Let's try something non-depressing

Highlights of the past week, aka "vacation":

I re-read King Solomon's Ring, by naturalist-ethologist Konrad Lorenz, a book from my childhood. It still rocks, as he talks about the joys of aquaria, and deadly insect larva predators, and the pet-qualities of various animals (though he rates the Golden Hamster more highly than the domesticated rat), and a long chapter on his jackdaw colony, and his final chapter on how "peaceful" doves in a cage will peck each other to death while "savage" wolves have ways to avoid killing each other. The whole book has his cute little illustrations in the margins, ending with a dove with a sword and a wolf with an olive branch. The book has been sent as a belated gift to my niece, who was into birds and nature until she got a boyfriend.

Hung out with Andrew, watching Firefly and chatting about physics and SF and such.

I delved into the web, searching for actual references on whether hunter-gatherers got more of their calories from plants or animals, or from gathering or from hunting (not necessarily the same question.) Conclusion: uncertain. The consensus in the air is plants/gathering, but actual studies I can find go the other way.

I got sucked into entries on abortion and atheism on the blog of Pharyngula's daughter, including reading Nicholas Humphrey on religion indoctrination. I might have linked to that, plus the whole Ebon Musings cache. News of the laptop-for-kids, the XO, had me reading old articles on Lifestreams, a time-oriented computer UI, and then ideas for a text-adventure like command shell.

Lost a couple of blitz Go games on time, one of which I was set to win. I made up for that last night, though.

Read most of Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade at Dandrew's. My bias against White Wolf cracks a bit; the whole Mage concept is kind of cool. I'm still a Technocrat at heart, though. The *Traditions* propaganda makes me take the other side...

Contra-dancing was pretty cool. Male-favorable ratio and lots of people I wanted to dance with. Read review of Gay Life and Culture.

Then there's work stuff, which isn't interesting, and social running into people stuff, which I don't talk about, and my starting the Berlitz Japanese tapes from the library though being too tired to get far. And reading the Aeneid, though not very quickly since I've been out or in front of my computer much of the time. It was fun having a girl at contra flounce over, ask "Have they reached Carthage yet?" and flounce back. I interpret this as "showing off that she's read the Aeneid" (besides expressing interest in whatever I was reading, which happened before.)

Today's Order of the Stick

Yes! Villain-slapping satisfaction! Or as one commenter put it, "Insult Nale, and whoever responds IS Nale. Elegantly simple."

Now if only Girl Genius would deliver, in a non-accidental form.

Puccini's La Dolce Vita

An Italian restaurant here in town, part of Ethnic Restaurant Ground Zero, which I'd never gone to because I hardly ever go to Italian and French restaurants[1] or European ones in general[2]. But a girl I've met dancing works there, and encouraged me last night to go. "I'll serve you!" "It's expensive!" "Nah, you get a lot of food." So tonight I went -- before she got there to start working, herself, oops, though she chatted with me later anyway. But it was good. After staring at $18-21 entrees I discovered $12 pasta, which normally is part of [1] but due to recency effects looked good, and ordered penne bolognese. This was a dare on my part, because my family makes a heavenly tomato meat sauce, thick and rich and meaty and spicy, and almost all other red sauces seem thin, sweet, and bland by comparison.

First free bread came, fresh and hot which should be good, but I think they use less salt than I would because it tasted bland even with salted olive oil or modest amounts of butter, though being drenched in melting butter redeemed it. Not as bland as the "I can't believe it's not matzoh" one gets without any salt, but close. The lass said the cooks are Mexican and something, and may go overboard in countering their instincts. Though, no salt?

But the bolognese itself was good, thick and rich and meaty. Probably had no cayenne in it but I'll accept heat as a quirk of my family. I ended up eating it all, despite the "food for two" warning last night, on the grounds that I'd not eaten that much earlier, but when I left I realized how distended I felt, though the bread I did eat probably contributed. $15 including tax and tip, for what could have been two meals, or dinner for two. Not bad!

[1] "Why not?" asked the lass. "Because they tend to be pretty expensive, particularly so for pasta."
[2] "I grew up with 'eating out' meaning ethnic food. And I don't like to eat out for things I can make myself." Not that I could really make many European dishes to order; it's a psychological thing. But I can make pasta with various sauces...