CurtBlog

Tank Sushi in Lincoln Square has pretty good sushi and a lot of interesting rolls, but like most hipster sushi places it tends to be a bit overpriced. After all, they have to pay for the chillout collections they play as background music. But on Sundays you can get half price maki rolls from 1:30p to 6p and that makes it a steal of a deal because the rolls are generally pretty tasty. I went yesterday with Kristin and 4 other friends after church and we all had our fill of sushi for under $100 total. Not bad, so check it out if you like sushi, but can't always afford it.

Interesting comment/article here from an organic farmer who was one of the first to grow and sell the prepackaged salad paks (he's out of that side of the business now). As most people who appreciate food and where it comes from already know, you are much better off (and safer) to stay away from the so-called "prewashed" and "precut" vegetable paks and just buy the real thing and do it yourself. Plus it just tastes a lot better. Now there have been times I've bought the little premade salad paks because I'm lazy, but honestly now it's more than just about convenience and taste, it's also about health and safety. Scary stuff. I'll be happy when I can walk out into my own garden one day and cut some spinach or lettuce out of my own plot. The less middlemen the better.

So Amazon released their new video download service Unbox a few weeks ago and I gave it a try over the weekend. This fall I'm especially interested in download services since I gave up my cable and my Tivo won't record from my over-the-air HD box. I grabbed an episode of Anthony Bourdain's new show "No Reservations", which I couldn't get on my cable lineup anyway. Hooked my Thinkpad up to my TV using S-Video and it really looks pretty decent. The Amazon player has a full-screen mode that looks pretty good, all things considered. It's not HD by any means and S-Video wouldn't output that anyway, at least not well. But it's definitely good enough to watch TV shows. In other download news, Apple just bumped up the resolution of their video downloads as well to 640x480, so they should look a bit better on screens other than the video Ipod. here's hoping. if both of those fail, there is always BitTorrent. I'm willing to pay for the shows I want, so it's up to the networks to provide content in the format I want as far as I'm concerned. and it seems like they are starting to get the hint.

Well, since getting back from camping over Labor Day weekend I've been in a bit of a funk. Part of it is just general life stress, but I think a lot of it is that summer is already over. I love fall, it's my favorite season and really nice In Chicago, but before long winter sets in and Chicago winters are hard. I admire the people who have lived here all their lives and through some combination of grim determination and sheer will power manage to toil through winter year after year. not sure I have the strength of character to do that my whole life. anyway, I'm just mourning the passage of summer a bit, especially since I don't ever feel like I take full advantage of everything a Chicago summer has to offer. This winter will be especially hard because we will be saving for the wedding and won't be able to go out as much. Time to find some fun free things to do and spend a lot of time with friends I guess. Thank goodness I at least know how to cook a great meal without going out.