Sweden!

Ambi and I aren't the best at updating the blog for the four or five people who read this (yes, I jest, it's really like six or seven), and for that we apologize. With classes for me and dissertation for her, we just don't take the time needed for a blog like this. Heck, I even devote more time to my daily sports blog, of course that's for purely professional purposes and this is simply for fun.

That said, I'm a flight from Helsinki to London, and I thought, you know, I can whack out a blog post or two and channel some rage (@#$% you, FinnAir!) at not being able to eat on a flight once again into something productive.

I just spent the last week in Gothenburg, Sweden for AoIR 11.0, a conference for internet researchers. We gather annually in alternating years between the States and Europe, and this year just happened to be in Svenska. Without making the obvious crack about the conference being in Milwaukee last year, the opportunity to travel to Europe and two new countries (Sweden and Finland) was just to good to pass up.

Especially when you consider it was my first presentation at a professional academic conference. Not only that, I chaired the panel I presented on. This was a pretty big deal.

Like most of us, my thoughts about Sweden have been acquired and molded by the media. I've met a few Swedes in my time, and while I engaged them in conversation, we didn't perform an in-depth analysis on Swedish norms and culture.

I don't think it's too far beyond the quick to presume that most imagine Sweden at an beer drenched Aryan-filled utopia of dirty dirty sex. While part of that may be true, (and let me tell you, it does exist), the whole notion of a land filled with perky breasted blond haired blue eyed bombshells is a complete myth.

In fact, I found nearly the same diversity I would in Chicago or any major cosmopolitan urban center around the world. I saw all shades of the ethnic spectrum and all were speaking Swedish with the same clarity. I didn't hear a vast linguistic diversity, there weren't a ton of people walking around speaking Spanish or Russian.

I'm not fooling myself into thinking that this is the norm across Sweden. I'm willing to bet in a small northern hamlet like Bjurholm, that there's a ton of Somalis speaking Swedish. But in Gothenburg, I heard Somalis speaking Swedish, and to be frank, that's awesome.

I don't know if it's a cultural norm, some overt pressure on non-natives to speak Swedish, but everyone spoke Swedish, and happily, opened every conversation with me in it.

Contrastly, no one in Japan assumed I was Japanese, and more often than not, I was assumed to be American. But here in Sweden, I was never picked as an American, only when the Swedish required was beyond my linguistic capabilities. Even then, American was not the first nationality assumed. Who knew I looked Finnish?

From Chicago to Ahmedabad

As we finally start on the updates from our India trip, we thought it would be best to go chronologically, to give you a sense of what happened on each day of our trip. We'll throw in some comments about cultural things we noticed along the way as well, of course.

We left Chicago in a rush on Dec. 24. The day began at Theo's place in DeKalb with a lot of frantic packing and me sticking my hand down an iguana's throat to remove the receipt he tried to eat. (Theo expertly held Dorian's jaw open through the whole ordeal.) Needless to say, it was a bit stressful, although Dorian was properly remorseful afterward. We left the house much later than we had anticipated, but I drove quickly out to O'Hare through the snow, and the parking shuttle dropped us off at the international terminal in no time. Then we waited in line to check in. Actually, we would do little more than wait in line, or sit on a plane, for the 30 hours or so. We were on a huge Air India flight to Frankfurt, and we were in line just to board the plane for over an hour. It was Christmas Eve and there were people everywhere.

Soon after we had boarded our flight, we learned that we had been bumped up to business class, which was the best news we had heard all day. We actually had a pretty pleasant nine hour flight to Germany. Theo had a lot of leg room, and the food -- eggplant curry and rice -- wasn't so bad for airline food. We shared my iPod and enjoyed the movies available on the flight, classics like Young Frankenstein. Theo even had time to do a bit of blogging from his phone.

Theo was so excited to get to Germany, and we landed around 8AM local time on Christmas morning. After riding in a shuttle across the terminal, we only had time to find our gate and wait in line again. I knew we wouldn't have time to experience Germany, but I was hoping to at least sit down for a snack and a beer. But I'll make it back there some day.

