Ooh la la

Yes, once again I'm writing about/eating cupcakes. It's a sickness. The one positive of traveling with my job (it's barely a positive... it's me "looking at the brighter side" of things) is that I get to go to places I would never normally go, i.e. College Station, Brenham.

Easter weekend

It started with Good Friday where I went to a Catholic assisted living facility of all places and finished my work by noon. Hallelujah. I had one last, mandatory non-meat lunch with the family at Pearland Seafood (they should have kept their company name of Baytown Seafood but probably feared people questioning why a restaurant would be called Baytown Seafood in the city of Pearland). Anyway, this is our go-to for fried seafood and we always get the etouffee. Their french fries look very plain.. thick and yellow (no visible skin) but I really like them. Maybe it's the touch of seasoning they put on them or maybe it's because it's always hot and freshly fried that makes them good. They also serve some Thai dishes and hamburgers but we will probably never try those. It's like going to a steakhouse and ordering the fish. As for the rest of the day, I don't remember what happened as I'm too lazy to get up and ask Lynn but I'm sure it was quality time well spent.

Baytown/Pearland Seafood
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Sleep is underrated

The entire month of April has been nonstop so far, there have been no breaks so far to relax, to just do nothing. Work is mentally tiring, more draining than being physically tired, so I rarely do anything after coming home. During the weekdays I don't watch any TV and this has been going on for quite sometime, to the point that I'm debating whether to cancel our costly cable service (damn you Uverse). Last night I zonked-out around 10pm in the boys' room (I think before the boys slept) and woke up naturally around 8am. That's a solid ten hours of sleep and it was good. I felt refreshed and rejuvenated. I forget how important sleep is. I don't know how other people do it but if I don't get eight hours of sleep, I'm a dysfunctional zombie for the entire day. From now on, my goal is to go to bed early... 11pm at the latest. (Man I'm getting old.)

Winning!

Charlie Sheen and I have one thing in common and that's winning. I weighed myself yesterday morning and I was at a slender 140 lbs, which means I won Bet #3 (check out the weight loss page) and the two losers have to wear super-tight scrubs for an entire shift. But the problem here is that I no longer work at Memorial Hermann so cashing in on this bet is going to be a problem... but I'm going to make it happen.

It's confirmed, we're having a...

Boy.

More cupcakes

Looks can be deceiving.

Happy birthday Daniel

Daniel, my nephew/godson, recently turned 2. He's quite destructive and there have been times when I would come home to fine things destroyed, which I have wrongfully accused Andrew of doing but only to find out it was Daniel. It's funny but I would ask Lynn who did it and she would respond "Your godson did it", at which point my anger would subside. If she had said "Daniel did it", I would probably stay mad but saying "your godson" makes it okay. I think Lynn is a Jedi master, using psychological tactics on me. But all is forgiven as there is something called unconditional love and I will treat him and Reed (my other nephew/godson) just like one of my own. Can you imagine what would happen if we ever got a girl in the family? She could probably get away with murder.

Happy birthday little man.

Awesome hair.

Free food is all good

It must be a psychological thing but if food is free, there is a 99% chance that it will taste good. If anything, it will taste exponentially better than if you were to pay for it. I can't explain it... maybe it's just me... but I wonder if anyone feels the same way as I do.

Tonight I went to Smith & Wollensky for a dinner presentation on a medication. Usually I'd would only go if they offered CE credit (which they didn't as most people come solely for the free food) but I came to actually learn something. Unfortunately, it's quite impossible to learn anything while eating. I was too busy enjoying my food and hailing the waiter for another glass of red wine. In the end, I learned nothing new.

As for the food, I had low expectations going in since I got negative comments from a few others and the reviews online were so-so. The steaks were priced around $40 so how bad can it be? I ordered the filet mignon, medium-rare. I got a piece of meat that was medium, medium-well. The guy sitting next to me had his steak cooked well done, zero pink anywhere. Maybe that's the way he ordered it? I didn't want to be the pretentious asshole that points out that steaks should never be ordered well-done but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed the cooks messed up his steak as well. Being a tender cut of meat, it was good but nothing spectacular. If I had to actually pay for this meal, I want spectacular. The mashed potatoes were okay and I passed on the vegetables (unnecessary calories since I'm on a pseudo-diet). Overall, it was good but not worth it's price. Vic & Anthony's remains my favorite steakhouse.

Not my actual meal. I didn't want to be the guy who took a picture of his food as if I've never had a steak dinner before.

Smith & Wollensky
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Coffee and cars... and crepes, burgers, cupcakes

The first Saturday of every month, there is an event called Coffee and Cars which is a gathering of people who love cars and a place to display their rare/exotic/expensive cars. The kids being car aficionados, I thought it would be a great place to take them. It's free and open to the public from 8am to 10am. This month it was at Vintage Park in NW Houston by the Willowbrook area. These cars are displayed by their owners so you could make chit-chat with them if you'd like... "Uh, how can you afford that?" We saw Ferrari, Lamborghini, Lotus, Audi R8, Ford Shelby Super Snake, Nissan GTR, Toyota Supra, and old classics (which I don't know or have an interest in). When asked of Jacob, he liked this much more than the Houston Car Show from several months back, which lacked these type of cars.

Since we drove all the way there, we made the most of it. Vintage Park reminds me of Uptown Park... a very nice, high-end look with outdoor shopping.

The first stop was CoCo's Crepes. We were getting hungry and the lunch spots were not open yet so what better way to feed our hunger than to eat some sweet crepes. Dessert for breakfast. We're a fan of the one in downtown and this was no disappointment.



CoCo's Crepes
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆


For lunch, we ate at Cheeburger Cheeburger. Here you can choose from four different burger patty sizes and you can add essentially any toppings you want (onion rings, coleslaw) at no additional cost, except for the only topping I really wanted (grilled onions) which is an extra $1. :( The burger was nothing special. The patty crumbled with each bite. (I'm no cook but maybe they need to put bread crumbs and eggs to bind that crap.) I was full after eating it, but not satisfied. It's a terrible feeling. Besides their weak burgers, they have a ton of malts and shakes. This place has a 50's diner feel.



Cheeburger Cheeburger
Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆


For dessert, we got cupcakes at Treat Cupcakes. These cupcakes seem slightly bigger than the other fancy cupcake places. We got the confetti (for the kids), red velvet, 24 karat, and Italian cream cupcakes. I really liked the cream cheese frosting. The red velvet cupcake had a slightly different/unique taste that I can't pin-point but it was good. They were all very good.



Treat Cupcakes
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