Archive for the ‘General’ Category

About two weeks ago, I had the fortune of catching my first baseball game at the new Nationals baseball stadium with a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a while. While we usually catch up over sushi, a new low sodium diet for her had us headed to the park for beer and hot dogs. Not a bad substitute.

I was always pleasantly surprised at how nice a baseball stadium RFK turned out to be but it simply can’t compare to the new one. So many more food options (Five Guys, Ben’s Chili Bowl, Boardwalk Fries), plenty of bathrooms, amazing scoreboard and as the cliché goes, not a bad seat in the house. For the extremely budget-conscious baseball fans, they even have $5 standing room only spots out in center field.

Between catching up with my friend and taking in all the new park had to offer, I barely had time to notice the Marlins scoring seven runs in the fifth to help send the Nationals to their 6th loss in a row. Too bad we have such a nice stadium and such a bad baseball team right now. Definitely still worth a visit when you get the chance.

A few pics from the evening…

I have a few friends of mine who have started up their own S&M; club. Now, to drag your mind out of the gutter, S&M; in this instance stands for “Steak & Mojitos”. Once a month these two couples select a steak house in DC and head out for an evening of fine dining. While the main purpose of the club is to spend some quality time together, there is a serious edge to the gatherings as each restaurant is graded in several different categories. A very sophisticated (and still secret) algorithm is applied to their individual rankings and used to compute an overall restaurant score. Prior to this past weekend, Charlie Palmer’s steak house was the lone restaurant visited by this crew and received a 73.9 rating. (Decimal points in the rating? Yes… told you it was sophisticated.)

Not wanting to invite myself into the club, but knowing that I a) enjoy these people’s company and b) enjoy a nice steak dinner from time to time, I half-jokingly offered my services as a guest reviewer to which they actually agreed. Woo-hoo! So this past Saturday, we met up at the Capital Grille for the official second meeting of the S&M; club.

I won’t bore you with the intricate details of the meal and the evening but a few quick thoughts along the lines of the categories used to rank the establishment…

• Appetizers – Excellent calamari. Clam Chowder soup was also quite good.
• Steak – When I’m at a nice restaurant, I always allow myself to get suckered in to the surf and turf… two petite filets with lobster. ($50, yikes!) Not amazing but still good. Meat was ordered medium rare and they delivered. No more or less taste then your standard filet.
• Mojitos – n/a… I went the way of a vodka martini.
• Sides – Very good mashed potatoes & cream spinach.
• Dessert – Meh. Probably my fault. I passed up Crème Brule for fruit.
• Atmosphere – A little noisy. A larger table for our party of five would have been nice.
• Service – While we had a very pleasant and polite waiter, service was a little slow. It took us quite a while to even get in an order of appetizers.
• Bathrooms – Very clean but an odd rumbling (broken fan? steak thieves tunneling in?) from behind one of the walls made for an annoyingly noisy experience.

I believe the final rating came in at a 71.9… a shade below Charlie Palmer’s. There are talks of an S&M; website/blog. I’ll be sure to share the address if that comes to fruition.

At my last job, I had the pleasure of working with some really great people and had some really great times. One of the highlights was the year my staff gave me a miniature foosball game for Boss’s Day. At the time I didn’t even know that was an actual “holiday” but the fact that they would pool a couple bucks in my honor was quite flattering.

Now at a new job where you’ll find soccer balls, scooters and light sabers throughout the office, I felt the foos would fit right in. Didn’t take long for my new co-workers to find it. Good times…

Never thought I would be a huge fan of a Pontiac commercial but Spy Hunter was one of my favorite arcade games growing up. Naturally I think this one is pretty awesome…

A week or two ago a friend of mine bookmarked a page on the web that listed 13 blog clichés. Although I didn’t agree with every item on the list, there was one that stuck out to me…

If you haven’t posted anything new to your blog in a while, don’t waste our time with apologies. Just write! The best apology is new and improved content. Maybe with a wee bit more consistency this time, though.

I couldn’t agree more. So taking this into consideration, I’m not going to apologize for posting a mere two times since September 2007. However I am going to set a goal of posting at least twice a month from now on.

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Now playing: Dave Matthews Band – Grace is Gone