Our second plane finally touched down in Ahmedabad at 11pm local time, or around 11:30 Christmas morning back in Chicago. Then there were more lines: the line into the immigration room, the line for the swine flu screening form, the line for the swine flu screening official, and finally the line to see an immigration agent. None of these were actual lines, though, just crowds huddled around each station that we had to push our way past. The immigration officer took a long time to examine our passports, but he seemed to think Theo was cool by the end of it. Then we had to climb over the largest mass of luggage carts I've ever seen to get to the baggage claim. Everyone seemed to have two or three carts, all crowded in front of the conveyor belt, which made it impossible to move. (This was actually a good initiation into Indian traffic, but I didn't realize it at the time.)

After Theo retrieved our bags, and my panic about possible lost luggage subsided, we walked out of the terminal to find a huge crowd of people waiting for us. Everyone was waiting for family members and seemed visibly disappointed that it was just two foreigners. I found the driver Ami sent quickly, and we took a fast, 20 minute ride through mostly empty streets to Ami's parents' neighborhood. We were staying in a house owned by Ami's family just down the road from their home. We were met at the door by two servants, who helped us with our bags. A few minutes later, Ami, her sister Anar, and a few of her friends came up to greet us, after they had finished that evening's wedding festivities. We must have looked (and smelled) terrible, but it was wonderful to see Ami and her sister again. It didn't take long for both of us to crash afterwards, though. We'd catch up in the morning.

Thali and Masala: Eating through India

I spent a weekend in Paris when I was in college, and I always tell people that I just ate my way through the city. I traveled with four friends who were also on my study abroad program, and one of them suggested a new snack every hour. We had crepes from a street vendor, then found ourselves in a pastry shop soon after. We stuffed ourselves on a four course meal at a small restaurant, then walked immediately into the Häagen Dazs next door. I took this trip before I went vegan, obviously, and I pretty much consumed my lifetime allotment of butter and cream on that trip. Since then, eating while traveling in a foreign country has been a little difficult. Indian food, with its vegetarian tradition, was something I was looking forward to. I felt like in India, I could actually experience the food culture easily, without relying on plain noodles from the 7-11 like I did in Japan.

And the food definitely did not disappoint. I wrote a bit about our food experiences on this blog while we were still in India, but I thought I would expand upon this here and show you some more pictures. Our days with the Modi family were the best. The Modis practice Jainism like most Gujaratis, where finding meat at restaurants is actually uncommon. We shared breakfast and lunch with the Modi family, eating a variety of grains, roti, daal, and cooked vegetable dishes that included a lot of eggplant, which Theo and I loved. Each evening we attended a wedding event, where we ate full meals on little plates as we mingled with the other wedding guests. The food at these events was a little more varied and usually included a hot soup served in small glasses, traditional Gujarati recipes, and Indian interpretations of Chinese and Mexican cuisine. (Theo got a good laugh at the enchiladas.) Chinese food in particular is incredibly popular in India and always good. I ate a lot of Chinese style noodles with chili on our trip, strangely enough.

After the wedding, we traveled to Delhi and through Rajasthan, where we found more meat, but also more food that we recognized from our experiences at Indian restaurants in the States. Our hotel in Delhi had a great restaurant on the roof, where we had the best Aloo Gobi I've ever had. When we got to Jaisalmer, we took a camel safari and camped out in the desert. Our tour guides cooked us a full meal, with vegetables, daal, and chapati an open campfire, which amazed all of us. The vegetables were great, especially the tomatoes and cabbage, but we did have to deal with a bit of sand...

All of the food was incredibly inexpensive and delicious. We didn't have a bad meal while in India. Okay, the greasy food from the bus station restaurant wasn't real great. We bought food on the train from Jodhpur back to Ahmedabad, but food at most train stations was rather limited, and we pretty much subsided on bags of potato chips while we were traveling. Most bottled drinks in India were incredibly sweet. I swore I was drinking mango juice at our hotel in Delhi until I saw them fill the juice dispenser with a container of orange juice. Theo enjoyed Thums Up, while I was partial to Limca (which tasted a bit like Fresca to me). But my favorite drink was fresh sugar cane juice. You really can't get more pure sugar than that! At one of the wedding events held in the late morning, servers offered small glasses of green juice, which was just fresh sugar cane crushed in the largest juicer I've ever seen. It honestly looked a bit like a wood chipper.

