Visiting Boise

Before I head to Barbie's dream campus, I'll be a Visiting Professor in the Accountancy department at Boise State University. I was able to meet with Dr. Renner during my trip to AAA in New York City and loved all the great things I heard about the department.

I'm originally from the other (and much, much colder) side of the state, and I've always remembered Boise as a cute city with mild winters. I remember going to Boise and running on BSU's track (and their smurf turf) every spring for Boise Relays and the state track championships. After living in Tucson and Hawaii for the last eight years or so, it'll be interesting to see if I still think their winters are mild.

Xav won't be joining me on this little adventure, though I'll probably try to get him to come visit me once or twice to see what he thinks of Boise. I'll be looking for a place to stay while I'm there, so if you know of anything, let me know!

Adventures In Dining: Barrio Grill Ruins My Brother's Birthday Party

Eight of us arrived at Barrio last night to celebrate my brother's birthday. We left nearly two hours later with empty stomachs and an amazing story of incompetence.

It all started with a martini: My aunt ordered a martini from the maitre'd because our waiter hadn't bothered to stop by and take our drink orders after sitting down for almost 10 minutes. She was told that they were out of vodka because the owner had let the liquor license expire last week. They had it back now but hadn't received their order from the distributor yet, and apparently had forgotten where the supermarket was as well. I know times are tough but to let your liquor license expire over the $585 renewal fee just seems silly.

Finally, the waiter showed up and we ordered; four rib-eye specials, and four various pasta dishes. Nicole wanted an airline chicken dish but the waiter said they were out of the airline chicken cut and that she would be happier with an alternative dish. No big deal but still, strange. Even stranger was two minutes later when the waiter came out and said they only had three rib-eye steaks left and asked if someone would change their order. It was only 7:20pm, but apparently they'd been selling like gangbusters! We laughed and started to wonder what the hell was going on back there.

The restaurant was only half full but the staff was completely panicked the whole evening. The bartender and busboy were running food, the maitre'd was bringing us drinks from the bar and our waiter was running around like a mad man. After about 20 minutes, some 2-4 tops that had arrived around the same time we had were starting to get their meals and we hadn't seen anything but bread.

After 30 minutes we started to ask what was going on with our meals. The busboy appeared from the kitchen and told us something amazing: "the food was coming but they were really busy back there and the MANAGER WAS COOKING." ...We looked around at each other and started to joke about going to the place down the street instead. The maitre'd came over and apologized profusely saying he'd provide us with free desert and that our food was really coming like, right away.

After 45 minutes, several tables that had arrived AFTER us were getting their food. We started making calls to other places.

After 50 minutes they brought out two bland dinner salads for the table to share and once again assured us that our food was "coming up any minute now." We were so hungry that we devoured the salads anyway, despite their flavorlessness.

Over a full hour after placing our orders we threw in the napkins, stood up, and walked out.

On the way out the maitre'd and waiter again apologized profusely and expressed their embarrassment that no one in the kitchen could execute eight of the simplest meals on the planet. The maitre'd told us the food was really ready this time and that if we'd like to stay it would, of course, be on the house. However, when Nicole looked him in the eye and told him that there was no way in hell all eight dishes were going to be anywhere near fresh or cooked properly, all he could do was demure and nod, "yes, that's true." As a last ditch effort, he then offered to take down my brother's information and mail him some gift certificates for a later date with the hope that this experience didn't "hurt our opinion of them."

At no point did the "manager" come out from the kitchen to explain or apologize for his colossal screw up. He just left his entire staff pissing in the wind and all of us starving and dumbfounded.

We had all had good experiences there before and were really looking forward to having a great meal but instead it was a waste of almost two hours and no dinner.

What a shame, that steak sure looked pretty good on other people's plates.

Catching up

I'm too lazy to do six or seven separate catch-up posts, and way too lazy to be doing homework, so one catch-up post it is:

1. Pepperdine. Way cool. Other schools I visited: also way cool, which unfortunately made the decision very difficult. And made keeping up with my school work incredibly difficult. I'm very glad to be off of the market and not going to fly-outs every weekend.

2. AMCIS, San Fransicso, August 7-8.
I love going to AMCIS, especially when it's in cities I want to explore. I was able to visit with old friends, get some important info, and watch some good research presentations. Equally exciting, I was able to finally touch base with my best friend Ryan. Back in the day, we were joined at the hip and for the last eight years have been living in different zip codes. He was nice enough to drive into SF and we chatted and had a wonderful dinner at Le Colonial. It was great to see him again and oh so surreal. Eight years. We have to get together more often. While walking around SF, I also got to go to Tom Colicchio's sandwich place 'wichcraft. Yum. Overall, I love San Francisco and need to visit with Xav some day.

3. This is old news by now, but my last semester in school started August 24. 11 more weeks. Not like I'm counting or anything, but senior-itis gets worse the more times you go through it.

4. Boring research alert: My dissertation advisor and I got a paper accepted to CHIMIT, which will be held in Baltimore this November. This is a small, very specialized conference, but it's one of my favorite. And it's held right after LISA, which we all know is way too much fun to really be considered a conference.

5. Nerd alert: Xav and I went to Blizzcon again this year, though I'll admit to mostly tagging along so we can go to Disneyland. I loved it... and randomly decided to skip a day of the festivities to check out Pepperdine's campus.

6. A patent I worked on with some old friends at IBM has been filed. Woohoo! I even have proof:

7. I finished up my summer accounting internship with R&A CPAs, a small accounting firm here in Tucson. It was an interesting experience and I had tons of fun with my coworkers.

8. I finally got my boring/professional webpage updated: www.nicolefv.com. You'll see repeats of a few news items, but just the boring ones. :)

9. I redecorated the guest bath. I've avoided doing it ever since I finished painting the first time, telling myself it wouldn't do any good because we were about to be moving. We've been here almost three years since then. Lo and behold: as soon as I redo the bathroom, I find a job. I should have painted years ago. I forgot to take before pictures, but here are the afters: