Rhonda discovered Melissa’s Reels on Facebook; she is famous for selling cupcakes, but makes and eats salads on the internet. I wouldn’t imagine that a salad video would be quite so inspiring, but there are some great ideas on her feed. Melissa inspired this peeled carrot salad, which features hot chili oil, rice vinegar, and soy sauce. Really good.

I usually order maraschino cherries for our manhattans on Amazon, but sometimes I imagine that I’ll have occasion to stop and grab a jar. Today, this was my intention; we picked up groceries and I was gonna shoot into the liquor store for a jar. But I forgot.

I asked Copilot for a quick cherry syrup recipe, and so combined equal parts fresh cherries, sugar, and water to make one. I strained the cooked cherries out and put three cherries, which I’d been soaking in vodka, in the syrup while I mixed the drinks. Came out pretty good.

I did just order a can of Luxardo cherries though.

Luna’s at the Savoy Bistro

Just up the street is a Vineland restaurant stalwart, the Savoy Inn. It’s a family operated business that has withstood the test of time (and Covid). It was, for a long time, both a venue for big events (like weddings and retirements) and home of the Bistro, a restaurant serving Italian-ish food. They opened Luna’s as a fresh start in a bid to keep up with many local restaurants unveiling outdoor dining options, starting with nearby Villa Fazzolari.

The dining al fresco revolution was welcome; Rhonda and I have been lucky enough to visit Italy twice, both peripheral to Y2K, and lamented upon return back to the States the lack of outdoor dining options that didn’t involve picnic tables and custard. Everywhere we went in Italy, there were restaurants on busy Roman streets with casual tables scattered just outside the storefront. We would find ourselves having pizza and wine for dinner, or a couple of beers, the docle vita expanding languidly into the evening hours.

Luna’s is a little affected: there are aesthetic attempts at making it look like a clam shack, or a landmark spot on a shoreline barrier island road. It’s none of those things, of course, but it also has its own collection of dishes and drinks that suggest an otherness from the Bistro.

It was a cool and raining evening, but it was still a lot of fun to commune around the table and enjoy the fresh air. It really is a nice spot to sit outside, sip a glass of Sauvignon Blank (see below), and be with the whole fam.

Sauvignon Blanc

I am guilty of having been a red-wine-only person for a long time; I don’t know where or why that happened, but for many years, a glug of red was my go-to with dinner or a meal out somewhere nice. The Bota Box in the pantry was always a red. This, after a long stretch of preference for whites, probably because I ate fish and veg mostly peripheral to finishing college; I adopted a low-fat vegetarian diet, punctuated by fish for dinner when I’d have a chance to dine out. I fancied Alsacian rieslings at the time, having read that James Joyce favored the varietal.

The gateway wine for me was rosé. I always thought the varietal was a sweeter wine, but I tried a few and loved the lightness of the wine, but appreciated the tartness and body. And having been down the white wine road before, I knew that certain dishes, such as raw oysters, beg for the crisp minerality of a thoughtfully crafted white.

As is my lot in life, I yammered on and on to Rhonda about how good the rosé at Bellview Winery was, after trying a glass at a celebration of life for a former colleague there in the fall of 2023. By that Christmas break, I’d managed to get her over to Bellview, and that’s exactly what she had. That has become our go-to when we visit, in fact.

At home, though, and often when we’re out to eat, we’ll get a bottle of chardonnay. Rhonda likes the oaky, buttery versions generally speaking, and I enjoy them too. But I have an adventurous palette, and on occasions where she’s having a beer or something else, I will wander to other varieties.

We took Joe to the nearby Pickwickian for a bite Thursday, and Rhonda ordered a beer. I decided on a class of their house Sauvignon, and it was really nice. (I tend to order their half-chicken when we go there, as it’s pretty guilt-free for bar food.) It was light, crisp, tart–perfect with the chicken. And last night, we joined my parents at Luna’s to celebrate Joe’s girlfriend’s earning her associates degree and I had a couple of glasses there. And Friday night, Rhonda made mussels here at home with some nice bread, and steamed the mussels in some J. Lohr Sauvignon Blanc, which paired nicely with the shellfish.

Meditation

Did you know that the incessant flood of language that besets you when your mind wanders is one, totally normal, and two, not something you have to allow to run your life? Sam Harris thinks so. Meditation is hard.

Thronefall

Plants vs Zombies was all the rage back in 2009, and was my introduction (but not initiation–I never played it) to the tower defense genre. I did enjoy a couple of titles, though: Kingdom Rush and Iron Marines. I preordered Thronefall so that I’d have it at debut. I played through the training mission and it was a blast. I suspect it’s a great intro to the genre, but enthralling for seasoned vets as well.

