spoonman's Journal

[spoonman]

I'll put Howl's Floating Castle on our queue. I heard about it a while back, but never got around to watching it.

I don't think I've heard of Eternal Sonata, but hopefully I'll get the chance to grab it through Steam someday. We sold the PS3 when we moved out of the PNW...it was hard.

[spoonman]

#151 01/25/2016 -- A Taste of Cypriot Fare

We’ve been biding our time here in Cyprus, saving money by eating at home. But the time has finally come to give local culinary delights a chance. We’ve been scouting the neighborhood for interesting places that look more or less representative of Greek Cypriot food.

We went to a nearby restaurant that seems to be popular with the locals. Most of the items on the menu looked a lot like typical greek selections, so I decided to order something a little bit different. I went for a pork chop with a side of greens and French fries, which didn’t seem all that exotic in the menu...but when they brought it out I was blown away by the sheer size of the plate. It was friggin huge! The image below shows the plate along with other goodies. Spoongirl ordered a large chicken pita that also turned out to be much bigger than anticipated.



All I will say is that the pork chop was legendary: huge, juicy, and well seasoned. I made sure to go to the front counter and congratulate the cook, he was very pleased with my positive feedback. You can see in the image that my Heineken and Spoongirl’s coke both have all kinds of greek written on it! All of that for the low price of $18. A meal that large would have easily cost twice as much back in Paris.

We’re looking forward to other places we’ve got lined up.

[spoonman]

#152 02/04/2016 -- Solar Power FTW

The price of electricity in Cyprus is roughly three times higher than in North America, so about $0.36/kWh. People here are therefore keenly aware of their energy usage and have taken interesting measures to reduce it. Some of them are a little funny, such as having an on/off switch on every outlet in the house, you know, to make extra sure that no power is being used.

But what I think is really neat is their use of solar energy. Most of us tend to think of solar panels when the topic comes up, but there are other ways to tap the power of the sun. I already mentioned one way of using the sun in a previous post: to dry clothes. Cypriots, like many others in the region, do not believe in using appliances to dry their clothes. And with good reason because the sun here tends to be so strong that it’s very viable for the task.

Cypriots also use the sun to heat their water. The image below shows a water heating system, which can be found on the roof of every house and apartment building.



There is an initial investment one must make, but it quickly pays for itself over time because it can easily slash an electricity bill in half. We’ve been diligent about using our water heating system as much as possible. Of course, you need sunshine in order for it to be worthwhile: in December our electricity bill was around $39, versus $75 in January when we had less sun.

It’s unfortunate that places like Southern California don’t regularly make use of such a simple and effective technology.

[spoonman]

#153 02/14/2016 -- More Foodie Goodness from Cyprus

Clockwise from the upper left:

• * Chocolate croissant, Halloumi baked bread, and a spinach roll
  * Local beer, plate of snacks
  * Mousaka (Layers of potatoes, aubergines and marrows with minced beef and pork between the layers, topped with bechamel sauce and grated cheese)
  * Halloumi pita (traditional cheese that’s grilled and salty, very good)

Clockwise from the upper left:

• * Houmous and pita bread. This dip is not common here, but more delicous than the American versions
  * Grilling meat in front of restaurant
  * Kleftiko (lamb baked in oven with local herbs and spices)
  * Chicken Kebab and chips

While we had the Kleftiko and Chicken Kebab there were 5 cats meowing for food. Their persistence paid off because we a dropped piece of chicken from one of the Kebabs and a cat quickly grabbed it. I eventually succumbed and gave them some more fatty leftovers, their cuteness got to me. =).

[peerifloori]

Your journal is a delight. Thank you. I appreciate a vicarious vacation. And vicarious sunshine.

[llorona]

Such tantalizing (and beautiful) food photos!

[spoonman]

@peerifloori: Glad you like the sunshine =). The weather is finally hitting this spot here, with daytime temperatures in the 70's, perfect for beach going.

@llorona: Another plus I didn't emphasize in the post was the low cost of the food, easily twice as cheap as food in Paris.

[spoonman]

#154 02/21/2016 -- Next Stop: Athens

Cyprus has treated us well these past three months, but we are finally ready to move on. We now have our sights on Athens! We’ve been meaning to visit Greece for years but were deterred by one reason or another, so we’re really looking forward to this step in our journey.

Since we’ve been hanging out in the Greek side of Cyprus, we hope the transition to Athens will be smooth. In addition to the usual sights and places, we look forward to enjoying Greek culinary delights and culture.

Yes, the cradle of western civilization and stoic philosophy beckons!

[Ydobon]

Loving all the food photos from Cyprus, you will find very similar fare in Greece. I find myself a little jealous, I love Greece (got married there) and the sun would be the perfect antidote to the miserable Scottish winter!

Oddly enough, solar panels (as in solar PV for generating electricity) seemed to be relatively uncommon on our many trips to Greece. I didn't understand this, energy networks seem to be quite fragile (particularly on the many islands).

[anomie]

Heya spoonman - hope ya'll are well.
I have a question(s) for you --

Your stories of digitizing your paper documents to downsize a few years back stick with me.

Do you find yourself going back to those digital stores over time to continue to prune?
Or referencing the archived documents at all?

Do you have a particular cataloging system that you use that you would be interested to share? I am sure there is a cool term for this.. any digital librarians out there?

Tax documents from 10 years ago? no thanks.

I find less and less documents and data that I am interested in keeping over time.
Maybe Pictures. This may be tied to a recent interest to destroy my online identities (facebook , linkedin, that type of thing..) .

thank you for comment.

[MedSaver]

I decided to go paperless a few years back. Got a scanner and went to town on my filing cabinet. I keep paper copies of very important documents, but everything else goes in the shredder. I use Evernote, which is free (60MB free upload per month). Digital copies are kept both on Evernote servers and my own local hard drive. Evernote is great because it's searchable and available online for iOS or the web. You can tag the documents yourself with keywords (e.g. federal tax return 2015), but Evernote will also search within all scanned documents. It can even recognize handwriting.

All my pictures are digital so I can't help you there.

[suomalainen]

@spoonman, you alive?

[Jason]

Hopefully the outcome will be better than when they last asked Chris Cornell the same question.

[spoonman]

For all of you wondering how I'm doing: I'm alive, I'm well, and I'm FIREd as fuck =)

I'm enjoying my freedom in the PNW right now.

[Cheepnis]

Being FIRE'd af* sounds lit*. Lots of Portland fam* meeting up lately if you haven't checked the Community section.

*That's the extent of current slang I'm aware of, just poking fun!

[rube]

Glad to hear Spoonman!!

[Gilberto de Piento]

Glad things are going well! Thanks for stopping by!