Mad props to those of you whom have wished me a happy birthday out there in blog land and such, I appreciate it. It does not go unnoticed. Rock on. To those of you who have sent me money, rock on, continue doing so. I like money. I am still tired.
So back to Wilkes-Barre. I mean, I'm not going back to Wilkes-Barre, and since I don't know anyone who lives in Wilkes-Bare, I doubt that you are either. I mean, maybe you are going back there next year for the 2k5 Kings Tournament or something, but thats like a fucking year away and obviously not what I am referring to. I am referring to returning to that story for the purpose of completing it. Really there is little more to the story except for the fact that we judged a bunch of debates, watched a kick-ass extended version of The Apprentice's board room, ate some Ben and Jerry's and left from Wilkes-Barre far later than we would have liked. One of Katie's teams got to semis in novice, which is hella sweet for the first tourney of the year, but I will spare you other debate talk. At some point during this season I am sure you will be far far from spared, but I pity you now. Maybe there are details I am forgetting, but since I am forgetting them, I cannot tell you. Fuck you.
We have pretty much spent all week either working (me on school, Katie on the UB Debate Tournament prep) or watching TV, so there is not alot else 2 report. We did, on my birthday, do at least 2 notable things. In the first place we went to the mall, which was obviously not my personal choice for bday activity, but was a to the g nonetheless. We had to go there for at least two reasons, in the first place, Katie needed some pants, and in the second we had coupons from Godiva that expired that day. The coupons, you may be curious to know, entitled both Katie and I to 2 free truffles from Godiva's new truffle line. We got the good parts of both ends of this deal, because when Godiva discontinued their old tuffle line, we happened to stop in and buy some of the truffles that were 50 percent off, thats almost half. Since we are loyal Godiva customers, we got these coupons at the same time. We haven't tried all the truffles we got yet, but I wholeheartedly approve of everything I saw there. We didn't get the cocunut creme one, but believe me I will be back for it.
The second important thing we did on Thursday was head out for dinner. I kind of hate choosing where to go, even on my birthday, because for the most part I am still unsure about whether Katie will like it. Regardless, I wanted either steak or lobster or steak and lobster. I was not, however, in the mood for the sometimes tolerable, sometimes hideously seafaring atmosphere of a Red Lobster, for instance, nor the extraoridnary expense of a Manny's-like ( I mean, Buffalo doesn't have anything that can stand up 2 Manny's, lets not be ridiculous, but you get the idea, really expensive fancier steak joint). As a result we compromised on the Outback Steakhouse, somewhere I thought was perfectly in the middle, which is probably just as tacky, but in a different way. Instead of a surly sea-captain at our table, for instance, there was a stuffed crocodile and a picture of a tasmanian devil. Classy indeed. Regardless, my favorite part about the experience was the ability to eat like a full dinner, ie to order drinks and appetizers as well as our dinner.
Since we were at the outback we had to go with the Bloomin Onion, which was a delicious taste treat as always. I wonder if William Sonoma or some catalogue has a Bloomin Onion cutting tool, because i think it would be chweet to whip up one of those at mi casa. I probably couldn't get it to come out all pretty like with a little dipping cup of some spicy little mustardy sauce which I couldn't quite ID. Anyhizzle, I got to roll the porterhouse, the mother of all steaks. I rarely get to have the porter when I am eating at somewhere like Manny's, since the bigger steaks are so pricey. That said, the porterhouse is essentially the cow's natural combo meal, like it was perfectly engineered for a solid dinner, or even split between a couple, if one is naturally inclined towards the strip steak for some reason. You've got the best deal on the hoof on one side, the strip, a tasty steak whose flavor is even strong enough to occassionally tolerate cooking beyond rare. I mean, you don't want to unless you absolutely can't stand it, but if you like medium rare and want a quality piece of beef, roll strip. On the oppoisite side of that bone, right next door, can you believe it, is the fucking filet. The greatest fucking food in the world is next to an excellent steak, the strip itself is probably one of the top 10 foods as well. The cow is like a fucking magical beast, imagine if there was an animal where, if you cut it in a certain place, would produce a big piece of cotton candy on one side and a fucking caramel apple on the other, seperated by a bone. No one would make racist jokes about the Indian subcontinent if they worshipped the candy-beast would they.
