On the way back from the bank, I stopped off at the Pizza store to buy lunch. I go to this pizza store very frequently, like several times a day - okay, maybe not several times a day, but a lot...

Today, the store, was simply broken. Here is the run down of how it went:

(1) Order Pizza
(2) Move to cashier to pay
(3) Notice huge line to pay
(4) Notice two people working on the single cash register
(5) Notice them failing at fixing it
(6) Someone asks for ice cream, response was - sorry, it is not working
(7) Someone tries to go in child ride (you know, small little toy ride thing), but it is "Out of Order"
(8) Someone asks for ice, response: "Sorry, the ice machine is broken."

Thankfully, I walked out with the food, and I was able to pay via credit card (the credit card machine was working).

But I seriously wonder if some disgruntled employee decided to break a few machines, including a kid ride, before quitting?

Posted at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

After a long day of standing at SphinnCon Israel on Tuesday, I was fairly tired that night. In any event, I knew I wanted to document the day and upload pictures on my extremely slow Internet connection in Israel. So when I woke up, I began my morning stuff, email, RSS, forum research. Then when I was done, I began blogging the conference at both the Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Land (Danny then told me, he would have blogged it at Search Engine Land).

I told my wife to go shopping while I blogged away the AM. She found a Michal Negrin store nearby and bought some jewelry. She then met me back at the hotel and I finished up my blog stories for the morning. A little after 1PM, we left to do more shopping in Geula. Yes, I am a great husband for going shopping even though it makes me ill to shop. I don't think we bought anything that day, I may be wrong - it is all turning into a fog right now for me. But we did stop at a tile place. My wife has been really wanting us to get a backsplash for ournew house but I have been trying to push off that decision.

In any event, she found two styles she liked here in Israel. Note, she hasn't been able to find anything in America yet - but she found two styles she liked in Israel. The one above, is one that I think we both like and will work well in our kitchen. Thing is, I guess it would have to be shipped from Israel and we would have to convert the measurements somehow - all doable. Not that we are going to do this anytime soon. The above backsplash looks a lot like Israeli stone, which is why we like it.

After the backsplash bit, we went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner with my brother and sister-in-law. Skipping some parts....

We go together to some restaurant that tells us they have no room for the four of us. My sister-in-law does her smooth talking and gets us in. We eat well. It turns out the waiter was a taxi driver that took my brother somewhere, so they chatted a bit about that. In any event, the food was good and the convo was good. Although, I prefer not to talk and be distracted when I have food in front of me ;-).

After that, I think the day was over - we had to rest up for the big day tomorrow. My nephew's bar mitzvah.

Posted at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Category: Blogging , Food , Shopping , Travels | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

To continue my documentation of my Israel trip, I'll pick up from leaving beitar. So we take a taxi from Beitar to Jerusalem with my parents. I know I am getting a good deal on that taxi ride because my brother or sister-in-law speak the language and if you speak the language, you don't get ripped off.

The guy drops me off at the hotel, the bellhop takes our piles and piles of bags (99% of it not being mine). They initially tell us our room isn't available but then a minute later, they said it was now available. So instead of leaving our stuff with the bellhop, he brings it up to our room. I give him some US dollars, which is now not worth as much as it was a year or two ago in Israel. We put our stuff down, I lock my precious laptop in the safe and we head to Cup O Joe for drinks and free WiFi.

I order something to drink and my wife does as well. I then pull out my iPhone and I see I can connect to a network for free. I connect and download emails to my iPhone. A guy then comes over to me and asks me if I was using an iPhone (the first of many comments on my iPhone while traveling in Israel). Oh, forgot to mention, Israel's airport as some sweet fast Internet, downloaded email there as well. We continue to drink, while I mess around with email - knowing that WiFi is a security risk but willing to take the risk at that time.

After Cup O Joe we go to both Geula and Ben Yehuda street to do some "shopping." That is where I found the touch of Google in Jerusalem, by the way...

I quickly learn that not only do I hate shopping in American stores, I also hate shopping in Israeli stores. I get this tiring and sick feeling going into a store, hard to explain. Anyway, as my wife looks for stuff to buy, I try to pick up free Wifi spots in town. The most popular network I was able to find was Unwire Jerusalem.

We go into a few stores and my wife buys some stuff from one of them. Now this guy is a smooth talker. Everything 50% off. I like you, this costs X but Ill give it to you for Y. No tourism, need to make a sale... Etc. Etc. The whole time my wife is saying, what a great deal and I am thinking, we are getting ripped off. In any event, thinking like that while on vacation is not healthy, so we buy some things, which in hindsight, were probably good deals.

