Text 21706, 96 rader
Skriven 2007-10-24 18:57:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: the last 2 days 337
===========================
As I'm a Sox fan, I was pleased to see them head into the
World Series - in anticipation I'd looked for award
airfare to Denver and was unable to find coach seats;
what I did find was a mixed itinerary of 20% coach,
30% business, and 50% first, for the price of first
(under normal circumstances I can often snag first for
the price of coach). In any case I picked up a pair for
Carol and me and went off looking for Series tickets at
Coors Field (there being no question of Fenway Park,
those sold out before they officially were offered, and
a few being scalped at 10000 percent of face value). So
for the last couple days I spent about 12 hours (12-10
Monday with an hour off for dinner, 2-4:50 Tuesday)
online on two computers, and every time I got close
(past the hold) I got cut off altogether, until I got a
new screen that said that tickets had been sold out. Went
online to find that the "official" scalping sites had
plenty of availability - at 2500% to a whopping 25000%
markup. Nothing available for less than 500 bucks a seat.
I shouldn't be surprised for the first World Series ever
played in the Rocky Mountain states. So no game for us.

I'm betting that scalpers lined up massive amounts of
computer power (the seats were sold only online) and
glommed all the seats, and they'll be millionaires soon.

==

Anyhow. Dinner during the Monday fiasco. I told Jonathan
to go to the grocery (as I was not in a position to
supervise him) and get whatever he wanted for dinner.
He actually looked rather disappointed that I would not
go to the store with him. He came back with about 12 oz
of rockfish, as it was on sale for 11.99/lb, and some
lettuce. The rockfish was full of bones and scales and
not too fresh but otherwise okay. The lettuce was fine
until he washed it with hot water.

I taught the kid how to pull bones with a pair of pliers
and to scale with a knife. I don't think he paid attention
after fixating on my using a pair of pliers on his food.

Broiled the fish and sauteed the lettuce; both came out
okay, the fish tasting almost as good as chicken and the
lettuce somewhat better, as I cheated by adding a big
knob of butter and an ounce of rum (we're out of xiao
xing wine); also made steamed rice (luckily there
was still some in the house, quite old, though).

Jonathan said the food was good.

=

After the Tuesday fiasco I rewarded my brother (who had
done something good, I forget what now) by taking him to
the Silver Diner, which he likes - I introduced it to him
last or this month as repayment for picking me up late at
night from the airport and which he's been to twice since
on his own, which partially explains why he has even less
money than I, despite having held a nasty but remunerative
job in computer tech support, over 50K a year I understand,
for some time (he is now unemployed, though). Of course,
I was starving, having missed lunch for keeping my nose
to the computerstone, and he was not, as he eats a lot,
constantly. He ordered chicken wings followed by (by way
of atonement) turkey meatloaf; I got the country-fried
steak. Jonathan asked me, incredulously, what are you
getting for appetizer, and I said, nothing, I'm not
feeling like a piggy. Peculiar response of the day:
"piggies don't eat, they get eaten, don't they?"

The main courses come with various salads or a taster of
various kinds of soupy things, so I had the cincy chili,
which was, as you might expect, bland tomato meat sauce,
lacking even the cumin-cinnamon-allspice that the real
thing has. Jonathan told the waiter that, as he had
ordered chicken wings, he wouldn't have the (COMES WITH)
starter. My CFS was barely acceptable, about half a pound
of mechanically processed round in a thickish salty crust
topped with sausage gravy that tasted, as do so many
white sauces these days, like wallpaper paste, complete
with the wintergreen taste. Also mashed redskin potatoes
in a completely different, differently nasty cornstarch-
based pot roast gravy and thawed baby green beans, some
green, some so old they were kind of khaki. I gave about
3 of my ounces of CFS and half the potatoes to the kid
and ate all my green beans, which were the best part of
the meal. His turkey meatloaf tasted like turkey Spam,
though less salty. It wasn't objectionable, though yellow
steamed broccoli and a mixture of wild and brown rice were.
For some reason, the waiter really, really pushed the
Zywiec beer after I ordered a Carlsberg. He seemed sort of
crestfallen when I told him that I've had Zywiec beer and
very crestfallen when I told him that it was nasty skunk pee.
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