Lunch With George!

Greatest Hits
July 25, 2002 thru September 19, 2002

Agenda

There are only a few ways to catch up on the lunch notes: 1. just forget the past and start with the present; 2. Stay up all night for a week writing up the notes; or 3. creating a "greatest hits" lunch page with the highlights of all the missing lunches.

I have opted for the highlights page!

• July 25 - Fat Tuesday
• August 1 - Arby's/Lake Pleasant
• August 9 - Pei Wei
• August 23 - Mimi's Cafe
• September 6 - Wildflower Bread Co.
• September 19 - Villa Deli

Victorinox Outrider

The highlight of the lunch was the George's demonstration of his Knife-o-meter(TM). He has invented a meter which assesses the sharpness of a blade. It is constructed of a piece of PVC pipe, a spring, a ring around the outside of the pipe (this provides the "high water mark", or the point to which the knife blade pulled the indicator before severing the piece of yarn attached to the spring).

He tried my new locking-blade Swiss Army knife, and it scored a little better than a nail file. Next, George revealed his hysterically sharp fixed-blade Spyderco (see the TBD lunch notes), which severed the yarn without moving the scale. Hysterical!

We each had a turkey sub sandwich at Fat Tuesday, which was passable, but we agreed it would have been much better with one if the beers they serve.

August 1 - Arby's / Lake Pleasant

For lunch this week, George picked me up at Honeywell in his RX-7, and we stopped at Arby's on our way to the lake. Before I get into the boat stuff, I need to mention that Arby's Market Fresh sandwiches are great! They seem like something you would NEVER find in a fast food restaurant. My personal favorite is the the Roasted Turkey & Swiss. The sandwiches are made with tasty sliced meat, big tomato slices, fresh leaf lettuce, spicy mustard, and are served on thick honey wheat bread. Yum!

After the meal, we buzzed out I-17 to the Lake Pleasant turn-off, finally making our way into the marina. George has a special pass card, so he can get right in (the marina is private, and charges an access fee for each visitor... unless you have such an annual pass). We entered the boat storage yard, and found Persistence! It's very cool. It sits so high in the trailer, since it has a fixed keel. The mast is lying on the deck, but it is still easy to imagine

A Pleasant Lake Lake Pleasant is a pleasant place, but that's NOT where it got it's name. It seems the dam (and subsequently the lake) were named after Carl Pleasant, an engineer who helped to design the dam. The dam itself was later renamed Waddell Dam. Now you know the rest of the story!

being out on the water. It's definitely a project boat-- George will have plenty to keep him busy over the next 52 weekends. His time will mostly be spent cleaning, varnishing, and making small repairs. He also must wait to put the boat in the water until the title arrives from Michigan (there's a long version, but the short story is that the owner was out of the country when George bought the boat, and a new title had to be requested from the State of Michigan).

George's friend Dave (another J24 owner) has a beautiful boat (which looks like he must spend many hours keeping it that way). Dave is a great resource-- he always knows what repair to make, where to get replacement parts, what brand to buy, you name it.

Dave's J24 - Bad Idea

August 9 - Pei Wei

I was returning a music CD to George which he had lent me a few weeks before-- Jake Speed and the Freddies. These guys play some great blues! My favorite is "Coffee Bourgeois Blues"-- a song about the great importance coffee plays, and the tragedy of local coffee shops forced out of business by the proliferation of Starrbucks. Click here to hear an excerpt! The CD is hard to find, but you can get it at CDbaby.com. They carry a lot of independent music, and their shipping confirmation e-mail is unique!

George lent me a new CD to try: Norah Jones. George said that he just might have a new female vocalist! She does have a beautiful voice, but George and I agreed that the album would have benefited from a wider variety musical styles. Not only does she have a great voice, but also co-wrote several of the songs on the CD. If you want to hear a sample from this album, click here.

August 23 - Mimi's Cafe

These new mice are part of a study at the University of Pennsylvania. After only a single injection of a synthetic gene (known as Insulin Growth Factor-1), the mice aer as muc as 60% stronger than untreated mice, and heal from injury with remarkable speed. Their muscles do not age, either. Some of the mice in the program are the equivalent of 80 years old, and yet their muscles are strong and well-toned.

The biggest downside is that if this treatment were ever adapted for human use, athletes could get an unfair advantage that could never be traced.

Read more about the supermice at The Philidelphia Enquirer.

September 6 - Wildflower Bread Co.

George was telling me about a CD that a co-worker lent to him. It's the first album by a 16-year old skateboard punk girl who can really rock. I already knew all about Avril Lavigne's "Let go", since my daughter asked for it as a birthday gift. George agreed that she showed promise as both a singer and a songwriter, but wasn't too interested. I had no choice but to listen to my daughters' favorite tracks, and found that the tunes were quite catchy! One day after dropping them at school, I listened to the rest of the songs and found that I really do like it a lot. I bought my own copy!

My only contribution to lunch was a report on the movie Teri and I watched on Pay-per-view: The Royal Tenenbaums. Gene Hackman stars as the father of a highly disfunctional family. While Hackman and Angelica Houston (playing his estranged wife) put in good performances, the remainder of the characters a nearly charicatures. I believe this is by design, but it is nonetheless unsatisfying. Hackman perfectly plays the scoundrel, and actually manages to redeem himself as the film progresses. It's an odd film, and it certainly was not "laugh out loud funny" as the review claimed, but I really did enjoy it.

September 19 - Villa Deli

• Google
• Internet Movie Database (IMDB)
• RoadFood.com

I would probably include Map Quest and ESPN.

Oddly enough, I currently voluntarily subscribe to four different web sites, but if they forced me to subscribe to get their content, I might decline:

1. Low End Mac,
2. Jerry Pournelle's Chaos Manor,
3. Everest News,
4. and Digital Web Online Magazine.

For What On The Web Would You Pay? There are no doubt many other web sites worthy of a subscription. What are your candidates? Let us know! Click Here to send us an e-mail.

Web sites are trying many different ways to stay afloat. Most of the sites to which I subscribe accept voluntary donations through PayPal or Amazon Payments (just as DBACKFANS.COM does!).

One site, Low End Mac, entices readers to pay by offering a version of their site to registered subscribers which has all the advertising removed.