Winna Winna Chicken Dinna

I don't suppose I have the time to make this one long, but I threw some scraps together this weekend and it was pretty good! I thought I'd share.

I had some steaks leftover from a dinner thing I hosted last weekend, and I wanted to use it and my other leftovers before they went bad. So here's what I did:

• Cut steak into smaller cubes about a cubic inch


• Throw steak into a bowl along with some olive oil, worschester sauce, ginger powder, and a little curry powder. Mix all that up and let it sit a while


• Heat up my bigger cast iron skillet. Should be big enough to hold a fair amount of food. I sprayed it with Pam or whatever, but I'm not sure if I was supposed. Whatever


• Dump steak in and let it brown real quick. This took under a minute or a minute and a half


• Dump a cup of rice and the cup of water it needed (I have freaky insta-rice, so I don't know if that's the same for other kinds of rice)


• Let the steak and rice cook together in the skillet until the water is mostly gone. I stirred in more ginger and curry powder as it cooked


• Dump all that on a plate when it's done cooking


• Slice 1/2 cucumber and 1 Roma tomato


• Clean off some cilantro


• Arrange it all on the plate all fancy like


• End up with the following:

It wasn't half bad and it definitely filled me up.

Things I'd change:

• Cook the steak seperately or put it in the skillet later. I like my meat more tender and less cooked than what I had


• More tomatoes


• I would like to try other spices with it and see what happens

Give it a shot and see if you like it. If you have a suggestion for a change, let me know.

Cheers

The Science of Traffic

I found a new route to get to work this morning. I finally decided to break the comfort of habit and find a new way to get to I-5 N. See, when I first moved here, I stayed in temporary housing a few blocks south of where I live now. From there, it was pretty simple to go up University until I ran into the I-5 N ramp. Since then, I've been driving through downtown traffic to get to the same ramp. Definitely not efficient, but it was what I knew and it was habit.

So breaking habits is always interesting, but it really paid off. I found a new way to go and it goes through an interesting neighborhood. Oh yeah, and it also saves me so much time.
Note: I used Google Maps on this link because I actually prefer their route to Bing's. I feel guilty/dirty. C'est la vie. I get to work all the same.

On the drive this morning, there was a line of cars on the side of the road in the opposite lane that had apparently been in the same accident. The first thing I thought was "I hope it wasn't impressive enough that people feel the need to look."

There are way too many times when I'm driving here where traffic crawls along until we pass an accident and then people drive normally again. I wonder if police and wrecker crews would be helping traffic along by putting up tarps or something so people wouldn't have anything to stare at when they drove.

I spend a lot of time in traffic. I spend a lot of time thinking about the science of traffic. It seems like a math problem almost. The road has some measure of capacity or bandwidth, and then there is the actual throughput which is present and it's far less. So what goes into the degredation? There are things like human response times, distractions, selfishness, anger, unwillingness to merge or let people merge, bends in the road, and all kinds of reasons to slam on the breaks and ruin everybody's commute. There are just so many variables and human psychology and physics and random factors that must contribute to the reason I spend an hour driving home in the evening and only 30 minutes in the morning. I like to think about the people at the front of the traffic jam and wonder what they're doing to back things up. It's like a whiplash effect where a small action up front translates to major jam-ups miles back.

It got me thinking that traffic is really an interesting problem, and I have more respect for the people that engineer those kinds of things. That being said, I'd still encourage an improvement, but I'd be interested to find out if there is any kind of literature or publications out there about traffic. It seems fascinating to me. But maybe that's just because I sit in traffic too much.

If there is one thing I can say about my commute here is that it is still stunningly beautiful. I hope I never tire of it. From the Seattle skyline, to the grey sheet of water over Lake Washington, to the engulfing trees and mountains as I get closer to Redmond, I find myself able to tolerate the traffic because it gives me more time to take it all in.

Still, somebody needs to invent robot drivers. It would be awesome.

I have returned, and this post is about food

Hey everybody. Sorry about the long hiaitus. I have had a harder time establishing my rhythm since I've moved here, but things are starting to roll right along now. I think the feeling of being "new" is wearing off, as are my excuses to put things off.

So I've got my apartment more squared away. I'm finding things to get involved in. I'm meeting new people and trying to become a part of my community--both in my building and in Belltown at large.

There are tons of things to catch up on, but in true Nebraska spirit, I'm going to toss it all aside and concentrate on food.