Then I finally convince my wife to head back to the hotel. As we begin to walk back, we bump into my parents who are going to lunch. So, being frugal, I latch on and score a free meal at a popular restaurant in town. Then we all walk back to our respective lodges.

At that point, I sign up for a week's worth of Internet at the hotel. The hotel speed is grossly over prices and incredibly slow. I do some email processing, some feeds, etc and then I think we go out to dinner, just the two of us, at a nice place.

Anyway, I learned that day - that shopping in Israel also makes me feel ill.

Posted at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Category: Family , Food , Shopping , Travels | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and I was all excited to go at the turkey.

I was prepping myself all day... I came into the game with high expectations. But since I was sick on Monday with some sort of stomach bug, I was a bit worried about my performance. I tried to have positive thoughts throughout the day.

But when it came down to stepping up to the turkey... I was very disappointed in myself. I estimate that I ate only about 4 or 5 slices of white meat from the Turkey. 4 or 5 slices! That is a serious joke. I would have been happy with 8 - 12 slices, but 4 or 5!

My stomach simply did not hold up.

I hang my head in shame on the day after Thanksgiving.

Posted at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday afternoon, I ran into a problem. I was hungry when I got back from work, my wife was out and I wanted to eat something. I opened the fridge and found a box of pizza bagels, yum yum.

So I took it out and I wanted to heat it up using our Convection Microwave Oven, I think it is this model. We were told to obtain this one, because it cooks like an oven, if you do not want to use your oven for small quick cooking.

So the pizza bagel was meant for this microwave. I would pop it in the microwave, and it would come out crispy and not soggy like most microwaves.

But I had an issue. It is a microwave. Do I use paper or tinfoil? If it is an oven and cooks like an oven, using paper can cause a fire. If it is a microwave and cooks like an oven, then using tinfoil would spark things and cause an electrical fire. What to do...

I decided to go with paper and watch it. If the paper starts to burn or get black, I would stop the thing and take it out. Guess what? I was right, the paper worked fine and the pizza bagels came out crisp and yummy.

Did I do the right thing? I still don't know, but it worked.

Posted at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

What an awesome surprise. Typically, the kosher food at these conferences are non-existant. But not at today's SMX conference.

Today, they provided lunch meals from Abigails. The assortment included chicken salad, pastrami, smoked turkey and maybe some other options.

Abigails is a nice New York kosher restaurant, so I suspect those meals were not cheap.

We appreciate it!

Posted at 3:16 PM | Permalink | Category: Food , Travels | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I had an employee, for about three weeks, that only ate one meal per day.

He came to work, drank only water and left without eating a bite of food. He said that is what he did his whole life. Yes, he was skinny. Very skinny. But he only had a dinner and that was it all day.

I wonder what metabolism that guy had?

Tonight, I eat a nice meal at Smokey Joes with the guys in the community.

Looking forward to a nice large hamburger.

Posted at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The other day, I went to the new Kosher Dunkin Donuts by my office.

This woman comes in and orders a muffin. She then immediately asks for a manager. The person behind the counter got nervous. He asked, "was there something I did?" She said no, not you.

The manager comes out and she explains in very angry tone that there are other people who come to Dunkin and like non-kosher items. She explained she was very upset that she can no longer order a sausage sandwich from this specific Dunkin. She goes off complaining that it isn't right that they changed it to kosher.

Meanwhile, I am standing there with my Kippa (thing on my head that shows I am Jewish). The manager explains that it wasn't necessarily a kosher thing. They made a management decision based on profits to stop selling all meats. They said, on average, they sold ten to fifteen meat sandwiches per day. It was not enough volume to cover the costs involved in buying the meats. So they stopped selling meat items, which then made it possible for them to easily make the place kosher.

She then paid for her muffin and stormed out yelling. She was yelling that there are other people in this world besides "for them."

Now, I don't think she is anti-semtic or anything. At least I hope not. I think she is just upset she can't get her sausage sandwich at Dunkin anymore. Honestly, I felt bad and upset overall the whole episode.

As soon as she left, everyone behind the counter began laughing.

Just a shame.

Posted at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Category: Food , Religion | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a serious issue when you have an office filled with programmers and not any sales people.

What is the issue?

The office fridge.

No one cares if the fridge starts smelling bad. You let it go and go until the fridge is so full that you are forced to clean it out.

That is exactly what happened with the RustyBrick fridge.

We got a shipment of sodas today and began to try restocking the fridge. But the cans of soda would not fit. So we began removing the old items in the fridge. There was a milk container that had hard chunks of cheese growing inside of it. There were old chinese noodles growing fungus on it. There were old egg rolls, old sandwiches and all sorts of things. We threw pretty much everything out and started from scratch.

