No matter how obscure an activity is, you can find other people on the internet who do it too.
Saw this in my Google analytics today:
I guess I’m not the only person to battle the artichokes, and lose.
He’s Also A Vampire
Stick asked if I wanted to go see a movie with him. His recent movie choices have included a subtitled documentary about skyscraper tightrope-walkers, so I was a bit cautious.
“Um… what’s it about?” I asked.
“It’s a secret Harry Potter film in which Mr. Darcy is the new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts.”
“It’s almost cruel to tease me like that.”
The Chocolate Bean
The Chocolate Bean
280 Meeting St
Cary, NC 27518
I’m lucky enough to do a lot of my work via my laptop, so I’ve been looking around for a local coffeeshop with wifi. I’ve been shopping around, and discovered that Borders, Barnes&Noble and Starbucks all charge for internet. (I don’t know if this is a new worldwide trend or if I’m just spoiled by the free wifi in Chinese Starbucks but it’s pretty lame either way.)
Stick and I are fond of Caribou Coffee for the drive-though, mostly because we love Caribou’s Eli. He is wide awake when we aren’t. Also he uses complete sentences in the drive-through.
Then I discovered The Chocolate Bean. The Chocolate Bean looks a bit like Cafe Zarah in Beijing, with the monochrome modern furniture, but without the odd sandwiches, and with a gourmet chocolate counter and a gelato bar like this one we visited in Rome. It’s like a hip living room.
I’m not a coffee purist. I know some people think that adding hazelnut and caramel and amaretto and so forth dilutes the flavour of the beans, and to those people, I say, hello? Do you not realize you can drink coffeedrink desserts all day? You are SO missing out! Anyway, the Chocolate Bean has a long list of specialty coffees or you can add flavors to regular drinks. In the interests of a fair review, of course, I had to try a bunch of coffees, and the boring Americano is nice too, but a cappuccino with hazelnut is definitely my favorite. The prices are better than Starbucks, too.
The Chocolate Bean doesn’t have Caramel Apple Crack but they do have my beloved pomegranate green tea, New York-texture bagels (not bread with a hole in the middle), and smoothies. Did I mention the gelato? Very Meg-friendly!
Overall, good coffee and snacks in a laid-back atmosphere. The only way it could be any better is if it didn’t look out over the parking lot. Now, I think I was supposed to be getting some work done…
Edit 4/23: The Chocolate Bean will start offering paninis in May! Can’t decide if I should get them with smoothies like this Xidan cafe, or with gelato like our old favorite, Andiamo’s in Amherst.
Posted in Beijing, North Carolina, Raleigh
Tagged cary, chinese, coffee, Eric, North Carolina, Raleigh, Rome, Starbucks, Stick, Western food, wo ai xi can, Xidan
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King Henry VIII Joins Twitter
King Henry VIII joins Twitter tomorrow, according to the Brand Republic News today.
LONDON – One of England’s greatest kings Henry VIII will be Tweeting from beyond the grave, updating Twitter followers about events from 500 years ago which helped to shape the modern world.
The Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that cares for Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London (two sites synonymous with the monarch) has set up the social networking identity IamHenryVIII.
Followers of the king will be able to read about events — from when he learned of the death of his father on April 22, to his coronation at Westminster Abbey on June 24 — exactly half a millennium after they happened.
The new @IamHenryVIII isn’t the first historical tweeter. @Genny_Spencer, for example, recounts the daily one-line diary entries of teenage Genivieve Spencer, living in rural Illinois from 1937 to 194i. This also isn’t the first historical event performed as social media. If you haven’t seen the Aeneid as a Facebook feed yet, you’re missing out!
But I think Twitter is particularly appropriate for Henry VIII. In an era when London commoners would gather to watch the king dine, I imagine Tudor England would welcome constant status updates about the king’s day.
The tweeting king would be able to see his follower count go up and down instead of having London street mobs express the political climate. At high points, he’d gather more followers than @aplusk! And the eager eyes of the court would watch who he followed, how many Boleyns or Howards, Catholics or Protestants.
I suppose King Henry would probably have the Groom of the Bedchamber send status updates for him. Although if he tweeted, we could expect from @IamHenryVIII:
Kicked butt at Guinegate. Missing @RegentKathy.
At Field of Cloth of Gold. Gotta go, @TheDauphin wants to have dinner. Again.
New Act of Succession! PLZ RT!
(Call me, Historical Royal Palaces, I’ve got more!)
One day, King Henry would take “Defender of the Faith” out of his Twitter bio, and another day he’d unfollow Thomas Moore, and it would all be downhill from there. Even with Twitter.
— Quoted text from Henry VIII Twitters from 1509 – Brand Republic News – Brand Republic. —
Posted in Raleigh
Tagged dating, Facebook, henry viii, Raleigh, social media, twitter
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Chatham Hill Winery
Chatham Hill Winery
3800 Gateway Centre Blvd. Suite 310,
Cary/Morrisville, NC 27560
We went on a really interesting winery tour taught by the owner and winemaker, Marek Wojciechowski, a biochemist who took up winemaking as a retirement project. Yes, taught by is the right phrasing, he gave a really interesting lecture on the history of local wine, beginning with North Carolina’s thriving winemaking industry before Prohibition. Sometimes I forget that this area has a history beyond the car-convenient shopping and cul-de-sac houses, and it was good to be reminded of distinct North Carolina culture.
