Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Today I chalked up blood donation #48 since moving to Charleston. That makes it 6 gallons of blood that I’ve donated over the past 10 years. Counting donations back home, I think I’m just over 10 gallons over my lifetime. That’s almost 38 liters! The average person has about 7 liters of blood, so I’ve donated my entire blood supply 5 times over in the past 20 years or so.
Yay me!
So how many are you up to now?
NOAA came out with their forecast for the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season a few days ago and said this year should be pretty normal as far as numbers of storms go.
They’ve forecast 14 named storms, 4-7 hurricanes with 1-3 of them being major hurricanes.
Shaping this seasonal outlook is the possibility of competing climate factors. Supporting more activity this season are conditions associated with the ongoing high-activity era that began in 1995, which include enhanced rainfall over West Africa, warmer Atlantic waters and reduced wind shear. But activity could be reduced if El Nino develops in the equatorial Eastern Pacific this summer or if ocean temperatures in the eastern tropical Atlantic remain cooler than normal.
NOAA also retired 4 names from the list of names: Gustav, Ike and Paloma for Atlantic coast and Alma from the North Pacific list.
Hopefully the worst we get here are windy tropical storms that will bring some much needed rain and no hurricanes.
This year Charleston is a location for the 2nd annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk and I’m helping to organize it, along with Chuck!
What is it? It’s a day (July 18) where hundreds of people/photo geeks all across the world will get together in groups and go take pictures. So far there are 400 locations all over the world with walks being planned.
For the Charleston event, the plan is to start the gathering at the Gazebo in White Point Gardens at 9AM July 18 and head up the peninsula from there. I’ll try to work out a route that will take the group through some interesting areas, but the route will be flexible. If people in the group know of other good spots to go to, we can do that. Afterwards, we’ll descend on the unsuspecting Tommy Condon’s for lunch and celebratory libations..
The photo walks are limited to 50 people, so if you want to go, check out the photo walk page and sign up.
I think what I need to do is get with Joan and have her help me plan out a route. Even better would be to get her to come along!
It was in Detroit where I discovered udon noodle soup. After moving here, I had to go without it for a long while until Shi Ki opened and I discovered they served udon noodle soup. They make a pretty good one too (I usually order the nabeyaki udon). Nice rich dashi broth, enough seafood, veggies and noodles to make it hearty but not so much that it becomes more stew-like. I consider it pretty yummy.
Last year Sakura opened on Ashley River Road, and I discovered they also had udon noodle soup, so I stopped by to try it out. Nice restaurant, the udon soup, not so much. Theirs was made from a chicken based broth, so essentially you’re just eating chicken noodle soup.
Yesterday after putting out a query on twitter to see if any other Charleston restaurants had udon noodle soup on the menu, I learned the relatively new Bushido (famous for their Spicy Tuna Handroll Challenge) has it on their menu. They make an decent enough soup (went with the tempura udon soup) but I didn’t think the broth was quite as flavourful as Shi Ki’s, the noodles were a little bland and heavy on veggies. It was much better than Sakura’s offering though.
I’ve been told Mama Kim’s on Calhoun also has udon noodle soup, so I think I’ll have to make it a lunch destination one of these days to check it out.
So far:
Shi Ki – Win
Bushido – Good if you’re in the area
Sakura – Give it a pass.
Heather noted that most of the better attended meetups happened to be ones that I threw together. I think I just got volunteered for stuff.
Today’s third anniversary meetup turned out pretty well. Had about 20 bloggers and tweeters show up, possibly much to the dismay of the lone newbie waitress working the patio area who was expecting a slow evening. I was pleasantly surprised by the numbers that showed.
It’s always good to get together and I think everybody had a pretty good time.
Several #jaredrumours were being formulated.
