last night i celebrated ann’s birthday by taking her out to straits cafe in santana row. whenever i’ve walked by the place, it was always packed and crowded and tonight was no exception. it was a good thing that i got reservations because it looked like every table and standing space in the restuarant was packed.

the food was surprisingly good. i always thought that the place may just be a little overrated and that people go for the ambiance instead of the food. but i was wrong. the appetizers we had were delicious. we had the roti prata and the fried calamari. the main dishes were also rather good.

i also ate beef. it was the most tender and juicy bit of steak i’ve had in a long, long time and i have to say that all of this fear i have about beef is quickly evaporating. beef is just too good. mmmm. we also had this seafood fried noodle with gravy dish that i thought tasted a little too seafoody, but still was good.

i’m pretty impressed with the food. the ambiance is nice, but it was also pretty loud. definitely not a place to have a quiet intimate meal, but still it was cozy and quite satisfying. they are not outrageously priced, either, but they were on the nicer side of dining.

good food, i’m glad i went, and i’d probably go again.

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oh man…the super bowl starts at 3pm on sunday. 3pm. i have a volleyball game on sunday at 7pm. which means i should be there at 6:50, which means i need to leave my place by 6:20. which means i have to start getting ready by 6:10. which means that i probably won’t be able to throw the usual super bowl sunday party….what’s worse is my fear that the game will last more than 3 hours….what if i miss part of the game? i wonder if it’ll be a good game.

hmmmm. what to do? what to do? i had grand plans of BBQ’ing up a storm too! maybe i’ll have a very early dinner….or a very late dinner. hmmmmm.

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i bought a shirt from geoffrey beane over the weekend. today, i decided to wear it. in the shirt pocket was a little scrap of paper. it read:

BE AWARE OF WHAT YOU WEAR
Over 2/3 of the clothes supplied to us are made in SWEATSHOPS.
Was this garment made in a sweatshop?
Ask the manager or owner — Let them know your views on worker exploitation.
More info? www.u-can.org
Don’t wear their suffering on your back!

hmmm…i wonder how many people check the pockets of the garments they are going to buy before buying it. it never ocurred to me to check the shirt pocket.

but this begs a greater question: did a bunch of people raid this store and secretly put all these scraps in every pocket without the salesmen finding out? hmmmm.

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“2.8 lenses are just too slow”
          -adam tow

yeah. ok. then my lenses must be crazy ass slow. but [url=http://www.tow.com]adam[/url] was nice enough to lend me his precious [url=http://www.usa.canon.com/eflenses/lenses/ef_28-70_28l/ef_28-70_28l.html]canon 28-70/2.8[/url] and i’ve been playing with it for the past few days and i must admit that i’m surprised about the lens. it isn’t quite what i expected.

my biggest shock with this lens is that i actually find this range to be rather limiting, surprising as that may sound. i used to use a 28-105 as my primary and when i went back to look at the images, i found that the majority of my images are either in the 28-50mm range or at 105mm.

when i’m using the 28-70, i feel pretty cramped. not much of a zoom to work with and not nearly wide enough. i never thought that this would be a lens that i would walk away from. i never thought that i would walk away from any L lens. but i feel that for the money, this lens is not worth its hefty price tag.
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today has been flying by like you can’t believe. i don’t know where it is going, but i’m surprised that it’s already midafternoon.

this weekend i finally broke down and ate some beef. yup. and it was good. i went to whole foods and got some beef for fajitas and made two batches of fajitas. one chicken, one beef. i had almost forgotten how good beef was until i had my very first fajita. after that, it’s over.

the bad thing about whole foods beef is that it is actually rather pricey. i think that it is almost double the fair market value of comparable beef at safeway. while i was at safeway over the weekend, i saw this family buying all sorts of beef. new york steak, tri-tip, top sirloin…there was more beef on the conveyor belt than there was anything else…with the exception of beer.

beer and steak. steak and beer. mmmmm.

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that’s the date when i last saw [url=http://jenny.ocliw.com/journal/]my good friend, jenny.[/url] man, it’s been over a year and a half! who would have thunk it? i guess i’ve been bad about visiting her. i knew that it’s been a while, but i didn’t realize that it had been that long. we still keep in regular touch (as regular as it can get considering our busy schedules) and it’s nice to know that our friendship can last even with the great midwest between us.