Lauren's world of useless information

Although he was not a big influence on me directly, I recognize Will Eisner as a major influence in the world of comics breaking barriers and going the extra mile. I hav several of the spirit collections put out in the last few years and you can see how the character changes both in visual style and conceptually. Many others have said more about the amazing Mr. Eisner than I ever can, but I will point out that this man worked up until he was unable to do so and the work sems to get better and better all the time.

I hope that the Eisner awards gain in stature until you have people from every walk of life appreciating this man, his work and what having a symbol representing that talent entails.

My folks took me to dinner at this greek restaurant in Palo Alto. The interior is fine, they are going for a rustic greek bistro/taverna feel, I guess, but when we were there it was very crowded and overly noisy, especially the insipid music playing that night. We had to ask them to turn down the music so we could hear each other.

The appetizers were tasty although the Taramosalata need more pita bread served with it, and the Patzaria seemed a little small portion-wise.

The wine list was very pricy with little to nothing under $30, but I will say the waiter was able to recommend a greek white wine that was good for most of the meal. I would like to see wines with a lower markup or a better price range.

The souvlaki was ordered medium and come out closer to rare than medium, We took most ofthis home and microwaved it later to bring it up to the correct level of doneness on the inside. The lamb chops were the best entree, ordered medium well and came out medium well, Some lighter pink in the center, nicely browned on the outside, still tender. Moussaka somehow seemed a little off, but okay.

The dessert menu has the typical molten chocolate cake dessert and some more interesting greek inspired desserts. The Rizogalo was very good.

If you have a lot of cash to spend you can go here, but I recommend going to Yiassoo in Cupertino/SJ or another greek restaurant where prices are lower but hte food is just as good, if not better.

1. Try to blog more often, minimum 1x a week, possibly more
2. Get below 190 and stay there
3. Eat delicious food, travel to interesting places, meet more people
4. Try a new sport - actually I have already started this one
5. Get some house maintenance done - make sure roof is good and so on
6. Stay employed
7. Make the blog more interesting

The US was shamed into promising a 10x the early 15- 30 million donation, Gonzalez is getting asked some tough questions by both parties - we can only hope that someone better than Ashcroft ends up as AG, and my chocolate fudge sauce came out as tasty as ever.

Employment slowly seems to be picking up as I now know fewer and fewer unemployed people.

My list of favorite things in 2004 (since I am a herd animal and doing what apparently every blogger is doing):

Chocolate fudge sauce - yummy!
Jon Stewart dissing Tucker Carlsen on Crossfire
getting a job after a year of unemployment and unhappiness
getting a good annual review for said job
Keeping my weight down to 190 for the year - yee ha!
Reading some good comics like True Story Swear to God, Fables, Y: The Last Man, Smax, Love Fights, New Frontier (surprisingly good), Sleeper, Queen and Country, and Fallen Angel.
Listening to some good albums by The Finn Brothers, Tears for Fears, The Cure, Green Day, Madeliene Peyroux, Ray LaMontagne
TV Discovered in 2004: TiVo - I admit to joining the TiVo cult and I am happy to be there overall, The Chapelle Show, the Charlie Murphy stories are great, the racial draft, the white people black culture quiz, the music styles of different ethnicities, the guy has great humor!
Good books: Bittersweet by Alice Medrich, the Tuesday Next series by Jasper FForde, some good scuba diving books including Submerged : adventures of America's most elite underwater archeology team by Daniel Lenihan
Good Movies: The Incredibles was amazing, Netflix, since I can have movies delivered to the house. I actually turned off all the premium movie channels from my cable/satelitte service.
My trip to Hawaii was beautiful as always. I love the Big Island for its many microclimates.
Cookie Party had a nice turnout.
Made a nice thanksgiving dinner aa good Halloween dinner and some here and there tastiness.