jburka's blog

The Littlest Exit Pollers Ever

Due to the unusually large crowds at our polling place today, Marc and I had to exit through the back of the elementary school's all-purpose room into the school's playground.  As we walked back up to 13th Street, we were accosted by a group of school children, probably around 8 or 9 years old.

They accosted us:  "Did you just vote?"

"Yup"

"Who did you vote for?"

"Obama"

And all these little kids start cheering!

When's the last time you saw a group of 8 year-olds interested in an election?!

An incredible meal at Komi

Tonight, Marc took me to Komi for my slightly belated, post-Pesach birthday dinner. We were last at Komi a little under two years ago, when my parents took us there for my birthday. At the time, Johnny Monis hadn't had his own restaurant for all that long. The tables were close together, the dishes were a la carte, and while the meal was quite good, its moments of brilliance were scattered. What we remember most from that meal are the mascarpone-stuffed roasted medjool dates with sea salt and the greek donuts with chocolate mascarpone.

Since then, Monis has been nominated for and/or won a few minor awards and received a four star rating from Washingtonian Magazine. The menu is fixed, beginning with a series of mezethakia, then a pasta dish, main course, and entree.

The mezethakia were fantastic. Our first was a crudo plate. Mine was a thin slice of fluke topped with chives and sea salt, a slice of amberjack with pignoli, and a cracker with creme fraiche and trout roe. I was disappointed by the amberjack, the flavor of which was masked by the pignoli. But the fluke was spectacular and the variety of textures on the cracker (crispy cracker, mousse-y creme, and briny, popping roe) was great.

Next up were some radishes sprinkled with sea salt and served with a yogurt-tarragon dip. This would make for great crudites, but didn't qualify as all that special.

Number three, though, was one of the coolest things to ever go in my mouth: a ceasar salad croquette. Sort of an anchovy-laden, savory molten chocolate lava cake, this was a gooey, pungent hot mess with the flavorings of a strong ceasar dressing, breaded and deep fried so that it looked like a crouton. Wow. Just...wow.

Item number four was one we remembered from two years ago: the roasted medjool dates with mascarpone and sea salt. Again, the combination of tastes and textures was great, and as good as Marc and I remembered.

For the fifth little dish, we were served little cones of crispy dough filled with mushroom, wagyu beef tartare (left out of mine, of course), a poached quail egg, and parmesan foam on top. This was, we both felt, the least successful of the mezethakia.

Number six was a mini gyro, on house-baked pita.  Both of our sandwiches contained caramelized onions and freshly pickled slice of cucumber.  Marc's also had lamb, while mine had roasted wild trumpet mushrooms.  We both wished we could have a full-sized sandwich like this, instead of the couple of square inches that were served.

Finally, we received "s'mores" -- parmesan crisps with a goat cheese "marshmallow" inside. Wonderful!

After this we nibbled on the provided flatbread crackers (curry, whole wheat, and thyme-asiago) while waiting for our first "real" course. Mine consisted of beet ravioli with crumbled feta and a maple-flavored foam. I ordered it largely because I was fascinated by the idea of beets, feta, and maple being put together. It simply never would have occurred to me. But oh, what a combination it turned out to be! Smokey, sweet, salty, with that vegetal earthiness one expects from beets. Meanwhile, Marc munched on tagliatelle with guanciale, mushrooms, and (!) blueberries, which he said was also quite successful.

My main course consisted of two pieces of cod which seemed to have been poached in oil and then fried on one side to make it crispy. This was served with a spicy avocado puree topped with pignoli and a salad of grapefruit sections, ramps, and green and white asparagus bound with a light citrus dressing.

To cap the evening, I finished with the greek donuts. The presentation is rather different than it was two years ago. Back then, I recall sharing the dish with my father and Marc and their being plenty. Now the serving is three small donut holes and instead of a glass dish of the chocolate mascarpone, the cheese was piped into a small cylindrical cookie. Not that I have any complaints! With all that had come before, it was a perfect ending to this filling meal.

