For the last couple days, I've had a horrid itch on my right arm. Tried lotions, no luck. Finally went to the doc and went through the expected questions. No new laundry soap, pets, and do on. I did mention I did prepare a pig head last Wednesday night. "A pig head?" "Oh yeah." "Hm. That's a first" So after more talk the conclusion is dermatitis, likely from the cleaner I was using afterwards to clean the kitchen sink. Or was it Porky's revenge? Did he exude some toxin from one of his piggy glands? Some anti-predator poison? I'll never know.

View Photos of Washington D.C., August 2009

First off, about the photos. I lost my nice camera either at home or on the way to the airport. It's gone. The photos here were all done with my camera phone, so yeah, they are not exactly high quality. Beats nothing, though!

The Hotel

Okay, so it goes like this: Our trip to D.C. this time was so I could attend CFUnited 2009, a ColdFusion developers conference. The conference itself was a few hours out of D.C., in beautiful Lansdowne, Virginia. Well, my wife and I spent 3 days in D.C. first, though, so we could be tourists.

I decided to give Orbitz a shot, and did indeed lock in a 3 night stay at the Hyatt Regency at $89/night. This is pretty much less than half price. But wait, that ain't all. We get to the Hyatt at 11 p.m., and ask if we can get a room with a single king bed instead of two twin beds. The reservation lady drops a huge surprise on us, they only got one room left, and it's a nice suite. We get it for the $89/night!

This pic so doesn't do it justice. This room is more like a full-blown apartment. All the amenities. Full bathroom with separate shower. Coffee maker with built-in bean grinder. Computer, couch, sofa, big dining table, all that. I think the room is intended to be a war room for politicians. It had two of those double-door doors which connect to adjoining doors, handy for cronies or secret service buddies. Weird thing is, we opened one of the doors, and there is a person sleeping on their bed! The dude kept his door of the double-door wide open! Weird. We called up the front desk and they sent somebody up who dealt with the situation. A bit odd. Anyhow, I'm guessing this was a thousand dollar a night room. We got so spoiled.

Just a couple blocks away is Union Station. Sorry, no photos. Union Station is where the train meets the Metro. It also is where armies of homeless converge, turning the area into an American Calcutta. No joke. It's pretty sad, really. Within, though, is Au Bon Pain, where we scored goodies to eat at all hours. Great cookies, breakfast sandwiches, whatever. Fantastic.

We attended the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, our first tennis tourney ever. Saw Andy Roddick lose to Del Potro. Argh. Really wanted Andy to win.

Anybody mention that parts of D.C. are pretty much "the 'hood'?" Yeah they are. We took the Metro out of D.C. and to Silver Spring, MD. Along the way is some major 'hood graffiti, right off of the train track. Where else would it be?

Oh yeah, we did do something pretty cool. Turns out right on the Red Line is the longest escalator in North America, right in Wheaton Station. I don't have video of it, but this guy does.. Took what, 2 minutes and 43 seconds? Yeah, that was it. That's all we did in Wheaton Station. Got off the Metro, went up the escalator, went back down it, got back on the next Metro.

Well, anyhow, we did that and more in D.C., then headed to Lansdowne, Virginia, for the conference I was attending. Tell you what; other than the conference, there wasn't that much interesting in or about Lansdowne. So, ahh, that's about it. Bye!

I have a Motorola RAZR cellphone. Nowadays this is a positively old phone, but I still use it. I got a utility to download the photos to my PC, but unfortunately, the images are labeled in DD-MM-YY_####.jpg format. Also, the utility I use to get photos off of my phone, well, all the file dates come out as 1969.

So, for a photo taken July 31, 2009; it is labeled 31-07-09_1234.jpg. Doesn't sound like a problem until you try to sort them. What a pain. I see no way to change the auto naming on the phone, either.

The problem? Photos are named DD-MM-YY_####. The desired result? Rename them in YYYY-MM-DD_#### format. So what's the solution? Well, I happen to have a server running Ubuntu Linux, so the solution to fixing the file dates is a one-liner.

