pechluck’s blog

Aw, what a crappy summer day. I woke up in the very early hours because there was so much thunder. It is still wet and grey and gloomy and humid out there. I was going to see Batman (and walk all the way over there), but I will skip that and just go straight to my tea meeting.

Tea meeting? That's right, there's a group of a few girls meeting for tea at the W. I thought it sounded intriguing: "Think afternoon tea is only complete with miniature watercress sandwiches and white-gloved service for dainty ladies? Think again! WAVE restaurant is redefining afternoon tea by tempting both girls and guys to partake in a "Uni-Tea" experience beginning April 30th, 2008. Sure you'll find tea, but you'll also find tea-infused vodka elixirs (Mar-TEA-nis), plenty of bubbly and a selection of hand-crafted brews in the form of beer for the boys.WAVE's resident "Spice Girl"" Executive Chef Kristine Subido, has created The Teatotaler, a selection of savory and sweet bites to satisfy any appetite.

For $30 per person, The Teatotaler menu includes: A selection of five savory small bites (guest choose either the "Gals" or "Guys" menu); sweets accompanied by Devonshire cream, lemon curd and jam; an individual pot of hot tea (13 varieties are offered from green, oolong and herbal blends) or an iced tea of the day. Here are my pics: I had the Gals and three pots of my Coco Truffle tea! Since it was grey it was actually a good setting for some hot tea.

Guys: Beef tartar toasts with white truffle drizzle; Grilled beef tenderloin and dried fruit chutney; Mini Angus beef sliders with bread and butter pickles; Sea salt and parmesan frites with lemon aioli; and Serrano ham, quince and manchego grilled brioche

Sweets: Macaroons- sea salt and caramel, lemon, chocolate and berr; Scones- butter and orange-vanilla; Madeleine- vanilla and orange zest; Market fresh fruit tarts; Tea cakes- lemon-poppy seed and chocolate chip

And for the non-teetotaller, the following beverage additions are available to The Teatotaler experience:

- Mar-TEA-ni - Choose from Raspberry Nectar, White Ginger Pear or Citrus Mint tea-infused elixirs paired with Grey Goose Vodka for an extra $10 per person.

- Bubbly TEA - Add a little life to your tea party and enjoy a glass of Moet Chandon White Star or Schramsberg Rose for an extra $12 per person.

- Masculini-TEA - A different kind of brew for the boys! Enjoy one of a selection of four handcrafted beers like Goose Island Matilda or Chimay Triple for an extra $8 per person."

I also took myself to brunch at Sepia, which I have been meaning to do for a few months and it's only a 5 minute walk away between my apartment and Steven's. It is not really a cheap brunch (especially considering Lou Mitchell's and Meli's are right around the corner from me), but it had two home runs.  First, there's Sepia's bacon bloody mary: house made celery salt on the brim of a bloody mary, vodka is infused with bacon and the in-house smokey chunky spicy bloody mary mix. Awesome. And it has a good kick! I would have had another if I wasn't already buzzing. To go along with this, I ordered Sepia's humongous smoked salmon brioche sandwich with applewood smoked bacon, gruyere and a side of duck fat crisped potatoes. I also got an additional order of these potatoes and I was not sorry. I think I'd try something else besides the sandwich though- it was too much for me, and although I did like the bread I wanted to taste less bread and more of all the great ingredients inside. They also put in way too many raw onions

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And one more meal! I went to Joy Yee's for dinner with my parents on Friday, and then again with my parents and Steven on Sunday. We went to the updated location in new Chinatown, and I had to pose with some of the humongous new offerings this location has (Vietnamese noode bowls, rice bowls with two soft shell crabs or giant prawn, etc). Hee.

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My mom loves the Korean bbq beef spare ribs here- they are really a huge portion.

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Usually, I don't like to eat crab legs. It is way too much work. I'm much more a lobster tail kind of person, or if the crab meat is already outside of the shell, I'm in (crab ravioli, crabcake, etc). Well, on June 27 my mom went and ordered a crab platter at Bob Chinn's that came with a variety of crab legs, so of course I had to help. As I was cutting one chunky chubby crab leg with the provided utensil, I noticed some red on my appetizer plate. That's strange, I thought. The crab is rare? Then I realized it wasn't crab blood. It was mine.

