Kris and Jo go to Paris

More ketchup (this time it's kinda sideways)

This time, I'm just going to cover Saturday, and it's not going to be in any particular order. So instead of Memento, this is more like Pulp Fiction.

Food
For breakfast, Stew came over and we went to the 5-Spot. I got the Toulouse Street Scram which includes hash browns and whole grain toast. It was good. I was starving and it hit the spot. I also had coffee and water to drink. I don't remember exactly what Stew got, but I think it was two eggs over-easy, coffee, and grapefruit juice. I'm pretty sure he got something else as well, but I can't remember what. That's what happens when you wait four days before posting.

We got to the 5-Spot just as they opened, but we still had to wait for a table. Usually there's no line until around 9:30. I don't think it was the lack of empty tables, but rather they were taking forever to seat people. Also, the fact that the sun rises at 5:30 AM these days makes 8:30 seems a lot later than it normally does, so there may have been a lot of early risers waiting for breakfast as well.

At some point during the day I had to leave because the apartment was being shown, so I went do Caffe Ladro and got an orange Italian cream soda, which is what I get when I'm not interested in caffeine.

I have no clue what else I ate on Saturday, and I would have completely forgotten about the trip to Ladro if I hadn't taken a picture.

Technology
Stew drove me to Fry's so I could buy the parts to fix the Internets. I also picked up a part that I thought would give me faster transfers from my Tivo, but after playing around with it, my transfer rates are the same.

After getting some work done (and leaving the house for a bit), I made some "improvements" to the blog.

1. I added some javascript to the pages so that I could use StatCounter.com to track site usage. You can see who's been viewing the site by clicking here. You can also use the link that appears at the bottom of the column on the right. See if you can find your visit!
2. I switched the RSS feed link to use FeedBurner, so I can get some stats on who is subscribing to the site. Unfortunately, it doesn't yet work with Firefox's Live Bookmarks, so if you're using that to see the feed, it's not showing up in the logs. This is really no big deal, since I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one with a subscription to the site. (Note: If you want to use the FeedBurner feed within Firefox, simply click on the "Subscribe to this site" link on the left from within Firefox, and then use that page to create the live bookmark. Or you can manually subscribe to "http://feeds.feedburner.com/KrisAndJoGoToParis".)
3. I got tired of waiting for this site to appear in a Google search, so I bought some AdWords. If you search on "Kris Markel", "Kris", "Markel", "Johanna Trobough", "Johanna", or "Trobough", you may see an add for this site. There one ad for me and one for Jo. My daily budget is set really, really low, so the ads stop showing up after about five people click on them. Jo's ad has a much higher click-through rate (the percentage of people who see the ad and actually click on it), which is a little ironic since she never posts anything.

Movies
As I alluded to in the post about Sunday, I rented Shaolin Soccer and watched the American Edit. (As I also said on Sunday, the original edit is better, but it's missing subtitles in places.) I liked it, but not as much as Kung Fu Hustle, which I watched the previous weekend.

Getting to Paris
(I'm saving the best for last.) Jo and I accepted an offer on the house! I don't want to say too much because we still have to deal with the inspection and some other paperwork, and I'm worried about jinxing it. However, I am pretty pleased with the offer.

I promise to do a better job of staying on top of posts, at least for a little while. I'm not going to talk about what I've been eating recently, but tomorrow I'll resume my regular meal postings.

Jumbo, no wait - no mess, stay clean cap, upside-down ketchup catch up

Whew! It's been a busy few days. In reverse chronological order (think of it as the Memento of blog posts), here's what's been going on.

Monday morning, approximately 9:30 AM: I make a trip down into the Westlake bus tunnel to buy some bus tickets because I lost my bus pass yesterday. More on that later (er ... earlier?).

Monday morning, approximately 10 AM: Salt bagel, toasted, with peanut butter, and water to drink. The bagel is from Seattle Bagel Bakery, which I think makes the best bagels in Seattle. And since the salt bagel is the pinnacle of bagel achievement, this is the cream of the crop, so to speak. Topping it with nature's perfect food (that would be peanut butter) sounds like an ideal combination, but it ended up being too salty. Also, there wasn't enough PB, and the bagel wasn't toasted enough. This is understandable because the bagel store was very, very crowded. A couple tourist families had wandered in looking for breakfast and were crowding out the locals.

Normally I get cream cheese, but I decided to go with the healthier vegetable fat instead of the less healthy animal fat.

