May. 10th, 2015

walkitout: (Default)
Mother's Day is a weird day for me, because, between Evil Mother and Raised by JWs, Mother's Day was a non-event until I Quit the Cult and continued to be an ambiguous event for a long while thereafter.

But I've had kids for a while, and many of my friends have had kids for even longer, so Mother's Day is now mostly just The Day You Don't Go To Restaurants Because OMG It Is Cray-Cray Out There, with a side helping of cards/flowers/chocolates.

I'm not the only person out there with a complicated and/or non-relationship with her mother, but I'd like to wish _all_ of my women friends, whether they have children or not, Happy Mother's Day. You may not realize it, but you have nurtured someone in your life. If you can't think who that was, well, then, it was me.

And if you have reproduced, good luck to you! It's tough sometimes, but I hope you find it as worthwhile as I do.
walkitout: (Default)
The research that went into the gadget post got me thinking about TVs and entertainment systems. Last night's date night -- Dali's continues to be completely amazing -- got me thinking about how to better communicate how to get the TV up and running so you can watch it. It's different in every household and can be quite a mystery just getting the damn thing turned on and any kind of signal through to the screen.

To solve the initial problem, I'm going to do something that I assume _someone_ has done before for their own home entertainment system but that I cannot think of anyone that I know who has: produced an illustrated guide. Then I'm going to write something like the gadget post about why home entertainment systems are so horrifying to figure out how to use and what might be about to happen to change all that. While the gadget post was about the end of the portable pseudo-peripheral era, this next one will be about the Wearable or Installable Wireless Peripheral Era, which is where we are, or are at least heading.
walkitout: (Default)
At the moment, R. and T. are out for a walk around the block. I'll probably go after they come back.

Yesterday evening, R. and I had date night. We went to Dali's and got there a little before six and were seated immediately. They had Sazerac on the Vintage Cocktails menu! It's a good one, served in a lowball with no ice and a twist of lemon. Super yummy! R. got the red wine flight; they were all good but two were really nice. We learned a new wine term: "crianza", which means a rioja that has not been aged very long at all. Same word means a crying baby that is still nursing. Kinda funny, actually.

Dali's is small plates, tapas -- you can get entrees, but not many. They now have a non-dairy menu, so if you share my issues, ask for it. Very convenient! We got the bread with garbanzo bean spread, the mixed greens salad, the mussels, the ham, and the veggie empanada. It was all really good, but the veggie empanada was probably the best. They have a non-dairy chocolate cake, which was not too sweet and very chocolatey. R. got a sherry that is somewhat difficult to find to round things out. We got out of there for just under $100, and the great joy that comes from learning that a beloved restaurant that you haven't been to for a decade is even better than you remembered.

Dali's doesn't take reservations after 6 p.m. on any night you are likely to go, so you should know that The Kebab Factory across the street used to be absolutely wonderful, and still gets raves from Zagat -- we haven't been in a long time, but I feel optimistic. Other possibilities on that corner include Bergamot (farm to table and very fancy; you would have to be dressed appropriately) or the Kirkland, which is now a Tony Maws restaurant, IIRC. We'll eventually get to all of them, because parking on Beacon Street is a breeeeeezzzze.

Earlier, A. went to the horse. I got to have a nice phone conversation with my friend K., then T. and I went to Bertucci's and had lunch. Then we went to the horse where I had a lovely conversation with two friends. T. and I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts on the way back.

Once I got home, I made meaningful progress on a project I thought of last night. It is ludicrously hard to even figure out how to turn on an unfamiliar home entertainment setup, and if we are going to have babysitters, we should be able to point them at a piece of paper that will help them out when they are staring at the 4 remotes downstairs and 5 upstairs and trying to figure out what button to push first. I wrote two, one for upstairs and one for downstairs, and printed out copies to stick into page protectors stored where needed, but what I really want to do is send a copy and let people read it on their iphone. It's a google doc, so I'm trying to make sure that if the link gets loose, it doesn't cause me any trouble.

I'm able to put photographs in the docs, which is nice, but I can't figure out how to free-draw arrows, which is a bummer. I can do that in other stuff, but I don't feel like going to the bother.

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