adrian is rad

Not really. But the place I lived was torn down and the new house that was built there was sold for that much.

Last night I put ice cream between two Hob Nob milk chocolate digestives. It was incredible.

Some days I have no choice but come to the conclusion that I’m the smartest person alive.

I never mentioned this. It’s a start.

Two instances:

• A couple weeks ago, running late for lunch with the friend, I parked at the wrong restaurant, so went to get back into my car to drive to the right one. I got in the left front seat and looked for the steering wheel.
• A few days ago, distracted by a whole host of things, I made a left on red. That is not legal in South Africa.

Remember that time I wanted to get new underwear and I couldn’t find where to get the ones I wanted. I went to Macy’s and Nordstrom’s and all those places and you said, no, you should just try Walgreen’s. I said, no, no, Walgreen’s won’t have them! I mean, Walgreen’s!

And then I found them at Walgreen’s?

That was funny.

Part 1: It’s raining on my plants. This wouldn’t be a problem if they weren’t in my room. My hats—I have a collection, six, hanging by my plants—are also getting wet. The carpets. But no electronics. That’s good. The hallway above was flooded by the cleaning lady. She is coming down to clean up the mess. No big damage.

Part 2: I took a minibus taxi for the first time in Cape Town today. (I’ve taken them in rural areas before.) They’re pretty easy: just flag one down, get on, pay the fare and then tell them where you want to get off. They usually have a two person team: the driver and the shouter. Well, I’ll call him the shouter—he shouts out the destination and also takes your fare. On the way back, the shouter’s line was “Cape Town! Waterfront! Table Mountain! 2010!@” I laughed at this along with some of the other passengers.

I’ve realized recently that my favorite way to nap is the following, which overtook dozing on the couch while watching TV:

• on my bed, at a slight angle across it
• on top of the covers
• feet hanging off the end and head below the pillows
• arms folded under my head

Who knows why.

Notes on my new room[1]:

1. My room is color coordinated. I mean, not ridiculously so, but things generally match. When did I start caring?[2]
2. Who doesn’t want a man cave? Unfortunately my room is closer to just a cave.

[1] I moved last week.

[2] Probably when I moved to SA and bought all my room things at the same time.

It’s hard to believe it’s been over four months in South Africa already. Like life tends to be, the time seems to have passed both slower and faster than that.

In general it’s gone by very fast. I’ve done a lot but it doesn’t seem long ago that I was getting on a plane here. It doesn’t seem long ago that I was looking for an apartment and trying to decide whether to go to Ingwavuma. It doesn’t seem long ago that I was spending my birthday with people I hardly knew, but having a fine time anyway.

In a number of ways, things have gone slowly. Making friends takes time, though I feel like I’m starting to get there. I still haven’t gotten a number of things that I thought would be nearly immediate: a bike and a guitar among them.

Culture shock has come slowly and subtly. For how South African I viewed myself and all the things I was already accustomed to—most language, food, braais, mannerisms, etc—it was a bit of a surprise that there was any culture shock, but it was that little things that I found surprising, distressing, or disorienting.

When it comes to culture, it’s difficult deciding what I’m going to be stubborn about. One may think that it’d be best to be fluid and adopting of another culture, and that may help socially, but there are some thing I want to be stubborn about. One easy example is that I’d like to guard against the (sometimes intense) paranoia that some South Africans display. I feel like there’s little reason to live life paranoid and if I do get to that stage, it’s time to move back to the States.

I don’t have much of a concrete plan about what the future will hold, but I am coming back in January to see. It should be an exciting few months: a roadtrip with a friend, a visit from my parents (planned before I decided to move here), and the World Cup. And I’m sure other things will turn up in there as well.

But for now, I’m preparing to return to the US America. I’m pretty excited for the trip, to see friends and family, to see my breath, eat some comfort food and drink good beer.

First kisses by direction turned:

• left: 35%
• middle (no turn): 55%
• right: 10%

(Figures are approximate to obscure actual number of first kisses.)

Five all time great laughs:

• Buford- it’s not the laugh he has when someone tells a joke, but the laugh he specifically reserves when he tells stories. It’s a stifled laugh in the midst of a sentence when he’s setting up something particularly amusing. “So we’re at the circus [stifled laugh] and there’s this guy, right [stifled laugh], and he…”
• Jesse – He is a perfect example of the contrast between a big, tough exterior and a giggling laugh.
• John V – When John would laugh really hard, he’d transition from his normal laugh to a higher pitched laugh. I think it rubbed off on me.
• Colin A – I don’t know if Colin still does this but in high school he’d laugh in a moderately contained manner but his nostrils would flare and contract rapidly during his laugh. I tried to imitate this; it’s inimitable.
• Jeff M – Jeff has a few laughs, but my favorite is the mouth-fully-open boisterous one when he finds something really funny.

