End of January
Apparently, I haven't posted since Christmas. Well, the grind of work is back 😜 I'll have to work over this weekend and I'm just debating if I should work both days. One of my work goals this year to was to focus more on lab work, but that's already failing heavily!
But to less boring updates, both Angie and I had birthdays and related activities.
For my birthday, Angie and I went to an escape room then dinner. For a place that's quite close to our house, we don't really go too much. We went once before in the summer with similar results (basically getting to the last puzzle when time ran out). But overall, I do enjoy this place since the quality of the room (actually both were multiple rooms) was good. And even when we were stuck on puzzles, none of the solutions were stupid seeming once you got them. Both times, I felt like we made somewhat minor mistakes that consumed time. We also aren't really for asking for clues/help until we spend significant time confused. And the operators both said "we did good for only two people". I'm not sure if they're obligated to say so.
Afterwards, we had a steak dinner at Ruth Chris Steakhouse. I haven't been to one in a while so it was a nice surprise. And the food was quite good. We also had sufficient left-overs for another nice dinner later in the week.
For Angie's birthday, we went into the city (NYC). I love to complain and hate on NYC, but it is nice to be near it. There is a sequel movie to a Taiwanese drama that we both very much liked. It's a limited release so we went to a theater in Manhattan that was showing it. We arrived early, so we also walked around the LINE store. The movie itself (Someday or One Day) was good. It was a continuation of the drama (of the same name) and very similar in themes and story. The drama is better since it takes more time for complex time traveling, but the movie was worthwhile.
Afterwards, we went to the Time Square branch of a ramen restaurant from Tokyo that we both thought had the "world's best ramen" (Ichiran Shibuya). Originally, we went to the Tokyo one since it was vending machine ordering and personal booths. I think one of the things that make it extra good is that you fill out a card with properties of the soup, noodles, and sides. For example, you can pick (1-5) how rich you want the soup, or how firm you want the noodles, and such. I find that ramen places (at least in the US) have been getting progressively less rich for some sort of reduction in salt/fat. So it's good to be able to personalize what you want. Anyway, the Time Square branch still does the personalized order card and personal booths (no vending machine ordering though). We both thought it was quite good (probably because of customizing to our tastes), but still not to the Tokyo/Shibuya level. (Although we had a discussion if the Shibuya location was SO good because it was the first real meal after a trans-Pacific flight.)
No-Tipping Establishment! It's starting off a good foot
Something to read while waiting in line. For a line out the door, the wait wasn't too bad (under 30 minutes).
The food is passed through the back of the booth (directly in front of the photo with the bamboo curtain). Then they drop the curtain so you can eat in privacy with a button if you need help/more food. I opened my booth on the side (where my spoon is) since Angie was sitting there.
So delicious. There were instructions to drink some soup first, then slowly mix in the ingredients.
I feel like it was decently expensive, but for the middle of TimeSquare plus tip, it wasn't too outlandish.
One of Angie's coworkers (Joy) gave us books for Christmas. Since I'm known to be a nerd (or something), she gave me Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World. Since I finished the first two Sherlock Holmes stories (and the next ones are short stories), I decided to try it, even though I don't read too much non-fiction. It tells stories about different errors or misunderstandings. These range from calculations/coding that causes disasters to lawsuits for false advertisement to just funny stories. I'll say I'm enjoying it (almost done) since it's written as light humor but explains the concepts. I particularly enjoyed parts where it talked about Excel (since at work, I do lots of work to transition us away from Excel) and explained how little things add up (thinking about it, it's similar to an investigation at work, but interesting since it's in different fields). Upon completion of this book, I'm not sure if I'll go back to Sherlock Holmes (it's hard for me to read lots of consecutive short stories), or go with something else.
In the gaming front, I completed Resident Evil 2 Remake with Leon and am pretty close to finishing it with Claire. There's "playthrough 2" which they claim has some different content, but I'll likely wait a bit to play through those. I kind of feel like a more RPG type game. I did start Horizon Zero Dawn before Christmas, but it's a bit too open world for my current mood.
And we're planning to go to Jordan in a few weeks! We've often talked about going to Petra, but didn't know what else there was in Jordan and/or if it'd be worth it for one site. But watching an episode of The Amazing Race, there appeared to be several interesting places in Jordan. So I'm excited and we'll have an Indiana Jones marathon before we leave 😁