Travis Pettijohn: Blog

Quotes from Kitchen Confidential:

"Saving for well-done" is a time-honored tradition dating back to cuisine's earliest days. ... What happens when the chef finds a tough, slightly skanky end-cut of sirloin that's been pushed repeatedly to the back of the pile? He can throw it out, but that's a total loss. He can feed it to the family, which is the same as throwing it out. Or he can "save for well-done"—serve it to some rube who prefers his meat or fish incinerated into a flavorless, leathery hunk of carbon, who won't be able to tell if what he's eating is food or flotsam. Ordinarily, a proud chef would hate this customer, hold him in contempt for destroying his fine food. But not in this case. The dumb bastard is paying for the privilege of eating his garbage! What's not to like?

Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food.

I'm on vacation in Manhattan right now. If you want to follow my trip, you should read my reviews on Yelp (in order as they tell a story, starting with Chelsea Hostel). I'm eating and drinking my way through Manhattan. Yesterday I met a group of Brazilians on the subway and hung out with them. The highlight of the night was the couple having sex in Carne Vale in front of everyone. He was seated in a booth, she was riding him, and it was pretty obvious they were having intercourse. Eventually they ran off to the bathroom to finish up...I imagine they couldn't finish the way they were because they were constrained by having to be "discreet." Anyway...it was like the carnage at a car accident that you know you shouldn't look at, but you just have to.

On Sunday morning, I ran the Shamrock Shuffle, an 8k (5 mile) race through the streets of Chicago. It was the first "competitive" run I've done since track in high school, and I only ran freshman and sophomore years. My finishing time was 47:28, which I'm happy with, as I was targeting ten-minute miles. The girl who won, Tera Moody, I ran with in high school. Small world. I kind of wish I had stuck around for the awards so I could have said hi.

After the race, I went home and showered. It was so nice out, I decided I had to get out and about. Made a few phone calls, ended up meeting a friend at Rock Bottom for some beers and a burger. While I was waiting for him to arrive, I ran into some guys I knew from college on the rooftop beer garden.

After eating, we took a walk North on Michigan Avenue, then ended up hanging out at Oak Street Beach to read and people watch. Then I decided to walk home, another 3 miles along the lake.

Came home, got a phone call from another friend in my neighborhood and hung out on his friend's deck while the sun set with a few beers.

Came back home, finished up the Vista installation, got a text from a buddy who wanted to meet for a beer. I looked at the clock, thought it would be better to go to bed, so I went and had a pint instead. We went to Galway Arms and I had a few Guinnesses.

Man, what a great Sunday. I probably ran and walked a total of ten miles. And I got a nice afternoon beer buzz. Beautiful. I made up for going to bed so early on Friday and Saturday preparing for waking up early for the race on Sunday. Everything's coming up Millhouse :)

On Saturday, I went to The Chicago Diner at 3411 N Halsted with some friends for dinner. It's a vegan/vegetarian place and it was really good! We were all in awe at the choices. Chris and Katie are both veggies; Dan (Katie's brother) and I still eat meat, though less now that we used to. It was hard to decide! For appetizers we had mushroom and spinach quesadillas and some nachos with fake-meat chorizo. For the entree, I settled on a red pepper ravioli that was quite delicious. Others ordered seitan burgers and a pulled seitan BBQ sandwich. It was all really good, and I'll definitely be back!

After the delicious meal, Chris and I went to Kingston Mines, a blues club that's been around since 1968. Quality music, I'll tell you. Watching those guitarists play so effortlessly made me so, so jealous. The place is clean and orderly, not super expensive and they have an air filtration system that works wonders. It was a good weekend :)

I had a pretty fun weekend. Friday I went to a happy hour, drank beer and watched the Sox game. I'm not a huge Sox fan, but I'm happy to see a Chicago team in the running. Being that I live on the North Side, this is Cubs territory. There's not a ton of excitement, given the significance of the situation (I live across the street from a few bars, so I have a good indicator outside my windows). I can't help but wonder how nuts this place would be if it were the Cubs. I guess I should ask someone who lived here last year.

After sleeping in on Saturday, I took a walk down to the Old Town School of Folk Music and picked up some fresh strings for the guitar. I'd had the last set since I got the guitar in December '04. So I walked back home, changed the strings (broke the high E in the process...damnit...good thing I bought two packs), and decided that I had to do something outdoors since it was so perfect outside.

I took a walk toward the lake, stopped in at a sushi place and had a bargain lunch special. The rolls were good, the fish was so-so, but all in all it was a very tasty late lunch. I then continued on to the lakefront and plopped myself down on the rocks at the shore and read for about an hour. The crashing waves...the sun...the breeze...the peace...it was almost like vacation (almost).

