Last night, I went to a restaurant I've been meaning to go to for quite some time -- Kingfisher Grill. I meant to go last year, during the Road Trip extravaganza, but never did. I completely forgot about it when I returned, until it was mentioned on LJ as being a place that's open late at night.

For my west-side livin' self, Kingfisher's quite the haul away - almost 8 miles away. (In the scheme of things in good local restaurants in Tucson, it's fairly centrally located at the Tucson and Grant intersection.)

An unpleasant surprise for me, as I had been told it was a casual place - think more nice jeans and polo rather than slacks and a button down, basically, the kind of clothes we wear at work - is that it's much more dressy. Or at least, last night's crowd was. It's bad enough eating as one, but being underdressed to boot? Oy.

Suffice it to say, I did NOT get the best of service, aside from the water/coffee girl. (She got a cash tip separately because she rocked hard core -- it's a fine line between coming too often and not often enough, especially when you're interrupting someone who is either contemplatively eating, or reading a novel. She managed to toe it perfectly and hit me JUST as my glasses were getting almost empty, but not so empty it was an issue.)

In all fairness, the manager recognized the crap service without me having to say anything -- he saw me reading with the menu down and came over and asked if my order'd been taken, and took it and said my wine and dessert (should I opt for one) would be free, which was a nice touch. My waitress was a little bit more attentive after that ... but not much that I forgive the long delay. As I said: the water girl got it right, service-wise. (Had I not been alone, it would have been ... better.)

Atmosphere, service aside, was pretty relaxed. Soft music playing, muted (but not neutral) colors on the wall, interesting art. Nobody was rushing. Like most restaurants, they brought out some bread - a rosemary bread, with a compound butter. The butter was too hard for a good spread, so I ate my bread without it, and it was tasty.

The wine list was fairly good for by-the-glass. I ended up with a Gewürztraminer (Ash Hallow, which is out of Columbia Valley), because I wasn't feeling the reds, and Fumé Blanc and Chardonnay just didn't seem right. It was a mellow white - something I'd recommend to someone who doesn't normally drink wine. It paired acceptably well with my entree - got a little spicier and a little crisper, but it wasn't out of whack or anything. (It's something I can see myself drinking regularly - it wasn't too dry or too sweet.)

My entree was one of the road trip specials. This week's road trip is California/Hawaii. I had the coconut crusted mahi mahi, which came with a slightly spicy mango barbecue sauce, an ogonari salad, some purple potato hash, and plantain home fries. (That's right - two starches!) I think if I was plating it, I would have found another vegetable than the plantains, because it was too starchy - maybe go with some more greens. In any case, it was all very delicious. The salad was plated on top of the fish, so when I ate the fish, I had some seaweed, some fish, and a swish of barbecue sauce, and it was ... divine. While the plantains may be somewhat traditional, they were boring and bland on their own, but acceptable with the fish. The purple potato hash? Was awesome. Yum!

For dessert, I had the triple lemon gateau - a lemon cake, brushed with a limoncello-based syrup, filled with lemon curd, and frosted with a white chocolate buttercream. There was a berry swish on the plate, and mine came with a berry compote to the side, though that was not on the menu. (No complaints here - I LOVE berries with lemon curd and the cake was no exception!) I also had a giant mug of the house coffee, which was flavored with Bailey's, and came with a cookie. Yum!

Price wise - if I had paid for all of it, it would have been just under $50 before the tip, which isn't terribly bad for a meal with wine and dessert and coffee at this sort of restaurant. With tip, I think it hit right around $50, but - yum! I'm definitely going to go back next year before I leave for the summer, even with the so-so service. Everyone needs the occasional treat.

Monsoon is an interesting little season here in Tucson. It's not a proper season, like summer -- it's only about six to eight weeks long, so it's considered a "mini-season" by climatologists (or at least wikipedia).

At the beginning of monsoon, it's so arid that there will be "rainless" thunderstorms. From the ground, it looks like it's just a lightning storm, but from air, a proper thunderstorm -- the rain drops evaporate before hitting the ground. This, of course, is not a problem this time of year as the monsoon is usually in its third or fourth week, and it's humid enough that the rivers are flowing above ground once more. Lucky me, both this year and last year, I left before the start of monsoon to go travelling, and returned to a turbulent rainless thunderstorm. (I hardly ever get airsick, but monsoon storms are so much worse than normal rain storms with the turbulence that I very nearly lost my lunch both times.)

I somewhat dislike the smell of the rain here. It smells dirty -- but not the clean, fresh dirty of the midwest (or, for that matter, every place else I've lived), where it usually smells like freshly turned dirt and a bit green. It's a dustier scent, almost chokingly so. (For that matter: the tap water also tastes like dust! So I tend to use my water filter way more often than back home, where the water is delicious and non-dusty.) It was great to be outside in the rain in Boston, even though I had no umbrella, because it smelled so nice and clean.

Another interesting monsoon thing is that the clouds have a tendency to just sit in one place and build and build and darken right before a storm -- not at all like the midwest, where you can see them moving around before the rains. (Incidentally, I haven't experienced many cloudy days here.) It's actually kind of cool how quickly and greatly the clouds will grow and darken, as you can see in this four minute video - and not much rain in it!

Yesterday, we had one righteous storm - power was out in parts of the city, there was hail, and it rained so hard that some places had water flowing uphill. That's right, uphill.



