Occasionally Interesting, often not

Hotels We stayed in a couple of tripadvisor reviewed hotels that got good ratings, both in the Myeong Dong area. (a) Prince Hotel: this is located on the southern edge of the main Myeong Dong shopping area. It's a newer hotel. Rooms are small-ish, but top floor rooms can have nice views through large windows. Beds are queens (as opposed to double/fulls at other hotels) and are pretty comfortable. Hardwood floors. Small bathroom. Small pot to boil water provided, as is wifi. (b) Metro Hotel: this is in the heart of Myeong Dong, and as such, being slightly less expensive than the Prince Hotel, a better deal. On the other hand, their beds are double/fulls. We chose to get a "deluxe", which was 2 separate full beds. Slightly better amenities at this hotel, compared to the Prince -- with two bottles of water provided daily, and included breakfast on the top floor, which is decent. Downside is that, at least for our room, we looked out through a small window to a narrow alle...

We did a very quick trip to Utah over a weekend in late September, mostly to take advantage of an early appointment for the Global Entry program available on a weekend day at SLC, and since we were there, we took a very quick trip to Arches National Park. It's a pretty long drive from Salt Lake City, down I15, across on US6 and then I70 to US191 to Moab. The interstates are the usual, but US6 is an interesting road that goes over a couple of mountain passes, but also with long flat stretches. It's well surfaced and has two lane passing sections regularly interspersed for those caught behind slow moving traffic -- lots of trucks and people with trailers on this road, at least on the weekend -- and otherwise pretty fast traffic flow. I was quite impressed with Utah roads and drivers, especially on US6 -- the road was well surfaced, and drivers kept good following distances and were pretty consciencious at keeping left except to pass on the passing sections. Would see that in Cal...

The default recipes don't have that much ginger taste, so I endeavored to make a better one. There are other recipes online that call for candied ginger, and that indeed is part of the solution, but better than buying the stuff, which adds things like preservatives to your cookie, why not make them yourself? It's easy. The basis of this recipe is Alton Brown's. The proportions of my variation are similar, but there's a lot more ginger involved. Ingredients: For syrup: 8 oz fresh ginger 2 cups water 1 cup sugar Peel and dice the ginger (easier done now than after it has been cooked), Add ginger and sugar to the water and bring to a boil. Simmer, covered, for 45 mins. Let stand overnight (though not strictly necessary). Remove ginger, then reduce to syrupy consistency (note that will still be quite liquid when hot, so don't reduce too much). Cool. For cookie 7.5 oz flour 1.5 teaspoons baking soda 0.5 teaspoon salt 0.5 teaspoon cinammon 1 tablespoon g...