I've noticed grocery shopping has become a lot harder. I've always enjoyed shopping for food--in fact it's one of the few ways I can shop that doesn't make me uncomfortable--and I love to cook. The problem is that I live by myself, and I can't often find one person sizes of everything at the grocery store. I've never had to cook for just one person, so this is new and it's kind of an issue. I can't eat fast enough to preserve the food I do buy.

I've also been considering my health a lot more lately. Suddenly, I guess I'm in charge of that kind thing so maybe I should step up. I don't know what it is, but lately I'm highly interested in preserving what potential my body has left.

So I think I need to get better at planning. I would like to have a planning system where I know what meal I'm making for every day of the week and then shop accordingly. I've done this before when I lived with 3 other guys and it worked well. This planning system would be nice if it also encompassed some nutritional analysis. It would be even better if it were smarter than I am, because I know nothing about nutrition--as in, it took me forever to realize carbohydrates and calories aren't the same thing.

Like any good nerd, I looked to see if there were any web apps that could do those things.

• Relish!
  The site looked good and it had a clean design. But it also has a subscription fee. Maybe this service would be something I'd want to pay for in the future, but the knowledge that I could really just sit down and do this with a pad and pen makes it a tough sell for me. I didn't get to learn more about this one. Perhaps a "lite" or "bachelor" version would be useful (*cough* HINT *cough*).
  


• Plan To Eat
  This one looks pretty cool, and it seems like something that would almost persuade me to pay for it. The ability to drag in and import recipes and break them down into grocery shopping lists seems awesome. It also looks like it has Amazon Fresh integration, but I'll spare you my idealogical rants regarding that. Again, it looks like it's subscription based, so I'll pass until I decide this service is worth money to me.
  


• H-E-B
  This one has me very excited. If you're from Texas, you know what H-E-B is. It is the grocery store of all grocery stores! Yes folks, I'm this excited about a grocery store. Anyway, H-E-B has a service where they just plan weekly meals for you and they provide the grocery shopping list. I suppose the more clever name for it is "weekly suggested menus." Either way, the food looks great, and it's free, and it's awesome. On the H-E-B exclusive meal days, I can find my own things to eat. I'm going with this for now.
  

Ok, well that was my triumphant return to the blog scene. And it was about food. I'll run with this for a week or two and see how it goes. Ideally, this makes my grocery shopping more efficient and saves me money while keeping myself fed and healthy.

If you have any suggestions, by all means let me know. It seems like this "living by myself and pretending to be an adult" thing has uncovered lots of places for me to learn and grow.

Cheers!

Just popping in

First, might I just say that coming to this public computer is becoming more and more enjoyable? I like to play this game called "what was the last the person before me copy and pasted". So far I haven't found anything too noteworthy, but the anticipation of some treasure is too irresistable. That and the Dean Martin and other classical music they always have playing in the lobby is pretty solid too.

Ok so anyway, I had my first day of work today. I'm still fried because I didn't really sleep last night. I don't know why, but my body absolutely didn't want to fall asleep. I didn't think I was nervous or anything, but the best I could do was watch the clock tick past 4 am, then 5, then 6, then I got fed up and just got out of bed to get ready. That, and traffic in Seattle is crazy. On the way home, I did a pretty good job reversing my directions until I decided to get on I-5 North instead of South and that was a bummer. Oh well.

Work was the standard fair of "these are your health care options" and "DON'T GIVE AWAY YOUR PASSWORDS" orientation business. The other parts were the more Microsoft specific things and that was pretty exciting. I met a lot of cool people who were from different walks and positions in their lives. All in all, it was a cool day, but 'veddy veddy' long.

I'll have more interesting things to say tomorrow. I think.

Anyway, I decided to treat myself to a real dinner tonight. The past few days I have been sticking to sandwiches. I bought some tomatoes, bread, salami, prosciutto, mozarella cheese, and some various items I haven't been using. Same thing. Lunch and dinner (I rarely eat breakfast).

So tonight I went to a sushi place in the courtyard of Harbor Steps because I saw a sign that said "HAPPY HOUR." I'm pretty sure that's Japanese for dinner salvation because I loved it. I had a bowl of miso soup, a nice salad, and a roll each of salmon and tuna. All for about $10. I'd say that's a pretty good deal regardless, but an amazing deal compared to what I've seen in Seattle so far. I'll probably be dropping by there more often.