Rhonda just clued me in that Loretta Switt, who played Margaret Houlihan on the TV version of MASH, died on Friday.
Hot Lips on TV was not the caricature from the movie version. And that makes sense; you can say the same thing about the difference between the television show and the movie. I grew up with the sitcom version on TV each night, but only watched the movie later, in college, rented from the library. My father often lauded it in the same breath as Catch-22. The MASH movie remains among my favorite films of all time. The film is satire; the television show was far more sincere. Both cast a hard light on the human cost of war, with divergent strategies, but equally noble goals.
I imagine that in the same way there are people who stridently affirm that Van Halen is better with Dave and The Office ended when Steve Carell left, the movie trumps the film, or vice versa. For my tastes, I prefer the dark, artful humor of the film, but I recognize how black comedy would not translate into a television serial.
In the same way that Alan Alda brought a pathos to Donald Sutherland’s Hawkeye, Switt played Hot Lips not as a turgid rule follower but as a values-driven exemplar of service–if, occasionally, a little coarse.

I included Neil Fiori’s Unschedule in a Sunday Serial in January. I’ve bastardized it in the intervening months such that I don’t track the time I spend on items necessarily; it’s more of a loose guide of things I think I need to spend time on that day, with all of the time commitments I have (meetings, errands, domestic responsibilities, as well as exercise) accounted for. It still helps me see when I can really sit down and focus for a while, and more importantly, when it would be wise to. And in a pinch, if my Sunday night OmniFocus review doesn’t happen, it at least helps me prioritize Monday.

Most of the items that populate my Unschedule come from OmniFocus. I schedule time for emergent projects on my Unschedule, and consult fantastical for meetings and the like. The astute OmniFocus user might suggest that the Forecast View can, in fact, display your calendar items, so what’s the point of the Unschedule?

Besides, of course, an opportunity to use OmniOutliner.

I’ll tell you, and it’s counterintuitive.

In Getting Things Done, projects are comprised of next actions, and next actions are the small, visible things you can do to move a project forward. OmniFocus excels at capturing these next actions, and is most effectively used to organize these next actions into projects. The general wisdom holds that you work off of action lists: phone calls, email, or errands, for example.

Not so with the Unschedule. You can conceive of it like a punch card system, where you would record 30-minute blocks of work around your other commitments (most importantly, preferred activities… aka fun).

Next actions, atomic nuggets of work that they are, often don’t take up 30 minutes. A phone call might go 10 minutes. Writing a letter might take 15 minutes. Sure, you could log 30-minute blocks of phone calls, and only do that for 30 minutes. But that’s not necessarily how people work. Or me, anyway.

I do find that setting aside time to work on projects is helpful. I can work on the budget for an hour, and I’ll use OmniFocus’s corresponding project to clue me into my next actions. To that end, I find myself populating the Unschedule with projects (sometimes I’ll use Hookmark to link to the project in OmniOutliner). So it’s more of a focused projects list than a repeat of tasks I’ve already recorded elsewhere.

I was thinking about OmniFocus’s Focus perspective and I tried grouping by project. But Forecast doesn’t support such tomfoolery. So I cobbled together a perspective called-what else?-Unschedule, which shows any available tasks that are flagged, due, or deferred, grouped by project. And by using the Collapse All command, it’s effectively an Unschedule without the duplicate data entry. This doesn’t help with time blocking, if that’s how you’re using the Unschedule, but it’s close.

Here’s a slightly ginned-up Unschedule if I weren’t working for a living:

And here’s the Unschedule perspective I created:

John Gottman, one of the foremost experts on human relationships, would agree with Arthur Brooks in this video:

Eye-rolling, using sarcasm, scoffing, belittling: all bad unless you want to be alone… or in a weird liminal space.

Michael Tsai’s article on the iPad Mini has really been hanging with me since I read it–I like the “lean into” it angle he’s pushing, after so much trying to bend the OS (or me) into being something it isn’t.

It’s better to lean into what it’s good at. For years, Apple tried to resist the idea of an iPad as an iPhone with a larger screen. But the apps have trended in that direction, and I think that’s actually not a bad way to think of it. It’s actually what a lot of people want.
There’s a lot to like about using the iPad as it is, especially if you like to write notes. I’m much more casual about tossing the pen on the end table or nightstand when I don’t need it, or tucking it behind my ear. Even the largest models beg to be used naked in one hand.

For those of us in the US, tomorrow is Memorial Day, which commemorates persons in military service who perished in the line of duty. Aaron leaves for Disney tomorrow, so we’re not doing anything out of the ordinary, save for not going to work. Lots of BBQs going on.
Anyway, here are some things for your consideration:

Hidden Sands Brewing

Rhonda and I gave up the usual winery visit for a quick pint during an emergent errand. Drinking at the facility is not an expansive Tonewood-like experience; it’s a more industrial, out-of-the-way spot. We both enjoyed the beer, and the Porter is not to be fucked with. Like really good homebrew in a basement bar vibes.

The location itself reminded me of Slack Tide Brewing Company. They’re both little industrial spots off of historic Route 9. We stopped there on a lark with the kids years ago while on vacation in Ocean City, NJ.

The Martinez

I whipped up an intermezzo between our pints and dinner last night. The Martinez is gin and sweet vermouth, which in our case is Bombay and Antica. You could riff endlessly on this combo. I didn’t have maraschino liqueur, but I did use a little cherry juice.

