Texas Fold ‘Em
I just want to say for the record (this *is* The Record, right?) that poker night with the boys is great, even when you lose. And man, did I lose. But hey, at least when you play with friends, your loss is a friend’s gain - as opposed to a blip on some casino’s “Gross Gaming Revenues from Suckers” radar. And you get to hang out all night, drink, smoke, and tell dirty jokes. It doesn’t get much better than that. Well, actually it does. When my friend Stuart is the host, he throws down some feastage like most people never see. Smoked duck, anyone? Giant tiger shrimp poached in butter? Gougère? Cheese board with four types of cheese? Two home-made pizzas (one carmelized onion with olives, and one margherita)? Great beer and wine? A home-made chocolate-chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cake, with chocolate ganache, and raspberry something-or-other? And that’s just the stuff I can remember. And never mind that the rest of us (we car-pooled to Stuart’s) picked up two dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts (for five guys??) on the way there…
Ah, but that was Friday night. Back to the present. It’s raining, as usual. It seems that last month was the rainiest March on record here in the Bay Area. Twenty-four days of rain, breaking a record set in 1904. Hurray. It’s almost two weeks into April now, and the rain hasn’t let up much. The ground is so rain-soaked that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes, it’s as strange to write that as it is to read it) declared a state of emergency yesterday in seven northern and central California counties. Aside from the mudslides and such, it seems that California has its own levee system that’s severely strained in a number of places, which in turn is putting a lot of people at extreme risk of severe flooding. At least San Francisco isn’t one of the seven counties - we’re soggy here, but at no real risk of being flooded that I know of. And I’m out of here tonight, for a three-day trip to Everett, WA - where the forecast (duh) calls for rain every day over the next three days. Sigh. And the San Francisco forecast says it’ll still be raining here when I get back Friday night. In fact, it’s not supposed to be sunny here for at least another week. Sigh. At least it’s not snowing. 
I haven’t posted much lately, because work’s been fairly busy, AND it’s tax season. I’ve been a US resident for the last seven years, which means I haven’t filed a Canadian return since 1999. But last year I sold some shares in a Canadian business, and that’s making my tax return life incredibly complicated this year. I had to pay taxes on the sale in Canada, which means I have to file a Canadian non-resident return (with a TON of ensuing additional paperwork), and I also have to record that income on my US (federal and state) returns, and claim a foreign tax credit, and… Words just can’t describe the fun I’ve been having. To cheer myself up, I’ve been looking at this photo of three baby hedgehogs (warning: link is work-safe, but the cuteness factor is off the charts, and is likely to sicken people who aren’t coming off of doing their tax returns).
Oh, and thanks to Arnon and Carlos for the wedding reception music tips. I’m slowly building a playlist of 30’s music that ought to do - it’s just for background music during dinner. And when I mentioned “the band”, I should have mentioned that the live music will be provided by Alex Pangman & Her Alley Cats. We’ve never seen her live, but we’ve got one of her CDs, and we’re thinking it should be great. You can even check out a video of her on her site, which is an excerpt from the made-for-TV period movie Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story. Not a great film (yes, we rented it), but not bad, and it covers an interesting episode in Canadian history that I’d never heard about before.
Side note to Ronen: Yup, it’s the same Daniel’s Broiler. They have three locations - I was at the Bellevue location, and it sounds like you were at the Lake Union location. I’m sure the food is equally good at all the sites, but the views from the Bellevue location can’t be beat.
April 11th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
Holy crap! Alex Pangman! Nice one Roach & Em! Time for me to brush up on the swing-dancing!