North Carolina is considering adding a “sin tax” on certain luxuries, and our tour included some really interesting politics of how alcohol is taxed, whether it should be based on bottle price or alcohol content per volume or type. Although I think a tax on luxury items seems like a fair way to raise state revenue, the winemaker was concerned that fine wines would be taxed like, say, Mad Dog 20/20. (Growing up with my father, my mental narration is listing all the ways I can work sin tax error into this paragraph. But I won’t. )
Although the outside of the winery is pretty typically Cary, in yet another nondescript industrial complex, it’s worth making the trip through the maze of identical roads, to an unpretentiously informative tour and tasting.
At the post-tour tasting, we tried an assortment of Chatham Hill wines, including a chardonnay that was extra-good because of bad weather that year, a late frost that produced smaller, sweeter grapes. We had a great time sipping blackberry wine and picturing Dr. Wojciechowski mixing it up in his lab.
Posted in North Carolina, Raleigh
Tagged adventures with Stick, cary, e3, Grace, North Carolina, NPR, Raleigh, wine, winery
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Armchair Coaching
Today’s Captcha must be about when Stick watches football.
Faerie Solitaire Review
I have a review of the new Faerie Solitaire up on ThumbGods.
I’m a bit late posting this because every time I went to get another screenshot or check a fact, I got sucked into playing a few hands of Faerie Solitaire.
Faerie Solitaire from SubSoap is a new casual game, mixing a cute fantasy story with basic solitaire. I’ve said before that the best games have simple rules, with many variations and strategies. In Faerie Solitaire, you are given a foundation card, and you can either play one card higher or one card lower than the foundation card. A played card becomes the new foundation card, and you do it again. You could easily teach a child to look for a number one higher or one lower than the selected card.
sometimes find it annoying when there’s a lot of game to be unlocked. In some cases, it seems like a tacit acknowledgement from the developers that some parts of the game are good and some parts are lame, and to make the game longer, you’ve got to grind through the lame to get to the good bits. When I reviewed GardenParty World, I talked about not enjoying games with the game mechanic of working at a dull minigame to earn spending points. GardenParty World is hardly the only offender here, I was also frustrated by unlocking the chance to play indentical levels in Fashion Solitaire. But Faerie Solitaire had a system of power-ups and unlockable features that kept me excited about the next add-on without leaving me feeling like the developers had greyed out most of the game.
Read the rest at Thumb Gods » Game Review: Faerie Solitaire
Posted in Game Reviews, Gaming Culture, My Other Writing
Tagged e3, Faerie Solitaire, Fashion Solitaire, Game Reviews, games, garden, indie games, my other writing, ThumbGods
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Pokemon Detractors
We gave our students a practice verbal SAT test in class this week.
“What does circumlocution mean?” asked one student, who wrote a hilarious career essay on becoming a successful Pokemon master.
“I can’t tell you that,” I said, “I won’t be next to you on the real test.”
“I could summon you from a Pokeball. Miss Meg, I choose you!”
“Then I would appear and tell you to break it down into smaller parts! Look for roots you know. What does circum mean? What other worlds have locu?”
“Circum is like circle and locution is like elocution. So… it means talking in circles?”
“I can’t tell you the answers, Ash Ketchum. The more word parts you know, the better you’ll be at this.”
“Gotta catch ’em all!”
Another student raises his hand. “Miss Meg, what’s detractor mean?”
“I can’t tell you kids the vocabulary words! Try to break it into smaller pieces.”
“Huh?”
“It starts with de. What does de usually mean? What other words have tract?”
“Oh! So it’s someone who takes apart a tractor! Thanks, Miss Meg!”
If only I could get back to privacy of my Pokeball to laugh.
The TurboTax Turing Test
Dear TurboTax,
Thank you for making my taxes kind of annoying instead of a total nightmare. Sure, it cost most of my tax return to pay for the TurboTax version for under-employed freelancers, but that’s fine. You made it easier to turn a stack of 1099s and scribbled receipts into the single-digit check I’ll be receiving from the state of North Carolina. This is the very first year I’ve filed on time, and it’s all thanks to you. (Well, thanks to you and a nagging worry that I might be paying this year instead of receiving, and I’ve heard the IRS is less forgiving about late filing when one is meant to be sending them money.)
But a Captcha at the end? Seriously? A check to see if I’m human after all that? Turbo, honey, if there were a program that could find my gross income from last year’s return, the employer numbers from a half dozen 1099s, my date of birth, my social security number, my special TurboTax pin, my routing number and bank account number, and then put all those numbers into the right little boxes on a hundred different pages… well, if there were a bot like that, I don’t think it would be thwarted by a Captcha image!
Meg
Posted in North Carolina, Other Blogs, Raleigh
Tagged freelancing, frustrations, letters, minor milestones, North Carolina, other blogs, Raleigh
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No Surprises
“Hey, Stick, do you know what the day after tomorrow is?!?”
“The day after Ea—The day Cadbury eggs go on sale.”
“Oh. Guess you already knew then.”
“Meg, we’ve been dating for five years.”
Related: Last year’s post on Cadbury Eggs.
Posted in Raleigh
Tagged adventures with Stick, cadbury eggs, dating, Raleigh, Stick
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