Salad Is Slaughter

Dead Like Me started its second season last Sunday and it was pretty good.  I really like this show, but I think they spend too much time on George’s family.  I guess I don’t see what they really have to do with George’s development as an un-dead person.

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Yesterday we got a wine club shipment from the Charles Krug winery.  One of the bottles was a Pinot Noir and we had that one for dinner.  They only charge about $15 or so for wine club members and to be honest, it tasted like a $15 bottle of wine.  It was ordinary at best.  I have much higher hopes for the other bottle.  I think it was a 1999 Merlot and that one should be pretty good.  You can find decent bottles of wine for $15 and under, but this wasn’t one of them. 

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I’ve been getting frustrated trying to find stuff in our pantry so I think we’re going to put some shelves in the bar area and store things like Rice-a-roni, chips, can goods, and so on.  That should make those things easier to find and free up some space so I can find the pots and pans I need. 

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Every once in a while Janet will bring up petfinder.com and take a look at the list of available Groenendaels.  That’s where we got Lisa.  Now I tell Sammi and Jake don’t misbehave, because their mother has a replacement in mind.  I’m a cruel doggy-daddy.  I wouldn’t mind taking in Belgian Sheepdog/Groenendael rescue dogs but we just don’t have the room. 

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While rummaging through the panty I came across a couple of marinades that I had forgotten that we bought at the Concannon winery in Livermore.  I think I’ll pick up a tri tip and marinate it overnight in one of them this weekend. 

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There’s a wine tasting thing in San Jose this weekend.  I think it’s 10 bucks to get in, refundable if you buy something.  I think we’ll go and take a look at what they’ve got from South America.  We’ve been really impressed with Chilean wines we’ve picked up at Costco.  We have one on the shelf from Argentina that we’re looking forward to trying as well. 

I’ve had a dislike/hate relationship with Federal Express for quite a while.  They piss me off when they do things like dropping several thousand dollars worth of playoff hockey tickets at the front door and not bothering to ring the bell to let anyone in the house know that they were there.  My season ticket holder rep heard about that one.

We belong to several wine clubs (see http://franksblog.hofer.us/469 for the current list) and only one of those – Cakebread Cellars – ships via Federal Express.  All of the other clubs ship with UPS.  One exception is the Retzlaff Wine Futures; we go up to Livermore to pick that up because we can sample the wine and create our own case.

We were expecting a delivery from Cakebread on either Tuesday or Wednesday this week.  Normally Janet works from home on the days that we’re expecting a wine delivery but she was going to be up in the People’s Republic of Berkeley to attend a class.  Since I didn’t want our wine to spend more time than necessary in the hot FedEx truck I knew that I would probably have to drive down to the Federal Express office near the airport to pick it up.

I got home about 4:30 yesterday and found the expected note from FedEx on my door.  I took a look at their form and noticed that the driver wanted me to sign the form, he would leave my signature on file, and in the future he would just drop off my package.  If I did what he suggested he would be breaking any number of laws.  The sticker on the box clearly states that an adult must be present for delivery because the package contains alcohol.  That should have been a clue that my evening would be wasted.

The driver also circled the item on the door tag letting me know that I could pick up my package that evening.  The door tag said that I could check the availability for pick up by checking the Federal Express website or by calling the toll free number.  I powered up the PC and went to the FedEx website.  I could check my package delivery status but I couldn’t find anywhere about package availability for customer pick up.  I even used their website search function and didn’t find any information.  The door tag lied.

I called the Federal Express toll free number.  After navigating through voice-option hell I finally reached a live person.  I gave her my door tag number and asked her when I could pick up my package at the FedEx office.  She assured me that my box would be there at 5:30 and I could pick it up then.  I fed the dogs, waited 20 minutes to give Jake his insulin shot, and tossed the dogs back outside.  I started for the FedEx office at about 5:30.

I arrived at the Federal Express office at about 5:50.  I asked for my package and the clerks refused to serve me.  They have a rule that they will not give out packages until 6:15 because they have to get packages destined for the East Coast out the door by then.  This rule is not posted anywhere.  I pointed out that the woman on the phone told me that I could get my stuff at 5:30.  Apparently she lied to me. 

I sat and fumed while people kept coming in and dropping off packages.  Other people who wanted to pick up their stuff got in line behind me.  I pointed out loudly that I never have this problem with UPS, and that UPS is my preferred shipper.

6:20 rolled around and people were still dropping off packages for the East Coast.  I had just wasted 30 minutes waiting for people to get their packages into the office at the last minute.  At this point I didn’t give a flying F about them and their shipment.  I wanted my package, and I wanted my dinner.  I finally got to the window and handed in my door tag.  It was now nearly an hour after the time I allegedly could have picked up my box.  The woman entered my door tag number into the computer, and then called back to the dispatcher to find out if my driver was in yet.  He wasn’t.  My package was not at the office.

I was pissed.  I went over to McDonald’s to grab a burger for dinner.  In hindsight I should have gone over to Costco for a hot dog.  Those two and a sub shop were my only dinner choices in the area and I’m not a fan of subs.  I managed to choke down my burger, getting madder and madder at Federal Express and their complete disregard for customers.  It was pretty obvious to me that they don’t consider the people who pick up packages to be customers, but we are.

I went back to the FedEx office and tried again.  I handed the same woman my door tag and she again brought up my package information.  She asked me if my name was Carlos.  I looked at her with a questioning look on my face and said no.  I eventually found out that the driver had returned to the house after I had left, then went to the next-door neighbor’s house and left my wine with him.  I had wasted over 90 minutes and my wine was only a couple of feet away from where I started.  I was not happy.