I walked out my door at 6:40 this morning for a walk. Out my door is a gorgeous view of Table Mountain and stunning blue skies all around. I finished my walk, showered and opened the door again at 7:30 and the mountain and most of the city were completely gone. Fog/ a low cloud had moved in really fast. It was ridiculous.

–

It’s really astounding how much construction there is. Roads, buildings, bus rapid transit lanes, stadia. I’m surprised the city can sustain this for so long. Driving anywhere, any road, is bound to have construction somewhere along the way. I suppose know that most, if not all, of it will be in 198 days or less probably helps.

As I mentioned before, each road construction site has one, if not more, people employed to wave a red (or sometimes orange) flag continuously. There are various styles of flag waving, I’ve noticed. There’s the unexpected lane closure/ merge flag waving, which is very directed purposeful. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the well-there’s-a-construction-site-here-but-you-probably-know-that flag waving, which is just sort of a little wave side to side.

–

On Friday I’m going to see a cricket one day against England. It should be fun. The one-days are pretty exciting, though Twenty20s are really a home run derby, to mix metaphors.

–

I’ve been surprised a few times when people mentioned the holiday or traveling this week. I keep forgetting it’s Thanksgiving there. I do like Thanksgiving a lot. I thought of trying to make a pumpkin pie, but I haven’t gotten my act together yet (and I’ve had a hard time locating some components) so we’ll see if that happens.

–

There’s a lot of real crap on TV here. Just horrible horrible TV, between soaps, bad American shows and possibly more professional than they even show in the States. So when I heard that Big Bang Theory was starting here, I was pretty excited. It’s on Tuesdays and I was looking forward to it all day. I’ve seen it before, but I was still unreasonably excited about it.

–

In other TV news, Al Jazeera news is pretty good. It definitely has more of an international focus that most of the SABC new programs. They show the feed of it on Cape Town’s community station for half an hour each evening.

Well, that was fun. I’m not quite sure why I decided to do it but I think it turned out alright. I didn’t have any of the stories planned before the day I wrote them and I enjoyed having the pressure to write something.

It sort of makes me want to do a 365 days of stories project. I’m not sure I have that many stories.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

JW is a solid dude. He’s the sort of guy who, if you asked him to take time off work to show around a Malawian guy you barely know around New York, would probably say yes. He’s also the sort of guy who could be the first person to inform me of my receding hairline and I wouldn’t take it as an insult or an effort to embarrass me; he would simply be informing me of a fact.

JW is also the sort of guy that might have traveled to Bermuda on the spur of the moment a few years back and returned with some Bermudan black rum. And though I was of legal age, I may have never have been even remotely tipsy.

And so it may have happened that we may have mixed that rum with ginger beer to make dark and stormies. And I may have gotten drunk for the first time as we sat in the hallway outside JW’s room and laughed and chatted, stumbling down the hall to the bathroom at necessary intervals and marveling at slushy feeling I was getting in my head.

Maybe.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

Early childhood is a bit like a dream. You know things happen but why or how or when are not always clear.

I don’t remember why my dad was at school with me. It might have been evening; it may not. It was at Chadds Ford so I was probably 6 or 7.

But dad was at school with me and we were watching a video on safety along with a number of other people. I don’t know why we were watching a video on safety. A policeman may have been presenting it.

The video was extolling the virtues of wearing a seat belt. “Most accidents happen near the home because people don’t think they need to wear their seat belt on short trips around their home.”

Dad leaned over: “That’s doesn’t make sense. Not wearing a seat belt has no connection to whether an accident happens or not. Do you see that?”

I thought. I furrowed my brow and squinted. “Yeah.”

And thus I was introduced to logic. That’s what I remember.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

How I came to talking to the agitated man on the other end of the phone at 2am starts three years earlier in a fourth floor rock club in Pittsburgh that–no joke–had a chain-link fence around the bar.

That bar was Club Laga where Andy’s dad had dropped us to go see Bonnie Prince Billy. I hadn’t heard of the band or the frontman Will Oldham, besides Andy’s warbly voiced impersonation of his song “I am a Cinematographer”, which he mostly used to poke fun at my own uncertain singing. But I watched the band, backlit with moody blue light, and enjoyed the show.

“That one song was really good”. Andy knew what I meant. “It’s ‘I See a Darkness’ and Johnny Cash recorded a cover of it.”

Three years later and I, like many other indie rockers–oh fine, I’ll say it, hipsters–had ‘discovered’ Johnny Cash, so when American IV came out, I was playing it on my new radio show.

I played “Personal Jesus”; the phone rang. The caller seemed agitated, almost irate. “Why are you playing Johnny Cash?!”

