Seriously?

Having had an awesome weekend in Portland meeting up with Duff & SuperEggplant and her Brother. Eating awesome food including donuts from rice flour that were super yummy.

All that and now I'm in a meeting where the people in the meeting are arguing over non relevent stuff. It's not my meeting so I'm blogging this instead of jumping their shit.

What is the opposite of hypocrit?

Well I guess it's me. I said I was going to go out to eat on Thursday for a good cause. Then I did.

So that's not hypocritical. It's hypercritical? no. just critical? I don't think so. I don't know, but I went to Crave with Jen and a friend of her's from the homeland of Boston that I hadn't met before and we had a great time.

Who knew a golden beet looked like that? Who knew?

Gormet Snack Food

So this weekend I got to taste test a new flavor of Combos. This flavor (along with what sounds like an even scarier version) is so new it's not even listed on the official combos site. Let's talk for a moment about one of my favorite snacks ever the combo. The pizza cracker combo doesn't have MSG in it. It's cheesy-esque and has no redeeming nutritional qualities. It's a cracker or pretzel tube that has been injected with a cheese-flavored filling. (See the website for a how combos are made!)

Almost on a dare. If one can dare one's self. I tried one of the "beta" flavors of combos. Cheese Burger flavor. Yes that's what I said. Cheese Burger. No coke, Pepsi. No seriously I drank Coke with them to cleanse my pallet. I had threatened to eat them, to try them and Jen apparently followed through and bought them for me. (There is no better girlfriend than one who will not only stop at 7-11, but also knows your true snack desires and fulfills then without asking anything in return)

So the package: No MSG? Check. Cracker shell wrapped around cheeseburger flavor filling. Um where's the beef? So you vegetarians out there aren't left out there is no beef at all that I could find in the ingredients. You can't check me on the web because they are still in beta. You'll just have to believe me or find some yourself and read it. Vegans beware however as they is in fact some molecules of something or other that came at one time from cheese. "Made with real cheese," the package states, but come on with lawyer leeway here I'm sure that means that the minimum wage employee who was operating the machine at least actually saw some cheese one time in a store. Hence made "with cheese" is not "Made of cheese" let's just be clear.

OK so all that bitching about how bad they are and I ate almost the whole bag. (I did share with Jen because well hell she bought them I couldn't exactly hoard them all to myself.) I have to say overall the flavor layering was quite good and did sort of make me think of a burger. In that I could taste ketchup and mustard and cheese. I didn't get the burger sense though. Maybe my beverage pairing was off. Perhaps a pinoit would have been a better choice than my can of (not plastic bottle, no no, I'm a purist. Admittedly a glass bottle would have been even better, but alas.) of Coca Cola. The "burger" flavor didn't come through. Did that stop me? No. Nope. I mean who can resist a snack food that not only sponsers Nascar, but is the official "Cheese Filled Snack" of Nascar. (I'm not kidding go look at the site.)

I ate them and they were good. I wouldn't say I loved them. I wouldn't say I would switch from the elusive pizza cracker Combo, but if they were served at a party and had the right wine paring I wouldn't turn them down. If anyone from the Combos would like to quote this review in marketing material just leave a comment and provide a full link to this post. I know you might not like the part about your minimum wage employee thinking of cheese as he presses buttons, but hey I'm just speculating and my reader(s) know that. (The s in parens back there is really optimistic if you look my site stats)

Next week? The other beta flavor. Bonus points to who can guess (or find out) what it is in the comments.

I can say that me and the CheeseBurger Combos had a good time. I can say that.

Dine Out and Help

I like to support the Life Long Alliance for Aids by going to their annual dine out for Aids. This year it's on Thursday 4/24/2008. 30% of all proceeds that night go to the cause. You can find a list of participating restaurants here. There are lots of choices ranging from the inexpensive to the truly "fancy ass." It's the perfect fund raiser. Hey you were gonna go out to dinner anyways weren't you? I was.

