What Better Time?

To make a lengthy blog entry than when you are procrastinating on a 4-6 page paper that is due tomorrow?

There is no better time.

That's the great thing about procrastination--when channeled properly, it can actually be a pretty good tool, because it makes those other things that you have been meaning to do seem so much more important all of a sudden.

Alright, lets get down to the nitty-gritty. What the heck have I been up to recently? Well, here goes:

On Sunday, Maxx H. my friend from Maine who is joining the Air Force, came down to Boston to spend a couple of days with me. I felt kinda bad because I'm not nearly cool enough and didn't have a lot of neat stuff to show him--but he seemed to have fun anyway. It was a great time, he went shopping and exploring while I was in class, which worked out really well.

But here's the cool thing. Maxx offered to take me out to dinner Monday night--at a really nice restaurant. With the help of Dan R. (The Civilized Man) we chose a nearby italian restaurant called "Via Matta" (I was going to put a link to their website, but I think it's a monstrousity of flash movies in a pitiful attempt to be 'hip' on the internet). Anyway, we had to get dressed up a little, and we walked to the restaurant. They checked our coats and asked us if we would "like to enjoy cocktails before the meal". Declining, we sat down and were treated to the menus, which were short, but interesting--but the waiter came over, who reminded me of Piglet from Winnie the Pooh, because he had a high voice, and seemed incredibly inteligent but gentle. Anyway, he recommended that we try the tasting menu.

Sixty-Five Dollars per person. We decided to get it.

It was a five course meal with (I totalled this up at the end) 19 different foods that we were able to sample. Before I get into a detailed explanation about the meal, let me say that this meal took TWO HOURS to complete... not because the quantity was overwhelming or the service was slow, but because we just had such a great time talking and eating this AMAZING italian food.

Now, the thing about this taster menu thing is that the chef gets to pick everything that you eat, (you tell them if you have any 'aversions' beforehand) so it's like a friggin' adventure, waiting to see what the next course will be. So they had some infused basil olive oil with fresh bread--which beat any restaurant I'd ever had. So we ate some of that until they brought us a plate with the pieces of bruchetta (spelling is wrong, I'm sure). We each had a small peice of each. One was a more traditional brushcetta, with tomatoes, olive oil, and real mozzarella cheese (apparently 'real' mozzerella cheese is made from buffalo milk.) and then two other types, one with a slice of parmasean cheese and orange beets, and another with some sort of medditeranean tuna stuff. All were fantastic.

And the waiter told us that this wasn't even technically the first course.

The first course was thinly sliced pork loin, (often times veal is used, but this chef feels that the pork works better) with a weird mayonassie/anchovie/caper/oil/vinager sauce and with some oiled greens on top... (I don't remember the name of the greens). It was like sensory overload for the tastebuds--after eating nothing but ketchup and hamburgers in the dining hall, such a complex flavor was so intense I almost misinterpreted the sensation as disgusting. But it was delicious--very intense, as you can imagine, but the pork was very tender and thin.

The second course was the pasta course. This was probably my favorite course, because it was soooo magnificent. There were three types of pasta, all made 'in house' (not from dried pasta). The first was an "ear pasta" shaped sort of like a tiny bowl (or an ear) with sweet fennel sausage, some sort of bitter herb (like swiss chard, but not) and a white cream sauce. The waiter served us as he described each dish, and he served us using a technique that was very interesting to watch--he took a spoon and a fork in one hand and pinched them together as if he was using chopsticks or something. And he would put a small scoop on everyone's plate, and go around, then putting a second scoop on everyone's plate--making sure it was completely even! It was kinda amusing. The next pasta was a ravioli--now these ravioli were probably 2.5 inches square, and we each got two. But served one at a time to each of us, mind you! The meat inside was venison, and it was in a more traditional red tomato sauce that was more sweet. The third pasta looked almost like wantons, but it was filled with something made from sweet butternut squash! It was such a delicious and interesting contrast from the other--I was so suprised to eat it!