The water, while posing as bottled, is really from the tap. (Damn posers!)

Monday morning, approximately 8 AM: Grande latte from Torrefazione. I'm on the verge of ranking this coffee as better than Ladro's which hasn't been so good recently. This is very hard for me to do, as Torrefazione is owned by Starbucks, which I hate.

Monday morning, early: Standard morning cocktail - Metamucil, two vitamins, two fish oil capsules.

Sunday night, dessert: My headache has mostly subsided, so I have a glass of "Ye olde regular" (Metamucil) and head to bed.

Sunday night: I watched the original release version of Shaolin Soccer, which was better than the American edit, but it was hard to enjoy because my head was pounding to such a great degree. I also did a couple hours of work because my headache is preventing me from sleeping.

Sunday dinner: Inspired by Howl's Moving Castle, I had Roquefort on a rustic baguette with slices of Braeburn apples. I would have preferred the stronger taste of Cabrales, but the Cabrales they had at Metropolitan Market looked disgusting. (They're whole cheese section is kinda iffy.) I also picked up some Granny Smiths and Tellagio, but didn't have the energy to eat them. I think the milder Braeburns would be better paired with the Tellagio while the sweeter Granny Smiths would go well with the blue cheese. I'll try that tomorrow (er ... tonight). Plus it was hard to enjoy anything with my headache.

Sunday, approximately 3:55 PM: I still have a few minutes to kill before the open house is over, so I head to Metropolitan Market to buy dinner.

Sunday, approximately 3:30 PM: I make it to the top of the hill and decide to grab some ice cream at Scoops so I can eat it while scoping out the apartment to see if anyone comes in or out of the open house. There's only one table on the sidewalk and it's occupied, so I start eating my ice cream indoors and move once the table opens up. I don't see anyone enter or leave the apartment.

For ice cream, I get a single scoop of cookie dough, which tastes like crap. It's too sweet and not at all creamy. They really serve terrible ice cream at that place, especially when compared to what the Cow's Meow offered when they ran the shop. (Cow's Meow made their own ice cream, Scoops just ships in drums of Dryer's.)

Sunday, 3:00 PM: In an effort to abate my migraine and some misguided hope that maybe it's caffeine withdrawal related, I get a grande latte from Caffe Ladro. This is the second or third coffee I've gotten from them that was too chalky and had an odd tangy aftertaste. Normally I like my latte to have a bit of a chalky mouth-feel, but this was too much. Plus, it didn't do a thing to help my headache.

As I'm wandering about the bottom of the hill, I start to lose my peripheral vision. This is a common migraine symptom, and it makes navigating difficult. So I decided to head back up to the top of the hill and I realized I no longer have my bus pass. I think it must have fallen out of my pocket at the movie theater, but I'm in too much pain to go back to the movie theater and ask if they've seen it.

Sunday, 1:00 PM: I noticed that Howl's Moving Castle is starting at the Uptown, and I've got three hours to kill, so I decide to see it. I normally don't like seeing movies by myself, but I'm hoping it will help to pass the time. Initially, I start nodding off, but then a migraine starts. I can neither sleep nor enjoy the movie.

Sunday, noon: I am exhausted and sore from so much frantic cleaning, so I head down the hill to Dick's for some "comfort" food. I get a Deluxe, fries, medium root beer, and two ketchups. (At Dick's, you have to pay for the ketchup.) The hamburger hits the spot, the fries are cold and soggy, and the root beer is fantastic. I think Dick's just serves Dad's Root Beer or something equally pedestrian (I'm a bit of a root beer snob), but they've got the syrup to soda water ratio just right or something.

Sunday, 11:30 AM: A super quick shower. (I can't remember if I have to be out of the apartment by noon or 1:00, so I'm shooting for noon.) I run to Metropolitan Market for some flowers to pretty up the place.

Sunday, 5:00 AM: After my morning cocktail and a bowl and a half of corn flakes with milk and sugar, it's clean, clean, and clean. We have an open house today so I start a six-and-a-half hour cleaning session that includes scrubbing both bathrooms and the laundry room from top to bottom, sweeping outside and watering the plants, vacuuming everything, doing all the laundry and the dishes, dusting, taking boxes out to the garage, and 10 million other little things. The thing is, the house wasn't really that dirty. I just felt compelled to get it spotless for some reason.

Well, that's enough for now. I'll recount Saturday's details later.