We also popped in a new Arm and Hammer box to hopefully stabilize the smell.

What an experience. :)

Posted at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Category: Food , RustyBrick | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, my inlaws flew in from STL and are staying by my sister-in-law and brother-in-law's home in NJ. So we drove there to celebrate July 4th.

My brother-in-law cooked up tons of meat on his BBQ. There must have been five full chickens, two dozen hamburgers, six or more steaks, and these huge hot dogs.

I personally ate two large pieces of white meat chicken, two burgers, and a few piece of the hot dogs. Great job - broinlaw! Oh, nice job cleaning up also.

Then the home made brownies came out - ouch!

Oh, there were salads and stuff like that - but it just took up space on the table. :)

Makes me hungry now thinking about it.

If you missed the Search Engine Roundtable's July Fourth theme, here is a screen cap:

Posted at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Category: Family , Food | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been hearing some buzz that the Dunkin' Donuts near my office is now kosher.

Supposedly, as of two weeks ago, they received some type of Kashrut certification.

Being a Fast day today, I can't keep my mind off of food.

Aren't all Dunkin's kosher? No, only some. The one in Teaneck, NJ is and I have eaten there a few times. I went to one in Chicago recently and for my first time had a egg and cheese from a Dunkin.

But if these rumors are true, a kosher Dunkin in my area - oh boy!

Update: Confirmed. The kashrut is provided by two places. The KOF K for the supplies (aka Donuts) and KOA for supervising the store. It looks legit to me.

Posted at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is a Jewish fast day, Tzom Tammuz, so I am fasting. I also had to schedule a blood test for around now, so I decided, heck do it on a fast day - since it is a fasting blood test.

I didn't realize I would have to give like ten things of blood. So I am a bit light headed. Deal is, I can't eat or drink until about 9:30 tonight. I have not ate or drank anything since 9ish last night.

Notice the picture above? Yea, two band aids. The first attempt on my left arm did not work. She missed the vein, and tried to jab that needle in the same vein about six times until we tried the next arm. The right arm worked and we were set to go.

Hungry.

Posted at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This past Sunday, I was at a pretty fancy wedding. The food overall was solid. But the salad was a bit too much for me...

Let's take a look:

The plate had droppings of salad dressings. Inside the cucumber (which I would eat) was salmon, topping the salmon were carrots and something I can't recognize. Then on top of that, a few leaves of lettuce. Sticking out of those leaves were two chinese noodle like sticks.

You see the picture? It remained like that on the table until a waitress took it away before serving the main course.

Yes, I learned my lesson... Sushi night, which is going to take place, I believe, this Monday - will be in a restaurant that serves both sushi and on types of foods. I am in!

And tonight, I am off to Prime Grill al-la (spelling?) Gary!

Posted at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Danny Sullivan walked into the SMX Seattle press room 20 minutes to 9 with a box of cupcakes.

Yup, they say, SMX, with a green thing over them. That is kind of like the SMX logo.

Best thing... Karen told me that Danny's wife, Lorna, sent them. How nice. :)

They look so good.

Posted at 12:09 PM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

So my friends bought me a sweet Grill - Brinkmann Pro Series 4400 from my wedding present last summer. But now I am banned from using it.

I live in a condominium and there are tons of people who have grills. People grill all the time. But we all got notices that we are in violation of a village code. So we all need to remove our grills.

Here is my grill:

For safety reasons, I understand.

So my plan is to bring it to my parents who are not too far away. They have a nice big deck and I can go there are BBQ if I want. It makes for a good, early, fathers day present. ;-)

Only problem, I need to take it apart so I can fit it in my wife's Jeep. That will have to wait until Sunday but I have crazy day Sunday.

Posted at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Not only am I swamped and tired from the holiday but I am also extremely fat from it.

Well, I am fat anyway, but more fat now.

Last time I felt this full was my honeymoon where we ate so much for a week, I honestly became sick of food. Well, I don't feel that full, but it reminds me of that.

No picture included.

Posted at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I like Ketchup that much that I thought to blog about it.

It doesn't represent a distaste for any food. I like the food I eat also. But I also enjoy putting ketchup on it while I eat it.

I am not a mustard guy. I am a ketchup guy.

I love putting ketchup on hot dogs more than anything else. But I still put it on spaghetti, most chicken and turkey, hamburgers, eggs, potatoes, etc.

The Heinz Ketchup Web Site has some cool information about the company and product. The timeline is interesting as well.

Heinz Tomato Ketchup was launched in 1876. There is a wealth of information on Ketchup at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup.

Are you a mustard or ketchup user? Do you put it on everything like me?

Posted at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Category: Food | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)