You Don't See This Everyday

No wonder Target is my favorite store.

Drexel Takes Ugly Parking Garage and Makes It Uglier

Drexel University is known for the ugliness of their buildings. Recently they added a few more floors onto an existing parking garage. (This parking garage is part of the Tale of the Two Parking Garages but that's another story). I didn't think it was possible, but they made it even uglier.

The upper floors are clad in metal, remembling an overgrown afterthought air conditioning unit. It's awesome how it doesn't even attempt to coordiante with the existing part of the building.

Way to go Drexel! That's a great example of never settling for ugly enough when you can make it uglier.

Something for Everyone

Voodoo Dolls & Childrens Books... something for everyone.

French Quarter, New Orleans, LA.

100 Yard Dash

March 20th was a great day. My wonderful wife saw that Raphael Saadiq was appearing at World Cafe Live Free at Noon and signed me up for it. We didn't have an event scheduled at the Grey Lodge that night, so I didn't have a set time to be in, so I was able to make a nice 1/2 day of it.

At 10:30am, I got in my car and got on I-95 at Princeton Ave. Got off at Aramingo to go to the Port Richmond Target. They had what I wanted. In/out wham/bam, all was good. Got back on 95 at Allegheny. Got off at Girard. Parked near the Girard El Station. Took the El to 30th Street. Walked to World Cafe Live, arriving at 11:42.

Jeez Louise, Saadiq and his band kicked ass! It's very easy to blow off a free at noon show. It's in the middle of the day, it's on the other side of town and a pretty involved trip that time of day with traffic and parking and/or SEPTA, and it's not like I would be out of pocket. Man was I glad I'm not the sit around type. Because as I said, the band really cooked. They were really polished and everyone was all-star caliber. The songs had different on-the-road arrangements. It was a very diverse and fun wall to wall crowd, and we were all grooving out together in the middle of the day. It was so worth going to.

After the show, I walked over the river from West Philly to Center City. My first stop was DiBrunos where I picked up some cheese to take home, using up the gift card my sister-in-law gave me for Xmas and then some. After that I headed to Joe's Pizza on 16th for lunch. I was regular there during my cubicle days. The eggplant pizza was as good as ever. Got back on the El at 15th. I had considered heading down to Spring Garden Market when I got back to my car, but decided to head straight home for a nap instead. I was in bed by 2:30. Four full and fun by not furiously paced hours in the big city. What a great 1/2 day!

Time: 4 hours
Modes of transportation used: (3) Car, subway, foot.
I-95 Interchanges used: (4)* Princeton/Cottman Ave, Aramingo, Alleghany, Girard.
SEPTA Stations used: (3) Girard, 30th, 15th.

* If I had gone to Spring Garden Market, it would have been 5.

Another Item To Check Off the Bucket List

Back in late 1990s, I noticed a Asahi lucky cat downtown in the window of a Japanese restaurant on Samson Street. I had already started my lucky cat obsession by that point. I owned a few and had named my Web hosting operation Lucky Cat Systems.

So how does this fit into The Third Quarter blog, which is supposed to be about being middle aged? Good question. Hopefully here is a good answer.

Back in the late 1990s, I was in my early 30s, still young. The Grey Lodge was starting to get noticed in our niche, but that really didn't impress anyone outside of the smallish but growing Philadelphia craft beer community. Craft beer was still a niche ignored by the major wholesalers, whom represented Anheuser Busch, Coors, or Miller. The Grey Lodge was just another little account and nobody really cared much about making us happy.

I knew the Asashi lucky cat existed. It was a lucky cat holding a beer! I really, really wanted one, but I had no pull with the big wholesaler who distributed Asahi and probably never would. It was out of reach for a goofy nobody like me.

Asahi lucky cats didn't seem to ever appear on eBay, so I couldn't even buy one. Out of reach for a goofy nobody like me.

The 2nd picture shows the side of the box. "KEEP DRY". Good advice, cats hate getting wet.

Fast forward 10 or 11 years later to January 2009. The Grey Lodge's lucky cat, Wissinoming Winnie, has been a feature of our annual Ground Hog Day celebration for 7 years. The Philadelphia craft beer scene has grown exponentally. Through a series of consolidations, most of the local craft breweries are now with the big distributors. I somehow have become a minor figure in the local craft beer scene and The Grey Lodge is identified as a key account. (Now you'd think key accounts would be given nifty keys to wear around our necks. You'd be wrong. Yeah I was too. Hey I got the cat; I can live without the key).