We returned to Ahmedabad at the end of our trip to catch our flight home. After we shopped for gifts on our last night in the city, we went to a thali restaurant. Thali is basically a bunch of regional dishes in small bowls on a large tray. They're also all-you-can-eat, so about five servers hovered around us refilling our dishes any time it looked like we might get low on something. I tend to clean my plate, but I had to learn to leave food in the bowls, or they just would have kept refilling them!

I was inspired by all the wonderful cuisine from throughout our trip, I just had to pick up a vegetarian Indian cookbook in India. I hope to have some of my friends over to enjoy some of these recipes soon. बोन एपीटिट

Wedded Wine and Dine

Just a few weeks after I proposed to Ambi in Agra, the Buck family con-fab kicked into high gear to start planning next year's nuptials. Once my plans for a pirate themed party were quickly sunk, and the baby blue leisure suits with a dazzling disco design were discarded, Tammy and Amber got down to business. And to be frank, I'm fine with that. I'm playing Polonius and it's already Act IV. Well, to thine own self be true, right? This is Ambi's drama, so she gets to direct the drama.

We're still about a year and a half away from 09-10-11; we have plenty of time right? Well, not exactly. We've already secured the church and the reception hall, and really, not a moment too soon. In 2008, September was the fourth most popular month for weddings, with its popularity increasing year by year. It could be the milder weather, the decreased costs of avoiding the summer crush, or even for a time when more friends and family have a weekend free of events or other familial obligations. Both our selected church and reception hall called to confirm our date mentioning that several couples had inquired about Sept. 10, 2011. And here I thought we were a bit early to be planning so much!

On Sunday, June 6, Ambi and I met with our vegan caterer, a lovely lass named Lisa. Lisa invited us to her home to share some samples she had prepared. To say she did an excellent job would be an understatement. We had submitted a number of suggestions to represent our appreciation for global cuisine. I'm sure we'll eventually scratch out a post about our wedding theme, (which fits nicely into the scope of this blog.)

I thought we'd share a few pictures of the delightful delicacies Chef Lisa prepared for our consideration. We haven't fully decided what the menu will look like, but it will certainly reflect our love of food and international flavor.
For the appetizer, Lisa presented some homemade baked baguettes topped with a spicy veggie sausage and vegan cheese. She included samples with a tasty cucumber cream cheese dill spread, and toasted for pita triangles for dipping in a delectable baba ganoush.

I'm a big fan of baba ganoush and this was awesome.

Look how happy Ambi looks.

Since we're presenting a full course meal, we also tried a salad with Lisa's own pomegranate vinaigrette. I'm not a fruity dressing fan, but her balsamic mixture was really good.


When we first began looking for a caterer that could do what we wanted, we first and foremost established that our meal must be vegan and should be able to put even the strictest of carnivores at ease with an eye pleasing fare. People will buy into quirky vegan tree hugging hippies for only so long. They try some of my "abnormal" cuisine at family functions, but pigging out on it? That's a whole 'nother ball o' wax. We want to prove that delicious rib sticking meals are possible. Secondly, we want the cuisine to be representative of our international travels.

This seitan stroganoff was simply awesome. Lisa made her seitan from scratch and it was delicious, it had a much different flavor than most of the commercially available seitan. She also used noodles and bedded it with mushrooms and peas for a hefty and savory bite. Of course, stroganoff has its roots in Russia, but it has remained popular throughout the world. Don't believe me? Just ask Ambi.

It was also important for us to have a dish representing where we got engaged. India will always be special to us for that reason, and not just because it's where Ambi received her ring. Indian cuisine was a favorite of ours even before we traveled to Ahmedabad. After traveling through much of northern India and the Golden Triangle, we discovered new flavors that we just had to find back here. Lisa made a south Indian dish for us to try, composing a light curry with cilantro and a mixture of crisp tasty veggies.


When we tried her kale and potato enchiladas, I turned to Ambi and said, "Sorry, babe, these are better than yours." They had a strong smoky ancho flavor, but the spiciness of a strong jalenpeño pepper. We're both big fans of cilantro, and this was fresh from Lisa's garden.

Doesn't that look delicious?

Ambi really enjoyed both desserts Lisa made, a fruit tart mixture of blueberries and blackberries drizzled with agave nectar. Lisa's friend Mark begged her to bake apples for us (methinks someone wanted leftovers), and Amber devoured them happily.


