Friday, March 7, 2014

Breakfast at home: a small bowl of granola with unsweetened soy milk. Rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Edited and replaced an image for Nadav due to a misspelling he had found. Drupal gallery content build, testing, and troubleshooting with Eric. Late lunch at The Corner Store (415-359-1800, 5 Masonic Avenue, San Francisco) which sounds like a grocery but is instead a restaurant. In the past I have browsed the menu in the window and have since avoided it because it seems like one of the priciest restaurants in the area. Today I happened upon it just at the start of happy hour (3:00 PM), when prices for certain items are a smidge cheaper than they are on the regular lunch menu. I sat at the bar. All the indoor seating was otherwise empty. All the patio seating was full. I ordered the niman ranch burger with fries and a Blue Bottle americano with cream. All coffee drinks are double-shot by default. They played classic David Bowie and Talking Heads. The bar shelves include several house-made concoctions such as baked apple bitters. A glass of water was served by default. My coffee arrived within a few minutes after that. Oddly, the woman who brought me my coffee didn't offer me cream or sugar. A minute or two after my coffee had arrived, my server asked me and brought me cream right away. The wait for the burger seemed like 15 or 20 minutes. The burger (niman ranch chuck, aged cheddar, pickled red onion, bread and butter pickle, garlic aioli, bacon jam) is artfully presented and is filled with an interesting variety of flavors and textures. I had ordered it medium well, but I could find no hint of pink in any bite. I considered what I received to have been well done, but I did not complain. If I return, I'll order it medium rare or medium. I find their menu's hairline-thin, typewritery, monospace fonts 1950s-charming but very unpleasant to read both on paper and onscreen. Their website uses Virb and is awful—framesets and full-page jpegs. After eating, I realized that I had forgotten to do something at the doctor's office, so I returned to Kaiser on foot, then walked back to work. More gallery content build and testing. Rode Muni bus 6 to 9th and Judah. Bought dim sum at Wing Lung Bakery. The wait for Muni was too long, so I rode UberX home in 10 minutes including wait time for $8.48 including tip—totally worth it since Muni would have taken another 40 minutes. Late dinner at home by myself: dim sum from Hing Wang Bakery. Among other items I ate, I found the pork sticky rice much too sticky. It included (five-spice?) egg yolk which was interesting for the flavor but there was too much of it, and it overpowered the rice with its dryness. Recharge Spa work: various web edits, more work on services and allergy testing and treatment. Accidentally worked all night then realized that my cold symptoms are changing and that I now have a runny nose and sneezing.