A flier picked up at Sprouts, all about how to find the perfect drink to go with cheese. There’s a website, too: CheeseCupid.com lets you start with either a type of drink or a type of cheese, and find its perfect mate.
They even have an iPhone app. 😯
I guess the Cheese Information Center just wasn’t hitting the target.
Remember the Battlestar Galactica cake? For last night’s LOST finale, Katie made an authentic DHARMA Initiative chocolate cake, and pizzas with the Swan and Orchid logos.
The cake is chocolate, with homemade buttercream icing (vanilla for the background, chocolate for the design). The pizzas have an outer ring of sausage, with bell pepper strips for the I Ching. The Swan logo is cut from a bell pepper. The Orchid is cut from a tomato, and placed on the pizza after baking.
For more views, including in-progress pictures, close-ups, and making-of commentary, check out the LOST finale food photos on Flickr.
I’ve always been annoyed by the phrase “mental telepathy.” It’s just redundant, like “big giant” or “fast speedster.” Is there any such thing as non-mental telepathy?
So it was nice to see someone taken to task in this panel from a Flash story in Adventure Comics #459…all the way back in 1978!
The characters pictured are two of Barry Allen’s high school classmates at their fifteen-year reunion. The woman, Rachel has just picked up that one of their classmates is the Flash.
Hijinks ensue.
The latest seasonal beer at Oggi’s* is The Schwartz, a Belgian IPA. And just in case the “May the Schwartz Be With You” tagline wasn’t clear enough…well, check out the poster:
Sorry about the image quality. I wasn’t sampling the brew, it’s just the phone camera in low lighting.
*Oggi’s (pronounced OH-jeez) is a chain of pizza & brewery restaurants in Southern California, mostly in San Diego and Orange County.
I saw this amazing circumhorizon arc around 1:30 this afternoon. I had just crossed the street while walking to lunch when I looked up, saw it…and walked back to the office to get my camera!
Lesson learned: always bring the camera!*
It started out as just a couple of small segments, but as the clouds drifted into position it quickly grew, and at its strongest it was just long enough to fill the field of view on my camera. There were also a couple of fragments of a 22° circular halo visible at the time.
The whole thing had vanished by 1:50, as the clouds drifted out of alignment, though I did see a more complete circular halo later on.
It looks like a sort of straightened-out rainbow, but it’s actually caused by ice crystals. If the right type of crystals cover the entire sky, this will actually stretch in a circle all the way around the sky, parallel to the horizon.
They’re a lot less common than the 22-degree halos. I’ve seen and photographed a ton of those over just a few years, but this is maybe the second time I’ve seen something like this. Fourth if you count the two feathery fragments I’ve seen.
At times like this, I really wish I had a DSLR, but the point-and-shoot will do in a pinch.
*On the other hand, when I went back, I pointed it out to a couple of people at the office who are into photography, since it was visible through the windows on one side of the building. One of my co-workers has a digital SLR and carries it with him, so he went outside and got some great shots. If I hadn’t taken a late lunch and chosen to walk anyway and been in the habit of looking for halos and forgotten to bring my camera, chances are no one in the office would have seen it.
Update (May 17): I just discovered that there are people who think these clouds are connected to earthquakes. No, they aren’t. They’re caused by ice crystals refracting sunlight, just like most halos, and have been seen in many places that didn’t have earthquakes.
Today is the last day for people to cancel their hotel reservations at Comic-Con International for a full refund. Starting Saturday, they’ll keep a $75 cancellation fee.
So what’s the good news?
If you couldn’t get a room in March, and haven’t found alternative housing for the convention, this may be your second chance!
Even if there were fewer “just in case” reservations this year, there are always at least some people whose plans just fall through. Someone gets sick, their financial status changes, they were counting on a raise that didn’t happen, a cousin schedules a wedding for that weekend, etc. Rooms should be opening up over the next few days as people take their last chance to cancel without penalty.
The question is: what happens to them?
The old reservation process worked like a crowded store, where everyone kept trying to pick a room until they ran out. So when rooms freed up, they were made available to whoever happened to be checking up on the system.
This year, though, was like a massive take-a-number system, with Travel Planners assigning rooms to people in order (even though it’s not clear exactly what order it was). They did cap the line, but there were an awful lot of people who got requests in but no rooms, and ended up on a waiting list. A representative confirmed by email that they will contact people as rooms free up.*
So, what we should see in the next few days is Travel Planners offering rooms to the early part of the waiting list. Edit: Maybe not – see the comments.
It’s a safe bet that some people on the list have already secured a room through other channels, and no doubt some of them will want to stick with their alternate lodging (especially if their alternate hotel is across the street, and Travel Planners hands them something ten miles away). That will probably trigger a second round of free rooms next week.
No doubt the process will repeat itself on June 18, when the rest of the deposit becomes non-refundable.
Of course, it all depends on just how many people cancel their reservations to start with. I doubt anyone outside of the travel agency (and maybe CCI) has solid numbers of just how many con-goers are stuck in limbo.
*The way they put it was that they were trying “to identify any rooms already committed that might not be ultimately utilized.” Gotta love corporate-speak.