All told, we had a wonderful time with Lisa who was gracious in opening her home to spend some time with us. As I said at the beginning of the blog, this is Amber's show, and I think she was very happy with such a good start on the menu. If everything goes as smoothly, as this first tasting, the wedding should be a breeze. (I know, I know, easy for me to say.)

Sorry it's been so long since either of us sat down and typed out a blog. Blame my YouTube addiction and Amber's studies. I promise she'll be back soon with a blog on how we ate our way across India.

Motion City Madness

It shouldn't come as any surprise that Amber and I are huge music fans. Maybe it's my dreads or Ambi's laid-back demeanor, but we just look like music people. If you're a party, and you're looking for a couple of music nerds, we're prolly the peeps you wanna chat up.

In fact, Ambi and I have a 'music' tradition that I carry out every few months. I'm one of those guys who loves knowing about cool indie bands that you don't. I admit, I secretly judge you by your knowledge of cool bands. As Christian Lander writes, "If you mention a band you like and the other person has heard of them, you lose. They own you. It is essential that you like the most obscure music possible." That being said, I hunt indie rock bands like Ahab hunts white whales. Amber acts as Queequeg, riding along in the boat with eager harpoon in hand, but not quite sure what lies beneath.

So every holiday or 'special day' (like our anniversary or her birthday), I find a band Ambi's never heard of, but that I know she'll love. The past few months have seen quite the bevy of ear-tastic tunes for my Deathcab Cutie. For Valentine's Day this year she received Throw Me the Statue "Creaturesque"; our anniversary, The Antlers "Hospice"; with the biggest haul at Christmas including The Noisettes "Wild Young Hearts", Phoenix "It's Never Been Like That" and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin "Pershing". Her birthday Nov. 24 saw NPR's album of the year, Veckatimest" by Grizzly Bear land in her waiting CD player.
This all started back when Amber lived in Peoria while teaching at Illinois Central College. I had moved back from Japan to Muncie (a five hours drive from Whiskeytown), and we really didn't see much of each other. A relatively unknown indie band I was into was appearing about two hours west of Amber, and I thought, "What a better way to see a band I like and get to spend time my darling girlfriend?!" ... and so began our love affair with Motion City Soundtrack.

We've now seen MCS, as they're commonly

known, on six separate occasions, traveling throughout Illinois and Indiana. Back in January, we read about a meet and greet on their website that would taking place just an hour from my place at a Best Buy in Aurora. Ambi hurried into her hybrid and hustled her heinie to DeKalb for an intimate acoustic set and meet and greet after the concert.

Amber and I dutifully waited in line to get our autographs, (photo printouts of the band's Mii avatars on our Wii), we debated asking them if they would play our wedding. Now, we're not fooling ourselves to think that we could afford to have a them play our special day, but we in wouldn't hurt to ask right? Alas, we chickened out. Maybe it's because we didn't want to hear them say no, or perhaps it was the strange (and frankly, a little creeped out) looks they gave us. When we entered the Ultimate Wedding Contest from Crate & Barrel, we noted that we'd love to have MCS play our wedding. You get 100 grand, why not, right?
When we saw Motion City Soundtrack at the House of Blues in Chicago, we weren't expecting to get another chance to hang out with Justin, Josh, Matthew, Jesse, and Tony. But as luck would have it, the band announced an after-party at the downtown bar Angels & Kings. Supporting bands fun, A Rocket To The Moon, and Sing It Loud also joined MCS at the bar. We got there a little after 10 pm and hung out waiting for MCS to arrive, chatting with Pat, the lead singer of Sing It Loud, who was a very cool cat, and an undergrad from Iowa, Travis, who celebrated April 20th a few weeks early. Like, reeeeally celebrated.

When the fellas finally showed up around 11 pm, Ambi and I were determined to corner one of them in a nuptial shakedown. Not wanting to completely mob them to start, we finally made our way through the masses until we captured drummer Tony Thaxton's attention. Tony was completely amicable and really friendly. He didn't big time us, but admitted that he really had no idea. I threw out 50 grand as an estimate, but he really couldn't confirm. Since we weren't sure what to expect, the fact he didn't have answer wasn't a surprise. He suggested contacting their management, and even offered up an email.

