The Random Ramblings of Samm Diep

Old Memories & New...

I finally broke down today and unpacked my laundry from my recent two week trip to Minneapolis/Louisville. Amazingly, after not doing any laundry for a month, once I separated it all out, there are only five loads to do (not including the two more loads of sheets). That's where all that extra clothes comes in handy. Teehee...

Mike asked me to check out a Miele washer at a couple appliance stores in my area. After taking a wrong turn, I found myself on Smith Road near Tower Road, passing the exact location where I rolled my very first car almost exactly 15 years ago.

It was March 19, 1993 around 9p.m. and I was on my way home from an orchestra concert with my BFF at the time, Letitia, and we were dropping off my cellist friend, Brian. It was dark and I was a young, new driver. Back then, there were no businesses or much paving on Smith Road, especially no appliance showrooms, and when I caught that dirt shoulder, I was too inexperienced to know how to correct it.

I rolled my white 1986 Toyota Corolla hatchback which I'd only had for two weeks that only had liability insurance on it (yeah, dad was NOT happy). I broke the front axle and my violin was launched about 20 feet from the trunk window.

Miraculously, we all survived. We all had our seatbelts on and escaped with nothing more than a few scrapes.

I remember the date clearly because exactly one year before that, on the same day, Letitia was driving me home with her permit and her mom in the back seat when a hit-n-run driver t-boned us and she was thrown from the car, cracking her head open on the street and was left with a permanent scar (which appears to have healed quite nicely since then).

Coincidentally, but completely unrelated, I also purchased Curby, my 1998 Honda CR-V, on March 19, 1997. So, I guess that means it's almost his 10th Birthday in a couple months.

Anyway, enough reminiscing. Those were the old memories. Here are the new ones:

Last Thursday was a great day! It began with a visit to Denny's at 10 in the morning. I brought Alvina with me to help him with some iPhoto stuff. Afterwards, we checked out a new restaurant called "Old Guy Pasta & Salad Express" (unless you're looking at the back of the menu, then it reads "Old Guy Pasta and Sapad") There's more misspellings in this menu than a copy of "I came to win."

Anyway, this place describes themselves as an Italian-Chinese fusion. Never one to pass up a food challenge, I was very excited to check it out. It's $4.50 all day. This price includes your choice of a pasta (this is the Italian part), sauce (watch out for the garlic sauce), side salad (where they just tell you what kind of dressing you're having), one or two meats (this is the Chinese part I guess), and either a soft drink or a small cabbage salad.

Some photos shown in the menu include: Sesame "Chikcen", Meat Balls, & Pasta, Beef Rib (which actually weren't bad) & Pasta, or you could get the Shrimp, Crabmeat & Pasta.

First of all, there's nothing fusion about placing two ethnically contrasting foods side by side on a plate and smothering them with a mutual sauce. It was a frightening experience.

I can't do it justice with words. It was scary. I'll just leave it at that.

Fortunately, boba saved the day! We introduced Denny to boba and it made it almost all better. Well, that is, until the faux garlic burps initiated the side pot on how long the place will stay in business for. 2 months, 3 months, or 6 months?

After we dropped Denny off so he could get back to work Vina brought me to the Truffle Cheese Shop. OMG! I love this place!!!! Janet, whom I coined our resident "cheese-xpert" behind the counter was incredibly knowledgeable and friendly. They had just about every cheese you could imagine and the coolest thing is that you can sample any of them!!!

We left with a few goodies:

• Piave, aged cow's milk from Veneto, Italy
• Seal Bay, a triple creamed cow's milk from New Zealand
  
• Goat Gouda, an aged goat's milk from the Netherlands
• Duck Liver Mouse pate (YUM-MYYYYYY!!!)
• And some dried strawberries (Delicious!), pears, and blueberries

I can't wait to bring Mike back to the cheese shop so we could pick some things out for our cheese blog.

It was truly the perfect day...

posted by Samm @ 1/28/2008 08:55:00 PM