The driver lied to me about my package being available for pick up.  He probably thought he was doing the right thing by trying to redeliver my package but he ended up wasting my time because he didn’t do what he said he was going to do.  He also should not have left my package with someone else without my permission.  He didn’t know what kind of relationship we have with our neighbors (their nice people, but we don’t really know them very well) and shouldn’t have left it there.

Our UPS driver is far better.  If we’re not at the house he goes to the local Burger King parking lot at 5:00 and people come to pick up their packages without the hassle of going to the main office.  If he writes a note on the door slip saying that he’s going to be at the parking lot at 5:00, I know that he will be there.

I will never ship with Federal Express, and if I have a choice of shipping options on items sent to me, UPS will get my business every time.

When I was in a cooking class years ago the teacher told us to be very careful if we ever wanted to marinate a piece of chicken in fruit juice.  If you let it sit in the juice for too long the acid in the juice will “cook” the meat.  She recommended that if a recipe calls for a citrus marinade, skip that step because you’ll get better results.

The first time that I tried ceviche was at the Taqueria Cañonita in the Venetian in Las Vegas.  One of Janet’s coworkers had ordered it and let the rest of us try it.  Last week Janet was flipping through one of her magazines and found a recipe for ceviche (also spelled seviche and cebiche) so we decided to try it.

The property of fruit juice “cooking” food is used in ceviche.  The recipe we had called for bay scallops and shrimp.  We used bay scallops and prawns, and then diced the prawns so that they would be the same size as the scallops.  We half-cooked the seafood in boiling water then shocked it with an ice-water bath to stop the cooking process.  You then put the half-cooked seafood into a bowl containing chopped tomatoes, onions, chili peppers (I think these were Serrano peppers), spices, lime juice, and tomato juice that has been sitting and mingling flavors for the past half hour.  The seafood sits and finishes “cooking” over a two-hour period.  The acid in the tomato juice, limejuice and the peppers do the trick, just like we were warned not to do in cooking class.

It takes a long time to make ceviche but it’s something that you can stick in the refrigerator in the afternoon and eat when you’re ready for dinner.  Most of the time I’m not too impressed with recipes from a magazine but this one is a keeper.

FCC chairman Michael Powell is at it again.  He wants to expand indecency standards so that cable stations have to abide by the same rules as broadcast stations.  Powell says, “My child has no idea what a broadcast channel is — no idea what the difference is between channel five and channel 105.” 

There’s a huge difference between a broadcast station and a cable channel.  In Powell’s example channel five is “free,” meaning you don’t have to send a check to anyone in order to see it.  Just turn on your television that’s hooked to an over-the-air antenna and you can see the broadcast.  You “pay” for broadcast channels by watching commercials.

With cable or satellite — channel 105 in Powell’s example — you have to send a check to an entertainment provider who in turn activates your set-top box and allows you to watch what you’ve paid for.  All set-top boxes for both cable and satellite services have parental controls.  If you don’t want your child to watch a particular cable channel you can easily block access to it.

For example, suppose Mr. Powell doesn’t want his child to watch Comedy Central because they’ve shown an episode of South Park where they say the word “shit” 162 times in a half hour period with no bleeps.  Mr. Powell can easily set up parental blocking so that his child cannot tune it in.  Powell himself could watch the channel if he wished by unblocking the channel then re-blocking it when he has viewed his program.  More importantly his actions don’t affect the people like me who want to watch the show with no government interference.

Powell states, “I’m a big believer in the First Amendment.”  I believe that as much as I would believe Yasser Arafat if he said that he had Jewish friends.  It’s the parent’s responsibility to set guidelines on their children’s viewing habits; it’s not the government’s job to be the nation’s mommy.  I don’t want the FCC to baby-sit me; I want to make my own decisions about what I watch.

Michael Powell and the FCC’s continuing assault on free speech must stop.

Last Monday we hiked from one end of Almaden Quicksilver Park to the other, going from the McAbee entrance over to the Hacienda entrance.  For last week’s hike we took the Guadalupe Reservoir trail to the Mine Hill trail, then over Castillero and then down the English Camp trail.  It seemed like most of our hike — about 7 miles – was uphill.

This week we hiked in the opposite direction from the Hacienda entrance back to McAbee, but we took a different route.  This time we went up Mine Hill (a part of the Mine Hill trail that we haven’t been on) then took Randol until it eventually met up with Mine Hill again.

The first mile or two was a killer; it was all uphill.  After that the trail was pretty flat with just an occasional uphill or downhill stretch.  The total distance was longer but overall I think it was an easier hike because last week’s was more of a steady uphill climb while this week we had a chance to recover on the flats.

This week’s hike also had some more interesting areas.  The old mining operations were much more evident than the trail we took last week.  We took the Randol trail down to the Buena Vista area and saw the foundation for the old pump house.  That’s where I walked right into a piece of rebar standing up from the foundation and scraped my shin.  But, since we carry a first aid kit in the backpack it wasn’t really that big a deal. 

There were a lot of deer along the trail this weekend; I don’t think we saw any last week.  There were also some wild turkeys at the Hacienda entrance this week.  We’ve seen them before in the park, and when they fly it’s pretty impressive.

We really need to do our long hikes on Saturdays.  I felt OK yesterday after the hike, but this morning I really didn’t want to get out of bed when the alarm went off.  Next week we may head up to Big Basin and try a 10-mile hike down to the waterfall that we’ve been wanting to try.