Anyway, when I went hiking again this morning (waking up at dark o'thirty so I could be parking my car at 6am, when the trail opened), there was still some standing water on the roads where they dipped a bit, on both of the access roads I have for leaving my apartment complex. The trail was pretty moist too -- not enough to be really muddy, but enough that it was a little squishy in places. The clouds were amazing (the photo up by where I was talking about them was from my morning hike, as is this one, though the first one shows the clouds better; this one is right around the time I was leaving, and it started sprinkling again not too long after I returned to my car), and it was nice and cool. I was surprised by the number of people that were out and about, given that it was 6am that I was hiking. Then again: 6am is probably the best time TO hike out here in the summer - it'll be fairly cool (low-to-mid 70s), unlike the afternoon (where it may be in the upper 90s to low 100s).

This past week was quite interesting -- I participated in the NA-MIC summer projects workshop at MIT. I know I didn't get a third as much out of it as I would have if I had been more familiar with our code and how it utilizes their tools (entirely my fault for focusing on the NIREP website goals - which looks like they may have had a large shift if we move our data to a local XNAT server).

I am going to talk with people about the possibility of delaying the interpretive/comparative web interface until we've got a decision on the data storage, as XNAT would give a mechanism for uploading/downloading the data (and associating names with access) and then, I would just need to write something to ping the XNAT server to access the data and compare the results. Since the XNAT API has built in methods of push/pull data from the server, our executable code can be adapted to push the results to our XNAT server, and the web code can be adapted to pull it - which is simpler than me having to write both mechanisms and then wrap it into typo3. Worst case scenarios with XNAT, I think, are that I may need direct access to the database instead of using the more graceful API, or I'll need to write a PHP wrapper for the API.

Anyway, the most mind-blowing part about the week (aside from the after workshop bonding with some of my coworkers) were the revelations on CMake and its close friends, CPack, CTest, and CDash. I think they've changed my life forever. I'm going to talk to my section head at RMS about them, because I think they fit into things we are trying to do and things we should be doing. In any case, I may start to molest the CDash code, as I think there are many changes that need to be made to it (mostly for security, some for sanity). It's highly regulated, so the best I can do is make changes on a test install, and submit them to the repository since our main is synchronized via SVN to their nightly build. That said: I was pleased that my first fix to the code (fixing how they generate CTestConfig when the project name involves special characters such as spaces) made it into the nightly build already.

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As far as this website goes, I'm undecided what I shall do with it. I am integrating into it my foodie blog, because its blogging software died when I moved here, and once I do that, I think I may do start using the front page as a proper blog, instead of a vague State Of The Site thing.

The first place I ate dinner at in Vegas was Bouchon. And I've got to say, while the food ranged from ok to very good (the soup was one of the best things I have ever eaten), there were many things I didn't like.

First of all, the menu? Nothing is accurate. They don't erase the specials as they're no longer, so I got super excited about the slow roasted lamb shanks only to be shot down. They also don't update regular menu changes. For instance, my friend Val ordered what was supposed to be a watercress and endive salad with Roquefort, apples, walnuts, and a walnut vinaigrette, and it came with pears.

I've just returned from a few days in Vegas, and oh my: the food there is superb. Expensive, but quite tasty.

The first place we ate at was the Mesa Grill, which is in Caesar's Palace.

First off, let me say that I am still less than happy about the whole reservations thing there. We had reservations for 10 for 12:30 and arrived about 15 minutes early ... but weren't seated until 15 minutes past our reservations. I'm also less than happy about their drink prices (iced tea was $5; actual cocktails were more like $15), and the fact that they didn't offer ice water when we seated (just bottled water - sparkling or flat).

The food was quite good, though I'm not sure how much of that was because it was actually delicious and how much was due to the fact that it was 1:00pm Pacific and I'd been up since 4:00am Central and all I'd had to eat was a power bar and something on the plane.

It's been awhile again, hasn't it?

Well, today for lunch, my brother, sister, and I went to Bo Loong down in Cleveland's "chinatown" area (which is more like the area in San Diego than in Chicago) for dim sum. It's not the best dim sum I've ever had, but it's also not the worst.

They have the pushed steam carts. Somehow, every time one came, five came. It's ok, we filled our table, several times. 15 dishes, and my brother claims he could have eaten a few more.

The only thing I didn't like is that they didn't have the sauces on the table that I'm used to - my Chicago dim sum places have chili garlic sauce and hoisin sauce and something that's kind of like duck sauce but not really and soy sauce and two other sauces that I'm not entirely sure what they are (but they taste good). They happily brought some chili sauce.

If memory serves, we had chicken sui mai, pork sui mai, char sui bao, shark fin dumplings, shrimp in noodles with sweet soy sauce, pot stickers, shrimp dumplings, pork ribs, and sesame balls. But I could be leaving stuff out coz yo, 15 dishes is alot! The prices weren't bad, it was only $40 for it all. My Chicago dim sum source, that many would be more like $50-55.

This past week has been hellaciously busy with work. I got a last-minute, high-priority (but, theoretically, short-term) project that needed all of my attention. So, by the time I come home, I just want to sleep. And often, I did, waking up around midnight long enough to say "hungry. no food. no open grocer. where to eat?" and running out to some crappy choice like Denny's or IHOP or Steak n Shake.

Well, Thursday, I had the brilliant idea to order from one of the local delivery services. So I ordered up some Indian (lamb curry, chicken naan, samosas) from Jaipur Junction via Deliver Me Food before leaving work, and take a short nap after getting home.

It was pretty good, though all I ate Thursday was half the naan and all of the samosas before getting full and going back to sleep. The rest, I brought to work Friday for lunch. I actually STILL had leftovers - enough for lunch on Monday! What an awesome deal! I actually may go visit JJ at some point in time, because the food was quite nice.

I'll probably order up again, but man, with the $22 minimum order (well, $15 minimum order, plus $4 delivery fee, plus $2 minimum gratiuty), I think I've got to be pretty hard up before I'll use the service again.