Ok that's all I have. I'm going to see if Ice Truckers is on or something because I haven't had much to do lately other than watching geeky television shows. Or I'll read. I just finished a book called "Habitudes" by Dr. Tim Elmore. It was a book about leadership but I don't see why this book could be applied to anybody wanting to manage their lives/time/I-don't-know-what-word-to-use more effetively.

Perhaps I'll provide a better explanation on my take of the book some other time. I need to VEEEEGGGG right now.

Take care everybody!

Wide awake in Seattle

Did you see what I did there with the title!? SO CLEVER!! lolololololol

Seriously though, I can never think of good titles for blog posts. But I am in Seattle now and I am, in fact, awake. So I guess that will have to work for now.

Anyway, I don't really have anything specific to say and I feel weird having to type this at a public computer. I don't actually know if there are people that read this, but in the slight chance that there may be somebody that does and could possibly be interested in what's going on in my life, I figured I would post an update.

I arrived in the Seattle-Tacoma airport at about 1:30, picked up the keys for the rental car, and started out on a wing and a prayer (and some directions I could only hope were right) toward my temporary home. While contending with Seattle traffic, I had to chastise myself over and over for thinking too Nebraskan. My mind was racing with thoughts like "this place is so big" and "there are so many people, so many cars!" and "why is everything so close together"! This is definitely nothing like the busiest parts I've seen in Omaha. Perhaps it was the stress of traveling, but that's all I could think about as I was driving from the airport into the city. I had to check myself and try to overcome all the stress to appreciate the beauty I was driving through. Washington really is a beautiful place, and the weather was stunningly amazing. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but I hear that isn't really a common thing around here. Either way, I'm pretty thrilled Seattle came up with some good weather to welcome me.

I get to stay at the Harbor Steps apartment complex. I looked up the address before I left Nebraska and I was pretty stoked to see that it was right by the water and right in downtown Seattle (at least I think this is downtown). That being said, nothing could prepare me for how beautiful and impressive the whole thing is. I get to stay on the 21st floor of the North East tower of this complex. I can throw a rock and probably hit the harbor, but odds are I would probably hit an unfortunate person walking on the streets below instead. I can see massive buildings and beautiful architecture. This is definitely a city! As I would come to find in the following days, there is still a homey atmosphere here and the people are so nice.

I spent my first night alone in the apartment. I went out to explore the streets below. It was kind of funny because I opened the door and stepped outside and I was immediately lost. The funnier part of that was I absolutely loved the feeling. I loved being able to just walk around and take it all in. It also helps that my love of having a sense of direction and knowing where North is at all times works out well with the fact that the harbor provides a great landmark (or water mark??) to help me keep my bearings.

I ate dinner by myself at a little Mexican restaurant right outside of the apartment complex called Guayma's. It was actually kind of pleasant to be able to sit by myself to decompress and unwind. It was even more pleasant to enjoy a beer with some chips and I couldn't have been happier in that moment. How wonderful it is to just be happy and feel taken care of even in the smallest things. Anyway, I ordered these ceviche tostadas that is kind of like 'pico de gallo' and a bunch of seafood blended and dumped onto a crispy tortilla. It was pretty good! Hooray for being able to enjoy good seafood again!

I got my little car back on Saturday, and I feel so much better to have that now. I was blessed to be able to rent the Corolla and get me from the airport to the garage of my new digs. Even so, it was still kind of big for my taste and the windows aren't set up as they are in my Scion, so I felt like I was driving a boat with no windows through the crammed streets of downtown Seattle. That's probably just the stress and my hatred of traffic talking though. With my little bean car handy, I feel much more comfortable zipping around the streets now (when I do feel courageous enough to go out without walking). I saw some ridiculously steep hills and for the first time in my life I considered a having a manual transmission to be a bad idea. However, I'll get used to it--just like all the other drivers here...kind of--and I even learned a cool handbrake trick from the truck driver who delivered my car. Hopefully I don't get a ton of chances to use it.

I spent some time walking around while I was looking for a grocery store. The concierge here did me a solid by telling me of the place and giving me directions.

"Sure, you can walk there!"

