). Most notable is the passion with which Achatz sought the radical form of treatment that he eventually took to fight the Stage VI cancer, continuing work on his cookbook and putting in eighteen-twenty hour days at Alinea as he was fighting radiation sickness and undergoing treatment.

It's also given Achatz a lesson in trust. As the radiation treatment resulted in a loss and slow return of his sense of taste, Achatz has had to rely on his sous chefs to ensure that his "prototype" dishes are ready for the ever-changing menu at 1723 N. Halsted. I find it astounding that he was going through all of this at the time I interviewed him. According to Max, Achatz had been plagued by this since he was at Trio, nearly five years ago.

It also reminded me that, when I was in the lost post-HotHouse months trying to make ends meet freelancing, I pre-ordered the Alinea cookbook set for release this fall. Pre-ordering (and it's only $50, so don't be a cheap bastard) grants you access to the Alinea mosaic, which for me is like the ultimate Harry Potter wiki for anyone else. Customers holding pre-orders on the cookbook are allowed to view hi-res images of some of Achatz's menu creations, video of the process for some recipes, and recipes themselves. Achatz mentioned in our interview with him that it all boils down to it simplicity, a theme repeated in countless interviews before and after. After reading his recipe for cheese and crackers, I now see that.

Correcting an Error

A couple months back I had the bright idea to switch my office and bedroom around, which turned out to be a monumentally bad idea. The office was relocated to the back of the apartment, past the kitchen and away from the street view and living room that offers me motivation when I sit down to work. Meanwhile, the bedroom now had the street view, and - at night - a streetlamp burning its essence into my brain as I slept.

I switched the rooms back around today, as well as tossed out an old sofa that I gained possession of when Sue and I finally stopped being roommates four years ago that had long outlived its usefulness.

After I switched the rooms around I did some moving around of the Chris Voit Botanic Garden, now in its third uninterrupted smash year in my apartment, and started getting inspired to fully utilize the front room for the sunroom I always aspired it to be. I think I'll get down to that order of business after Mothers Day.

Back in the day I would have been content to stack some milk crates up, drape a piece of fabric over it and call it a divan. Someone I dated briefly called it "early bachelor," 'cause I also was alright with having my California king mattress and box spring rest on the floor with just a simple fitted sheet covering it (I may have bought some actual bedding for it once she started sleeping over, although I doubt it which was one of the many reasons we only dated briefly). That was 27, 28.

Now I'm a month away from 39 and walking into Nordstroms looking for the right sized storage benches to parallel the front room windows and obsessing about the right tone of sagebrush to complement the tile in the fireplace mantle when I paint an accent wall.

I'm probably gonna make someone a really good wife.

Trying to Forget the Early 90's (And Late 80's)

Spending the weekend in working through a stomach virus. There are better things in life than running to the bathroom every half-hour to drop a soupy deuce. Like, everything. But the worst is past and even Mom called in unannounced because she had a feeling that something was wrong with me. I just told her that it was a really bad case of gas.

I haven't always been a paragon of refined taste. It has taken some mistakes along the way to get to where I am. 'Course, if I'm still using phrases like "soupy deuce" there's probably a ways to go still.

Case in point: during my military service I listened to a lot of, well, crap music. Bands like Extreme, for example:




And they're getting back together, too. Who asked for that?