It wasn't like we were going to take no for an answer, but we weren't going to go crazy with our interrogatories either. We ending up asking keyboardist Jesse Johnson and bass guitarist Matt Taylor as well. Both were very accommodating and very patience with our impudence. We spent a good 20 minutes talking with Jesse and Matt, and walked away with the impression that we are indeed fans of the coolest rock band in the world. I just can't see Lars or Axl just hanging with fans shooting the breeze without reminding you how much better they are than you. If you're not into Motion City Soundtrack, you should be.

We look forward to rocking out with them again soon. We thought we were a little weird considering how many times we've seen them and how many times we've actually engaged them in conversation. I apologized for 'stalking them' until Jesse told us that we're not even in the team photo for obsessive. "There's some people who've seen us over a hundred times." Ambi and I exchanged glances... (whoa)... Matt reiterated, "So you're not that bad. Pretty normal I'd say."

The guys in MCS are still on tour promoting the new album, My Dinosaur Life. They'll be back in the Midwest in June, and we're hoping to make it to Des Moines for another show. We're sure it will be another great one.

We Finally Made the Finals!

So we finally made the finals of one of these social media contests we've entered. About time, huh? Actually, we think we deserved to be included this time, but we hesitate to trumpet that too much. Fact is, we entered to the Crate & Barrel Ultimate Wedding contest because we think our love story is unique and compelling. The fact we finished in the Top 50 is quite the accomplishment considering we didn't rely on tragedy to define our entry or to have a good story. Nearly everyone else in the Top 50, and definitely in the Top 20 defined themselves by illness, sexual orientation, or tragedy. Whether it be a car accident, cancer, or societal discrimination, all they could talk about was about how badly their lives sucked.

I'll try not to get too much into another rant here, but Amber and I thought the contest was about what made your couple unique. Of the Top 6, three had cancer, two were in severe auto accidents, one had a serious birth defect, and the other couple was championing same sex marriage. If it bleeds it leads, and these couples exploited their personal calamity to the fullest! The interesting part is that originality makes up the greatest percentage of a team's score. If 15 other couples are defining themselves by one partner's cancer, how unique is that? After a while, it's the same narrative:

John and Jane knew each other in high school, but lost touch. Seven years later, they saw each other on Facebook and rekindled a love they thought long since buried. Two years into the relationship while planning her fairytale wedding, Jane was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. John's love has brought Jane through this terrible time. With outstanding medical bills and crappy jobs, we need this wedding. Vote for us.

On top of the guilt trip in the entry, their friends, coached by them I'm sure, flood the C&B Facebook page and YouTube with updates claiming their friends "deserve" this fantastic prize. Interestingly though, no one ever says who they deserve the $100,000 dream wedding over. If they are deserving, doesn't that mean someone else is undeserving?

As for Ms. Buck and me, we've both had tough times, but we decided not to frame our relationship by our own misfortune. Amber and I are very lucky to have each other, our health, and a positive outlook on life; not mired in inferiority and feelings of inequity.

We had a blast with the contest and all the interviews we did for our entries' promotion. The last day of the contest, I had two interviews on DeKalb's news leader, 1360 AM WLBK, and another on NewsTalk 1400 WDWS in Champaign. The latter allowed me to reconnect with an old friend, Elizabeth Hess, from my days on the "Murray in the Morning" show on Sporting News Radio. That was a fun interview. I also did a previous spot the day before on WLBK, and recorded a nice spot on with WZBD 92.7 in Berne, Indiana. WZBD holds a special place in my heart as it was one of my first radio gigs fresh out of high school long long ago. We also managed to wrangle write-ups in the Ball State Daily News, and the hometown papers of the Decatur Daily Democrat and the Saginaw News. For each media outlet, we talked about our entry at http://tinyurl.com/yh9haon and how everyone should vote for us, and I'm pretty sure I guided a few people to check our proposal video at http://bit.ly/6Nc3Dj.

Even if we don't win a prize, we had a lot of fun as we always do, and sure has opened our eyes to the possibilities for our gift registry. That'll be a perfect post for another day.

The Ultimate Explorers Enter the Ultimate Wedding Contest

Yes, dear friends, we've entered another contest! Theo and I entered a contest through Crate and Barrel and Daily Candy to win a dream wedding, valued at $100,000 and designed by celebrity wedding designer, Jo Gartin.

