tigertoy

I know not everyone plays or cares about Magic: the Gathering, but even if you don't play the game, if you like fantasy art, you should take a look at this review of card art from the new set.

Went to a new-to-me restaurant in Urbana for dinner this evening. It's a tiny hole-in-the-wall Mexican place called Huarches Moroleon. It's located at Washington and Philo, in a building that I've seen a bunch of places rotate through, but I hadn't been in it for several incarnations.

Turns out it's really good. I'm not exactly knowledgeable when it comes to Mexican food, but a lot of the things on this menu weren't the usual American Mexican restaurant fare. I don't know if that means they're authentic or creative. We started with the traditional chips and salsa, but they had four different salsas to mix and match, and they fry their own tortilla chips which are way better than average. I had enchiladas mole which were wonderful, and there were lots of other things on the menu that looked tempting. The prices were very reasonable -- I think the enchiladas were $8.

So if you're local and in the mood for Mexican, don't settle for El Toro.

Another Thanksgiving weekend is done. Thursday I had Thanksgiving dinner at Holly's with her large fannish chosen family. Then, after stopping by there again for lunch (Peter's risotto is legendary), on to Chambanacon. Chambanacon is small, but it seemed like we'd found a good place for it, in Champaign where it should be. So it was distressing to learn that the hotel has been sold and the new owners are remodeling away all of the space we hold Chambanacon in. More distressing is that our stalwart concom have determined that, thanks to the amount of demand football creates for hotel space on Thanksgiving weekend, there are no available hotels in Champaign that can host the con. (One has the space, but has a policy, apparently not negotiable, that the function space closes at midnight, which is a non-starter.) So the con will be in another city next year. Having to leave Champaign was the main cause of the con's crumbling from an important regional convention into a party, and everyone that still cares is worried that leaving Champaign again will lead to further decline.

But enough worrying about next year. What happened this year? I played some board games, enjoyed conversation, got in a little filking, and had good company. The filking broke up disappointingly early both nights, but what there was was good. It was especially good to hear BJ Willinger again. It seemed much too short, and looking back it seems like I didn't take full advantage of the time I had, but I was happy while I was there, and that's what it's all about.

I am safely home from OVFF. The trip was smooth. I had a good time, though there was noticeably less sleeping involved than I would like. This despite spending a fair bit of time in bed. I got to have dinner with my cousin Saturday night. I sang some songs without embarrassing myself terribly, heard lots of great music, and saw a lot of friends. I got to catch up a little with some of them. I never did play any games -- too much other stuff going on.

Congratulations to all the Pegasus winners. And commiseration with all my fellow voters, who had to choose among so many worthy choices, especially in the Best Song of Passage category. Wow, those are all good songs. And double wow, the performance of Scarlet Town at the concert -- high point of the whole weekend musically, maybe the whole year. I don't know if there's a recording of that on line, but if there is you should listen to it.

Thanks to everyone who gave me hugs and support, and to everyone who bought calendars, and to the OVFF concom and volunteers for running the show again.

The worst part of the trip was getting a call Saturday night from my mom's pet sitter (after she'd failed to get through to my mom). Maggie seems to have taken a turn for the worse and can't stand up now. She's at the vet now and I'm waiting for another call.

For anyone in or near C-U, this weekend coming up is Prairieland Feed's annual Pet Fair. Several groups with cool animals (that you shouldn't have for pets) exhibit, including EFRC. I believe we will have a couple of the tiger cubs from last year, although it's not yet entirely settled. It's also the best prices of the year on dog food, if you have a dog. Stop by Saturday and say hi to me, or if you can't make it, stop by Sunday even though I won't be there.

In case anyone out there communicates with me: my primary (net66) email address is going away. They were bought by a regional comms aggregator years ago which was bought by Cincinnati Bell, and Cincinnati Bell is dumping their dialup business, and doesn't have any other way to give me net access. (I now actually get on the net through my phone, but had the dialup as a backup and to keep the email address.) If you need to email me, you should be able to reach me at (my user name) at gmail.

On a more pleasant and less sensitive note, Mother's Day is coming up Sunday, and since birder2 is going to be kind of busy that day, we decided that we'd go out to dinner today. I had heard that her favorite Indian restaurant had closed, but I'd also heard in the same conversation that a new Indian restaurant had opened in downtown Urbana. Google found it for me; it's called Sitara. It's on Race between Elm and Main, which I drive past every week or two, but I had been oblivious to it.

The space is small -- it was a bar, the name of which I can't recall. They had several flat-screen TVs running what I assume was a Bollywood musical. (I've never seen any Bollywood fare, I've only heard it discussed on the radio.) I couldn't keep myself from looking at the TV; it was pretty but didn't seem to make much sense. The menu looked fairly promising -- not an extraordinarily large number of choices, but certainly not small. A lot of familiar dishes, but some that I don't recall from other Indian menus as well, it presented the usual dilemma, since pretty much all of the dishes sounded good. We settled on samosas and an appetizer called, if I'm remembering the unfamiliar name right, chicken kusawa. Something like that. The menu described it as having Nepali spices, which sounded novel. birder2 chose an odd named curry whose name I can't recall, but that had a j and I think a z. I chose lamb kedai. The samosas were tasty, not exceptional, but perfectly good samosas and I like samosas. The chicken appetizer was a surprisingly generous bunch of grilled chicken breast chunks, and the spicing was interesting. My curry was quite delicious, pleasantly spicy to me (which meant it was a bit too much for birder2 to sample). I had a small taste of hers and it was also tasty.

So, all the things we ate were good, and the prices were quite reasonable by C-U sit down restaurant standards. (I think all the entrees were between $9 and $11, mostly $10.) So, if you're looking for Indian, apparently you can't go to Bombay Grill on First Street any more, but you can go to Sitara instead, and it's a fine choice.

So, I have been playing Magic almost every Friday night, but I've mostly been playing draft, and I've never quite bothered to record my decks. But I decided to play Standard tonight, because I have a deck that was weak months ago but I've actually gotten a few more of the expensive cards that were holding it back, and I felt like playing it. We ended up only having 8 players, and if I'd realized there weren't enough people to go four rounds I would have drafted again. There were more people when I signed up but a couple of them left.

My all-in Gray Merchant deck came in second. Not too bad. ( deck and details )

Since the weather was attractively springlike, I went to Kennekuk today. The ponds were still frozen over, but I did see one small orange butterfly of indeterminate species.

If there is a God, it is indisputable He hates us.