Cottleston Pie

I almost spend too much time reading law blogs. The newcomers are

• Decision of the Day : summary of recent, interesting appellate decisions. Tends to be edited for corrections in some way frequently, so I tend to try and hold back and let new entries sit a while before I read them. And this is a Bob Loblaw Law Blog! If you're an Arrested Development fan (as I am), then you just laughed (you might have laughed anyway, because it's just funny). Now, please, don't go to the blog and comment, "Have you seen/do-you-watch/etc Arrested Development?" as many people have already done. Whoever writes the blog wishes to remain anonymous (there are many legitimate reasons one might) and doesn't respond.
• The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog : Interesting, law-tilted, commentary of things going on from the perspective of the authors.
• Blog detailing the interpretation and application of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 ("BAPCPA") : I had no idea I would find this interesting, but it is! Oops! So, it's another regular read for the time being.

Fortunately, the New York Times has recently started charging for their columnist content. This has freed up a little more time to read all the law blogs I enjoy, much of which is high quality stuff.

Derek's bad UHaul experience this past September (U-Haul: The New Bane Of My Existence) was no suprise to me. I figure I'll document here and now my own impressions from experience. And it'll be nice if in a few years or so I find this dated and no longer accurate.

I remain amazed at the effectiveness for the UHaul brand: a clever name and good advertising. UHaul hasn't gone downhill. My observation is that they've been at the bottom of the hill for about 10 years. They'll generally charge you more than competitors for equivalent or worse product along with mediocre-at-the-very-best service. I've a bunch of experiences of my own as well as hearing those of others over the past decade. But UHaul still seems to be the first and favored call for most people. I've had good experiences with Hertz-Penske, Rider, and Budget. In my most recent experience with Budget (August 2004), the people that were supposed to return the truck I needed didn't. So, the Budget guys drove a bigger, available truck from the other side of the city and gave it to me at the local location at the same price as my reservation for the one-size smaller truck. Exactly the type of great service that UHaul wasn't going to do for Derek.

Monday before Christmas, I went to Bluebonnet Station, the USPS Post Office for 78758, to mail four Priority Mail packages. I took a magazine that I'd just started because, based on past experience, I imagined my wait would be probably be an hour or so. Amazingly, I was done in the post office within ten minutes, including doing my hand addressing on the Priority Mail address labels. They have new Automated Postal Center (APC) units which are essentially like the ATM for postal transactions, which is great.

Because it was busy, there was a postal worker standing next to the machine helping people quickly navigate the touch screens. That was both a good and bad thing. Generally, it was helpful in moving things along, but I wanted to understand which button I was pushing and why because if a mistake were made, I'm sure I'd later be told caveat emptor and that it was my fault, not the postal employee standing there advising me, for not taking responsibility for the buttons that I was pressing. This was going through my head at the time and a bit awkward as the employee seemed to wonder why I was so pokey and wouldn't just press the button he was telling me to press. I was scanning the screen, and I'm no speed-reader, to double-check his directions.

There seems to be some sort of Bermuda-triangle for Priority Mail between Virginia and Austin. The Louisiana triangle? The Tennessee triangle? My cousin and I mailed each other packages that same day, the 19th. We also both mailed packages to Maine. All packages to Maine arrived by the 24th (6 mail days) or well before. Her package to me arrived the 27th (7 mail days). Mine to her was not delivered until the 28th (8 days). Unimpressive.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
 — A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

Christmas day a few friends and I met at a middle school on South Congress to take a bike ride organized, more or less, by the Austin Cycling Association (ACA). There were five of us (Fred, MJ, Kari, Jon, and I) and maybe about fifteen total. The trip lead had maps of the route which was about 20 miles.

We went through lots of neighborhoods (I waved to you Bridget on Barrister, though I'll bet you weren't home) on a route that would be nigh impossible on any other day because of traffic. We went as far South as Ben White. As far West as Lake Austin. As far North as 53rd Street. As far East as Duval.

We took it slow and easy. The temperature started pretty cool, but I had enough layers on (which wasn't a whole lot) that it was okay and it warmed up to perfect by the end of the ride.

It wasn't all trouble-free though. Somehow, progress seemed impossibly slow at times (as in...I...can't...go...any...slower...without...toppling...over...). So the group broke into sub-groups, which is fine and normal. But then some of the people, who were in the same group, all seemed allergic to pulling out and looking at their maps. Start to finish took about 3 hours, making it the slowest 20 miles I've ever biked.

