Interesting sign walking by the Bank of Alameda this afternoon…

Perhaps they’ve had…issues before?

Before dropping off Tam’s mom at the airport, we made a trip back to Alborz in Berkeley (2142 Center Street between Oxford and Shattuck) for an early dinner. It’s one of the few Persian restaurants in the East Bay and is pretty darn good. Unlike the last time we were there when it had just opened and was virtually empty, the place was busy at 5:30pm on a Sunday. Nice problem to have.

Tam and I shared the Alborz Plate again with the berries in the rice rather than the standard basmati rice. The ground beef skewer again stole the show. The chicken and filet mignon skewers were definitely jucier and more tender than last time as well. Looks like the chefs are getting into their groove now.

My manhood was challenged last night so to set things straight, I went for a snack challenge of death for lunch. Tam didn’t think I could eat an In-N-Out 4×4 Burger without hurting myself so I set out to prove her wrong. I got a 4×4 Animal Style and damn, that sucker was heavy. I’ve concluded that even with my big mouth, it’s not possible to bite all the way through. Try as I might to dislocate my jaw, it just wasn’t going to happen. So I went for maximum gnawing action instead of tearing my mouth.

Jeff: 1
4×4: 0

We had dinner at the highly recommended Dopo up the street from us at 4293 Piedmont Avenue. It’s been getting rave reviews and always has a crowd of people milling about on the weekends. And let me tell you, it lived up to the hype. Even though we went on a weekday, we couldn’t get in. Literally. We wound up comandeering the two front outside tables with my cousin’s weekly supper club gathering.

As the review in the Chronicle indicates, the restaurant is truly tiny. The antipasti mista of shrimp salad, beef tounge (much better than it sounds), and skate was delicious. Tam and I both had their outstanding, simple thin crust pizzas charred to perfection. She had the Pizza Dopo sans anchovies and I had one with proscuitto and rosemary. The staff was friendly and attentive.

Bottom line: tough to get into, but well worth it. And the prices are really reasonable!

Thanks to the power of WordPress plugins, there are now random quotes from The Simpsons on the sidebar. I’m still getting a slew of errors and am not quite happy with the layout, but there it is. I just can’t figure it out. Every time I even touch the PHP file and save it back to the webserver, I get errors indicating that there’s extra whitespace. Argh.

The author’s website is having problems so the install instructions are hard to find. Once you’ve enabled the plugin, insert the following code where you want the quotes to show up.

< ?quoteMe() ;?>

Some Kind of Monster was on TV last night, but all Tam could do was scream “Jamba!!!” and “Razzmatazz!!!” every time Kirk and Lars were in the lunchroom drinking Jamba Juices. And then out of the blue, I get a call from her at work today asking where she can get a French Dip au jus. Subtle. Because I’m obedient like that, I stop by Jamba Juice and Fenton’s Creamery on my way home.

P.S. – She drank the juice. Which one? Both.

Coming soon!

It was smooth sailing from Oaktown into SFO for an 11:05am departure. I picked up a pair of casual carpoolers from my favorite Oakland Avenue pickup point to beat the mid-lot backup at the toll plaza. Traffic was a bit slow on the Bay Bridge for a Friday morning, but I had plenty of time to get to SFO. I abandoned the EP3 at the PCA lot and was shuttled to the international terminal. Check in for UA977 was a breeze at the 1P counter and there was a very short wait at customs. I had about 15 minutes before the 10:20am scheduled boarding time so I made a detour to the Red Carpet Club to down the world’s smallest bagel, a bruised banana, and some OJ before heading over to gate 93. I had a chuckle at the tiny A320 parked between a United 777 and an ANA 747. After boarding, I tuned in to Channel 9 from 8D. Other than a brief delay shortly after pushing back for the pilot to fix something, it was an uneventful flight. A serving of meatloaf and Batman Begins later, I was in Mexico.

Arrival into Mexico City was a spectacular urban sprawl. Just a mass of humanity as far as the eye could see. The horror stories about the air pollution were definitely overblown, but the ones about the traffic…well, 1 out of 2 ain’t bad.

I seem to have this nasty habit of winding up with guidebooks at the end of their shelf life when a new update is just around the corner. And I do mean just around the corner. I’m headed to Mexico City this weekend and was hoping to get the Moon Handbooks Mexico City guidebook. I noticed on their website that a new edition is being published in October 2005. Outstanding, this is October 2005, so lucky me! But wait, according to the publisher, they just started shipping the books last Monday from their distribution center and no bookstore or online retailer that I’ve tried has it yet. There’s nothing more gratifying than buying obsolete material.

As scary as it sounds, in 8 months, I’ll be someone’s daddy. I got the surprising and wonderful life-changing news from Tam when she returned from New England. I musn’t panic…I musn’t panic…