The Bull Og

Link: Skate & Destroy. Just had to reblog because of the beauty of the sculptures (via http://tumble.blagspot.com/):

How often do you go to a restaurant and the waiter/waitress brings you a glass of water with ice in it? How often are you so hot that you really need ice water to cool you down?

Here in San Francisco, I’ve been in air-conditioned restaurants in the winter where they’re served ice-water. Since returning to the States from Austria three years ago (where it is uncommon to serve ice in water at restaurants,) I almost always ask for ‘water, no ice’ at the beginning of a meal. Surprisingly, several waiters or waitresses have asked me why and ice water is simply no longer my preference. I find that room-temperature water with a bit of lemon does the trick if I’m parched, much more so than ice-water.

While walking down the street today, I thought “since it’s the standard at practically every restaurant in the US to bring you a glass of ice water when you patronize their establishment, what if the next time the waiter/waitress asked ‘Something to drink?’, everyone in the US responded with ‘water, no ice please.’ Wouldn’t restaurants, reacting to less demand, use ice-makers less frequently and thereby save vast amounts of energy?”

I don’t have any reliable statistics at hand, but let’s assume a rate of 3 restaurant visits per month per person in the US (population ~307M people.) If one glass of ice-water is served during those visits, that’s a lot of ice cubes.

Several months ago, my brother came to town. He wanted a good steak dinner so we went to one of the best steakhouses in town.

Our table wasn’t quite ready when we arrived so we sat at the bar for a drink. When it was time to be seated we made our way into the dining room but as we were leaving the lounge area, a trio of jazz musicians were setting up. As I was leaving, I noticed and immediately recognized the drummer: Peter Magadini of polyrhythm fame. Unbelievable after all these years; Peter was setting up to play in the steakhouse where we were about to have dinner!

The trio played a set and when they took a break, I rushed up to greet Peter and tell him my story of having met him years previously. What a rush to meet a musician I so admire in a steakhouse in SF.

And yes, the steaks were fantastic. The best I’ve ever had, actually.

I created a Flickr account a long time ago. I then created a Yahoo account and tied that to my Flickr account. I then created another Yahoo account and wanted to replace my previous Yahoo account with the new one but couldn’t do it!

I just discovered that I could swap out my old Yahoo handle with my new one and tie my Flickr account to the Yahoo account I use most. Nicely done, Flickr.