All in all it was a fun ride and I'm glad we did it. The same five of us met a little later for an afternoon Christmas dinner of Chinese food at Din Ho and then watched some videos of old Christmas movies, including the '69 Frosty the Snowman which stands the test of time well and the '73 Jack Frost which I hadn't seen in a very long time and doesn't stand up quite as well, but it was still entertaining.

A while ago, I learned about The Soup Peddler from a friend of mine, Gopi. We thought we should try some of his soup sometime.

It's an unusual operation. You have to order exactly what you want by Friday the week before you want to eat. Then, you can have it delivered, chilled, to your door in several areas in Austin on certain days of the following week, or you can go pick it up at Peddler HQ in south Austin.

What you order is what you get. No more. The menu changes each week and something offered once might not be offered again for a long time, if ever.

On a Thursday in late September, we went down to Book People where the Peddler himself, aka David Ansel, was presenting and signing his new book, Soup Peddler's Slow and Difficult Soups: Recipes and Reveries. Gopi bought the book. We still hadn't actually had any soup.

The next day, Friday, we arranged soup. I'm too far north to have it delivered, and was leaving town Thursday afternoon, so I arranged to pick it up Monday. This seemed a perfect opportunity to make a Austin event of it, so we did.

The crowd that particular evening included Gopi's brother Shankar, long time friends and neighbors Fred and MJ, and Ann, a friend of recent vintage.

We had Cioppino and Soupe au Pistou Les Montilles soups. They were both excellent, served together with saltines and oyster crackers (we had both on hand), baguette for soup sopping, and red and white wines.

Calling cioppino an Italian soup is like calling chop suey Chinese food.  It's only part of the story. This seafood stew came from the immigrant-staffed galley kitchens of San Francisco's fisherman's wharves.  Of course, nowadays it's served with white cloth napkins and fine wine.  It's another chapter in the epic story of how low culture feeds high culture, especially in the world of culinaria.

Ingredients: fish stock, shrimp, chopped clams, cod filet, carrot, celery, mushroom, green bell pepper, onion, red pepper flake, tomato paste, savory, thyme, basil, parsley, olive oil, salt, pepper

Les Montilles is a idyllic little mas, or farm, in the alluvial plains of Provence.  It was there that I was taught this, one of the planet's great soups.  Pistou is a not-so-close French relative of Italian pesto,  and it adds a bright, incomparable flavor to this hearty vegetable, bean, and pasta soup. Many thanks to Annie Marbat, pictured above, for demonstrating this recipe to me, so that I could bring it to the Soupies.  This soup requires no accompaniment, but a glass of pastis, three parts water, is the recommended aperitif.

Ingredients: leeks, tomato, zucchini, green beans, red beans, macaroni pasta, potato, carrot, basil, garlic, olive oil, salt

I also got porc provencale, which I thought was a soup too when ordering. But it wasn't. It was an entree of prepared pork loin with an accompanying sauce. It was good too, but not as outstanding as the soups. The Peddler mentioned at his book presentation how his business has been growing and branching out to offer complementary non-soup items recently.

Pigs and Frenchmen have long been at odds here in Austin... Monsieur Jean Pierre Isidore Dubois, the chargé d'affaires of the French Legation, started the infamous Pig War of 1841. A neighboring innkeeper (at 6th and Guadalupe) let his pigs roam freely through downtown, and their frequent visits to Dubois' stables ignited his ire and led to open fighting in the streets. We offer this dish in those pigs' honor...

I got a baguette from the Peddler too, but I don't think that I could tell the difference between that baguette and one from the local HEB bakery. It was a bit pricey too.

The soups were good enough that I'd journey to south Austin to get those same soups again, if I could.

The soups being served this week looked mighty tempting too, and I would have ordered them for myself for this coming Thursday, but I forgot to order them by Friday! Urgh! And the soups being offered this week for serving next week aren't nearly so tempting.

Update less than an hour after I originally posted: Well, whatd'yaknow. I just got email from the Peddler. He just added one more zip code for delivery...mine! "We'd like to announce a new delivery zip code... 78759. Welcome aboard. Your frequent, devoted trips down MoPac are no more. While we're honored that you'd go to such lengths (during rush hour, no less) to patronize our little business, we think it's better for all concerned if we just come up there and deliver. Your delivery day will be Friday ..."

