Chattanooga

I'm very fond of Chattanooga. Or, as a sticker I saw called it, "Noog". The city has clearly been making an effort, for many years now, and it shows. It's doing things right that so many cities, of any size get wrong -- targeting neighborhoods for redevelopment, encouraging a diversified economy, encouraging local arts, renovating and expanding public spaces. There are real neighborhoods in the city. Free electric shuttle buses on the tourists routes downtown. What's most impressive to me are the number of local shops. It's too easy to give over all shopping to chains. It's great to see the support of local entrepreneurs. There's even good sushi. It's one of the few cities that small that seems livable to my tastes (normally I get that feeling only in much bigger cities).

Perfect day with the kids:

• Chattanooga Aquarium. Two buildings now. I love the conceit of the original building: a vertically-aligned experience that starts at the top as a mountain trout stream, and winds its way down to the gulf.
• Lunch at Big River Brewery. Decent beers. Stout variable, IPA is excellent. Some home-made sodas for the kids with free refills, too. Roomy, good service, both family-friendly and adult-friendly. The menu does not push the envelope, but they really seem to take pride in the execution -- both the separate pizza oven and the main kitchen are open to public view -- and the food has always been impressively good for me. E.g. the kids chicken tenders are made from strips of actual chicken.
• Cross the river on the cool pedestrian bridge and wander around the North Shore. Stop at River City Cycle shop, because it's cool. Stop at the kayak shop and ogle the kit there. Drop by the excellent used book shop and local folk art shop. Pet the shop dogs. Step through all the dances helpfully diagrammed on the sidewalks.
  
• Clumpies: encourage children to eat their own bodyweight in ice cream.
• Wander around the riverfront park, back across the river, watch a movie or grab coffee (I like Perky Piranha) or amble about.
• Catch a Lookouts game at the downtown park. AA ball, Southern League. I like sitting on the 3rd base side, right behing the visitors' dugout. Man, those guys are nice. I thought so a while ago when a visiting coach tossed my oldest a ball. This trip, one of the players gave my youngest a bat that had developed a hairline crack. Talk about a cool souvenir!
• Have kids fall asleep on the way home. They'll wake up later to throw up.

Plenty of good stuff for adults, too. We used to like staying at the Bluff View Inn, but more recently much prefer the Mayor's Mansion Inn, right at the edge of the university and more our style. The Bluff View Art District is still worth a visit. It's heavy on crafts, moreso than art, in many instances, but still should have something of interest for everyone. The Hunter Museum is up there, too -- have seen excellent photo exhibits there in the past. And very nice views. The North Shore is fun. Good little sushi place, in addition to the shops. And Clumpies of course.

Maple Vanilla Walnut Ice Cream

In general I think it's a huge mistake to go for low-carb versions of high-carb foods (more about that in a future post), but ice cream is a great weakness of mine, plus ice cream has a good low-carb foundation (unlike, say, bread). So I borrowed Hyperlipid's ice cream recipe. Can't get double cream here, so heavy/whipping cream had to do. I used 1 pint heavy cream, 6 egg yolks, 1 tsp. vanilla extract, and 2 Tbsp maple syrup. I prefer grade B maple syrup but seems impossible to get now, so grade A it was. It was quite good. It will not taste sweet at all if you're not already used to being sugar-free, but was fine for me. Something like 40g carbs for the whole thing, and easily feeds two people with a high tolerance for rich ice cream. My oldest and I split it. We made it again a couple days later, this time throwing in (at the end) a heap of chopped walnuts. Even better!

Size in the States, or, "no, really, just stop eating carbs"

No matter how frequently I return to the US, I never cease to be amazed at the size of the cars and the size of the people. To be sure, there are plenty of slender folk, but the normalization of the huge is startling to the unacclimated eye.

I renewed my US driver's license yesterday. The woman in charge of license renewals at the courthouse was very nice, truly sweet, and really efficient (a rare and wondrous combination in the public sector). Although young and attractive, she was carrying a lot of extra weight. I've lost forty pounds since I last renewed the license, and as we changed this detail she seemed genuinely pleased and impressed, and asked me how I'd done it, leading with a question about exercise. I said that basically I'd just cut back on carbs. She didn't seem to believe it. After some other administrative details were taken care of for the license, she again asked me I'd really done it just with diet, or I'd also been walking, running, etc. I explained I really had lost the weight just by cutting out most carbs (at this point I simplified and just said, "mainly just elminated all sugar and all wheat", at which point she said she wished she could do that but laughed that she couldn't). I admitted I do now exercise regularly, because I enjoy it, but I didn't start until after the weight was lost. Pure diet, low-carb, not exercise. I still don't think she believed it. She's likely been getting, and will continue to get, terrible advice about "healthy eating" and how to lose weight. I was sensitive to not being a zealot but would gladly have provided more information, but, like I said, she was efficient and there were other people in line.