I copy the files to a directory on my server, get a terminal session started, navigate to the directory with the photos, and issue this command:

Unlike the 'rename' command in other flavors of linux, the Ubuntu version uses regular expressions (aka "regex") to do the rename. This particular regex shuffles the DD-MM-YY format to YY-MM-DD, and plops a "20" in front of the year, to turn a "09" into a "2009". The 'rename' command itself is applied to all files in the current directory ending in ".jpg"

Our trip to Hawaii in the summer has left me with a few pounds I have not been able to shake off. So to that end, I have agreed to follow Deanna's Weight Watchers plan. Before saying a tearful goodbye to my old ways, I had to go out with a bang. I decided it was going to be dim sum, a festival of fried goodness like no other.

Earlier in the week I did up some char siu pork steaks, and saved one for this purpose. I picked up some leup cheung (pronounced "lop chong"), green onion, and shrimp. Out came the big cleaver, and I minced all the stuff up into a nice filling, liberally adding in hoisin sauce, Chinese 5 spice, and a bit of sesame oil.. Some nice round gyoza wrappers and square wonton wrappers completed the ingredients list.

The square wrappers were used to make some nice fried wontons, generously stuffed, unlike the skimpy wontons which are often found in Anchorage. The round wrappers I used to make potstickers, which are certainly available locally in good quantity and quality, but I just like making them myself.

The potstickers, I cooked in a large pan by putting in a dab of sesame oil, frying 'em on both sides, then adding in chicken broth and putting on the lid for 10 minutes. The potstickers got that classic "crunchy but wet" texture, quite nice, if not a bit soggy. Next time I need to watch the pan closer.

The wontons came out fine, receiving a 5-minute bath in the deep fryer with the oil at 340 f.

Although I don't have a photo for 'em, I also fried up some banana, which I did by cutting up two not-quite-ripe bananas, and tossing them in a mix of instant pancake flour, Splenda, and cinnamon. Those also got the 5-minute deep fry.

I lost track of how many plates I had of this dim sum feast. I ate and ate, and ate. Oh, it was so good. So good. Now I have until Sunday before I resign myself to carefully measured portions of pseudo-food. I feel good going out with a bang, though. For sure.

My 7 Days of Cheesecake was a great success, but after a rather indulgent few weeks, all but three or so pounds have found their way back to me. In our fridge is a rather large jar of Adams no-sugar-added peanut butter. I was inspired. 7 Days of Celery. I would eat celery for seven days, troweling in all the peanut butter I could manage.

So, without further ado, here are the details

Day 1 - Starting weight: 176 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Celery with peanut butter
    Dinner: Celery with peanut butter, celery with cream cheese, celery with hot Thai peanut sauce (mmm!)

Day 2 - Starting weight: 174.6 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Celery with peanut butter
    Dinner: I decided that eating such a stark diet could subject me to scurvy, which often palgued sailors of days gone by. As a safety precaution, I decided it was in my best interests to eat whatever there was to eat at our weekly Bible study, which often has a fairl amount of not-low-carb goodies. True enough, our pastor and his wife had a wonderful casserole consisting of chicken, rice and water chestnuts, baked with cheese on top. I was happy to hear that it contained cream of celery soup, so I did indeed have celery for dinner. Perhaps I had a bit too much, and perhaps it wasn't actually on a stick of celery, but there was celery in it, right? Right.

Day 3 - Starting weight: 174.4 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Cleery with peanut butter
    Dinner: Celery with peanut butter, celery with cream cheese, celery with hot Thai peanut sauce. At the hockey game tonight (Alaska Aces over Fresno Falcons, 3-1) I was concerned about the debilitating effects of Rickets, possibly brought on by a celery diet. In an effort to stave off the dread condition, I sacrificed and ate a cheeseburger. I did remove one of the buns, so I'd call it a low-carb cheeseburger.

Day 4 - Starting weight: 173.6 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Did up a stir fry with plenty of celery, and a cheese bratwurst. Used a touch of Chinese five spice and powdered star anise. Very Chinese, except for the bratwurst, of course.
    Dinner: Celery with peanut butter, celery with cream cheese, celery with hot Thai peanut sauce; same dinner as before.

Day 4 - Starting weight: 173.4 lbs
    Breakfast: Skipped breakfast, had a breve instead.
    Lunch: Celery bratwurst stir fry again, this time I added in some sesame seed, too. Quite good.
    Dinner: Out of concern that my celery-heavy diet might put me at risk for contracting Beriberi, I decided to indulge a bit at the hockey game tonight. I had a bag of cashews, coated with that delightfully sugary sweet glazed praline nut stuff. Oh yeah. I can't recall if I had a burrito or what, I just don't recall. For what it was worth, tonight's hockey game, normally an enjoyable affair with the Aces over Phoenix 5-2, was marred by Phoenix player Dave Pszenyczny being seriously injured on ice, requiring emergency surgery. Our friends and I prayed for him right there at the rink, and praise Jesus, the medical reports are that his surgery was a success and he should be able to play by next year's season start. Anyhow, celery didn't factor into dinner too much tonight.

