The mixed olives (house-marinated with fennel and orange) and pickled eggs (with wild onion chives) were, collectively, the best $5 I’ve spent on food. Yes, the bowl of olive was $3 and the bowl of pickled eggs (two, split in half) was $2.

Jodi’s orecchiette with hedgehog and shiitake mushrooms in a roasted garlic and cream sauce ($13) was, dollar for dollar, almost that good, and that’s like saying that having the second-best orgasm in history is almost as good as having the best.

My ‘veg plate’ ($14) was a sampling of five things, presented in a meter-long trough as if it were a deconstruction. From left to right:

• Spicy vegetable slaw: they’re not kidding, this tasted like cabbage and onions pickled in jalapeño, but in a good way.
• Braised collards: a good-sized serving, cooked thoroughly but not to steam-table extremes, salted just enough to bring out the flavor.
• Sautéed mushrooms: a bit dry, a bit chewy, not as flavorful as I’d have hoped.
• Steamed creamer potatoes: unremarkable, mostly flavorless.
• Petite salad: immaculate greens with pickled onion slivers.

We shared our olives with the table, and they shared with us a taste of two red wines (I don’t remember which) and five delicious cheeses:

• Nellie Bell’s feta with pickled onion: this may be the only onion dish Jodi has ever enjoyed.
• Luna’s fresh chevre with lambrusco jelly: delicious, though a sesame bagel with cream cheese and peach jam this morning was very good in the same way.
• Truffle sottocenere [redundant for emphasis, I'd imagine] with local honey: Jodi had the last bit of this; I think we’ve had it at Wild Oats and could probably find it again.  She loved it.
• Nevat with fresh thyme: I don’t remember tasting this, actually.
• Tilston Point blue with raisin chutney: very tasty, well paired.

We also shared a molten chocolate cake (really a souffle of eggs, butter, and cocoa — and perhaps a speck of flour) with crème fraîche, and had some delicious coffee.

The bill was somewhat sinful, but the experience (two to three hours of excellent food, drink, and conversation) was worth it.

And, as a bonus, after I put a couple of bucks into the guitarist’s case and asked him if the song he’d been playing was by Eliades Ochoa (it wasn’t originally, but he thought Ochoa’s recording was the best he’d heard), he played guajiro music all night.

• Got up at 6:30am for a brief workout (and actually did a brief workout).
• Managed, finally, to get connected to the worst wi-fi network ever.
• Spent the afternoon being the volunteer technical liaison to the hotel’s IT department in an effort to resolve technical problems that had been plaguing the entire conference.  (See previous item.)

Three things that made me happy today:

• Seeing that lots of people had taken me up on my recommendation of The Grit for dinner (hey, guys, they have a cookbook too…)
• Spending the evening with Jodi
• Learning that a friend’s husband may soon be pain-free and living a happy life

“Pardon me, ma’am, do y’all have sweet tea?”

“Uh, we will, for lunch.  We’ll put it out at eleven o’clock.”

“Oh, man.  I’m gonna have to go tell my wife that we’re in Georgia and there’s no sweet tea!”

Puzzled, she asked, “For breakfast?“

I hadn’t realized that was odd, so I shrugged and said sheepishly, “She’s from Pittsburgh.”

“Oh.  I’m sorry.”

Jodi’s joining me for the trip, though she won’t be registered for the conference.  Which is a shame, because I think she might dig Fun with ZeroConfMetaOpenSearch or Library Data APIs Abound!.

If any of my readers have hints about fabulous vegetarian food in Athens, Georgia, please speak up.  We’ll have some sort of Internet access here (code4lib would brook no less).

I’ve sent Facebook invitations and I hope you’ll all join the Vaxers group that I started (it’s the one that you can see even if you don’t have an email address ending in .ufl.edu).  The group’s URL is http://usf.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2245167545 — and if you haven’t gotten a Facebook invitation yet, let me know and I will send you one.

• Alerted a friend that she was indeed invited to the party in Gainesville.
• Met a lot of new people at the Tampa party.
• Drove to Gainesville.

Three things that made me happy yesterday:

• Seeing a lot of cool vagina merch on display at the Tampa party
• Taking some fun photos at the Tampa party
• Writing down a bunch of quotes at the Gainesville party

I apparently had a lot of fun in a friend’s imagination yesterday too, but I’m not counting that because I didn’t find out until today, and sadly it was merely imaginary (this time)…

• Inflicted my little bit of interactive fiction on a playtester, the lovely
  tally_cat

   , and added a new verb at her suggestion.

• Installed MediaWiki 1.6.9 on a RHEL 4 (and therefore PHP 4) server.
• Almost totally rearranged the living room to provide a somewhat quieter sleeping space, more room for exercise, and more seating.

Three things that made me happy today:

• Getting a workout with Yourself! Fitness for the Playstation (man, Maya’s legs use a hell of a lot less Δv than mine do — I’m not sure I could ever match her pace)
• Unsolicited compliments from the aforementioned lovely
  tally_cat
• Having a night to myself
  

We’re still going to pay the other half of the furniture purchase so as not to waste the first half, and we still need a mattress set.

But other than that, we’ll have to be careful.

I think that means we’ll have to find a free place to stay tomorrow night in Gainesville or else we can’t go to Mardi Frog.  That would be bitterly ironic, since it involves only a fifth of the driving that Mardi Frog usually does.  I’m appalled that going to a VAX party two hours away might be out of reach for us.  (We can’t just go for the day because we have to put in a nontrivial appearance at a 3pm Tampa party — which will also be fun, but prevents the “leave Tampa at 10am, stay from noon until 8pm, drive home” plan.)

Fortunately, I will be driving to Athens GA soon for company business, which means that a good chunk of money will be expensing its way into our bank account.  (Even at 44.5 cents per mile, it’s still cheaper for the company than any other method.)

Also fortunately, we’ve got about $200 in Target furniture that we decided not to use, and can return for a credit-card refund.

But jeez.  Just… jeez.

• Taught big boss how to use WordPress
• Learned how to write interactive fiction with Inform 7 (it’s a lot easier than you’d think)
• Successfully navigated a dinner party hosted by someone I didn’t know very well yet

Three things that made me happy today:

• Vegetarian abenkwan (Ghanaian palm-nut soup)
• Talking with a coworker about “How I Met Your Mother” (there are finally some good episodes again)
• Jodi offered to watch a Star Trek movie with me soon, not because she likes Star Trek, just because she wants to watch things with me.  (Though if she’s going to make that sacrifice, I think we should at least wait until Amanda’s back at home so she can enjoy it too.