still sick...

I'm sorry for being out of touch with the world right now, but I'm still out with the flu and just curled up in my little bubble right now, hoping to get better and trying to remember how it is to breath without a stuffed nose.
I also discovered that Theraflu and I do not go along. To be precise there is some compound in it, which introduces nausea.
Another discovery was that DayQuil has no effect what soever on me, but Sudafed works. Curiously they are based on the exact same ingredients and identical concentration.

Needless to say, I spend now 5 days in bed and not having much fun or getting any work done. But Robin is doing an amazing job nursing me back to health.

back from monterey

a couple of weeks ago Robin and I decided, that we want to get out of Davis and relax a bit from work and without the whole hassle called phones, internet and laptops.

So the original idea of Calistoga Spa was abandoned, main reason was money and lack of stuff todo there. So we decided togo to Monterey instead.

Or in other words, the epic discovery of rain and seafood.

somewhere at a state beach

Now why do I say this? Well it was raining all weekend and so we decided to just walk around in the rain and discover different foods.

friday dinner:

• some pizza and some shrimps in thai sauce, rather bad...

saturday breakfast/lunch

• Strammer Max, was nice for a change, but Robin was not to happy
• German (Bavarian) Style Apple Pan Cake, very delicious, but a touch to big

saturday dinner

• clam chowder
• oysters Rockefeller
• steamed clams in white wine sauce
• maine lobster with shrimps, prawns and scallops
• key lime pie (from now on referred to as a cheesecake...)
• a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, Sonoma
• couple of drinks

sunday breakfast

• 3 different kinds of crepes (apple/apple sauce/spinach)
• paper cup vanilla lattes

sunday lunch

• mozzarella sticks and sirloins dip sandwiches

sunday dinner

• chicken soup, cause I caught a cold somehow. Maybe it was all the rain or me being underway on the motorcycle in the rain. Well I'm out of commission right now.

she's chasing seal's, I'm chasing her

iPad, wePad, youPad

taken from here

well nomenclature was never really my thing and so I just gonna stick with iPad and iPod.

So yes I just managed to order an iPad and got it delivered yesterday and so far I rather like it and it's amazingly thin. I also ordered several iPod touches (8GB) and spend all my skymiles on it.

Why? Cause they have a good resale value on ebay and my skymyles where about to expire and I still had not enough miles to fly for free anywhere.

I mean really, I can only redeem 20k miles for 100$, this means I need 200k miles for a free flight to germany. But at the same time I can redeem 30k miles for a 250$ iPod? I'm not a genius with math, but I have the feeling that this is a far better deal. So it will be

miles -> iPod's -> ebay -> savings account -> flight

Now back to the iPad,

It is real nice, real thin and looks great with the red cover in my new bag. Yes I finally caved in and bought  yet another bag to carry laptop/camera and iPad in. So that I can arrive at work in style and not with 2 bags, helmet and so on.

amazon.com picture

For my defense, my old bag was bought for the 10" Lenovo I used to have and the 13" macbook never fit.

I'm also currently playing with a friends Luminix LX5 compact camera, which I was considering. But like always my 4 year old DSLR is so much faster and takes better pictures. I really don't want to have a camera without a viewfinder. Another 400$ saved, I guess.

And last, but not least. I tried oysters last night and they are rather tasty. Even with there weird texture. But at 3$ for a shell. I thought i can afford and risk to spit it out.

:)

iPad - i'll be rich...

so my current retirement plan is to develop a couple of hyped iPad apps. Now for this you need a couple of things.

The first step was to organize the perfect book for this investment

and now I just need to order an iPad2 on friday. The app writing is obviously the easy part. After all I have the perfect lecture for this!

birthday dinner -

as we all know my birthday was about a week ago, which means this post is way overdo.

So what did we endup doing?

We went to my favorite steakhouse, buckhorn in Winters and had some amazing clams, a great sirloin and some scampi for dinner with Asparagus/Mashed potatoes as a side.

Robin even managed to find a couple of balloons and a candy bar for me and put them on the table. To announce to everyone that it's my birthday. Great job...

Well we did get free ice cream cake with this procedure and happily they didn't sing for me, but took an awfully bad picture of me.

Thank you Robin, for the great evening and the fantastic dinner!

seared ahi tun with mustard dill sauce and blueberry pie - a cold and rainy sunday

this morning Robin and I decided to take a quick trip up to tahoe to teach her how to snowboard. So after we got up at 6.00am on a cold sunday morning we discovered that it's raining none stop outside. So I check the road reports and they said, chains/4WD required. Mhm risky, but let's head out anyway.

60miles later we encountered such heavy rains that I decided it's pointless to continue with this trip and we won't make it up in time to attend the snowboarding lessons for her. Afterall if there are chain required the trip takes about 3h instead of 90minutes on average. So we just had a quick and easy breakfast and headed back to Davis afterwards.

So what can we do with the rest of this day?

Well how about testing my new knife with a new dish. Thanks for the knife mum and dad :)

seared ahi tuna with rice and dill/mustard sauce

recipe

• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup spicy brown mustard
• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons freshly chopped dill
• 3 tablespoons freshly minced red onion

directions

1. Combine the lemon juice with 1/2 cup olive oil in a sealable plastic bag; seal and shake. Add the tuna steaks and store in refrigerator to marinate for 30 minutes
2. Whisk the brown mustard, mustard powder, sugar, vinegar, and 1/3 cup olive oil together in a bowl and  stir in the dill and onions.
3. put an iron cast skillet onto the stuff and heat it on high till water dropped in sizzles
4. coat the pan in a slight layer of oil
5. cover the tuna with freshly ground pepper
6. sear the tuna on each site for about a minute for rare

For desert I recommend a slice of blueberry pie, with whipped cream.

blueberry pie with whipped cream

off roading - the looks of it...

yay for windshield wipers :)

Basically not much to say right now and life is good, now I just need to replace the brakes :)