Day 5 - Starting weight: 173.6 lbs (yes, that's a gain)
    Breakfast: Okay, this one was a pure blow-out. We ate breakfast at the Hogg Brothers Cafe. Celery was not on the menu. They did have a vegetarian omelette which had celery in it, but that ain't what I ordered. I had a giant omelette with link sausage and Polish sausage in it, absolutely fantatic. Our kids each had one pancake. Thing is, each pancake is the diameter of a medium pizza! Giant. Of course, I had to have a tiny sample of those pancakes, you know, just to be sure they wern't too spicy. Oh, yeah, I followed up breakfast with a breve, too.
    Lunch: Didn't need lunch, probably couldn't even have fit it in if I wanted to. I did swing by Charlie's Bakery for a bubble tea.
    Dinner: Okay, another night at the rink. No celery. Instead, I had a hotdog covered in chili, cheese, and yellow peppers. I didn't eat the bun, however, so I'm sure that made it all okay. Aces won 6-1 over Phoenix, again, and happily, no injuries tonight. I did, however, eat a stick of celery with peanut butter at home, so there was celery eaten today; keeping my theme of 7 Days of Celery on track.
    Ooh, I know tomorrow's weigh-in will not be kind. Too much non-celery in there, oh yeah, way too much.

Day 6 - Starting weight: 175.0 lbs (argh.)
    Breakfast: Celery, Bacon and Cheese omelette, which I made at home. I must admit, today's weigh-in was a bummer. Although it would be easy to blame yesterday's overindulgences, I suspect that instead, maybe the celery in the refrigerator has lost some of it's potency due to aging. Anyhow, I've only got two days to go, so we'll see. If I continue to gain back weight, that must prove that the celery went bad, right? Right?
    Lunch: Didn't have lunch.
    Dinner: Three tamales. I doubt they had celery in 'em, though. Good thing I had that celery omelette.
    And at 9:30 p.m., I had a bowl of cereal and a banana. I had to do a 12-hour fast for some annual blood work.

Day 7 - Starting weight: Did not weigh. (I knew that scale would be hating on me)
    Breakfast: Well, that didn't happen until after the doc's office, I had a 12-oz. breve.
    Lunch: I had a Vanilla Creme protein bar, one of those South Beach Diet ones. They're not that great tasting, but they're filling.
    Dinner: This was sort of the fireworks at the end of the show. Ending my "7 Days of Celery" with a bang, I did up a stir-fry that probably should have served three, and I ate it all.
     
    Celery Leup Cheung Stir-Fry

• 4 stalks celery, diced as you see fit
• a few stalks green onion, diced diagonally
  
• 4 leup cheung sausage, diced diagonally (it's a Chinese sausage with a waxy look and a slightly sweet taste)
• 1/2 onion, chopped, but not too fine. I like big slices
• garlic-chili hot oil paste (another of those Asian grocery items, this stuff is fantastic)
• Hot oil (Sun Luck brand works fine)
• Steamed brown rice (that's what I used, anyway. You want white rice, go for it)
• Oyster sauce (can't cook Chinese without oyster sauce, for sure.)

I heated my wok up good and hot, and slapped in a spoonful of the garlic chili hot oil paste. That stuff immediately made the house fill up with a near toxic cloud of eye-burning vapor. To this I added in a generous splash of hot oil. Now this is a serious cauldron o' oil going. Since this is hot oil, I carefully added in the leup cheung. Once the leup cheung looks right, add in the other ingredients, and shake on a good glob of oyster sauce. Stir it up good, put the wok lid on for a few minutes, stir it a bit, and toss the whole mess on a plate of steamed rice.

This was serioulsy good. Hot, too. Oh, and it had celery.

Final weight: 173.6 lbs. I figured with such a restrictive diet, I would have lost far more. Well, I suppose losing 2.4 pounds over a week is pretty reasonable. I feel like I haven't lost too much muscle mass, and oddly enough, that celery was filling.