I love mangoes and eat them often. This morning, I thought Wouldn’t it be great if I ate a mango at work? As it turns out, it was great. However, I have learned some valuable information about the process and so I thought I’d provide this helpful guide on how to eat them properly while in your cube at work.

1. Lay out a napkin or a tissue or something else completely inadequate to absorb the juice you are about to subject it to.
2. Place mango on napkin; realize simultaneously you did not bring a knife or other sharp instrument with you.
3. Check kitchen for knife; find nothing.
4. Find pair of new scissors with office supplies.
5. Use wide open scissors to cut around the mango along its length; cut similarly around the center, dividing it into quarters.
6. Use edge of scissors to peel back skin on one of the sections.
7. Attempt to chisel away as much mango as possible from the pit on the skinless section.
8. Eventually give up and simply bite at mango flesh.
9. Continue like this, eating the other section until you realize you’re late for a meeting.
10. Upon returning from the meeting continue to peel, chisel and devour mango.
11. When done feasting upon the mango walk - somewhat ashamed - with hands and scissors covered in juice to the kitchen area; clean up face and hands.
12. Return to your cube and realize that during the meeting the napkin fused with the desk.
13. Use scissors to scrape mango infused napkin from desk.
14. Vow never to be without scissors again.

Last night Paul came by and hung out. As always it was good times. We went to the Coney Island near my house that I’ve been meaning to check out for a few months now for dinner and it was totally great. There’s something about a Coney Island place with friends that is just fantastic in my opinion. The food was pretty good too I can happily say; not quite to Zorba’s level (and certainly not as good as Lafayette) but it was pretty damn good.

We headed back to the house where I gave a quick demo of some of the beats I’m working on and then moved on to Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the NDS. This is a game about solving puzzles. It’s very much like that comic shows actually. Every time you try and do something, a person tells you, “Hey, how about you do this puzzle first.” Being a jerk of a professor who acts like an insufferable know-it-all you have to prove to the simple villagers that their pointless mind games are child’s play.

The game is actually quite pretty, with very nice looking art and a level of animation for critical scenes that surprised me, even voice over work (which was hilarious on in its own way). We hadn’t really gotten too far into the game to see what exactly made the village so curious except for the obvious stack of homes reaching into the sky. We did, however, learn that I am an absolute bloodhound at finding “hint coins.” Must be from those days as a kid playing pixel-hunting adventure games.

The puzzles kind of attempt to fit with the game’s plot/story/environment but sometimes they’re pretty blatant about the “Hey, solve this math problem,” attitude the game has. That said, a couple that we came across were actually quite tricky and fun. I don’t really have any puzzle games like this that encourage actual critical thinking (I have to do a lot of that at work as it is…) but this might be worth picking up when I can find it used for cheap.

After that we watched a few episodes of Flight of the Conchords, one of my favorite shows as of late. Paul seemed to appreciate the dry and often wacky sense of humor that the show has, and that we both also share.

Before it was time to call it a night Paul helped me unlock level 5 in Rez HD. After failing on the final boss (making me realize just how bad I am at this sort of thing now) I realized it was after 11:00 and that I should probably head to bed.

I have no less than seven drafts sitting in my WordPress right now. Seven. Several of these are really good posts too… Or will be when I actually write them. Work is really hitting hard right now and I’m running on all cylinders to keep up. Hopefully I’ll get some time this weekend to do a little writing.

Across the street from my building in the park there is an Au Bon Pain, which happens to have some seriously tasty baked goods. My favorite are the muffins, particularly the cranberry walnut ones. While I’ve been watching what I eat lately I can’t help but get one of these muffins when I go down to the park for a breath of fresh air, especially now that the weather is starting to get colder. For some reason, Fall is muffin time, or something.

But no more! Or at least, much less! I will do some research and pull together an ultimate Cranberry Walnut Muffin recipe! It will start with some that I look up of course, but recipes are starting points, not rule books. Ideally I’d like to come up with a really good muffin base (whole wheat probably) and then tweak it for different varieties of muffins.

While I’ve always been very at home in the kitchen historically I’ve been a little less comfortable when it comes to baking. I tackled that starting a couple years ago when I began to make some basic cakes (with homemade strawberry cream cheese frosting of course) and then moved on to breads (French bread is my specialty). And now, MUFFINS.

I’ll be sure to post the results. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to make some this Sunday.

After a couple false starts the last week or so I finally was able to go out with Matt, Kari, and Lana to 220 in Birmingham last night. I hadn’t been there before but I heard and expected it to be a pretty cool spot. Luckily, I didn’t let myself down.

The area itself is of course very nice; downtown Birmingham (while a bit snooty at times) is always nice to visit, especially in the warmer months. I think one of the greatest things about 220 is that it’s in the old Edison building and in fact has a club downstairs called Edison’s (also a pretty cool spot). The building’s decor is full of rich dark woods but with a slightly worn feeling that makes it feel a bit more comfortable (something definitely welcome in my opinion in a city that can sometimes take itself a little too seriously). One of my favorite things were the old fashioned lightbulbs with the heavy filaments that glowed a deep orange hanging over the bars, as well as the marker caricature sketches of famous actors on the walls.

Dinner itself was fairly outstanding. I had the lake perch, with one of the best risottos that I’ve had in a restaurant. Good selection of beers as well. I’ve eaten at numerous fantastic restaurants, and while this one isn’t in the top 10, it was a surprisingly good value for the quality of food and service. I’d definitely recommend the place to others and go back myself sometime.