Actually, next time I'll probably drive. It really wasn't that close at all (View the route here). Either way though, the weather was nice and the city beautiful, so I didn't mind walking and I got to learn some more about the city. I did walk past the Space Needle and the Music Experience Project place and those both seem really cool. I'm excited to check them out someday. I also walked by the future site of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation building and I got pretty excited for that too.

I found a different way to walk back that took me through the Belltown neighborhood and then down 1st avenue to see that whole stretch of restaurants and shops. How much cooler this place will be when I'm not so broke!

Last night I ran into a lady I had met on the elevator on Friday and she invited me to a small work party on the big deck of one of the buildings here. I got to meet some people and they took me out to some pub here in town. I started to realize what a beer snob I had become in Lincoln, but apparently that flies here so I'm in good company. Either way, I hope the USPS is ok with sending beer through the mail because I will be missing Emperean.

I hung out with those guys for a while and then walked a few blocks (more like a mile) to meet up with one of two people I actually know here to a small party for a girl that also works at Microsoft. Turns out Microsoft people like to get together and throw parties and they are just the way I like them: kinda nerdy. I had some fun with that and eventually went home.

This morning I got up and went to Mars Hill church. I checked out a few churches online before coming here and I was really excited to check this place out. Apparently the building used to be a really seedy and problematic club before the city relieved them of their liquor license. The church bought the building and started up a congregation in downtown. To be honest, the building was smaller than I expected and I drove right past it the first time. Inside it was pretty amazing.

Sitting at church, for the first time since I got here, I felt homesick. It was weird though because I felt so at home. It reminded me a lot of the people I came to love and know as family back at Lincoln Berean, but at the same time it was awesome to see people worshiping God the same way we did back home. It was cool to see God's church glorifying His name. It was a good reminder that God definitely is everywhere and that this whole experience is very pervasive. It was kind of an emotional morning for me and it was weird because I rarely get emotional. Either way, I was thrilled to be there.

I came up with this philosophy when I was younger: "don't date the first girl you meet." I figured this out because I moved a lot. Being the new guy. It's pretty easy to work that angle with the ladies. When I moved to Texas though, I starting hanging around with one of the first girls I met there and was immediately locked out of meeting other people in a more natural way. Plus--and this sounds terrible--there is always the danger of jumping the gone and not enjoying the best relationship out there.

I think the same can be said of looking for a church. I want to keep the mentality of checking things out, being open minded, and staying out of the way until God moves me to the right church. However, if I end up sticking around at Mars Hill, I think I'd be a happy camper. We'll see how that goes. I think they have some kind of worship service tonight and they're going to try to get me plugged in to some smaller groups and communities around the city so I can meet some people. I'm looking forward to this.

So this ended up being pretty long, but that was my weekend! Or the things I cared to write down anyway. To the readers back home, I miss you guys! But be happy for me. This is a cool place and I think I'm going to enjoy figuring out what my life is going to be here.

I start work tomorrow so I might spend some time preparing for that.

Take care everybody!

Forgot to mention! I don't take many pictures, and I don't have any cool photo album for you to check out. However, I do take some pictures on my phone and send them to Twitter occasionally. You can follow me on Twitter to catch any pictures I might toss on there

Only in Texas...

Texas high school football is probably everything "Friday Night Lights" tried to convey, if not more. I was there for a few years and I loved it, but looking back I can only laugh at the ridiculousness of some of it.

In exchange for unquestioning and absolute devotion to the football program, the coaches would put these shirts together to encourage us to submit ourselves to physical torture known as strength building and conditioning.

I'm going through old clothes to sort out things I'll give away and things I'll keep before I move. I found a shirt I absolutely can't give away because it's so hilarious.

The front says "IF THE BAR AIN'T BENDIN' THEN YOU'RE JUST PRETENDIN'" with a picture of a heavily loaded bar. The poem on the back is just epic and I thought I'd share it.