So what would be our dream wedding? A destination wedding, of course! A wedding ceremony at Ashford Castle in the Irish countryside would be a dream come true. As vegans, we'll have amazingly fresh and delcious food as well. We’d love to have our meal catered by a great vegan chef like Alexandra Jamieson. The day wouldn't be complete without some great music. Our favorite band, Motion City Soundtrack, would be the best wedding band in history.

So what are you waiting for? Check out our contest entry and vote! You can only vote once per email address, so it's important that you pass the link along to your friends as well.

Mehndi Magic

As we've discussed earlier in this blog, it's not an Indian wedding without mehndi. On our first morning in Ahmedabad, we visited our friend Ami's family's home and watched the traditional application of bridal mehndi two days before the wedding. The bride has a distinct and traditional design, which is applied to her hands, arms, and also her feet. Ami's sister Anar and her mother Sonal joined her in having mehndi applied to their hands and arms. The whole process took over two hours, and even longer to dry. Theo took some video of the process so that we could share it with you. We both found the designs incredibly beautiful and complex.

Theo's Kick@$$ Proposal

In case you haven't heard from our Facebook page, we got engaged! This was the best part of our trip to India. Theo proposed in front of the Taj Mahal, and I was so surprised! He had the foresight to videotape the whole thing, so we could share it with you.

Just chatted with "Garfield" creator Jim Davis in the security line at the airport.

Wedded Ink

The day before Ami's wedding, we attended a morning ceremony and reception hosted by her uncle. During the ceremony, he presented gifts to Ami. There was also lunch, music, and of course, dancing. (Theo's dancing in particular became the talk of the wedding.) There were also women there who painted designs in henna on all the women's hands, called mehndi. This is the part of Indian weddings I most remember from movies and one of the things I was most looking forward to. We watched Ami have her mehendi done the day before, along with her mom and sister. They all had more complicated designs that took hours to put on, and Ami had a specific bridal pattern on her hands, arms, and feet (shown to the left). The rest of up just had simple designs done on both sides of our hands, which took only about 5 minutes. The henna comes out of a small tube in a paste that feels a little like mud and takes over an hour to dry. If you remove it beforehand, of course, the color won't stay. It was incredibly hard not to use my hands for all that time. Theo even had to help me eat! Once it does dry, the color will continue to get darker over the next 24 hours. The warmer your body temperature the darker the henna. All of Ami's friends told me that they use Vicks VapoRub on the mehndi at night; it heats up your hands and helps to make the henna darker. There are also a number of folk sayings involving mehndi as well. The darker your mehndi is, several women told me, the more your husband/boyfriend loves you. My mehndi lasted for about two weeks and faded shortly after we returned to the States. But I was able to take some pretty great pictures with my engagement ring before that happened.

Last message before we head home. We loved traveling to India. Expect lots of blogs in the next few months. Happy reading!

Theo caught me snacking on "lime n' masala masti" chips as we waited for our train back to Ahmedabad. We've found most drinks in India to be super sweet, but there are some great potato chip flavors here. We had spicy tomato salsa earlier today. This is pretty much the only food available in the train station, so we'll take what we can get.

Bus station fun

Ambi and I get a bite to eat before we side the bus south to Jaisalmer. We had a great time in Jaipur, but were disappointed we didn't get to take the Jaipur by night bus tour. More on that later!

Eating vegan in India

Theo and I had two delightful curry tofu roti rolls courtesy of SpiceJet. Here I am enjoying my second spicy roll on our flight to Delhi. We've been remarkably lucky with food thus far. Ami's family practices Jainism, a very vegan friendly religion, and we ate very well there. Everything that was served at her family's house and the wedding functions was vegetarian, and aside from avoiding some cheese, we could eat everything. Because of the number of Jains in Gujarat, the food in the whole state is vegetarian. I actually thought I may shed some pounds during the trip. Uhm... not gonna happen. The Modis and Shahs fed us too well.

Here in Delhi, we've enjoyed some delicious and amazingly cheap food from our hotel. More people eat meat here, but the menus at the restaurants are divided equally between veg and non-veg food. We both agreed that the aloo gobi was the best we've ever had. I'm afraid I'll never enjoy the Indian food in Champaign the same way again. Unlike Chinese and Japanese food, you'll find pretty much the same items on the menus here as in Indian restaurants in the States, but you'll also find a wider variety of menu items with more complex flavors. We're looking for a nice restaurant tonight for a New Years Eve dinner. In this town, we know we'll eat well.