Hippie Birdie

to britgeekgrrl
May this year be brilliant.

Ho Hum

Boring/bored today. Vacuumed. Took the bike out for a ride, did about a mile loop in the neighborhood with an iced tea stop at the nearby Starbucks halfway, then  came home to pump up the tires. Front was fine but rear was down to 40 out of 70 psi - I thought it felt more like 60 when I left the parking lot. The bike goes a lot faster with pumped tires. Drove out to Shoreline Ave & back, explored Whisman Park and discovered the secret route through the middle school campus back to the apartment, which saved about a 3-block slog. Only rode 4 miles all told. 

After lunch drove to the Pear Ave Starbucks where the eye candy is a lot better than my local one, and picked up a 6-pack of Buzz Cola at the Kwik-E-Mart (this was the first time they have had any in my many visits).

Had the urge to eat somewhere new for dinner, so went downtown (Mountain View). Several newly-opened places, none appealed to me. They had a few blocks of Castro roped off for what had been a "Cultural Festival" aka poorly promoted, poorly advertised street fair. Then I remembered my co-workers had recommended a place called Elephant Ear, somewhere in Cupertino or Santa Clara. Grabbed my laptop out of the car, walked over to the train station and hijacked a signal from a restaurant (Google had no signal strength!) and looked online. No Elephant Ear restaurant anywhere. Lots of recipes for elephant ears, though. Went to Yelp and punched in Elephant and found it is called Elephant Bar, Stevens Creek between Wolfe & DeAnza. Closer to Wolfe. On the way there I saw Valco is now Cupertino Center, and the big construction on the Sears side is done, it's all AMC now. They are still working on the JC Penney side, looks like it will have a multi-story parking garage.

Elephant Bar is a new, mildly jungle-themed restaurant & bar. Elephant head carved into one wall, elephant head cut-outs above the bar. Some of the chairs have zebra and tiger stripe upholstery, most do not. Cute teardrop-shaped fans on a mechanical crankshaft above the reception desk, not moving much air but looking Theme. Prices are mostly reasonable for a fad place, portions are mostly generous. My side salad was small and over-priced but the braised lamb shank was a decent price for a single shank, and there were two on the plate, with a goodly slather of mashed potato and veggies. Sprung for dessert, their lava cake was tiny, but too rich for me to finish. The three small scoops of vanilla ice cream were needed to cut the sugary taste, and the macadamia pieces were a nice touch. Service was inconsistent. It took forever for a waiter to take my order, but the food arrived quickly, and he was there when I needed dessert and the check. Despite the good stuff, I won't be back there by myself ever again - it is incredibly noisy and crowded. Crowded as in they will no doubt get a warning from the fire marshal if they keep putting tables where there is supposed to be aisle space.

Plans for tomorrow:
First day as a Motorola employee, among other things will put in for my vacation  and see if I can get a phone/answering machine on employee purchase price.
After work, meeting seamoose on a mission involving shiny things.