THE SQUAT
WAY DOWN THIS ROAD, IN A GYM FAR AWAY,
A YOUNG MAN WAS ONCE HEARD TO SAY,
I'VE REPPED HIGH AND I'VE REPPED LOW,
NO MATTER WHAT I DO MY LEGS WON'T GROW.
HE TRIED LEG EXTENSIONS, LEG CURLS, AND
LEG PRESSES TOO, TRYING TO CHEAT, THESE
SISSY WORKOUTS HE'D DO.
FROM THE CORNER OF THE GYM WHERE BIG
MEN TRAIN, THROUGH A CLOUD OF CHALK AND
THE MIDST OF PAIN.
WHERE THE BIG IRON RIDES HIGH AND
THREATENS LIVES. WHERE THE NOISE IS MADE
WITH FORTY-FIVES, A DEEP VOICE BELLOWED
AS HE WRAPPED HIS KNEES. A VERY BIG MAN
WITH LEGS LIKE TREES.
LAUGHING AS HE SNATCHED ANOTHER PLATE
FROM THE STACK. CHALKING HIS HANDS AND
MONSTROUS BACK, SAID, "BOY STOP LYING AND
DON'T SAY YOU'VE FORGOTTEN, THE TROUBLE
WITH YOU IS YOU AIN'T BEEN SQUATIN' [sic]."


Yeah, sometimes good poems don't have to rhyme the whole way through. Or flow. Or look like poems.

Some of my best memories from high school revolved around football in Texas, and I'm glad I found this shirt. There were many like it, but this was probably the most ridiculous.

"DON'T TEXT AND DRIVE!!"

I've had people yell at me to not text and drive so many times, I find myself doing the same to others now. But it makes a lot of sense. Thanks to the kind police officers pulling me over and sending me to STOP class (for turning right at a red light...how lame is that), I now have gruesome images of maimed bodies and mangled vehicle burned into my head that resurface every time I think about using the cell phone in the car. "IF YOU USE YOUR PHONE IN THE CAR, THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!"

It reminds me of the scene in Mean Girls where the coach says "If you have sex, you will get pregnant and die!" But that's besides the point.

So common sense says horrible things don't necessarily have to happen the instant you touch your cell phone in the car, but the point remains: operating a cell phone in the car drastically reduces your ability to pay attention to traffic and react accordingly. I've even had a minor accident because I was distracted by my phone, but thankfully there was no real damage and nobody got hurt.

So I do a pretty good job now about not using my phone in the car. The other day, I realized there is another activity we tend to do that is just as distracting, yet nobody really says anything about it. We have portable music devices that hook up via auxilary line-in inputs or other adapters. We have thousands and thousands of songs on our iPods or Zunes that we can take with us in the car. The interfaces on them are pretty cool and allow for the browsing of media with just one finger. However, we haven't really improved the way we browse through media in the car.

Back in the "old days," we grabbed a CD and that's what we listened to for half and hour to an hour. In fact, I still do it that way predominantly. Having a whole catalog of music at our disposal allows us to be more picky about our music and often we find ourselves jumping around from artist to artist. And that's a good thing! I think it's awesome we have that kind of technology. However, I was driving around with my dad the other day and watching him go through his media device to look up some artist.

I realized we should come up with a better interface for browsing through artists, songs, and genres in a media library while driving. It needs to be something that will be efficient without compromising the ability to focus on the road. The Microsoft Sync technology seems to be taking a crack at that using voice recognition, but I've never used it so I can't really say much about it.

I was thinking perhaps a HUD interface might work well in the vehicle assuming it wasn't something that distracted too much from looking at the road. If it were the kind of thing that could be manipulated by finger gestures or by buttons on the steering wheel, it would allow the driver to browse for media while keeping hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

Another interesting idea I thought about would be for the car to sense the moods or dynamics of the passengers in the vehicle and use that information to suggest music. What if it were like Pandora or Last.fm, except it could tell if you were in the mood for something upbeat or something mellow? What if the car were able to tell that I'm driving the car instead of my mother and select music from my favorite artists instead of blasting salsa music? Over time, the car could tell what the driver likes or doesn't like, and could use things like pulse, temperature, or other biometrics to determine what music to play. From there, the driver could make suggestions or alter the music as he or she saw fit.

Even other things like volume control? Perhaps the car can tell when people are trying to talk in the car and then it lowers the volume? There is already technology that can tell how fast you're going and adjust the volume to compensate for road noise. It's little features like that which allow the vehicle to be more responsive to the driver's needs.

Voice recognition technologies also probably have room to improve, and I'm sure there are good ways to leverage that to make selecting and enjoying music in the car a less distracting experience.

So I don't really have any more specific ideas or new directions to take on this, but for sure I see a need to redo the interface for music in the car. As technology allows us to take more music with us, we should figure out how to make the driving experience and the interface get up to speed. We should find a way to maximize entertainment value without compromising safety.

Ok, that's my rant.