Oh, I am in trouble. I tried the new tapas place that just opened up a half block down the street from me, and it is both out-of-this-world delicious and fairly expensive. I had stuffed mushrooms, brie, and a small portion of seafood & cheese-stuffed baked salmon that was the best thing I've eaten since getting back from Florida last month.

My wallet is really going to miss the days when I lived upstairs from a great Thai restaurant where my favorite dish was an $8 lunch special that was enough to make two meals.

Cincinnati has this amazing 200,000-square foot grocery store called Jungle Jim's. Incredible international sections, a produce section larger than some grocery stores (and they sell durian, although they don't keep it out; you have to ask for it), cheese for days, etc. etc. I think Neil Gaiman has shopped there when he's been in the area.

Anyway, you can explore the entire store -- inside -- through Google Street View. Apparently a photographer spent more than 6 hours inside taking pictures of it. Check it out: [link]

t edit Not as interesting as GeoGuessr, but it's still a big fucking store with a lot of cool food. The hot sauce section has some hot sauce locked up, not because of the scoville units, but because it's $1,400. (Not a typo.)

t edit again I keep trying to find the hot sauce section and keep ending up back at the hookah wall. It's like one of those dreams where you're trying to get home but all kinds of things delay you and you can't quite make it.

I have been to Jungle Jim's once, and I must say, it was definitely impressive.

I know my sister and parents have both (separately and together) taken trips two hours away to go to Jungle Jim's and IKEA, and make a day of it.

My boss got dinged by the CIO for micromanaging me. In effect, I got dinged for hot being senior enough.

Ugh. And now my old boss has told him I work well if you spell it out for me. Which is, surprisingly, what I hate. I want goals, and I want freedom, AND I WANT INFORMATION. He asked me for a presentation today I'd written under my own steam two weeks ago. I keep planning for meetings that aren't even happening yet because slide decks are our shibboleth. He got dinged for delaying producing a document which he never asked me about, but that I had written the first draft of and given him over a week ago.

But I'm hoping the more leeway he's been instructed to give me comes with more info, and we should both be cooking with gas.

I know my sister and parents have both (separately and together) taken trips two hours away to go to Jungle Jim's and IKEA, and make a day of it.

Dang, I can spend a whole day in either one. Well, okay, not a whole 8-hour day, but easily 3-4 hours, which is exhausting.

What are people doing this weekend?

I'm slowly and somewhat resentfully eating a salad because it's too hot for anything else. I need to pack a suitcase because I'm getting on a train after I pick up my CSA tomorrow morning so I can visit the family and go to the baptism of niece #3.

I would rather just take some ibuprofen and flop on the couch while watching cartoons and trying not to move muscles that currently hate me.

What are people doing this weekend?

Going to a vintage French carnival on Governors Island.

What are people doing this weekend?

Toga party tomorrow night. Because apparently we've stumbled into a college movie from the 1970s.

t edit Yeah, Hil totally wins. Vintage French carnival beats the hell out of toga party.

I'd take either of those things though. I am going to a lego club meeting, then a hawaii thing, and then I hope to god I'll get to go to the gym tomorrow.

Speaking of 4th cousins, I had dinner with my 4th cousin once removed tonight. Except I suspect he is actually my 5th cousin, because the person he calls his mother was 56 when he was born, but the person he calls his sister was 29 and designing Broadway musicals, so I bet he was born to the "sister" out of wedlock and raised by his grandparents. (It is incredibly difficult to be thinking this and not SAY anything about it while having dinner.)