duck-shaped pain

16 May 2001
Highly Valued, Impressive Tower of Pilaf

I am drinking the coldest wine. I put it in the fridge for safekeeping before I went to Denver last weekend and forgot to take it out until tonight.

It actually tastes pretty good. As a rule, I don't like my wine cold or even cool. Can't taste it. But since today has been muggy and strenuous as all get out, I can accept its gift of refreshment. It's tasty, but not the most special of wines in the first place, either. [1]


The valley I live in is ready for many things, or so it thinks. It tries to be ready for growth, but that's only sort of worked. It's certainly not ready for more traffic [3], although it claims to be. But one thing that I am certain of it that it is definitely not ready for an $18 bowl of rice pilaf.

One of my co-workers visited this restaurant the other night, one which opened up about a year or so ago. I've noticed it, but I still haven't paid a visit. [4] I've heard it's sort of pricey, and not that good for what you get. But I've also heard the opposite. I have no idea who to believe. Anyway, the person who visited recently is pretty reliable, and he told me that the food was pretty good. Sort of different than most restaurants here, but one that would also be one of hundreds just like it in a larger metro area. Lots of seared tuna, things drizzled on other things, that sort of item. He had roasted squash something-or-other, which was a bit on the expensive side ($15), but what really floored him was the 18-dollar bowl of rice pilaf. His dining companion that night was a vegetarian, and the only thing on the menu she could eat was the rice pilaf (the roasted squash something-or-other was accompanied by bacon, it seems). He described it at being sort of a mound on a plate, taller than it was wide. Sort of tasty, sort of not, but not really eighteen-dollar quality.

Now I know to stay away. Give me the restaurants that serve both green chili and gravy in the same meal anyday.


I was depressed. Then I saw that someone found my site doing a search for "fugs +boobs a lot." That cheered me up.


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[1] Plum Creek Colorado Riesling. $7 a bottle at the new liquor store down the street. Grown, fermented and bottled just a cat's throw away. Pretty nice -- lighter and sweeter than I'm used to, but nice for drinking out on the porch on a hot night, reading and watching the neighbors wash their car. [2] One of the first local wines I've found that I really like. Cheap, too -- I have yet to check the prices at the winery itself, which might be even cheaper.

[2] Our neighbors just bought two brand new cars, some sort of truck and a relatively compact green SUV. I guess they needed to replace the cars they bought two months ago before they became unsightly. Plus, they added a new little yappy dog and there seem to be more children every day. It's a sociological experiment I can enjoy in my pajamas.

[3] Local officials are following a policy of strict avoidance when it comes to traffic issues. Like, instead of widening roads or looking into building new ones as traffic increases, they decide to "fix" the problem by closing off one of the main arteries across town to trucks and narrowing it to only one lane in each direction. It's not like they've done any better in the public transportation department -- we finally have a bus system, but it doesn't really go anywhere and the scheduling is all weird and it only runs to about 4 in the afternoon. Now, I'm as big a fan of public transportation as you can find, but I still haven't ridden it, because it doesn't come within miles of where I live. And I don't live that far from anything.

[4] One reason, besides its strange erratic hours of business, is that it's one of those buildings you can't see into. There are a lot of windows at this place, but they're all tightly covered up with some sort of orange fabric, so, passing by, you can't see what the place looks like inside, how many people are in there, what kind of people are in there, or any sort of other useful information. I don't trust places I can't easily see inside, for some reason. It's like they're trying to hide something from me, and I'm just not going to play along. I also assume that any place so sealed up will be terribly dark inside, that special sort of fancy restaurant darkness that's done in the name of "atmosphere." I hate that. I like to be able to see who I'm with and to be able to read the menu without the aid of the waiter or any sort of flashlight he or she brings along. My final reason for not liking this restaurant without even trying it is that the building that houses it was previously a really creepy women's clothing store: one of those that stays open for years and no one knows why, because there never seem to be any customers going in or out of it. It had the same window display for as long as I can remember: sun-bleached mannequins dressed in faded polyester clothing (which should tell you how long these things had been in the sun), and orange wallpaper all around them. Nothing ever moved. Nothing ever changed. Then, one day, it was all gone.

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