I grabbed a paper towel... and then another... and then another to try to press my fingertip cut closed, but the blood kept coming. Then our entrees arrived, and after a few more minutes I gave up and went to the bathroom, rinsed my finger and threw away my crumpled out bloody towel, and got a bandaid from the host stand which I wrapped tightly enough so that the skin flap over the cut would close the wound enough to staunch the bleeding. I had to give it to the crab- it defended itself from me even when it was just a leg.

My finger stung a little for that day. All this last week I dutifully wrapped my finger tip with a bandaid snugly enough so that my wound could heal. After a week had passed since the crab defensive maneuver, I started to notice my finger was a little itchy- the sticky part of the bandaid was a little stuck on my finger even after I peeled off the bandaid, and I scratched at it to rub it off. I thought it was the adhesive gunk that was irritating my finger.

Then when I stopped wearing the bandaid this past holiday weekend, I noticed the top third of my finger was still itchy. Weird, the residue must still be there even though I didn't see it. I rubbed it now and then, but didn't feel anything. Weird. Then, I started to see little bumps. Oh oh.

Then yesterday, not only did I see lots of flesh colored bumps (almost like... a crab shell has bumps...), but the bumps and itchiness were spreading from the inside of my finger to the outside by my nail, and it was tender and a little swollen on that side. It even throbbed a little on that side.

I took some pictures and asked my sister, the pediatrician, what she thought. She stepped up my guess of some sort of fungus from too much wet band-aid to offer the hypothesis of a parasitic infection. I mentioned it to my mom (my dad was on call so unavailable) and after suggested maybe my finger was just dry and I needed lotion (no! that's not it mom!) she suggested tetanus. Ok... So off to the doctor I went today to learn the fate of my ring finger tip.

After she pressed and poked at my finger, she pronounced that since it was not red, not hard, and felt normal except for looking at it, that I was allergic to latex. Steroid cream for me! But don't touch your eye dear, or you'll get glaucoma!

Yes crab, I have learned my lesson. I will not eat you.

Happy Independence Day, from the Wrigley Building, Michigan Avenue bridge on the Magnificent Mile, and Tribune Tower.

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Also present and waving in the background trying to get in the picture was the shiny Trump Tower.

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I totally miss being able to write stuff on a blog, like I have been on spong.org for a really, really long time. I went back to look at the first entry to my space on the web, and I actually have two anniversaries: first, I have the one using the code he wrote to post on his server, and that was August 2002. I knew the word blog then, but I didn't think of myself as a blogger, in fact I called my first post a "journal entry". Before then though, I did have a website where I just wrote straight HTML in the editor of my choice (Hot Dog) and that was started in 1997. That's right- more than 10 years on the internet. It makes me shake my head a little to think about how I secretly (ok, guess not so secretly) make fun of the horrific layout of MySpace and the busy-ness of the interface of Facebook but I started out on Geocities, and now here is better reincarnation of the same neighborhood idea that's grown up from Livejournal and has a current form of Vox.

Anyway, even though after I got kicked off of posting on Steven's server I was still posting to the internet- it has been all through photos on my Picasa album and captioning those photos.  I saw though that my "Adventures of Pech 2008" album just for this first half of the year is already at 280 photos (I'm actually going to have to divide my album now by half year- and actually I have uploaded more photos than that online, since I do have other albums, both public and private I have created. I am today at 952 MB Storage used and 72 MB Storage remaining- seriously! And that's not with uploading at the full resolution or all my pics that I've taken!). But I digress, which isn't surprising since I write sort of train-of-thought style. Anyway I realized that its awful to have to keep up with me by looking at an album that has to download that many photos. So here I am, back to real text and just highlighting thumbnails, for your better user experience in being nosy and seeing what I am up to.

Previously this year:

My adventures thus far (Jan-June 2008) 

Visiting Denver the week of June 16

Ringing in the New Year in LA/Hawaii