Friday, May 02, 2014

Well, there's this.

The guy who keeps cancelling meetings now says he could meet June 6. The problem is, the place is far enough away we'd probably have to leave June 5. I am supposed to be in lab from 1:30 to 5:30 pm that day. I offered a bribe of $100 to anyone in my department who'd cover that lab for me. It's an intro lab so anyone could do it. Hopefully someone will go for that and hopefully the guy can still meet but good heavens, this has just been something nibbling at the edges of my consciousness that I don't need. I need CERTAINTY and I need to be able to CHECK STUFF OFF AS DONE.


ETA: well, that was fast. A colleague is going to do it in return for cookies rather than money.
***

Well, the restaurant meal didn't make me sick, so either (a) what I thought was a food intolerance the last time was a weird fast moving virus or (b) what I ordered last night was better for me, or didn't have some seasoning in it that makes my body get all weird.

I got a grilled shrimp salad. It was surprisingly good. I think perhaps you can judge the care a restaurant takes with their food by their salads - is it a bowl of roughly torn iceberg, with some indifferent bottled dressing? Is the lettuce brown at the edges? In that case, the restaurant probably isn't top notch. But this one - it was a mix of different greens, with a few avocado slices and tomatoes (the tomatoes weren't outstanding, but then grocery-store tomatoes never are). Oh, and there were tiny fried strips of flour tortilla. Stuff was arranged on the plate instead of thrown together, and yes, that makes a difference to me. And the grilled shrimp (I asked the guy to "go light on the salt." I can't tell if that happened but maybe it did). And a homemade dressing - they called it basil vinaigrette but it was actually a creamy dressing (but not gross creamy like ranch - I don't care for ranch). It was very good - hints of lime and honey in with the herbs.

Homemade salad dressing is another thing that makes me judge a restaurant much more favorably. Yes, it takes more time to make but it's better. And you can have distinctive dressings.

Several other people who had ordered larger meals remarked "I'm getting that next time" when they saw my salad. And yeah, if I eat there again, I'm getting it next time. More and more I find I prefer something like a good big salad to a full restaurant meal - not so heavy and you don't feel overfull or wind up carrying a bunch of leftovers home.

(And they do carry out. The salad maybe is at the limits of what I should eat in a meal, sodium-wise, but if I ever get so bummed out and don't want to cook, I could get the salad to go - the restaurant is only a couple blocks from me, I could even WALK there)

***

Also, last night, when I got home, flipping around to try to find a weather forecast, I flipped past where Comedy Central had been. And was "Wait, that looks like Jane and the Dragon."

It was. I now get Qubo on the channel that used to be Comedy Central. Qubo is a kid's channel, it's mostly educational programming aimed at tweens and younger.

I like Jane and the Dragon. It used to run Friday afternoons on Ion (I guess Qubo is part of Ion). Yes, it's a kids' show, but it has its charms. Like many of the shows Qubo runs, it's made in (or at least dubbed in) Britain or Australia, so the accents are different, and I like listening to the characters' voices. And even if it is aimed at kids, it's kind of a relaxing show - it tends to have some kind of good-behavior-related moral (like "Don't play a prank on your friend if you're not totally sure they're going to find it funny too")

I don't know. I don't know what it says about me that I prefer shows with those kinds of morals (actually, another big reason I like MLP is the "lessons" - the idea that it is promoting things I generally regard as virtues) even though I know many adults roll their eyes at them. Maybe it's that I like programs that essentially affirm and reinforce things I believe, when so often in the "real" world, I see those things being subverted and overturned.

So, I'll have to see what else is on Qubo. I know they used to run Veggie Tales and 3-2-1 Penguins, both of which I found diverting, so.....

A quick check of other "blank" channels turns up Ion Life, UP, and One.Tv. Ion Life seems to be a lifestyle channel (when I checked, they had some kind of makeover show on). UP is mostly "inspirational" programming; we got it for a short while a couple years back - I think they re-run Judging Amy and Seventh Heaven, stuff like that. And One.Tv, I'm just guessing from what I saw last night and this morning, is like a replacement for BET.

I hope those other blank channels gradually fill in. (and I hope Boomerang is one of the fill-ins). And I hope they change the on-screen program guide soon to reflect the new channels....

I won't miss Nickelodeon NEARLY as much since we have Qubo. 

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