Useful Documents From the Fed

I've come upon what may be my favorite piece of text in a government document.  In the description of the various data fields in the UCR, we have:

Population Source:

No documentation exists that reflects the year to year code changes.  This was the source for the current population.  This can be from certain commercial publications, from a special census or extra population based on the data from prior years or from the census.  If unused, it should be blank.  The code values are 1-9, but meanings of the codes are not available.

(emphasis mine)

Wow.  That's...really...useful.

13

My signed/numbered copy of the latest Jill Tracy album, The Bittersweet Constrain arrived yesterday.  I was very pleased to see that I received number 13...I can't think of a more fitting number to have hand-scrawled on a Jill Tracy album!

Lenny

Wow.  Didn't realize I'd been so remiss in updating this blog.  I'm a bad, bad, blogger.

Anyway.  At some point I'll try to backfill a few events of interest in the past few months.  For now, I'll point out that two days ago I was at the 42nd annual Smithsonian Kite Festival, where I had an opportunity to fly my 12m McConnachie shark, to much acclaim.  Here's a picture I found on flickr of Lenny

The Golden Compass

Well, it had a new Kate Bush song in it...

Okay, no, it really wasn't as bad as that. In fact, it was pretty entertaining. But I guess I was expecting a book-to-movie translation like we've seen for the Harry Potter books, and this just wasn't it.

What I liked:

• All of the actors in the major roles were essentially perfect, and exactly as I imagined them. Nicole Kidman was brilliant and terrifying as Mrs. Coulter, Daniel Craig had the perfect zeal for Lord Asriel, Sam Elliot will always be the epitome of the grizzled cowboy, and young Dakota Blue Richards
• Pan was absolutely perfect in his movement, his shapeshifting, and everything else. I was really impressed with the way they pulled him off and I had no trouble believing in him as an extension of Lyra
• The effect representing Lyra's ability to read the alethiometer was pretty cool.
  

What I didn't like:

• There's an awful lot of plot in the book, and a lot of scene-setting. While I think the movie managed to cram most of the content in, it became disjointed
• A happy ending? WTF?! I realize that they perhaps needed more closure with this film since they didn't have the guarantee that the other two books in the series would be made into movies. But this completely changed the point of the book. To me, the end of The Golden Compass and Lord Asriel's actions with respect to Lyra and Roger change everything that's come before and further the ambiguity of good and evil, the grey morality of the characters. Ending on this happier, forward-looking note changes everything. And not for the better.
• Mrs. Coulter's daemon seemed all wrong. While his evil actions were great, when he was acting benign he seemed too ugly to me. Part of what I liked about him in the books was how he went from this sweet and cute monkey to this evil, torturous monster in the blink of an eye. In the movie we got to see him acting evil (loved the choking Pan under the table bit!) but the contrast wasn't strong enough.
• The effect representing Lyra's ability to read the alethiometer was completely overused and I got completely sick of the breaks from the action for the gee-whiz effect to plow along.
  

I find myself hoping that the other two movies will be made, but I don't feel like I'm dying to see them, the way I was with the LtR and Harry Potter films. And while I'd probably buy this on DVD if there's a whole trilogy made, I don't see myself purchasing this movie if it ends up standing alone.

My daemon, per the official Golden Compass website

QotD: Best of Breed

Which breed of dog is your favorite? Post a picture of it. 
Submitted by Melissa.

Definitely the Merseyside Terrier.  They're quite rare in the US.  A medium-sized dog, they're great ratters, and a perfectly-sized dog for urban living.

Ophelia

QotD: En Route

What is your daily commute like?  What is the weirdest thing you've seen on that commute? 
Submitted by E. 

I live and work on 13th Street NW in my hometown of Washington, DC.  Most days I walk to and from work; it's about 1.5 miles.  If there's a lot of rain or it's real hot out, I might take the bus or the subway...this mostly happens in the summer.  I love cold weather, so I mostly walk during the winter.