On Friday a week ago, I got a call from security at work: "your car has been involved in an accident in the parking lot." As I descended the stairs, I had an unpleasant guess as to what happened, and, it turned out, I was right.

Before coming into the office building that morning, I'd sat in my car for a few minutes listening to a radio news item about hurricane Rita. Since the engine was running with the AC on, I'd shifted into neutral. Did I remember to put on the parking brake (aka emergency brake)?

As I gazed out at the parking lot, I saw the answer was "probably not," since my car wasn't where I'd parked it. Okay, so it rolled somewhere. I looked around, but couldn't see it. Security had said that they had someone at the accident site. So I looked around for a security person in a tan shirt or a security vehicle. I had an unpleasant feeling as I wandering into the neighboring lot and finally found my car, about, maybe 100 yards (90 meters) away.

My car had managed to skirt by some cement parking stops to cross into the next lot. Then it had hit a minivan which deflected it into a tree trunk, where it had finally come to rest. Thank goodness for the tree. If it hadn't been there, it would have rolled down into a large, ~4 foot (1.3 m) deep, drainage ditch. That would have been ugly. The tree didn't even leave a scratch.

Oh, and my car did an about-face on its journey, facing the opposite direction when it stopped. (My green route on the map doesn't contemplate how that happened...)

The owner of a the minivan was eventually located and came out and joined the security guard and I at the scene. She was a Vietnamese woman who worked in the same building and seemed a bit mystified by the whole event.

Fortunately, the damage to her minivan was minor since my car's bumper had hit it right in the middle of the front bumper at an angle. (It was good our bumpers matched hight! If either had been a big SUV or pickup, it all would've been worse.) The front bumper cover would clearly need replacing, but that was probably it. My own car's damage was worse because the corner of the bumper had hit the minivan, so the side panel had been scratched and bent such that it affected my opening the driver's side door.

The security guard started explaining the situation to her: we should exchanges insurance info; we could call APD (Austin Police Dept) if we wished but it was on private property and they might fill out a report, if they sent out anyone at all, but that was likely to be it; he would be filing his own paperwork which would be available shortly in case we or our insurance companies wanted it.

At this point, I respectfully took control because it was bad enough without eating up a whole day. I gave her a copy of my insurance card and didn't take her insurance info -- it was clearly entirely my fault. I said we shouldn't call APD because it was a waste of time (back in ~2000 someone ran into me in a parking lot, and after waiting a long time for APD, an officer finally showed up and gave us a blue form to fill out ourselves and mail in for statistics only; the driver that ran into me didn't take responsibility and I ended up paying for my own repair).

I immediately drove across the street to my insurance agent to set the wheels in motion to fix this little mess. Turns out that I should have taken her contact info because my insurance company needed it to call her and tell her to get her car fixed such that they'd pay. It wasn't a big mistake. I just drove back to the office and called my agent back with the info.

This past week, I had my car fixed by Rebreu Body & Frame again. And that all worked out well again.

As I was inspecting my car, I noticed a large-ish dent on the rear passenger side and also some small ripple-like-dents right behind the rear wheel well on that same corner. I've no idea when that happened, though it had to have been after my little run-in with Jesus last October. I can't imagine I would have missed the dents if Rebreu had failed to fix them back then. The dents also probably didn't occur during this accident (though there's the mystery of exactly how my car turned itself around).

I had Gene at Rebreu look at the dents. At first take, he thought it looked serious, like something had hit my car a lot harder than, say, a car door, and that my car would need a body-pull to fix structural damage. But further inspection revealed to him that there didn't seem to be any such damage. There was no evidence beyond the dent of any impact. And the paint wasn't even scratched on my rear dumper or anywhere around the dents. Very strange.

Gene gave me an estimate on getting those dents fixed, ~$850. Since it didn't appear to be the same accident, I imagined my insurance company would consider it a separate claim with another deductible payment. Ouch. So, since it's just minor cosmetic dent, I'll just wait for someone to run into my car's rear-end again.

This all reinforces the idea that it makes little sense to have a car that's particularly nice on the outside. Of course, winter salt followed by mud season in Maine had given me this same practical idea long ago.

I found a very interesting description of how to make a habanero flavored oil with controlled heat content, with a long interesting trail of comments.