I wanted to defend my selection but suddenly I wasn’t sure. “Um, I dunno, because I like it,” I mumbled. “Because he’s good I guess?”

“Damn right he’s good! He’s fucking great!”

1. A Friday in an empty apartment. Megan, P. David and I sitting on the floor having beer, talking about Pittsburgh, stories, friends, music and mostly avoiding where I was moving to in three days. I don’t know how long we sat there or what all ways said. For a couple hours there I forgot the echo.
2. A Sunday in a furnished apartment. The Reekies, Christine and I at a simple table with a simple meal and nice bottle of wine, talking about Taipei, cricket, football, and the state of the nation. We didn’t sit for too long but time hung with the laughter and chatter. For a couple hours there I forgot the echo.

Long Street Baths, the pool I use, is open 7am-7pm, which doesn’t leave a lot of time to swim outside of work hours. During work hours it’s gloriously empty, but whenever I’ve tried going before or after, it’s crowded.

Tonight it was packed. Actually, it was so packed that it was interesting. There were enough swimmers that if everyone stopped at the same end of the pool, there wouldn’t be enough space for everyone to stand at the wall. The system depended on at least some people moving. Similarly if everyone was swimming at the same time, there’d be collisions.

I’m sure there are systems or parts of systems like this in real life. Bus garages, perhaps, that don’t have enough spots for all the buses to be parked at once. Or delivery systems (UPS, trucking, etc). Can you think of any others?

Anyway, just something that made me think.

When you’re not working, any weekend can be a three day weekend[1]. I decided this would be in–Saturday through Monday. It was a good one. Really good.

three girls in Khayelitsha

Saturday

Saturday I did not expect. A friend of a friend asked me to help with a podcast that she helps with at a school in Khayelitsha. (She wanted my help because of all my experience in radio.) I helped with it; that was pretty good but rather straight forward. Then, it turns out, one students’ mom was performing a sangoma ceremony so we went as unannounced (but invited) guests. I’d been to a sangoma ceremony before on a township tour, but that this was genuine–that it was not done for tourists was special. Twenty, thirty people packed into a tiny house watching, singing, clapping, dancing during the ceremony.

After that, a kid of my parents’ friends was having a birthday party and I went. I met some cool people, chatted, had a couple drinks and some good food. I may have someone to watch some NFL with and some other people to play pub trivia with now, so that’s good.

Cape Town CBD plus Green Point (stadium, in construction, at left)

Sunday

Sunday was clear–crystal clear blue skies–and warm for the first time in a while, so that meant going up Table Mountain by foot. After parking mid-morning, it was a beautiful but strenuous hike up. It’s just about straight up for 3km straight. There are more stairs (made of rocks) than switchbacks and it’s step after step, one foot in front of the others. At the top it was gorgeous, as always, but I think some of the best parts are on the hike up. I meant to take the cable way down, but the high winds forced its closure for the day, so hiking back down was the option and that’s what I did. I still ache…

the Atlantic plus wildflowers

Monday

Monday I went to the Postberg peninsula in the West Coast National Park[2] to see the wild flowers. The trip up there was wonderful: the R27–the West Coast Road as they call it–goes from city to nothing very quickly. It’s a dead straight shot with no buildings and nothing but plains and a glimpse of the ocean for most of it.

The national park itself is fairly plain, but it has nice unspoiled beaches and lagoons. The peninsula was filled abundantly with wildflowers of yellows, whites, oranges and purples. It was really beautiful and worth the day trip.

I didn’t really plan for a three day weekend or really any of this, but that’s how it turned out. Pretty nice, I have to say.

[1] It could be argued that it’s always the weekend in such cases, but I feel like that would require always doing weekend activities.

[2] Can you believe I got a card that will get me into every national park for a year for ~$30?? Ridiculous!

There was a weekend. It was secret. Well, it was not really meant to be secret, but it turned out to be. It was between moving out of my apartment in San Francisco and before boarding a plane for London and then on to Cape Town. I’d planned everything—two, three social engagements a day in addition to packing and shipping—for before I moved out so after was a quiet weekend. A secret.

A trip to the post office. I’d forgotten to mail two things the previous day. The bus #22 took me there and returned with me. Even when jam-packed, there’s something peaceful about the bus.

A lunch and beer with my roommate at a favorite set of places. Well, I guess we weren’t roommates anymore by that point, but we’d been roommates so long–longer than you’d rightfully guess—I’ll probably always refer to him as my roommate, not as some cute familiar term, but because that’s what he is: of course he’s my roommate.

Blog. Writing the last two posts for my music blog. They were hard words to write; I wanted them to be all right.

