As you may have heard on the news, an LA MetroLink train hit a truck on the tracks and derailed near here. Yeah, it's the same system I use for my daily communte and not far from our house, but a different line than the one I ride so it wasn't my train and not even on my train's tracks. Yet another example of evolution in action for the guy driving the truck.

Good news on the Shelley front: raise, carrot bonus and certificate, and promotion (the good kind: more $ but not more responsibility) promised in 3-6 months. Her WB carrot bonus is for excellent work in handling her department alone for a while and going above and beyond in developing some databases that make things there oh so much more efficient.

To celebrate we went out to Picanha, a restaurant in Burbank that -- for about $20 -- gives you an all-you-can-eat meal. First, you start with a salad and side-dish buffet. Then, when you're ready, you turn over a little widget on your table and waiters start bringing over cuts of meat on spindles. They slide off chunks of each kind until you turn the widget back over to show you're stuffed.

We had roasted lamb, filet mignon, bbq ribs, bbq chicken, tritips, two kinds of sausage, chicken wrapped in bacon, garlic beef, garlic chicken, pork in parmeson breading, and prolly a couple more that I don't recall right now. You can accept or pass on any given offering, but it's all the same price whether you have a lot of one, a little of everything, or a lot of everything. I looked on it as practice for the February cruise.

We stopped by Jenn and Kenny's on the way home and shared a couple of new kinds of Oreo cookies: coffee 'n' cream and mint 'n' cream. Excellent variations on the original. In case you haven't checked recently, they also have peanut butter 'n' chocolate Oreos which aren't bad.

The Santa Ana winds continue!