Anyway back in January, I realized I now actually knew people at the Asahi distributor, who now also sold a bunch of the local micros, and they actually wanted to make me happy (being a key account and all), especially if it didn't cost anything. (It should be noted they definitely succeeded in making me happy).

I Google image searched "Asahi lucky cat" and emailed the image to my contact, asking if maybe they had one lying around. They didn't even recall having ever seen such a thing, but said they would look around. A week later they found one. I suspect it took a lot of digging It was probably under years of beer swag. Anywho it arrived this week and I noticed it waiting for me in the closet last night. Within reach for a goofy sort of somebody like me.

As I get older I get less and less attached to possessions. However I am actually very happy to finally obtained this. Opening the box last night was like being a kid on Xmas day.

The moral for this blog is that sometimes getting older means sometimes getting to a place where you can make 11 year old fancies come to fruition. If you are lucky, you will still want what you can now obtain. I'm a lucky cat.

No Recipe: Italian Turkey Sausage and Eggplant

With middle age comes the necessity to eat healthier. Which to be honest, blows. Not kacking too early doesn't blow (probably), so it sort of balances out (hopefully). I'm not trained in cooking, nor have I read too many cookbooks. But with age I have somehow gained the ability to throw stuff together out of the frig and pantry and make it come out quite tasty most of the time. Skill or dumb luck, I'm not sure which.

I had a package of Italian turkey sausage in the frig that I bought last week and needed to use or toss. I also had an eggplant I bought yesterday and a bag of red peppers from last week. Turkey is very low calorie. You probably already know that eggplant is a vegetable, not an egg, and I'm supposed to eat more of those, vegetables not eggs. The strangely named eggplant neither looks nor tastes like an egg. As vegetables go, eggplant can be pretty tasty. But that is usually after it has been salted up and fried in oil, which is at cross purposes of eating healthier.

I sliced the smallish eggplant into long thin strips. This was the most time laborious part of the meal preparation. It yielded quite a bit so I left the peppers in the frig. If it hadn't, I would have sliced the peppers into thin strips as well.

My intention was to try to treat the eggplant as though it was pasta. I'm not a big fan of pasta, mostly usually finding it rather boring. Not working in the fields, I don't require the calories of pasta. During one of my cubical enlistments, the company cafeteria had a weekly pasta bar where a guy in a paper chef fat would whip up pasta for you using a pan over a portable propane burner. Rather than boil dried pasta, he would saute up fresh pasta using a little oil.

I heated up a large handled wok-like pan, tossed in the eggplant, drizzling it with a little olive oil. After stir frying that for a little bit, I tossed in the sausage and sprayed the mess with some Pam (for some added oiliness with no calories). I stirred and fried until the eggplant was really soft and the sausages were both cooked through and browned. Time unknown. How ever long that took, it took. Somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes I expect. To my relief the eggplant really did look like wet string, just like cooked pasta.

If I had used the peppers too, I would have cooked them for a bit before adding the eggplant. My uneducated suspicion being that the peppers would take longer to soften.

I had two jars of tomato sauce in the pantry to pick from. I went with Classico Four Cheese. I turned down the heat and dumped the whole jar over the sausage and eggplant. Hey Zeus, the scent of the tomato sauce and the cheese was incredibly appetizing. Maybe eating healthy doesn't have to suck too much. I let that simmer for about a minute or two until the sauce was warmed up, stirring most of the time. I didn't add separately any salt or cheese.

Lunch was two smallish sausages with a little greater volume of eggplant. The combination of sausage, eggplant, and sauce was really tasty. The eggplant made a great medium for the surprisingly tasty jarred sauce. This meal was quick and I believe low calorie and pretty healthy. There is at least enough left for 2 to 4 more servings. Leftovers should microwave nicely and take almost no time to prepare.

I'm sure a nutritionist would recommend having a salad with it as well, but I didn't have any salad stuff in the frig. I do buy salad stuff often but it usually goes before it gets finished.

Comcast is Tired?

Gotta love cameras on cell phones. This is from Comcast's Northeast Philly Service Center. Taken today.

I like how the tire is placed exactly in the middle of the sign. Very balanced. I don't really understand what the message is, but here's my guess. Maybe it means Comcast is tired. I hear being an evil empire can take a lot of you.

To my surprise, I left Comcast satisfied with the outcome of my visit.

It's not as good a pole dancing bear, but I don't create these scenes. I merely cameraphone them.