The Mandelbear's Musings

A pretty good day. Reasonably productive at work, except for the hour or so in the afternoon when I was too sleepy to do much.

A good walk. My Keen boots arrived.

We were originally intending to eat at home, and go out for a family dinner tomorrow. But the YD wanted to cook for her gamer friends, so we went out and checked out a new Indian restaurant: India Gate. Good food, though not quite up to Spicy Leaves. Slow service. Looks like it has a great lunch buffet, though.

Links up above behind the cut, as usual.

Last weekend I went looking for shoes. I'm trying to replace my Keen hiking boots, which are comfortable, give me good ankle support, look good enough for everyday wear at the office, and are wearing out. I'm on my second pair, and I'm starting to fear that they've been discontinued.

I did, however, find a pair of Merrell slip-ons on sale at REI that were sufficiently cheap ($65 or so) and fit well enough that I decided to give them a try. Glad I did. I've worn them on a couple of walks now with no problems. And they look like dress shoes, so they'll be perfect for travel. All I have to add is an ankle brace or two.

Along the way I picked up two different shoulder bags: an Eagle Creek sidekick at REI, and a smaller, vertically-oriented Eagle Creek bag at Any Mountain. I've been using a sidekick for a good many years now, but it's undergone major revisions; this is essentially a whole new bag now. At first I thought it wasn't going to hold all my stuff; the front compartment (where I keep my wallet, checkbook, changepurse, and business cards) has gotten wider but lost its internal pockets. But things still fit, and fit better, if I put the cards and changepurse next to the wallet and checkbook.

The back compartment has acquired pockets for camera (looks like it's actually designed for glasses, but I don't need to pack those), cellphone, and pens. The pile of stuff that I used to keep in the front zipper pocket -- things like the backpacker's chopsticks, titanium spork, tape measure, and dental floss -- pile nicely in the bottom because the camera and phone are out of the way. The outside flap pocket is gone, but I can now use the front zipper pocket for other peoples' cards.

It's a little smaller, and sleeker. Good bag for everyday, though possibly a little too small. There still isn't room for everything I used to carry in the old one, but I wanted to cut down on the weight anyway.

The vertical bag was an experiment; I still want something I can slip into my backpack next to the CPAP for air travel, and that opens from the top so that I can get at things without taking it all the way out. It's a little small, but holds the essentials.

(ETA: have verified that the sidekick fits nicely across the top of the backpack, with enough headroom for the CPAP if I'm careful not to leave too much stuff lying at the bottom. Would need to be checked before travel, since I do leave a lot of stuff down there. Have also verified that the sidekick will hold an Asus Eee, but only with major and inconvenient re-arranging of wallet and change purse.)

I looked at a couple of larger vertical bags: the Eagle Creek guide bag and something similar from REI. Both were too wide to fit in the backpack, and neither had a detachable strap with D-rings. Maybe in another year or so Eagle Creek will redesign the guide bag? At this point I can wait.

Still looking for decent-looking, all-leather, mid-height hiking boots with wide toes. The Keen were perfect, damnit.

Woke up at about 5am to find that my marvelous flower_cat had been up before me and made some peach custard. We both went back to sleep. The custard was delicious.

Went out for a pleasant five-mile walk this morning. After that, I drove over to REI and bought a new pair of hiking boots, because a comment by quadrivium a couple of posts downwhen made me look at the soles of the old ones -- they were practically worn through. The new ones are the same type (Keen Brooklyn) but half a size bigger -- 11 rather than 10.5. (My current walking shoes are size 11, too. It seems one's feet never stop growing; I was a size 9.5 30 years ago.) So these should be a bit more comfortable in addition to not being on the verge of falling apart.

About 5pm the flower_cat and I went out on our dinner date. We'd been going past the Forbes Mill Steakhouse in Los Gatos for years, looking at their menu, and thinking we ought to try it some time. Some time was tonight, and a fine time it was. We started out with Sarticious gin (from just over the mountains in Santa Cruz), which we had never tried. Both of us loved it: smooth, slightly fruity. Yum. Shortly after that they brought the bread (made on the premises, I'd guess) and the apetizers we'd ordered off today's specials: figs stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto, and oysters on the half-shell. There were three figs and three each of two kinds of oysters; we split the odd fig and divvied the oysters by proximity: one of the far ones and two of the close ones.

For the main course we just had more appetizers: the beef carpaccio, day boat sea scallops (two big scallops on a bed of black "forbidden rice"), and the filet tips (with cognac peppercorn sauce, scallions, and garlic chips). All made of yum. I personally thought the figs were the best.

We finished off with a cheese plate, cappuccino for the Cat, and espresso for me. Total was a little over a C-note before tip: high, but not outrageous as long as we don't do it more than every couple of months. We've paid more taking the family out for sushi, and enjoyed it less.

The car came out to $388. They gave me a free rental, a silver Ion (Ag+ -- well, actually a Saturn, but the pun was too good to pass up), while waiting for the part they needed to fix the window. The actual repair was free under warranty.

I got the message about the car being ready while driving from work to my eye exam at Kaiser. The new bifocals came to $200 after the vision plan's $175 allowance. Not bad. The computer glasses are, apparently, good enough to last me the two years til my next appointment, but my astigmatism has drifted slightly and I've become a little more farsighted, so new bifocals with stronger reading sections (+2 diopters).

I'm continuing to find things about the new macbook that annoy me -- many of the third-party apps I'm using to make it more Linux-like are buggy. Only to be expected, I suppose. And nothing can get around the fundamental brokenness of the top menu bar (which can't be changed) and click-to-focus (which is dictated by the menu bar, which can't be changed). Well, between Parallels and Boot Camp I should be able to get a reasonable Linux going on it.

The shoes I ordered from REI on Monday arrived this morning in time for me to try them out on my walk. Nice. Just about the right amount of ankle support, without the excessive compression of the elastic brace.