Shaun and Walter's Visit

Hooray! Shaun and Walter came to visit! Shaun is my very good friend from High School who now lives in Iowa. Actually, he’s the only friend from high school that I keep in touch with. Thank goodness Shaun comes to visit me every once in a while, as I have been a very bad friend and have not gone to see him and Walter in Des Moines! Bad Sherri!!

Deal or No Deal

Well, I finally did it. I have been watching Deal or No Deal all season. Addicted. Feeling like I’m at a table gambling myself. Feeling the highs, the lows, the risk, the chance. Did I mention addicted? I want to be on that show so badly. A few months ago, I decided to submit my application… but while filming my 5 minute video, I came to the conclusion that I looked and sounded like a dork, and that I would be much better in person. One day, when I was casually stalking the NBC Casting page, I noticed that DOND is doing a casting tour around the country, and that they were holding an open casting call about 30 miles east of San Diego just FOUR days later. That was the closest stop to San Francisco.

So I got on a plane and flew to San Diego, picked up a lawn chair at WalMart, slept a few hours at a hotel in Alpine, CA, got up at 3:30 am, and was waiting in line by 4am, with an estimated 900 people in line in front of me. Somehow I envisioned a nice sunny line, where I could relax and read my book while waiting for the interviews at 10am. I somehow overlooked the fact that there is no sun at 4am, so I sat shivering in the dark for a few hours, Luckily, there were thousands of people all around me in the tent, and I had a fantastic time chatting with everyone while we were waiting, and later shuffling along (moo!).



Casting began at 10am. By 11:10 I was up. They wrangled 10 of us at a time into each of the tents. Inside the tent there was an NBC casting person. Each one of us had 20 seconds to tell him what makes us unique and why we want to be on the show. 20 seconds!!! I was so excited, my mouth hurt from the permagrin on my face! I was in the tent with a super cool truck driver who is studying to be a nurse, a lady who is famous for her chicken dance, and a young woman who loves to waterski naked and breast feed. She breast feeds as often as she can, she loves it so much. Did I mention that she doesn’t have any children? Three of us had the opportunity to do another 20 seconds (which I was TOTALLY unprepared for!). We won’t know until the day when (and IF) they call us for another round of interviews. Worse case scenario, I passed a very spontaneous, exciting and adventurous 24 hours with 8,000 other people who each came ready to present their very best selves. Wish me luck!

Exploring the Windy City

Continuing our quest to determine which cities we could possibly live in, one day in the future, we headed off to Chicago for a long weekend of fun. We were hosted by the lovely Kathy R., in the West Loop, and began our adventures there. Our action packed weekend included wandering through 10+ neighborhoods, popping into Open Houses to see what you can get for your money (a LOT!), eating tasty Chicago dogs, dining with Kathy and Darren at Carnivale (yum!)..

..seeing Keb Mo at the House of Blues (fantastic show, but he didn’t sing House in California despite Kathy and Sherri’s pleas!), catching up with Joey (who was in town from SF to find an apartment), cocktails with Sherri’s friend Chris (from the good old dot coom boom days in SF)...

brunch with Laura (from Habitat for Humanity El Salvador) and her fiancée, buying my very first pair of Fluevog shoes, and .. this one deserves its own paragraph..

DINNER AT MOTO with AT's friend Greta and her boyfriend Keith. AMAZING.

If you have never been to Moto, it is worth every penny for this one-of-a-kind dining experience. Moto describes itself as such: a “futurist influenced, degustation focused restaurant dedicated to the avant-garde cuisine of Homaro Cantu. At moto dining is an interactive, multi-sensory experience unlike any other.” .. “With his philosophy of pushing the limits of known taste, texture, and technique, Chef Cantu provides our guests with a truly unique and exquisite dining experience.” Please allow me to break that down for you. Whatever you think you are eating, it’s not going to be that. It’s going to be a different texture, flavor, temperature than you are used to. The 10 course menu includes liquid nitrogen, the 15+ course menu also uses a laser. The menu is delivered with your name on it “moto welcomes A.T. Howe”, you select which menu you would like, then you eat the menu.

It’s a very tasty parmesan cracker. Yum! Each course blew my mind. We had fish over popcorn sauce (it just TASTED like buttered popcorn) with pomegranate noodles and a minty sauce. We had quail over macaroni and cheese (the macaroni was cooked, dehydrated, and reconstituted with a smoked gouda sauce, so it was almost crunchy, a completely unexpected texture and delicious flavor!), we had a delicious sort of salmon tartare (to say simply salmon tartare is NOT doing it justice, I know) with sesame crackers that were scooped out of a bowl of liquid nitrogen and onto your bowl (if you ate it quickly, you could blow smoke out of your mouth). Each course was truly an experience, and while completely stuffed at the end, I didn’t want the experience to end. The grand finale looked like a bowl of nachos. I’m going to make you go there yourself to find out what they were REALLY made of.

Overall analysis of Chicago: two thumbs up. It’s brrr cold in the winter and hot & humid in the summer, but we loved it anyway. I would definitely need a winter and a summer wardrobe, and should probably start growing some thicker skin. But it seems like Chicago would be a fantastic adventure, with lots of food, nightlife (A.T. loves him some Blues!), people, and places to explore. Maybe one day..