Gathering Darkness - 17

Speaking to a manager in my department, who has of late been out of the office more often than she is in, the following question escaped my lips before I could call it back:

"You're never here anymore. How do you still have a job?"

What I meant to say was more along the lines of:

"You must be very valuable, to be able to take so much time off and still be considered one of the better managers."

I don't have any practical use for it, but Google Analytics for Flash sounds like something some of you may be interested in. More here.

Just some funny stuff from Dublin, via a chat with Radar:

(15:17:46) AoD: So, I kept asking everyone where to buy treacle toffee, but no one knew what it was
(15:17:57) Radar: LOL
(15:18:27) AoD: Someone found a toffee shop that carried it, and mentioned the name - I guess a couple of different people each independently stopped by there today and bought me a box of toffees
(15:19:06) Radar: LOL
(15:19:11) Radar: that is hilarious
(15:19:26) AoD: So I'm bringing home roughly 5 pounds of toffee
(15:19:48) AoD: It's almost half of my return-trip luggage!
(15:19:32) Radar: OMG!
Continue reading "Adventures in Irish <!Cuisine>"

For lunch Tuesday, we walked to a nearby cafe and had some more sandwiches - I chose the "Southern Fried Chicken" and - at Radar's suggestion - a bottle of Lilt, while MJ picked the "Spiced Beef". After one bite of his, MJ and I split the two sandwiches half-and-half.

The "Southern Fried Chicken" was quite spicy, with just enough heat to make you aware of it but not so much to make one uncomfortable. It had a cheese on it that the owner identified as "Durrus" (see the wikipedia entry), a distinctly Irish cheese with a sweet but sort of nutty taste. The Lilt tasted (to me) exactly like Squirt.

The "Spiced Beef" tasted, to my distinct horror, exactly like my Mother's goulash.

Now, I'm not trying to disparage my Mom's cooking here - the woman was a saint, and I know it had to be hard to satisfy four distinctly different growing boys and my Father. However, somewhere along the way she got me confused with one of my other brothers and thought that her goulash was my favorite dish. Let me be clear about this - I never cared for the goulash. However, since she thought this was my favorite, she'd cook it for me on "special occasions" such as my birthday, and I just didn't have the heart to tell her "Mom, I don't like this". The problem only grew when I got married and my Mom, believing she was doing me a favor, told my wife that this was my favorite dish and gave her the recipe, and my wife started to cook it for me and beam proudly as she served me this dish. It took a long time for me to find the wherewithal to explain the situation to my wife, and over that period my dislike for goulash only increased.

So imagine my horror when MJ managed to con me into swapping half-sandwiches with him, to find something that tasted like my Mom's goulash with the additionally questionable decision of adding mixed veggies. It was not good. Not good at all.


Southern Fried Chicken: 6/10
Lilt: 5/10 - I can get this in the US in Squirt bottles
Spiced Beef: 0/10 - can I give negative scores?

By the way, if you have any suggestions on foods I should try while here, I'm glad to take them - I will, however, NOT be following the suggestions from Radar and Daboo that I eat a pastie...ew! WTF is wrong with you two? The Wikipedia article even states that "deaths have resulted from men being injured after attempting to remove pasties with their mouths".

(14:21:57) Ancient of Days: The operator at my hotel answers the phone "Delighted to help you Mr. Smith, my name is ______, what can I do for you this evening?"
(14:22:28) Mad Giggler: expensive place?
(14:22:38) AoD: Has to be
(14:22:52) AoD: There are no ice machines in the hall, you call room service to get ice delivered Continue reading "Mad Giggler discourses to AoD on Hotels"

For dinner Monday night, we went to Gotham Café off of Dublin's Grafton Street (sort of like the Gateway Plaza, except it's just right smack in the middle of town, and much bigger)...unfortunately, I couldn't find any decent online resources showing Grafton.

For dinner, I had the Spicy, Crusted Vietnamese Beef - a deliciously salty-sweet-crunchy dish with noodles - the only drawback was that restaurants here haven't really acquired that US habit of serving bread with every meal, so I didn't have anything to mop up the left-over juice from the beef. MJ had the pepperoni pizza, which he described as having a nice, crispy crust and otherwise being "OK". For dessert, I had the "Black and White Caramel Dream", which was 3 small scoops of ice cream - I want to say it was chocolate, vanilla, and either caramel or toffee. The chocolate ice cream was quite good, the others were passable. Additionally, I had a drink called a "Pink Cloud Dream Juice", which was a mix of cranberry and orange - unfortunately, these flavors didn't blend quite as well as I had hoped, although I think I may experiment in this realm when I return from IE.

Spicy Beef: 8.5/10 - Excellent portion size, great value, really good flavor - left too much food in the bottom of the dish due to inability to reach it
Pepperoni Pizza: Reported as "5/10 - I've had better in Dublin"
Black and White Caramel Dream: 6/10 - a most excellent chocolate ice cream!
Pink Cloud Dream Juice: 4/10 - both flavors tasted "thin", as though too much water was used in the mixing

I would definitely eat here again - I really wanted to try their famous "Sausages and Mash" (a German style and a Bavarian style sausage with garlic mashed potatoes), but the "pork scare" prevented them from serving it to me.

For lunch, we walked over to a Munchies, where I ordered an "Italian Scallion" (Ciabatta, Salami, Black pepper, Provolone cheese, Roasted Red Peppers, Scallions, Mixed Leaves, Olive Oil) - mainly because I was still looking to redeem the taste-poor experience of the previous evening. While the sandwich was acceptable, it still didn't have that great salami taste I was looking for. However, I did find two great new tastes - Club Orange Soda which lists as its ingredients "carbonated water, sugar, reconstituted orange juice from concentrate", and "Hunky Dorys" brand potato crisps, in the "Cheddar Cheese and Spring Onion" flavor.

In fairness to the sandwich shop, Ireland is currently in the middle of a big pork scare, and the sandwich is normally supposed to have Irish Bacon on it, which is supposed to be quite flavorful.

Sandwich: 5/10
Drink: 8/10 - I wonder if I can get this in the US?
Crisps: 8/10 - Better even than my standard American favorite, Ruffles' "Cheddar and Sour Cream"

Here I am coming out of the Subway at Times Square -

Spent most of the day goofing around in Times Square, here I am at night doing the classic "tourist" pose -

We should meet up for lunch somewhere, Radar...oh, wait, NEITHER OF US IS ACTUALLY IN NEW YORK.

Radar called me today, at 1:25 PM, from "New York"...what a liar!

(Note: I did "Photoshop"[1] this image a little bit to protect my cell #, the other people in my call history, as well as the party that's hiding Radar during this time of lies - no reason to punish anyone else for Radar's sins - but there should be enough there to see that it's clearly an 801 area code number, and we all know Radar doesn't own a cellular phone.)

[1] Okay, technically I suppose a I "The GIMP'd" it. Do you think Adobe likes their flagshop product being a verb, or do you think they're like TiVo and feel it "weakens their brand"?