Tag Archives: good-eats

"A Unique Shopping Experience"

A coworker of mine recently visited the salad bar of a local grocery store. Dissatisfied with some of the store’s recent changes, she decided to write a letter:

I used to come to your store for the salad bar – where a employee would hand make it for me and toss it. It was great. Now we have a manual salad bar with half the ingredients and no way to toss the salad. I am disappointed and have no reason to shop at <store name> anymore.

Here is the store’s EPICALLY AWESOME response:

Dear <snip>:

Many thanks for your email and for sharing your thoughts with us. As store director, I’m always eager to hear what’s on your mind because you’re our valued guest. Your feedback is extremely important to me and my staff, and I want to follow up with you personally.

You share with us your disappointment with regards to our new salad bar arrangement. I’m so glad you’ve voiced your concerns, as I’ve got some information that I hope will please you. We feature a wide variety of salad options for our guests, including choices of greens, 26 different salad ingredients, and eight different dressings, just to name a few. Chicken and salmon (along with other items) are available in our deli case. You mention that you miss having an associate toss your salad. Please know that we would be delighted to toss your salad for you, so please don’t hesitate to ask any associate – we’re here to serve you and to ensure your complete care and satisfaction. In addition, if there’s a salad item that isn’t at the bar, please contact an associate, and we’ll check to see if that item is available.

<snip>, we’re committed to providing you with spectacular service, a unique shopping experience, and the finest products at the lowest overall prices of any full-service market. After all, you deserve nothing less!

[…]

Sincerely,

<Store Director>

*That* is customer service.

Hangin' with B-man

Look at those two handsome devils:

One night on our vacation, we had dinner with our friends Wayne, Laurel, and Braden. Troy was on crack. He was so busy running around their house that he shunned a most excellent dinner. On any other day, he would have scarfed it like a rapacious badger. Oh well. The boy could stand to lose a few pounds.

Just like his old man.

Ba-zing!

Would sir desire a Coors Light with his T-bone?

Why, yes, I would, thank you.

So.

Kelly and T-man are out of town for the next couple of nights, which means I'll have to fend for myself when it comes to food. Fortunately, I learned how to operate a BBQ at an early age (thanks, Dad!), so, for tonight at least, I won't starve to death.

What's on the menu:

T-bone steak
Kimchee
Rice
Coors Light (for basting the steak (honest))

Mmm… temporary bachelorhood food…

Starbucks + AT&T = Teh Rad

This is good news. Whenever I'm traveling and I need to check my email, I'll generally head to Starbucks for a cup of joe and to tap into the T-Mobile wireless hotspot. However, at $9.99/day, the access fee always ticked me off (though never enough to prevent me from paying for it). I have never needed 24-hour Internet access at a Starbucks. Why the heck couldn't they offer a smaller time period for less money?

Well, now they do. Except "they" is no longer comprised of Starbucks + T-Mobile; "they" is now Starbucks + AT&T:

At Starbucks, T-Mobile is out and AT&T is in, at least when it comes to WiFi. AT&T and Starbucks announced their new partnership this morning, saying that the carrier plans to offer a variety of service offerings at 7,000 Starbucks locations in the US. Best of all, many customers will be able to access the service for free (as in beer), with paid offerings as low as $3.99 for two hours of use.

Ah, sanity momentarily returns to the land of overpriced breakfast sandwiches and macchiatos.

I'm not an AT&T broadband subscriber (monopolies are a bitch (SureWest does provide excellent service, though)), so I don't get to surf for free, but $3.99/two hours is still a welcome change.

Good move, Starbucks!

Eastern Max Buffet

One of the guys on my team at work is being forcefully happily transitioned to another team. As a small send off, we went to a team lunch at the place of his choosing. He chose a place I had never eaten before, called Eastern Max Buffet.

I think I can sum it up best thusly:

It’s like HomeTown Buffet, but Asian, and without the suck.

If you’re ever in Roseville and looking for a good mix of Asian grub, stop on by. $8.50 all you can eat at lunch.

Wasp Crackers

I was all ready to file this one under "Redundant Slurs Against White People", until I looked at the picture.

ETA: Speaking of crackers, we're teaching American Sign Language to Troy, hoping that it will reduce the terror of the Terrible Twos by allowing him to communicate his needs to us. We're using the Baby Signing Time series of videos.

One of the first words they teach you is "cracker":

Click to see a video demonstration of the word "cracker" being signed

Of course, me being me, I couldn't resist; instead of making the correct sign, I simply said "cracker" and pointed at Kelly.

That set off an internal struggle inside my brainial region:

I'm so offended!

No, wait – that was HILARIOUS!

*sigh*

It's tough being a half-breed.

Cugini's is still good the second time around

Yeah. We're pathetic. We had lunch from Cugini's for the second day in a row. The pizza is sooooo gooooood! We just couldn't help ourselves.

Anyway, we didn't do a whole lot yesterday. We went for a walk in the morning, and, after lunch, we headed up to Morro Bay to walk around on Embarcadero St. We had a nice relaxing afternoon up there. The weather was perfect, and, by chance, the local merchants were having a street fair, so we got to check out an eclectic mix of wares being hawked. One guy was even selling backyard drilling contracts with his plates of BBQ Tri-Tip. That confused the hell out of me until I took my finger out of my eye socket and realized that his business was in fact backyard grilling. I are smart, Cletus.

For dinner, I had a Red Dragon Roll from Yanagi Sushi. That's absolutely one of my favorite rolls of all time, though I wouldn't go so far as to call it #1. In fact, I don't know if I could designate any roll as the top dog. There are just too many good ones out there to choose from.

Like I said, it was a pretty mellow day. You tend not to do too many Wild-N-Crazy Things when you have an infant in tow.

Not that I'm complaining. This downtime is just what the doctor ordered. It's nice to get away from it all.

KSLY's Gone Country!

Jeez, you leave for 2 years, and everything goes to hell. Not that there's anything wrong with country music, but when you're bombing down the Cuesta Grade at 11:30pm, and there's nothing on the XM radio, and you've listened to the CD in the deck about 47 times since you started driving, the next natural step is to turn on the good ol' terrestrial FM radio and tune into the stations that you know will play some good Top 40 tunes. Instead, I got an earful of manure.

Othere notable changes since the last time I was in SLO:

There is a COSTCO
Tortilla Flats has closed down, and a Karaoke bar took its place
Lots of previously open spaces have been developed
Cal Poly has been seriously developed – new dorms/apartments, and mondo additions for the College of Engineering
There is a HUGE Apple store downtown
Sakura is no more – it's now called "Sushiya"

One thing that is still the same is the presence of elephant seals up north of San Simeon. As you can see from the picture above, they are quite fat and lazy. Get a job, ya bums!

Also, the weather is just about perfect compared to the cesspool that is the Sacramento Valley. Glad to see that hasn't changed.

We're having fun driving around, reminiscing about all the good times down here. It's hard to believe it has been over 10 years since I first came down here to go to school. This city is just so awesome.

We're also trying to hit all of our favorite restaurants while we're here. Yesterday, we hit up Cugini's (for me), Nucci's (for Kelly), and Mandarin Gourmet for dinner. That's always the dangerous part of coming back to SLO. There's just too much good food here.

As for Troy, how's he handling all of this, with the moderate climate and the fresh air and the beautiful sights? Let's just say that he "exploded" with enthusiasm, "unloading" his glee at being in new surroundings. He is "relieved" at the prospect of finally seeing where Mommy and Daddy went to college.

(I'll just come out and say it: he's no longer constipated. Yesterday was a BIG day for TroyTroy's colon.)

Jon Sagara

So easily amused