After that, I went to 3 Penny Cinema and watched The Aristocrats. The Aristocrats is a documentary about a sort of inside joke in the comedy industry. The joke is simple: "A family walks into a talent agent's office and says, 'we have a great act for you!' 'Let me see it,' says the talent agent." At this point the comic telling the joke improvises the most filthy, vile, incestuous, scatological act he can imagine. "'Wow,' says the talent agent, 'what do you call that?' 'The Aristocrats.'" (Watch South Park perform the joke for a prototypical example.) The movie is worth seeing, but (as I was previously warned) it suffers from very distracting editing. As for the cinema, it's a small, two screen theater that still only costs $6.50 for a ticket. Plus I live about 1.5 blocks away. Good enough.

Sunday started with me going to my guitar class at Old Town School, as usual. Then I decided to go for a run. I don't think I've run for much beyond two miles since track in high school, but today I decided to push it. (In fact, in March 2004, 2 miles was an accomplishment.) I ran almost four miles and felt great. I don't know what got into me. Maybe it's my soggy belly, or maybe it was seeing all those fit, trim people with their LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon t-shirts walking around town recently, or maybe the trouble I've been having falling asleep the last few weeks. Whatever it was, I ran about twice as far as I have in probably five years. My route: up to Fullerton, over to the lake, south along the lake to North, stop to stretch, cross over Lake Shore Drive, run back up to Fullerton, back to home. It felt great! Maybe I can make longer runs more regular.

I did some laundry after that, and have been watching some baseball this evening while diddling around on the computer. I'm experimenting with running Virtual Server 2005 on my Media Center, with Server 2003 running in a virtual instance. I want Server 2003 somewhere (mainly for IIS6 and multiple concurrent remote desktop connections), but I don't want extra hardware. My Media Center Box has plenty of oomph (though it needs a pinch more RAM). I'm frustrated by XP's limitation of only one interactive user at any given time. Two people can be logged in at any given time, but only one can be interactive. In other words, I can't remote desktop into my Media Center box and do work while at the same time playing music with the account logged into the console (hooked up to the TV). Another frustration I'm having is that I don't have a "home" computer anywhere. Every time I get a new laptop issued by work, I transfer my primary operations there, since I already have too many computers. But I'm thinking I can set up a "home base" in this virtual instance. Remote desktop in and I'm home. It won't work for things that need to be on hardware (DirectX, for example), but being able to leave MSN Messenger or AIM signed in somewhere (given that I can't sign in at work) might be cool. More to come.

On Friday, I got my hair cut at a salon around the corner, maybe 200 feet away from my door. The timing was perfect. I stopped in on the way home from work to schedule an appointment and she said she could fit me in right then.

After the haircut, I dropped off my dry cleaning at the place right next to the salon. Another short walk.

Saturday was spent moving and playing with my Media Center and home theater. It's looking and working pretty sweet. My entire music library, time-shifted HDTV, divx movies...all driven by a remote control.

I walked to 2200 N Clark to Indian Grill (it has the same owner as Bombay in Champaign) and had some delicious saag paneer for dinner. They wouldn't let me substitute naan for rice, which caught me off guard. I really thought she was making a joke when she said no.

Saturday night when I decided that I needed a snack, I went to the Chipotle downstairs and got some chips and guacamole.

Today when I woke up, I walked out of my building, crossed the street kiddy-corner, went to the Starbucks right there and had myself a coffee.

For lunch, I walked halfway down the block and had a sandwich from Potbelly's on Lincoln. I love those peppers!

Early in the afternoon, I walked a half mile to the Dominick's on Sheffield and Fullerton. It's a cool store—it has two stories. Produce and deli stuff on the ground floor; cans, boxes and refrigerated items on the second floor. Elevators included. I got three bags worth of groceries and walked back home.

For dinner, I took a random walk, heading south down Lincoln, then looping back up Clark via Armitage. I found a gyro place and had way too many calories for dinner.

After eating, I decided to keep walking. I headed two blocks eastward to Lincoln Park Zoo. I think I may have been there when I was a kid, but I don't remember specifically. Anyway, it's really just a park, an extension of the sidewalk. There's no entrance, no gates, no turnstiles. The sidewalks on the street lead to the sidewalks in the zoo. So I took a walk through the zoo. It was a nice walk, though the little girl standing on a bench and screaming, "GIRAFFE! HEY, GIRAFFE!" was a temporary distraction.

On the way back home, I stopped on one of the other corners of the intersection I live on and grabbed a copy of The Onion. I took that to a pub and had a pint of Sierra Nevada.

This evening I registered for a Guitar 1 course at Old Town School of Music this fall. It should be fun!

City living sure is convenient and full of opportunity!