Archive for the year 2013
Newest Trick Shot Titus Video
Posted on May 29, 2013 by Ching under Videos.
Holy cow! This kid is good and only getting better!
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The People of FourSquare Let Me Down
Posted on May 27, 2013 by Ching under Food and Drink.
Whenever I try a new place, I can usually rely on the recommendations and tips of FourSquare users. Not so much this time, though.
Brian and I decided to try Doo-Dah Diner after church yesterday. I’d heard so many good things about the restaurant that I had such high expectations.
Brian got what he usually orders at most breakfast places: biscuits and gravy, hash browns, and two eggs fried hard. He was disappointed that his biscuits were hard as hockey pucks. He said they weren’t fresh by any means. The sausage gravy was okay but bland as with the hash browns and eggs.
I ordered the country fried steak dinner which came highly recommended on FourSquare but, like Brian’s meal, everything on my plate was under seasoned. It’s like they ran out of salt in the kitchen or something.
I’ve had some friends who have had wonderful dining experiences at Doo-Dah and some who haven’t, but the general consensus is this place serves great food is awesome overall. Our server was definitely friendly. Although, I wish the quality of the food lived up to the restaurant’s reputation. Perhaps we didn’t order the right things. This just goes to show you can’t always believe what you read on FourSquare.
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My Mom Has A New Tenant
Posted on May 27, 2013 by Ching under Family.
Mom’s landscaping has come such a long way from its early beginnings seven years ago when they first moved to their current house.
The tree is fuller and the rest of the plants are finally mature. Not only that, they discovered a new tenant a couple of weeks ago.
A bird made a cozy condo in the tree next to the waterfall in front of their patio. We are not sure what kind of bird it is, but mom and dad said they saw that it had blue eggs. Mom and dad are quite fond of the bird and barely allowed us to go near the nest to take photos. I told dad that he should set up a camera and point it at the nest so we can watch the bird remotely as we wait for the eggs to hatch. I doubt that he will do it, though. Anyway, do you guys have any ideas what this bird might be?
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Brian’s Early Birthday Present
Posted on May 26, 2013 by Ching under Home Ownership.
Brian has whined about how much he hated our mattress ever since we got it last year, so I decided to take him to Mattress Firm (it’s where we’ve bought all of our mattresses over the last five years — well, all of them except for the one he hates) yesterday to pick his own mattress. I figured this would stop the incessant whining once and for all.
Naturally, he falls in love with one of the more expensive models. Ugh.
How can you say no to this face though? You can’t. Lucky for us, they were having a Memorial Day sale. James, the sales rep who sold us our queen mattress for the guest bedroom a few months ago when the Orbases came to visit, was the same sales rep who was there yesterday. He actually remembered us. Not only that, he cut us a really good deal on our new mattress and was able to arrange for it to be delivered today.
We stripped the bed this morning before we left for church to prepare for the delivery of our new mattress. We learned our lesson the first time when Brian and I hauled the queen mattress (that we had purchased earlier this year at the same store but tried to save money by not paying for delivery) to one of the guest bedrooms in the basement. We were able to do it ourselves, but it took quite a bit of effort. I told him then that I didn’t care how much they charged for delivery, I wasn’t hauling a mattress myself ever again and neither was he.
Delivery was totally worth it. The guys moved our old king mattress to the basement for us so Brian and I didn’t have to mess with it. They made it look so easy too.
Now we have a king mattress for Tracy and Jeff when they come to visit us later this year. It’s a Sealy Posturepedic plush mattress that we had gotten from Slumberland when we purchased our bedroom furniture last year so it’s not actually a bad mattress.
I didn’t mind it actually. It was better than any of the other mattresses we’d ever owned except for the one in our guest bedroom on the main level, which we had bought from Mattress Firm three years ago. We had to give it up when we moved last year because it was a queen size and we upgraded to king when we moved.
Brian has never let me live that down, though. He was always quick to remind me that our guests sleep on a better mattress than we do. Well, he can’t say that anymore.
Our new mattress may not be organic, but it’s definitely the best mattress in our house. Oh, and by the way, what we originally thought was going to be a problem wasn’t a problem at all. Yep, we already broke the new mattress in. LOL.
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Hideaway Steakhouse
Posted on May 26, 2013 by Ching under Food and Drink.
Pictures from our dinner at Hideaway Steakhouse in Westminster.
This is their menu. Prices are kind of high and your bill will add up since the items are a la carte. Lucky for us, Avaya picked up the tab.
Darcy and I shared a crab cakes appetizer. Their crab cakes are decent, but not great. I still think that the crab cakes I ate at Skipper’s Dock were better.
This is the escargot, which I didn’t try, but everyone else said it was very good.
The roasted portabella mushrooms above were very good. That, I can attest to.
I skipped the fresh oysters also. Oysters just don’t appeal to me.
Several people ordered salads to go with their meal. This is the iceberg wedge. I decided to skip the salad because I had my fill of the appetizers and was already worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish my entree.
If I were inclined to order a salad I would have probably picked the same thing. The other choices were Caesar, spinach salad (with fresh seedless watermelon, toasted pistachios, Bermuda onions, haystack mountain goat cheese, and honey balsamic vinaigrette), tomato caprese (with artisan greens, beefsteak tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, extra virgin olive oil, and aged balsamic vinegar), and house salad. Although, the spinach salad sounds pretty good too.
Darcy ordered the scallops for her dinner, which she said was very good, though not quite as good as the ones she had in Seattle when she and Ginger were there for the ICMI conference the previous week.
Jay, one of the Avaya reps, got lobster. It was huge!
Ginger got a filet mignon.
I got the fish special, an orange roughy. It’s a white fish like tilapia and the texture is very similar. Except, I think orange roughy is a bigger fish so the filets are bigger and meatier. It was good, though I have a feeling they serve this better at Bonefish Grill. I will have to try their orange roughy there for comparison.
These were five of us from my work and I think five reps from Avaya at dinner but these were all the pictures that I took. I didn’t want to get up and go around the table to take pictures of everyone’s food. They were already picking on me as it were.
I really, really wanted to get a picture of the prime rib because everyone on FourSquare said that was the thing to order. No one in our group ordered it though. However, Jay said that he’s had it before and it is pretty good. Oh, well.
The food at Hideaway doesn’t photograph that well, though. For such an expensive restaurant, their food presentation is a little on the sloppy side. The taste of the food makes up for it some but, when you’re paying that much for dinner, you kind of expect perfection.
Overall I think Hideaway is pretty good. We had good food and good service. However, when you factor in the price you’re paying and consider it with the quality of the food, there’s really other places to eat that probably would be better.
The atmosphere is nice, though. I imagine that’s one of the reasons why it seems to be popular with corporate types. I had a good meal and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with my colleagues. As for simple people like Brian and me, if it were just the two of us dining, this probably isn’t our kind of dinner joint.
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