This helpful hint by Diane Duane is worth preserving as I think I might find very useful at some point:

Re: touching chilies and dealing with the aftermath

When treating so-called "Hunan hand" in the emergency room, the treatment of choice is a weak bleach solution (approx. 1 tablespoon to a liter of water). Soak your hands in it briefly. The chlorine in the bleach breaks the capsaicin molecule and renders it non-hot. The pain stops immediately.

For those who get the stuff in their eyes (or for gentlemen, somewhere else they, uh, shouldn't have touched before soaking their hands in bleach...), the specific treatment is contact lens wetting solution. This also breaks the molecule.

The last couple days, I've been enjoying a jar of Mrs. Renfro's brand "Habanero Salsa" from Fort Worth, Texas, but found on my local HEB shelf here in Austin. Excellent flavor.

I'm really telling this all backwards.

A month or two ago, I started picking up "hot" HEB salsa picante, but the "hot" label seemed something of a joke. I would describe it as "strong mild." So, I bought the "extra hot" HEB Habanero salsa picante which uses habaneros rather than jalapeños for spicy flavor. The difference is dramatic: it's a lot hotter and has a much more burnt/seared pepper taste (meaning pepper as in bell pepper rather than peppercorn). I'm not too fond of the taste straight-up, which is good because it's too hot for me anyway. I found that mixing a little habanero in with the regular picante spiced it up and improved the flavor a lot.

So, after that whole little experiment, I decided to try some other local (Texas) salsas that were available on the shelves of HEB. I picked up a jar of Jardine's brand "Cilantro Texasalsa (hot)" and also a jar of Jardine's "Queso Amarillo (flame roasted flavor)" for variety. Jardine's is from just down the road in Buda.

The Queso is horrible. It looks like there's some cheese involved, but it smells and tastes a heck-of-a-lot like ranch dressing. A few chips of that and the whole jar was immediately promoted to the garbage.

The Texasalsa is great. I finished it off quickly and have another jar in my pantry.

It was then that I found Teresa's post about making the habanero oil and between that enticing discussion of the joy of the resultant flavors, I decided to try the Mrs. Renfro's Habanero Salsa, another success.

If three's the charm, an average of about 6.3 seems to be the laugh. On both The Family Guy and American Dad, the writers use a comedic technique of repeating something several too many times to make it funny. I'd guess I'd seen this before, but never so often repeated. I guess that's the writer's meta-joke -- if we can give jokes extra oomph by having a punch line repeated ad nauseam, let's do that ad nauseam! I'm not complaining. Just noticing. I think both shows are hilarious and if all goes well, will be taping them both tonight while I go play frisbee.

A few weeks ago, a friend called and suggested we go see "The Aristocrats."

I immediately said, "Sure," and with enthusiasm.

He was surprised.

The fact that I don't swear like a sailor occasionally gives some people that idea that I'm more sensitive than I am. I tend to swear more like a scuba diver -- looks like I'm happily blowing bubbles while ranting away inside my head like a sunken sailor.

So, he confirmed, "You do know what movie I'm talking about? The one about the dirty joke? Not the one with cats in it?" Yes, yes, I knew what it was. And the stellar reviews made me think it was worth watching.

At the box office, I realized that I've probably said "aristocats" as a word more than "aristocrats." When I went to buy the tickets, I correctly asked for "The Aristocrats," then second guessed my myself, asked for "Aristocats," heard the error and quickly confirmed, "Aristocrats." Geez.

The movie was hilarious. The audience as a whole obviously thought so. Naturally, some comedians were more funny than others and to different people. For myself, when I wasn't laughing, I tended to feel bad for the comedian for being so embarrassingly unfunny. In particular, would someone take Andy Dick out? (I was going to say "of his misery," but I think it's more a case of his inflicting misery on me than feeling it himself, so I'll just leave that request with the mob-ish ending.)

There were lots of brilliantly funny stuff though. In the end, I was saying that the movie lived up to the hype from all the great reviews.

Some of it was by comedians or actors I knew. Some by those I didn't know. Unfortunately, it was such a large cast of characters, I largely still don't know who's-who of the people I didn't know before the film. One of the most funny guys wasn't a stage comedian or actor himself, but was, I think, a writer.

An exception to my continued ignorance is Sarah Silverman. She was a brilliant highlight. Turns out she has a film coming out this November called "Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic" coming out which was screened at SXSW. (And there's a longer trailer that it playing before The Aristocrats. Both trailers feature potentially offensive humor.) I can't wait to see it.

Update: Not unrelated NYTimes article: Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore