sushi and tyranny

took a sushi making class at the P street whole foods tonight. the class was taught by kevin & kevin from genji who run the sushi counter at the store. they did a great job running the class and i had a lot of fun. no raw fish (probably not something you want a room full of amateurs working with) but we did make regular rolls, inside-out rolls, and hand rolls with.

last night we saw richard III at the shakespeare theatre... the show is part of the shakespeare in washingotn festival that's going on through june. richard III is on through march and is - in my very uninformed opinion - worth a trip.

riding, yeah i've been doing some of that, but mostly on skinny tires. i'm well into the winter regieme of trainer rides after work and long road rides at the weekend when weather permits. we'll have to see how that pans out this weekend. the weekend is looking sunny, but who know what the next couple of days will leave on the road.

i've had a photograph accepted into the DCist exposed show in march.

from the (photo) archives...

scoring my second DCist photo of the day for a soup swap pic made me way to concentrate on pictures this week so i spent some time this evening looking through my photo archives for shots that never made it up to flickr and found a couple dozen to upload. there are a bunch from the 2004 snowshoe norba 4-cross

and cross country plus some pictures from a snow-day walk in the woods taken with my lensbaby

and a series of leaf photographs that i made as a christmas gift last year

soups on...

something a little different last night... in honor of national soup swap day (what, you didn't know that january 23rd was national soup swap day) we went to the dc soup swap organized by margret and adrienne from the gracious bowl and hosted at the dc guesthouse last night.

here's how the swap worked: you make and freeze 6-quarts of soup in 6 1-quart containers, plus take along a couple cans of soup for charity (since foodbanks won't accept homemade soup). once everyone's there you go around the room and describe your soup and any story behind it, like it's your grandma's recipe, or your mom made it every time you were sick as a kid. once thats done you draw a random number and take turns picking a soup from the table.

we made a beef stew with poblanos, tomatillos, and potatoes that i found in cooking light one saturday around thanksgiving while heather was at work and came home with: thai lemongrass shrimp soup, curried carrot & coconut, potato melange, bolivian corn chowder, ribolitto, and a japanese root vegetable soup.

see the whole flickr set here

new york city

photographs from this weekend in new york are up on flickr so go have a look at them

we ate the omakase menu and drank way to much sake at nobu 57, walked around soho, went to b & h, nosed around a flea market, caught a movie near times square, walked down the upper west side and, up through the garment district, hung out with friends, ate, drank, and made merry.

nyc

no blogging this week... why? well, this has been a pretty uneventful week. that's it, really nothing to write about. we spent last night making a massive pot of tomatillo beef stew with poblano peppers for next week's national soup swap day and getting packed for this weekend's trip to new york. no riding this weekend (first time in 4 weeks?) but i've got the camera and we've got no plans for the weekend so there'll be plenty of time for wandering and taking pictures.

i spent a lot of time - at least more than necessary - thinking about what camera to take with me to new york... film or digital. i wanted to pack light, so my little FE with a couple of small/fast prime lenses seemed to make the most sense, and the trip felt like it's be a flim kind of trip, but then i started to think about the time, and expense, of film and developing and i decided to pack the d200, but as a concession to my retro-grouch instincts i'm taking the manual focus primes instead of AF zooms.

we've got dinner reservations with friends at nobu in tribeca tonight. not a cheap night out, but it'll be interesting to see what it's like compared to morimoto in philly.

back to work now...

the cats

Cycleart

i wonder if i have any readers in charlotte nc other than arleigh?

i've got a couple of photographs in the Cycleart exhibit that she's organized at heck yeah coffee hub... opening party is tommorow night. wish i could go, but thats a long drive for an evening out.


if you're down that way you should check out the show, which runs through jan 31.

dcmtb

Good team meeting at temperance hall monday night. there were good discussions of plans for the year to come and plenty of swag given away.

last year mike at city bikes came through for us with lots of great product for the team. early last year we gave out all of the product that we had enough for everyone on the team. City Bikes riders spent the year equipped with Bell Sweep XC helmets, Serfas Optics sunglasses (i really liked my Sikes), Serfas mini tools and pumps. and last night we gave out a lot of the rest: floor pumps and more mini pumps from serfas, tires and saddles from WTB, and computers from blackburn. everyone who was there got to have some fun picking from the bins of swag, even a couple of new members.

in the last couple of years we'd become complacent and had fallen from having lots of sponsors to just the shop, but now we're trying to diversify a bit. Metro Gutter & Home Services came on board this year and we're looking to add a couple more sponsors to the roster this year.

plans are developing for the granny gear 24 hour series. we've got 5 of us committed to the team, but only 4 need to be able to make each race. for the series your top 3 races count but we're planning on doing 4: temecula, conyers, big bear and killington. right now the team pool is me, kent baake, jonathan wheaton, matt donahue, and mike klasmeier.

to blog or not to blog

every morning i roll into work and tell myself that i'm going to write up a quick blog entry on the ride/show/party/dinner/trip/or other social that featured most importantly in the day before, but then there are emails to be answered, change requests and bug reports to look at, and work to be done. before i know it's lunch time and once i'm past that point the blog entry just gets put off. i'll do it tonight, which soon becomes tommorow, and so on until what i'm doing has more in common with historical research than blogging.

i've been fighting off a cold for most of the last week, but felt great on saturdays road ride. i was surprised. had a pizza and a couple of beers with mike & tris at paradiso on saturday night.

sunday i helped heather pick out a bike to start riding to work on. she sold the cannondale she won in a raffle at a food expo and had more than enough to pick up a bianchi castro valley at city bikes. with full fenders and a front light/blinky driven off a dynamo hub it'll be a great commuter. after bike shoping and christmas tree removal we finished off the day with a trip to the studio theatre for the opening night of Neil LaBute's This Is How It Goes. Turned out to be a really good show and i'm glad we went.

I've got a DCMTB team meeting tonight at Temperance Hall, so it looks like i'm going to have to miss quiz night at McGinty's. If you're a local mountain bike racer interested in joining the team? drop me a line at captain -at- dcmtb -dot- com

road

cool ride with a big city bikes crew today. kent, jonathan, mike, marc, evan, anna, lorena, and i hit the roads for a good 3+ hours - most of us in shorts & short sleeves. mostly pretty casual, but evan bumped up the pace a couple of times and most of us followed. in spite of being a little under the weather all week i felt really good for the whole ride.

gotta run, pizza and beer is calling

riding...

if you're in the dc area, then you'll already know this, but it has been unseasonably warm for the last couple of weeks and that's meant one thing... lots of riding. 6 good road rides over the christmas/new year's week have given me a chance to get a little bit of base training in and has hopefully done something to counteract all of the sitting & eating based holiday events.

new year's eve in philly was fun, but the rain on monday meant the mummer's parade on new years day was canceled. somewhat disappointing as i was looking forward to it and had the big camera with me to try and capture some interesting street pictures.

Happy new year from south philly!