|
|
|
all things tempura-colored do
Friday, March 3 2017
Ray (but not Nancy) came over this morning with Jack to join Gretchen in the walking of the dogs. Afterwards we looked at Gretchen's remodeled library and then sat around the dining room table drinking tea (normally I would've made a festive french press of coffee for the occasion, but Ray had said not to bother). Ray, who was in an unusually good mood, was enjoying his cup of Tetley so much (it was just a teabag and hot water and there was no sugar or creamlike component in it at all) that he said he might have to start drinking tea. Meanwhile Jack was either chewing on a bone or playing rambunctiously with Neville and Ramona. All the cats had fled upstairs or outside; Jack is too high energy for them.
[REDACTED]
This evening I cut out of work a little early so Gretchen and I could attend an art opening at Ulster County Community College (also known as SUNY-Ulster). Our friend David (of Susan and David) was part of a four-or-five person show dedicated to the work of children's illustrators. Of course, David isn't just any illustrator of children's books. He is one who doesn't actually care much for children and doesn't have any himself. Just beneath the surface of his work, there's an apocalyptic darkness that expects the world to run out of fossil fuel and a nuclear war to erupt between Pakistan and India. He included a little of darkness in today's show. One illustration featured a faux product called Tobaccahol whose tiny writing included many irreverent turns of phrase and vaguely-scatalogical humor. Another depicted a crazed cat-like figure pushing a portentous button as if starting nuclear war just for the fuck of it. Other illustrators had stayed more within the world of child-friendly illustrators, though there wasn't much point; as far as I could tell, only one child was present at the opening and he wouldn't've gotten David's dark references anyway.
Gretchen and I had shown up late for the opening, and we weren't there long before some SUNY-Ulster employee started flashing the light as a sign that it was time to go. By this point, our contingent had grown to include not just David, Susan, Gretchen, and me, but also Sarah the Vegan, Nancy, and a friend of David's. For dinner, we all headed to Momiji, the Japanese restaurant in Stone Ridge. We don't go there very often, but it's a pretty good restaurant. Today I had an avocado & shitake roll and the big vegetable fried noodles (both of which are good choices) as well as a Sapporo beer. Susan had a bit of a ordering "melt down" (as she described it). She had trouble making up her mind for what she wanted, and then at the last minute changed her order to get what David's friend had just ordered. (I understand indecision about things that one has to live with, such as the vanity in a bathroom, but indecision about what to order off a menu makes no sense at all.) The thing Susan ended up with included a number of large cubes of tofu that had been covered in tempura and deep-fried. They looked delicious (as all things tempura-colored do), and Susan insisted I have one. But the damn thing was so insanely hot (in the vibrating atoms sense) that I had to spit it out. I tried another bite a little while later and the same thing happened; it hadn't cooled appreciable despite several minutes having passed. Evidently it contained boiling-hot oil. In any case, it was an objectively-disappointing food. The tofu itself was soft and insipid and had no real flavor, something the scorching-hot tempura layer did little to correct.
At the end of the meal, Gretchen (who is normally good at this sort of thing) struggled to mathematically divide up the check. Susan characterized this as a "mathematical meltdown," which I thought bookended our meal nicely after its auspicious beginnings with Susan's "menu meltdown."
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?170303 feedback
previous | next |