Tour de France

Winds up today. Great coverage this year. The most surprising thing is how many participants are now on twitter, posting away over the course of the event. I think other sports should pick up on this: how cool would it be to have a bunch of NFL players, for example, micro-blogging at halftime?

Bad Dumbledore

Richard Harris is a hard act to follow, but still, Michael Gambon's Dumbledore has really annoyed me. I haven't seen the latest yet, but so far he's been the odd man out of the otherwise stellar casting job. I've enjoyed his work in many other films, but as Dumbledore he comes across as twitchy and grouchy, displaying none of the cool, calm, collected ass-kicker plus elfin mischievousness of the book character. Peter O'Toole would've done a nice turn I think. But I think the ultimate Dumbledore would've been Cate Blanchett. The sparkle in the eyes, the secret smile, yet someone to be afraid of being on the wrong side of. When I remake the whole thing as a 70-hour TV series, she's my Dumbledore.

The Goofy Shoes In Use

I've now had a chance to wear the Vibram FiveFingers shoes in a variety of conditions. Overall, I'm really enjoying them. They are a pleasure to wear. They've done well on trails, in woods (except the exposed ankles are a problem), on most gravel, on sand, on large rocks and boulders. They've been fine in water, although not so good on wet algae-covered rocks (treaded water shoes do better). Good on pavement and such as well. Very comfortable. They did poorly on larger gravel -- from golfball-sized to fist-sized pieces -- but most shoes do poorly on that shit. Gravel just smaller, painful in bare feet, is perfectly fine in the vibrams. I heartily recommend them.

New Shoes

Just got a pair of these and so far I love them. Yes, the toes are a bit gimmicky -- a version with a regular forefoot would be interesting to try -- but they feel great. Have tried them on gravel, rocks, and a bit of trail. No extended-wear yet.

Reverse Dude Ranch

New business idea: instead of a ranch where office-bound folks can pretend to be cowboys for a few days, an office holiday destination where ranch workers can experience the thrill of cubicle farms and middle management. No, Hoss, you can't do that release until you've put in the change request form and had it signed off by the release manager, business sponsor, senior dev mgr, and someone from the blackout approval group. And don't forget to use the correct project code in your time tracker....

Sunday In The Village

Sunny and pleasant today. Stopped by the butcher shop and picked up another pork knuckle. JJ slow-cooked one the other day and it made the best pulled pork without a smoker. The joint came skin on, of course, and that baked into a hard crust as everything inside melted itself into perfection. I scraped the meat out with a couple forks (the bones ended up perfectly clean) and tossed with some home-made carolina vinegar sauce. Looking forward to the next one. Also picked up some more sausages -- they had toulouse, which I'd been fixated on lately anyway, on sale. And they were excited about their newest creation, a pork and stilton, so I tried that. Unlike the toulouse, which is a hearty, garlicky, sausage with some bite, they went with a much finer grind on the pork and stilton. Very civilized but excellent flavor all-around. Definitely getting more of that.

The shopfront that used to be my beloved Frock's has finally reopened as a wine store, which not only sells by the bottle but sells tastings automatically vended. The machines won't be online for a few more days, but they seem cool. They use smartcards but I think they missed a trick by not making them oyster-card enabled. The shop is right by a bus stop, would be handy to duck in on the morning commute, swipe the oyster card, and fill up a travel mug with a fortifying eye-opener. Maybe I'll suggest it. When they announced what the shop would be, I did a little research and found a couple articles from four or five years ago about this sort of wine-dispensing automation being used in San Francisco bars. One critic dismissively sniffed something about how "the midwest" would love this sort of thing but it won't fly on the coast. Which I found hilarious as I can't imagine it generating much interest in the midwest. I also think it's a good concept. I'm also a midwesterner. Or was. Curious, now, I looked up the manufacturer. Their list of installations in the US is nearly 100% east and west coast, not a single one in the midwest. For the London setup, they should've considered a steampunk look, but looks like clean stainless steel minimalism instead. Regardless, should do well.

We could really use a fishmonger now.

Arguing Economics

My friend Mike the mad financialist has pointed out an excellent economics blog that I'm now enjoying. Here's the perfect sample post. In a nutshell, it encapsulates the entire debate currently ongoing. Read the comments to see what I mean. The first comment (from someone who doesn't know what Keynesian theory is but is certain he doesn't like it) fluffs up the debt and inflation strawmen that seem popular on American airwaves. The subsequent official response, 3 comments lower, is brilliant.

"When it comes to future generations, my concern is not that we will shaft them by leaving them with too much debt but that we will shaft them by leaving them with too little of what really matters"

Better than a golf course

Someone's invented the concept of living near small farms. Wow! How innovative. Add some shops and we will have invented the village.