Anyway, after that course, the waiter came over and started talking to us, and we learned that he had gone to Cornell University! Ivy League! I mean, I think that's pretty cool. He said he had done management for a long time, but when he got married and kids, he wanted a job where he could be home during the day. I tell you, our waiter was totally cool. At the end of the night we joked with him that his tip depended soley on whether he could whip the table cloth out from underneath all the dishes! He laughed and said that he never learned how to do that, but he knew the trick about how to get a cork out of a bottle with a napkin.

So the third course was fish. There were two types of fish, both cooked to perfection. One was a mediteranean version of a snapper, and it started with an O (they threw so many unique and interesting foods at us that night that I forgot a lot of them. Sorry) and the other was Salmon on a bed of leeks. That fish was amazing, I don't know what else to say.

Fourth was a cheese course, where we had three types of cheese--all were very exotic, italian cheeses, but I wasn't too fond of them. There was a blue cheese from goats milk, a soft cheese and some other hard cheese that I liked with the sugared alomonds. It was an interesting course.

Then we got about a 2 tablespoon serving of Passion Fruit Sorbet (Also called gelato) 'to cleanse the pallatte' before dessert. Let me tell you, that was the best non-dairy Ice based desert I've ever had, and it wasn't even the desseret. The three desserets that they brought out were pretty good, the cooked custard being the hands down winner, complete with fresh cranberries. It was delicious. There was also a really really light (almost tasteless at first) cake type thing and a very rich peice of chocolate pie (I don't say cake because the consistancy of the chocolate part reminded me of a brownie.)

But like I said, this is a meal I will never forget, and I still can't believe that Maxx paid for me to eat a $65 dollar meal. Dan had come along, by the way, and had said he would split the bill with Maxx. The total with tax and tip was about $240! What a once-in-a-lifetime (well, actually, I hope not) experience!

Alright, moving onto other and probably less monumental business--I tried out to be a host for the 24th annual Evvy Awards on Sunday, and I think I nailed it. I really hope I get a job as either a host or the person(s) who come out and warm up the audience before the show. I probably won't find out until the the end of march or something.

I've been doing a pretty good job keeping up with all my papers, excluding the one that I have due tommorow that I should be working on right now, and it should be interesting to see how these last 48 hours before I leave school to go to Utah for spring break turn out.

Anyway, I was messing around with a program called "Soundtrack" for Mac's, and in about 20 minutes I made this. It's not AMAZING, but I do really like the part where the drums come in about 30 seconds into the song. But lemme know what you think! I plan on working with that some more, and someday maybe I'll buy some space to make a nice website and post all my media creations... but not right now.

Let's see, what else is new? Oh, well, the suite that I we (J-Pizzle, Dan, Joe and I) are trying to get looks like it is going to work out. I can't WAIT until next year when I have a single within a suite that faces the Boston Common. It's gonna rock.

And here's some great news for all the Harrisonburg High School Alums that read my blog--The budget for the new TV Studio in the new Harrisonburg High School came through! Seth Stratford of the Tech Ed. department and I had put together a proposal with all the equipment that we need. ALL! They approved EVERTHING!

I'm really really really excited about this. This is a huge deal and a huge step forward for Harrisonburg. I'm really glad that Irene Reynolds is the Principal, because I think she has a great understanding of these sorts of things, and want's to make sure our kids have access to communications equipment--a huge field, so that they can discover if it's something that they really like!

By the way, for the tech nerds out there, heres a list of some of the coolest things that the studio is going to have: A souped up G5, 10 copies of Final Cut Pro HD, 5 Firestore FS-1's (devices for encoding in realtime from a camera into footage usable by FCP) and 3 Canon GL-1 cameras for the studio! It's going to friggin rock!

Well, I think that's a suitably lengthy post. I expect hordes of comments. There are some friggin' sweet things going all, both for Harrisonburgers and for me, so you should have something to say!

Until I post again! (which may or may not be in a couple of days)