Vacation photos

I uploaded a very small number of my photos from San Francisco. There I spelled it out. You can see a slide show here.

I haven't posted any of my photos of "The Rock" yet. That part is coming soon.

Protests 101

So the torch came through SF yesterday. I'm not a hipster who has been in San Francisco long enough to call it SF, I'm just fuckin' lazy, k?

The torch came right by the tourist traps we were visiting yesterday. It was all "Free Tibet" around us. It took us a while to decide the torch was actually coming through rather just a lot of random people with Chinese flags showed up to line the streets. There was some yelling and although I missed it, some nudity.

The thing I found most telling was the two basic chants of the people involved. "Free Tibet," being the first. I'm for freedom, why can't Tibet have some liberty? OK right I get it. They want Tibet to be free so they say, "Free Tibet." Pretty protests 101.

So you can't say, "Tyranny for Tibet." You can't get behind or yell, "Shut up Tibet listen to China and pay your taxes and follow laws like good Chinese citizens," as it's just not catchy.

So what did they say in protest to the protesters? "Go China" or "Go Beijing" Seriously?

That's all you can come up with? That's it? This isn't a chant it's a cheer. Those guys would flunk protest 101. Not even "keep china whole." OK there was one sign I saw that also wasn't a chant or even a protest it said, "Tibet will always be part of China!" OK This makes a little more sense to come back at the free Tibet people, but really it's just a prediction of the future. You'd think they'd know what state they're in. We in the US don't assume that even California will be part of North America forever. I mean there are tectonic plates at work here, people. I don't like to utter the word earthquake when I am currently visiting Cali so we'll just leave it at that. So for predicting the future we'll give that one a C-.

Seriously, "Go China?" If you can't come up with a verb other than or any better than go and you don't even mention where China should go if it could then you really should examine your position. I mean on the one hand you have the liberty of a peaceful people and the other hand you could have something you hear at a Laker game. Assuming China bought the Lakers and moved them to Beijing which isn't a huge stretch what with the earthquakes and all.

Did you feel that? Go Tibet.

The Rock

We went to Alcatraz today. I'm sunburn. Who goes to the rock and comes back burnt? I'm such an idiot. Sunscreen? Moi? Apparently not so much. It's a great tour on the audio. Sam's ran out of gas so Jen traded her because she had been before. The ruins are super cool to see and the main building is very well maintained. It's probably the most expensive thing we've done (except for gas, duh) so far and by far the best.

I took so many photos I have to offload my 8Gig card which was empty when I started this trip. I would upload some to smugmug but the internet is kinda slow so I'm going to hold them til I get home.

pool side

I'm sitting watching the kids swim around an empty pool. This is much different from yesterday which had many children in and out of the pool with them. They all seemed to bring random toys that sank, squirted, or floated. What do my kids have? A Vermont Quarter to toss and dive for. It was George Carlin who recently lamented about the need for children to have time alone in the yard with a stick.

Yesterday

I drove 830 miles. It was mostly fun except for some of the mountain passes I wasn't expecting. We experienced snow (not on the ground) rain and some really nice sunshine going through wine (and apparently olive) country.

We made great time and Jen is an excellent navigator in strange cities. We only had to make one U turn and that was purely the fault of the directions. Jen says, "f-ing Google!"

We're headed to the mission today with my camera in tow. I'm hoping to have images to upload later.

Do you think there is msg in that?

So we're headed to SFO and I hope it won't be super foggy. We're driving, we're taking the kids and we're going to have mission style burritos, ride a trolley, and go to prison. Was Mr. Rogers from SF? I mean he hung out with a talking trolley for christ sake.

I'm going to take my camera bag and I'm going to post my photos when I get back. I swear. I'll put them up on smugmug and use the insta-slideshow feature.

I believe in San Francisco you have to eat Rice-a-Roni. You know that, "San Francisco treat." I'm just worried for the rest of the family because I'm pretty sure that shit is loaded with MSG.