AC Sub Rolls

I don’t prefer these to the more classic semolina roll or chewy Italian that you would get at a lot of sandwich shops around here. I do, however, appreciate the variety. My first try some years ago wasn’t favorable; I found it kinda gluey in my mouth. But successive tries have been more favorable. Again, I wouldn’t choose an AC roll over a reliably good hoagie roll, but it’s a fun switch. They do offer good structure to a sandwich. They tend to be more narrow, making for a smaller (or just thinner but longer) sandwich.

We have four iPhones in the house, and a family Apple One account. This means we can all listen to most any song, at a whim.

Yet: Aaron is a vinyl kid. He’s been collecting records. He has a record player. He goes to record shops. Tonight, on the way home from dinner, we went to Wall to Wall Sound and Videoat his behest. This expansive museum to a bygone era is named, most purposefully, after a now-defunct audio chain I frequented. I had a blast browsing the stacks, and would have absolutely purchased the debut Danzig album, were it in stock.

I really need to listen to Madonna’s True Blue record again. It has nothing to do with my taste in music now or even in the last 40 years, but I had a cassette as a kid and I listened to it constantly on my Walkman. It was the soundtrack to my walk to the bus stop each morning in second or third grade. I suspect I’d enjoy it today. And one time, I remember the section of “White Heat” where there’s a gunshot in the audio, played immediately when my grandfather started his car, and it scared the crap out of him. We had a good laugh over it.

I’d be lying if the suds were exclusive to today. Rhonda and I found ourselves near Hidden Sands Brewery on an unrelated mission and completely by happenstance, and so we stopped for a few pints. Rhonda tried an IPA; I fancied a pilsner and porter. Both of mine were excellent but boy did we both love the porter: roasty and quaffable. Really good.

Friday I stopped to grab a crowler (or two) at 13th Child Brewery in Williamstown. I’ve driven by it many times but it doesn’t open until 5 until late in the week, so I haven’t been able to stop in. I got two crowlers, and took the barkeep’s suggestion that I have something while I waited. So I had a pilsner.

Matthew Weber:

I really think everyone should give RSS a revisit. It’s better than using a news app since you get to curate it yourself, and it’s better than visiting sites one at a time. It makes consuming content so much more enjoyable, that it’s hard to live without.

RSS May Be the Best Invention Ever

Early this month, Joe Kissel delighted Mac nerds with specific email requirements about the upcoming launch of MailMaven, a power-user-focused email application for the Mac that reaffirms SmallCubed’s dedication to managing email on the Mac.

I’m hoping to write something more complete once I’ve had time with MailMaven, but I thought it would be fun to share things as I discover them. I’ve been using MailMaven regularly for about five days after first installing it; it’s still undeniably in beta, but the latest builds (I’m using build 5958 for this post) have been usable.

Smart Folders

The first feature I look for in an email client is Smart Folders: they are how I set up my email clients in my own particular preference, which I’ve written about before. A quick summary of how I manage email:
– A folder showing today’s inbox contents;
– A folder showing yesterday’s inbox;
– A folder showing this week’s inbox ;
– A folder showing last week’s inbox.

Some great examples of Smart Folder support are MailMate and Apple’s own Mail. Spark, especially on the Mac, used to be good at Smart Folders, too, but things have changed since version two. (If you’re interested, they still kinda work on iPad and iOS, but they break all the time and you have to delete the old one and craft anew.)

Once a message is archived or moved from a Smart Folder to another folder, it’s not something I see unless I search for it. I try to keep these folders pruned so older messages don’t pile up. It’s aspirational.

Happily, MailMaven supports Smart Folders. For my use case, I can create account-specific smart folders that fit the bill, so this checks off the Smart Folders box for me. It too supports compound rules, so I am able to combine my iCloud and personal Gmail accounts into “home” smart folders, and then a separate set for work. I like it.

It’s so handy having both accounts available so readily, in an app I’m likely running all day (for work email), that I’ve managed to prune down the last week’s home email attentively. I realized how much unsolicited email I’m getting (and subscriptions to newsletters and headlines and t-shirts and health suggestions) that I unsubscribed to a lot of it. I was not in this habit at all, as the home email solutions I’ve been using (Spark on iOS and Mimestream on the Mac) don’t work as well–or as simply.

Finally downloaded Rocket for Mac. It’s a free utility that allows you to invoke an emoji picker just buy typing a colon (:) and the name of the emoji you’re looking for.

It’s very cool and works nicely. I don’t know that I need it; Launchbar effectively does this, and there is a keyboard shortcut for pulling up the emoji picker in macOS. I do both of those a lot. I’m going to leave Rocket running and see if it sticks.

A coworker surprised me when I got to work today with some sea bass her husband caught. Moments later, Rhonda texted me about what we were planning for dinner (I keep all that in AnyList). I mentioned the piscine windfall and we got to talking tacos.

Rhonda make a crema with mayo, lime juice, Greek yogurt, and avocado, as well as a mango salsa and a roasted corn and red pepper salsa. We had rice and beans too. Came out great.