Anyway, the people at Outback, for the most part, managed to cook the steak what rare actually means, though there was about half an inch around the edges that was distinctly medium rare. The inner sections lived up to their potential. Literally, I don't think I have had a steak at all, much less one of any quality, since the wedding. Katie is not a big steak fan and so we don't cook them often and with our summer poverty streak going strong, we weren't headed out to the steakhouse 2 often during my days at Wal-Mart. Katie even said that if and when I get more birthday money from parents and such, I can use it to go out for another steak dinner, so the bday turns into like a twiz fiz oize deal. Rxrz. Katie had some pasta with chicken and shrimp and it was tasty, but certainly no porterhouse, not even a strip on its own or a sirloin for that matter. We got an ice cream cake on our way home, because Katie didn't really have time to bake while also getting ready for the tourney. It was totally chawehat for a birthday meal celebration and my official props go out.
Friday was a mad rush all day all night. I made vegan peanut butter cookies and they were, officially, the best cookies ever made which were entirely lacking in two of their main ingredients, eggs and butter. I mean, I replaced the butter with some soy margarine that Katie picked up at the store and the eggs were pretty much just substituted with water ( you can normally substitute eggs really simply with water and some dairy, to replicate the fat content of the yolk, but because margarine has both fat and water it throws off the ratio, yet another reason being vegan is the gastronomic equivalent of dropping a ten pound weight on your genitals like 5 times a day). The only other time I have even really eaten peanut butter cookies when they are lacking a primary ingredient would be in the flourless peanut butter cookie, which rocks, but is lacking an ingredient that provides alot of structure, but virtually no flavor. Hence the resulting cookie, while crumbly and crystalline in texture, is incredibly delicious. Here however, eggs and butter, two of the four flavor ingredients involved, each one adding a creaminess and fluff to the cookies which complements so delighfully with the dense nuttiness of the pb involved, are missing. I fondly remember a day, before I understood the love involved with the flourless pb cookie when KT, Sanjay, and I, after being denied a booth in the smoking section at Perkins because Sanjay wasn't 18, headed to the Burnsville Denny's. KTsuggested that the flourless peanut butter cookie was potentially to provide for those who were allergic to flour. We all found this suggestion about as funny as humanly possible especially insofar as, for those people allergic to flour, finding a suitable peanut butter cookie was far from their most serious problem.
The tournament, which I now glance at in hindsight, since it is Thursday and I have officially recovered, finally, went pretty well really. We dealt with a considerable group of idiots at Dominos on Saturday who put cheese on all the vegan pizza, delivered it to the wrong place, then had their car break down in the attempt to deliver it to the right place, after which they attempted to blame us (Katie specifically) for their automobile related issues. Even though some of these problems would be understandable, we had done, I think, more than our fair share of work in advance to see that they were avoided, like specifying that the vegan pizzas were NOT to have any cheese on them and telling them where they needed to deliver to, asking them if they knew where that was, and receiving confirmation that, yes, indeed, they did. Besides that and the running over of about an hour and a half on Saturday (which sucks, obviously, but could have been and usually is, much much worse since there were 5 freaking debates that day, we were out of the building the last people besides Tuna on their way home, by 10:00 pm. If you consider that at Kings we didn't leave until after 6 and they had only 3 rounds, I think its legit. Sunday went without many hitches at all, we even got the break of getting much of the cleaning done before awards. As elims progressed we got more of the rooms clean and during the novice quarters round (coinciding with the varsity sems) every room besides the 6 in use was done. In the end Katie judged the varsity finals and I finished the cleaning of all the rooms besides the two in use, got Chinese food, and prayed that Vermont would close out the novice finals. I have, for the record, arguably never cheered so hard for a school I did not debate on or coach. It rocked hard and by 8:00 on the night of the first annual UB tourney, Katie and I were safe and sound back home. So good show I say.
Of course it was only after all this nonsense was completed that I began to get truly sick, or as they say in the biznuts, sick as a chick with a slickdick. There has been some sore-throatosity, some sinus pain, some other various tylenol cold and flu symptomy bullshit, you get the pic. Anyway, that is that. Since we do not have any debate activitiy this weekend I will most likely holla.
Peace,
MB-K
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