More Adventurous Than You Think

Currently Reading: Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

Now, over the years I have taken quite a few sarcastic remarks and assorted jibes about being a picky eater. The rumors aren't true. I'm actually not nearly as bad as people say but I have that reputation because some of the things I don't like are very popular. For example, seafood. I'm really not a big seafood eater. I just don't like it. I tend to refer to shrimp as critters and I've never been all that big on fish. I will eat some of it. I like tuna and salmon and from time to time I even eat eel but you'll never have to fight your way past me to get to the all-you-can-eat special at Red Lobster.

Just to give you some idea of what I WILL eat though, to give you some idea of how wrong that reputation is, this is what I had yesterday for lunch:

Keema Matar: minced lamb cooked with fresh green peas, tomatoes and herbed spices
Chicken Curry: traditional dish cooked with boneless chicken, onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes and curry spices
Aloo Matar: potatoes and green peas cooked with onion and tomatoes mildly spiced
Chana Masala: garbanzo beans with ginger in a specially spiced sauce

Plus rice and some sort of appetizer that I can't find on the menu but seems to be a sort of samosa. If you guessed we were eating out, you guessed right. You may have also figured that we were eating Indian food again. Yes, CC and I hit the lunch buffet yesterday at Bombay House, our favorite Indian restaurant here in town.

Bombay House is one of the places I will certainly miss when we move to Nashville. Everything I've had there has been good, EVERYTHING. Better still, we've been going there for maybe a year and a half now and nothing has changed. The food is still just as good now as it was when we first started going there. We've been to one other Indian place that's also popular but I didn't like it nearly as much. The quality of food just wasn't the same.

So, if you're feeling like something a little different, trek on over to Bombay House. Some of the dishes are spicy but I haven't had anything that's been too hot to eat. Spicy, in the good sense of the word :-)

I picked up the latest from William Gibson yesterday. He's the guy who's credited for coining the term cyberspace. Great author. Writes really complex stuff. Unfortunately, like a lot of really great authors he doesn't write quickly. He's not the type to churn out a new novel every year or every two years for that matter. It's not uncommon to go three our four years between novels, which makes them all the more enjoyable.

His subjects tend to be tech related. The only question is how far into the future (or in one case the past) he's going. His first big trilogy was set in a very high tech future. One of his short stories is the basis for the movie Johnny Mnemonic. You may have seen that one. It pops up on cable from time to time.

Not sure where and when this latest one takes place but I seem to recall it being set in the near-future. His previous one was also set in the near future and I've yet to find out if the two are related. His first three were, so were the second three so it makes sense that some minor character from Pattern Recognition will show up as a major character in this one and will carry over into a third. That seems to be his MO.

But before I get to reading that one, I've got to finish Children of Dune. And after I read the Gibson book, I'll likley head back to Arrakis for God Emperor which will bring me back to where I started some time earlier this year. And from there? Who knows. There are two novels due out in the fall that I have on my short list so I may have some more fresh material to work with soon.

Incidentally, the second of those awful Dune books is out now. It's a freaky attempt to link the whole Dune saga together with the really awful prequel and sequel novels that Frank Herbert's son has been doing. You'd think he'd have learned from the whole Chris Tolkien thing. Never mess with someone else's fictional mythos, even if it was created by your own family. Resist the temptation to try and build on that because it won't work. It would have been better if he'd taken all his ideas and just set them WAY WAY in the future. Use the same fictional world if he wants, just don't try and link up with the past like that. It always bites you in the ass.

Still hot here in the south. I'm seeing forecasts for today ranging from 104 to 107. Tomorrow it's going to cool down a bit. It'll only be 101. Then we get a MAJOR rush of cold air, dropping it all the way down to 96 on Saturday. I remember something like this happening in 2000, about the same time of year too. I was in Manila at the time visiting CC and it was actually MUCH cooler over there than it was here. I missed the entire heat wave. By the time I got back things were normal again. No such luck this time unfortunately. But that's ok. It just reminds me of summer in Texas.

Besides, it's hard to complain too much about the weather when there's actual football going on now. Yes, it's only pre-season but it's still football played by the NFL and not some lower level minor league wannabe kinda thing. I'm even getting to see maybe 4 games a week. They're playing at night and I don't work nights anymore so this is a good thing.

Well, time to crawl into the safety and coolness of the bedroom. I'll probably stay there until the sun goes down or at least until the dogs REALLY need to go out. Place just gets too damn hot here in the afternoon.