Lunch

Too Jays is maybe the best Jewish food chain in the south and I love Jewish food. Not as much as Italian, but some Jewish foods are in my top twenty five favorite foods list. White fish salad, stuffed cabbage, knishes, and pastrami are definitely top five Jewish foods (I left out the fifth because there are probably a half dozen vying for that spot). Smoked salmon (lox), sabal, sturgeon, onion rolls, cream cheese, bagels, onion rolls, latke, all vie for the fifth spot and the rest vie for top ten including blintz, pickled herring in cream sauce with onions, kreplach, chopped liver, kasha varnekesh (with barley and heavy on the onions and mushrooms), baba ghanoush, farfel (heavy on the onions, musrooms, butter, and spices), liver and onions (heavy on the onions and a sweet ready gravy based sauce), halava sweet with pistachios, and I probably left out some.

Online, you can tell Jews make up less than 1% of the world's population. I have a little trouble believing the author is Jewish, but here's a list that claims to be the top 25 Jewish Foods. The article should have been called Middle Eastern foods. Good stuff on the list, but traditional Jewish food is Eastern European and Russian in my world. Wikipedia offers more to choose from, but surprisingly leaves out several traditional Jewish dishes, including all the smoked fish except for lox.

I suppose growing up (not that I ever did) in a Jewish Italian family and neighborhood gave me a taste for Ashkenazic Jewish foods (and pasta and cheese and tomato sauce and meatballs and pizza and... excuse me while I drool) since the Jewish influences were Eastern European and Russian. Some some of the Sephardic Jewish foods were served often too. If you are interested in a bit more accuracy than the more popular sites, try these sites.

So overall, Italian still wins the first prize my taste buds give out in the imaginary ethnic foods awards dinner, but Jewish food ranks high on the list along with Asian foods (shrimp or scallops or lobster in black bean sauce, lobster sauce, and other sauces, shrimp fried rice with lots of duck sauce and some soy sauce, spare ribs, Beijing duck, crab rangoon, egg rolls, spring rolls, shrimp/seafood egg foo young with sweet brown sauce, sweet sauteed eggplant, all sorts of shishami and sushi, hot and sour soup, oh stop me... we'll get into listing Asian foods and listing favorites {most of these are a start} there another time). Some American (BBQ'ed anything), cheeseburgers heavy on the cheese and grilled onions, hot dogs with mustard, ketchup, and onions in sweet red {tomato based} sauce, fried shellfish, meatloaf made right, and more but all done just particularly right specific for my tastes as much of American {and British} food is not at all appealing to me... I like spices and sauces, among other things) and Indian (ahhhh, oh yes.... shhhh, we will stop now) and we wander off into the international food court on my mind...

Yum.

Meanwhile, continuing the apartment search, we visited about seven and I ruled out some others by phone. The good news is there are really nice places to live in the area. The bad news is the potential new roommate can't afford any of them without major changes in his lifestyle and I am not sure he really gets that... and though I can afford them, they are pushing the limits of what I want to spend. I'd like to have the total bill for living expenses at a fourth of my net take home each month and the places we saw today would be closer to a third without considering I might have to cover the roommate now and then. Buying a house, or at least a condo, is definitely the most sensible move. Still, I may move into an apartment and pay someone else's bills for another year.

On a sort of side note (yes another, but this won't go on as long as lunch did lol... there's always hope lam), a one bedroom condo rental in my price range is becoming available December 1 and I apparently have first dibs on it (coincidence or not, it inspires a smile) and... it is being completely remodeled. A friend inherited six of them from her dad this year and while it likely is in an old building that I'll need to bug spray and mold spray... and it is not in the ideal location I wanted... and it likely has few amenities... and the community has it's drawbacks... and it's not gated or as safe as some... and... I will look at it Tuesday evening. Not sure how "remodeled" it will be, but all new cabinets, appliances, bathroom, and flooring would be a serious draw.

I would not be able to bring my washer dryer and would probably be cramped, but still would have more space than I have now and if I can find a cheaper storage, only pay a little more than I am paying now for rent and storage. All the utilities and stuff (internet, cable, etc) would be on me though, so I might end up paying the same as I would in a higher end shared place that would give me more room and amenities. It seems like a viable option, though the appeal of the higher end more spacious living and great amenities is a powerful draw if I risk the cost of a roommate who may not be responsible enough to pay his way all the time. I tell myself I can find another if he bit off more than he could chew, but there can be complications and hassles I do not want to deal with. Tuesday evening will tell me a lot more.

The places we looked at were nice, some beautiful, most very acceptable. One place I could actually bring my washer dryer, which is very appealing as I would not need to spend any extra money on storage (I wonder if the new potential roommate has even used one. Could be he has some real independent livings skills, could be he has none.... sharing a kitchen and all my kitchen stuff and the washer dryer suddenly became a queasy feeling... trust, hope, teach).

If you would like to know more about the apartment search (or just happen to be someone looking for a roommate in this area who stumbled by this blog), feel free to reach out (please? lol). If you are an amazing rich person who wants to live with an amazing poor person, definitely reach out. I do lawns, bathrooms, even windows lol... and I cook too :)

Hey, here's an idea (wanna put on a show?... no, not that idea), if you have an extra house in Lake Mary, Lake Forest, Heathrow, or Sanford, I'll watch it and take care of it for you.

Checking on the file transfer (two more hours have passed), the box says 60% complete and there are 82K files left. Speed continues to fluctuate and the peak remains 37 MB/s. I also just repositioned the two hard drives and put a fan on them as they were both getting very hot, especially the thinner and older 1 TB drive. 63% complete but still just over 82K files as large video files are currently being moved. 1 hour and 20 minutes is the estimate. According to the graph in the box, speed has been consistently in the mid-30s MB/s for about forty minutes. Cooling did not seem to be affecting speed of transfer, though when the files switched to much smaller .m4v files, speed dropped into the high teens to mid-twenties. Down to 81K files now. 66% completed. 1 hour 45 minutes to go. Yeah, I know lol.

It doesn't get much more exciting than this. lol lam laa

Narf :)