Don't eat anything that could have loved you.

The night that Vons was screwing-up the delivery of food that the Woman of Interest had ordered on my behalf, I went to Ramesses, at 3882 4th Avenue in Hillcrest. I figured that I could get a whalloping amount of protein in a highly palatable form.

They gave me too much food. Really, they are very concerned to please their customers, so when I told them not to bother with the salad (I cannot readily digest lettuce), they gave me more rice. And they'd just dealt with an unanticipated surge of customers, so that Said (one of the proprietors and one of the chefs) needed time to get more rice cooked; to compensate for that delay (which really didn't bother me), he gave me some free lentil soup (which was excellent) and then a piece of some sweet baked good. They amount of food that I would have got without the extra rice, the soup, and the dessert would have been quite filling. When Carmen (the other proprietor, and Said's wife) offered me a second glass of ice tea, I had to turn it down, simply because there wasn't going to be room for it.

My understanding is that Ramesses is developing a growing local following. Well, they deserve it. And if they stay in business then I can keep eating there.

I eat at Ramesses fairly often. I always order the same thing. I suspect that there are other dishes that I would really like. but I so enjoy the dish that I first ordered there that I don't want to pass it up to try one of the other offerings.

My lack of posts here have been an artefact of my illness. I managed to comment here-and-there to various journals and 'blogs, but putting together an entry to my own 'blog has seemed too much. I'm considerably better now, though I'm still coughing and somewhat congested.

One of the aspects of my being ill has been that I don't have a clear sense of the timing of events over much of the last few weeks, even though I felt fairly lucid during most of that time.

On the worst day, whenever that was, I awoke as weak as a kitten — I had to lay down and rest after the effort of simply finding two matching socks in my laundry — but had to go out and get something for food energy. I managed to get to CVS/pharmacy (a half-block from my home) and got orange juice. After I drank it, I was very cold. I wasn't thinking clearly enough to reälize that I was cold because, on the one hand, I had just put about a pint of cold fluid in my body, and, on the other hand, was too low in energy to generate off-setting body heat. I just climbed under my bed-covers and passed-out. When I awoke, I was over-heated, and thought I'm like an old mouse, who has lost his ability to regulate his body temperature. But I was otherwise feeling much better; the carbohydrates and vitamins in the orange juice had been put to good use.

Later that day or some time on the next (I really don't remember), worried about me, the Woman of Interest placed an order for home delivery with Vons while I was asleep. This was probably a good idea, but in the event Vons quite dropped-the-ball. They originally gave her a two-hour window for expected delivery; at the end of that window, she got a call telling her that it would be another 20 minutes. She told them to telephone her if there were any problem. After instead about two more hours, figuring that local restaurants would soon close for the night, I went out. On my way, I let the Vons delivery man thorough a pedestrian gate to the apartment complex. When I got home, there was no food at my door; just a Sorry we missed you note. And, no, the delivery man hadn't called the Woman of Interest; as I noted to her, he didn't want to have to admit that the ostensible 20 minutes had been more like 120 minutes. (FWIW, I live less than half-a-mile from the nearest Vons store. As the Woman of Interest notes, they probably don't run the delivery service out of the nearest store, but it is none-the-less absurd that they cannot perform the equivalent of a half-mile delivery within two or even three hours.)

I have twice now eaten at Ramesses, a new restaurant for Mediterranean cuisine in Hillcrest. Both times, the food was excellent. To-day, the sandwich that I had there was so good that I would have immediately ordered a second one were it not for the fact that I'd like to lose a few pounds. (Instead, I made a plan to go back to-morrow.)

Ramesses is at 3882 4th Avenue, in a small shopping center in the south-west orthant of the intersection with University Avenue.

Up-Date (20 October): Unfortunately, they stop serving sandwiches at 16:00, and I didn't get there until after 18:00. I ordered the same thing that I'd had on my first visit. This time, the quality was even higher, and the portion was notably more generous.

Yester-day I received an old Haldeman-Julius catalogue that contains a picture of David Oliver Cauldwell. He looked like some cross between a stereotypical Marine and Beaker.

The mail to-day brought four tickets from Television Preview:

You have been selected to participate in a survey whose findings will directly influence what you see on television in the future.

The thing is written to make it seem that the audience will be evaluating a show or shows (and my gut reäction was to be appalled that any of us in SoCal should be asked, it being bad enough that the thinking in Los Angeles has such a disproportionate and otherwise perverse effect). But I did a quick check on the WWWeb, and what I've learned is that the audience will really be used to test commercials, and otherwise be surveyed for their reäctions to consumer products. The shows presented will be old-and-probably-failed pilots or series.

I stopped at La Vache for lunch, and ate too much food. I entered planning to eat a salmon sandwich, and found carrot soup on the menu. I ordered a bowl (rather than a cup), and this in itself was a good choice; but I should then have forgone the sandwich (and its side of mashed potatoes), in spite of the anti-depressant virtues of salmon. I am now parked at David's Coffee Place, attempting to remain relatively inert.

Speaking — well, writing — of David's Coffee Place, my understanding is that the new owners are going to change the name to Babycakes. I think that this new name is a generally bad idea. First, David's Coffee Place (AKA just David's Place) is something of a neighborhood institution — a well-regarded institution — and a wholesale name-change will make people feel as if that institution is gone. Second, I see the particular name Babycakes as the sort of thing associated with something at best briefly fashionable.