When I'm stuck dealing with rush hour traffic for some reason or another, I'm always appalled; I can't imagine why someone would want to live that way.  I wonder what it is about their home in the 'burbs that makes such madness worthwhile for them...

Jealous Clerk

This might have been a first for me. Tonight after Marc's birthday dinner at Palena, he wanted me to swing by a Target so he could get a gift card for his niece.

While there, I decided to pop over to the electronics department to see if they had any copies of Super Mario Galaxy. Somewhat to my surprised, they did, so I went and found a clerk to unlock the case and grab a copy for me.

The clerk I found was a 20-something woman in stylish glasses. When we got to the right display case and she realized it was a Wii game I wanted, she asked, "Do you really have one?" I responded that yes, my wonderful sister had found one for me in southern Virginia over the summer and bought it for me.

This made the clerk jealous.

After fetching the game from the locked case, the clerk and I started heading to the register, when she made a comment about how hard it is to find a Wii. A woman standing near us with a cart then cut in to ask, "Do you know when you'll receive more?" The clerk responded that it was impossible to say and that the best indicator of a shipment is that on a Saturday there will be a circular ad, followed by a delivery on Sunday. Otherwise, it's a crapshoot.

It's astonishing that after over a year, these things are still impossible to find.

Not that I care...I have mine!

A Big Surprise in the Mail

Okay, so I started writing this post back in September, but for some reason never got around to finishing it. I suck or something.

The story is this:

Sometime earlier this year, before my April birthday, my best friend, Mike Matthews, started hinting about some gift he was trying to get me and if he was able to get it, it was going to be custom-made.

I, uh, pretty much ignored him.

Sometime over the summer, he started talking about it as if it was going to happen. But really, this was months after my birthday, and I wasn't especially concerned one way or the other.

In early August I was getting ready to go to an event I'd been invited to fly at, the Asbury Park Kite Festival, in New Jersey. Mike knew I was heading up there with Bob, my maxi Peter Lynn octopus and said that maybe my gift would arrive in time for me to take it with me. No such like.

In the middle of August, Mike and his wife were going to join Marc and me in Ocean City and again he said that he hoped my present would arrive in time to bring it with me. Marc and I headed to OC on Thursday and, naturally, the USPS tried to deliver a package at our house on Friday.

Of course, I still had no idea what might be in the package, so I wasn't too disappointed, though clearly Mike was.

On Sunday night Marc and I returned home and I found a slip from the mail carrier which would allow me to pick up my box at the post office. After working all day Monday, I headed home and then to the post office. After waiting in line, I handed over the slip and then waited patiently while a clerk looked for my package. Nada. She came back and asked what the box looked like. I explained that it was a gift and I had no clue. She disappeared in the back of the post office and kept searching, but eventually returned and told me that the mail carrier would make one more attempt at delivery and that if I didn't receive it that day, it would be available for pick up at the post office on Tuesday. Dejected, I walked back home.

When I arrived, sitting behind a hydrangea near the front steps was a long, slender box. I picked it up and looked at the label and saw an address I recognized, in Poway, California. Revolution. Oh my.

I hurried into the house and opened the box. Inside was a Rev 1.5 bag in red—the color of the Rev Masterpiece series. Shocked, and wondering which of the current crop of kites Mike had gotten me, I started to pull the kite out of the bag. I could see light blue and some circles and my first thought was of the Gibian Rising Phoenix kite (shown here in red, but I've seen it in blue).

But it wasn't until I unrolled the kite that I really appreciated what Mike had pulled off.

This is a Rev 1.5 built by Bazzer of a design clearly showing Mike's sense of humor. Mike somehow managed to get in touch with Ben D'Antonio at Rev, who worked with Mike and Bazzer to come up with the design. The octopi on the rev match Bob—purple with black trim and gold (okay, they're fluoro orange on the rev) eyes. Ben tells me he wanted Bazzer to build a second one with the colors of his own octo, but Bazzer refused.

I've flown the kite a number of times on the Mall, but it wasn't until the Cape Fear Kite Festival in November that I finally got to fly the rev alongside Bob.

Thanks, Mike!