hey say it's the little things that make life worth living. They also say the devil's in the details. Here's a short, whiny list of little things that have been bothering me lately.

- Starbucks must have it in their training manual to completely disregard the phrase "room for cream." Every time, every store I go in I ask for the same thing, and when they hand it back to me there's not enough room for me to spit in the cup without it overflowing. I could hand it back to them to pour some off, but then they pour too much, or I could dump a little of it in the trash, but that just seems rude to make them haul a big, gross, coffee filled trashbag. As a former trashbag hauler, I have some sympathy there. But it's gotten to the point where I have to hold my arms out to the sides like I'm telling them about a trout I caught or I'm pretending to be Jesus.

- Whole Foods is a great store. I love it because it has all kinds of cool gourmet food I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else except Trader Joe's, or Henry's... but I still like Whole Foods better. Except for the people who shop there. Bunch of aging hippies so wrapped up in their organic food self image that NO ONE watches where they're going. I've been backed into, walked into, nearly ran over, bumped into, and all around molested by my fellow customers every time I go there for something.

- I realize that the above two posts, about Starbucks and Whole Foods make me look really yuppie-ish. I'm okay with that.

- I really miss swimming. I love running, but it's getting to the point where I have to ice my knees and shins every time I go out... but swimming. Well, that's a post in and of itself.

- It shouldn't bother me because they're just crazy teenage kids figuring out what they want in life, but there are WAY too many "scene" type kids with hair-in-the-face emo haircuts in my classes and at my school. Ooh, your jeans taper at the ankle? When did it become OK to start wearing the kind of jeans my mother wore when I was growing up? Hah, my mom was scene before scene was scene.... what?

- What's the deal with airplane food?
posted by MAtt D. at 3:45 PM

 
I think that by and large, people's major hobbies and interests are ruled by which of their five senses they favor. You know, people who are very auditory will probably have huge music collections and often condescend to people because they listen to stuff you haven't even heard of yet, more highly visual people might flock to art - photography, painting, etc. and more tactile people might lean toward sports or other bodily endeavors. Myself, I've always kinda been a gustatory person. Food man, I love it. I love to make it, I love to eat it, I love to watch TV about it. And I've always prided myself on being one of those people who will try anything (and like our musically-inclined snobs, treat those plain-food eaters with haughty disdain). But there's always been one food that I have steered clear from, one food that, I'll admit, I was terrified by. Sushi.

When other people talked about sushi and how good it was, I had to rationalize it as a defect in THEM, not me, because I'm a food guy. Raw fish? Gross. I worked at Sea World for a summer, and I can tell you, raw fish is what we served to the animals. (I realize there are a lot of arguements that invalidate this point, but when you rationalize things for yourself, you tend to ignore logic.) Well, anyway after having Alli be after me about sushi for a while, I finally sacked up and went for it. We went to a sushi bar in Hillcrest - the Gay/International Food district (don't ask me how that works out... I have no clue how the owners of the Afghani or Indian restaurants deal with all the evil homosexual infidels that constantly flow through their tables...) Anyway, the restaurant was tastefully named "Nami" and prominently featured a large wave on the sign above it (Short for "tsunami" which I wonder if that didn't have anything to do with how empty it was in there...)

Yeah, I liked it. Yes, it was very good. Hell, I even got pretty good with chopsticks, which I regard as the most ridiculous and retarded way to eat food. (But MAtt, it's elegant! it's artful! It's goddamn frustrating. Gimme my fork and stabby-stabby!) I was expecting slimy, fishy... grossness. Instead I got firm, smoky goodness. Couple of things though - I definitely liked the nigiri (raw fish stacked on top of a ball of rice) better than the rolls. Something about seaweed that just doesn't do it for me. In the long run, it was good, and pretty cheap. I'm also stoked that I picked up new knowledge along the way, because pert of my fear was not knowing how to order. Now I can walk into most sushi bars with an idea of what I'd like.

Yes, I really just wrote a blog this long about sushi.
posted by MAtt D. at 10:28 AM