the world is your acorn

It’s an impulsive day. Well, not that impulsive because I pretty much walked out of the house this morning and said to The Little Red Haired Girl, “I’m going to buy something today.” The impulsive part is that, once I have that idea in my head, it’s like I’ve given myself permission to do it, and I can’t let it go. So, I was going to buy a flatscreen LCD monitor to replace the gigantic CRT at home, but that seems way too practical. So instead I am going to buy these things:

The Flip Camcorder is a small, lightweight recorder that does up to 60 minutes of 640×480 video. It’s built for taking short video wherever you go then uploading and sharing quickly. Even cooler, there’s this underwater case that you can get for $40. If/when I pull the trigger on this thing (I’m making myself wait until after lunch), look forward to waterskiing video all summer!

After having a fire lit under my ass about exploring the restaurants down on Nolensville Road, The Little Red Haired Girl, The Superheroes and I hit Istanbul Cafe last week for our kickoff Nolensville Wednesday. I hate to say, I was a little disappointed. Maybe we just didn’t order the right thing. Stupidly we forgot to check the article from Good Magazine to find out what the recommended thing was.

We started off with some fantastic stuffed grape leaves, which I forgot to get a picture of. They just looked like 7 grape leaves on a plate, anyway. The Superheroes ordered a salmon plate and white bean soup while we ordered some sort of meat combo. The entrees were so-so, but cheap with huge portions. We thought most of the things on our plate were too salty. The salmon that The Superheroes ordered didn’t seem to come with everything as described on the menu, but there was still plenty of food and the salmon was quite good. The service was strange and inattentive I thought, and we never got the olives that we thought we ordered. The Little Red Haired Girl and I talked about this later and decided that we never actually expect the service to be all that good in small cheap eateries. But if the food isn’t great, then it becomes an issue for some reason.

Anyway, I’m not sure we’ll go back to Istanbul Cafe, but if someone invited me I wouldn’t refuse. I think I might ask for recommendations about what to order though. I’m not discouraged about Nolensville Wednesday either. Wherever we end up this week, I’ll make sure I do a little more research about what to order.

not really safe for work, unless you have headphones.

“Food Fight” [via Boing Boing]

My mom often sends me bizarre, hilarious, and/or infuriating emails. Occasionally I post them here. Well today Brittney twittered about this blog, which is a compilation of a bunch of MomMail. Fantastic.

The Little Red Haired Girl is gone for the weekend, and I seem to have lost my mind. I baked and am now eating a Pillsbury cinnamon bun for breakfast. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Pillsbury ready to bake products. I actually spend a lot of time stuffing them with sundry other items. I just don’t usually partake in sweet baked goods. I just don’t enjoy them that much, and I rarely crave them without some sort of hormonal encouragement. Give me a salty snack any day. Well, now that I’m eating this one, I have no idea what I’ll do with the other 4. Maybe I’ll use them as some sort of hamburger or hot dog bun.

“I’m just like, tired of being preppy all of a sudden,…”

For three years now I’ve been complaining about the lack of good ethnic food in Nashville, all the while knowing that I haven’t really checked out Nolensville Rd. Shame on me, I know, but it’s just always seemed too insider, too hard to figure out where to go. Well, now I have somewhere to start. GOOD Magazine listed it as one of America’s 7 tastiest streets for affordable food, and they name five “Don’t Miss” restaurants:

ABAY ETHIOPIAN RESTAURANT 3792 Nolensville Pike
Try the: Meat combo with seven items

NORMAN COUSER’S COUNTRY COOKING 3754 Nolensville Road
Try the: Fried chicken

ISTANBUL CAFÉ 2631 Nolensville Road
Try the: Lahmacun

LA HACIENDA MARISQUERIA 3744 Nolensville Road
Try the: Fish tacos

PARISA’S 2424 Nolensville Pike
Try the: Fessenjoon

I’m psyched to go forth and pop my Nolensville cherry. Now I just have to find some folks to share my local eating adventure with. Anyone?

“Good Magazine names streets around the country with cheap and tasty food” [via Slashfood]

I visited New York a couple weeks ago with The Little Red Haired Girl, Lady E, and The Superheroes. Here are some of the delicious things we ate while there:

Noodle Soup with Chicken at Mee Noodle Shop on 9th at 53rd:

Foie Gras at Les Halles on Park Ave (it looked way better that this photo):

Noodle soup with duck at Noodles on 28 on 3rd at 28th:

Ceviche, steamed crab in banana leaf, and plantain encrusted goat cheese at Esperanto on C and 9th:

I have no idea how old this news is, but I’ve just discovered it. First, when you login to your online Nashville Public Library account now you can get Due Date Email Reminders and “My Reading History.” The Reading History is not retroactive, and you have to click a button to “Opt In” in order for them to keep track, but it could be useful somewhere down the line. I’m most excited about Due Date Email Reminders. I rarely get to read outside of my school reading, and when I think I’ll have a couple of days to do that I generally get greedy and take out more books than I have time for. Of course instead of returning them when I realize this is true, I hold out hope and renew as many times as I can. An irresponsible renewer does not keep track of when her books are newly due, has no paper record of it, and ends up with library fines. I think NPL is pretty lenient with library fines, and I have had $2.10 outstanding for half a year now, but I’d still like to not accrue them if possible. Anyway, the email reminders come 2 days before, so hopefully that’ll be enough of a window for me to do the right thing.

The other new and exciting thing the NPL website has going on is the new Encore catalog search. It’s a bit more sophisticated than the old catalog, although not fully integrated into the other functions available on the NPL site. Here’s some screens of what it looks like. It’s definitely more user-friendly and navigable.

The Search Result Page:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

The Item Page:

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Now all I really want is for them to have a better login system. Currently the site doesn’t allow you to stay logged in if you leave your account area. It’s frustrating. Also, just a tip for any firefox users like me who does not have her library card number memorized, I use the Signature extension to remedy that problem.