A long walk—with a portable toilet in the street!—and ice cream for dinner. It was only a couple miles, I’m sure, but it felt like we were walking for a long time. As dusk settled on the city, we walked in zig-zags across the Mission, freshly my former neighborhood, toward a ice cream place I’d meant to try, but hadn’t had a chance. Walking down 22nd St. there was something odd as we crossed Shotwell. It was a portable toilet right in the middle of the street. Drivers executing their three point turns were obviously as confused as I was as to why it was there. And shortly afterward: “What time does it close?” “9. We’d better hurry!” We did. Fudgcicle ice cream was the reward. So smooth and creamy.

Wine and a bad movie. Zoolander is either one of the dumbest funny movies or funniest dumb moves outside of Super Troopers. Splitting a bottle of South African wine, left over from my just moved out-of apartment, during it was nice, too, but nothing better than good company.

Italian mob movie with doves, robes and lots of blood. Not really. Not at all, in fact. But the stones and echoes and space and ceremonious nature of St. Ignatius always makes me think the dove/ gunfight scene of a Mafia movie is nearly upon me.

Saigon and New Orleans and California. Possibly the best $3 sandwich in San Francisco or even the US has carrots and cilantro and other delicious spices and it is from a hole in the wall Vietnamese sandwich shop in the Tenderloin. Even on a Sunday afternoon the line is out the door. Then was the issue of streetcars. I’d never ridden three of the best and there are two I still haven’t ridden: boat tram and the Zurich, but in almost a whole afternoon of riding, I did get to ride on < a href="http://www.streetcar.org/mim/streetcars/fleet/historic/952/">a streetcar named desire, which was fantastic. And if you ride all the way to Fishermen’s Wharf—let’s say this better—if you ride all the way to Fishermen’s Wharf on your last day in America, why not go to In N Out and get something. A milkshake and fries will do…

As they say, only in San Francisco. That is to say, Indian pizza. Better than I would have expected the first time and as good each additional time, my last proper meal in San Francisco was also at the place I’ve probably been more than any other, besides possibly, the taqueria.

And why do I remember just about every detail of this secret weekend? Well, for the above, and because it was the last weekend but also for some reasons I’ll keep for myself. After all, it is a secret weekend.

In order of mental energy required to start, from least to most:

• email to a friend or acquaintance
• phone call to friend or acquaintance
• email to someone I don’t know
• calling someone I don’t know, but is expecting me to call
• cold calling someone I don’t know

This list is not comprehensive.

The other day I had lunch at a nice pub/restaurant in Old Wynberg. A family friend had taken me there after our long wait at the Dept of Home Affairs. One of the specials was Thai chicken lasagna. It sounded interesting so I ordered it [1].

Me: This reminds of this Thai chicken pizza a friend made a few weeks ago. She made a peanut sauce instead of a tomato sauce and put cilantro and stuff on top. It was really good.

Family friend: Your mom mentioned you met a girl before you left.

Me, mostly to myself: Was it that obvious?

[1] It was both quite interesting and quite good. Who woulda thought?

I don’t usually share personal emails here but I liked my mom’s response to my email to her about my new glasses was too precious to keep to myself:

date Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 9:28 AM
subject Re: new glasses

So elegant, what could be better for you?

And the facial hair?

Mummy

Thanks, Mom.

So I wanted to get new underwear before I left. I like Hanes. Shouldn’t be a problem to find some, except that when San Francisco basically lacks big box stores (your Targets and whatnot), I don’t know where to look for just regular underwear.

So I checked Hanes’ website and it says that Walgreens carries their products. Between leaving work and selling someone my bookshelf, I had a couple minutes and I decided to try to fit in a quick trip to Walgreens to check if they had underwear.

So I rushed in and was looking around. I couldn’t find underwear and I was starting to get worried I’d be late to sell my bookshelf. I’ll just ask one of the employees where to find them, I thought. Then I reconsidered: they might get the wrong idea if I was rushing around, looking anxious and worried and asked “Do you have underwear?”

When time’s short it forces you to focus your energies and do what you’ve only said you’ve wanted to do. I leave for South Africa in a bit over a week; time’s short.

Friday I had a going away party which included a secret house concert. This is a guy I’m big fans of* and have seen play in the Great American and other big venues, playing a few feet from me in my living room surrounded by 30 friends. Just acoustic guitar, upright bass and two voices and no amplification, it was nothing short of amazing.

And, after, there was beer, there were friends and there were cookies shaped like Africa and carrot cake cupcakes.

Less than twelve hours later, I was zipping across the Golden Gate Bridge–my first time across it in any form, I tell to incredulous people every time it comes up–on a rented Vespa LX 150 with a lady sitting behind, holding on.

It feels like these are just two vignettes in among many. Time is doing funny things, going fast, but with slow motion episodes.

* Though you may be able to guess his identity, I’ll leave that off this blog. He has a commitment to a music festival to not play shows in this time period.

I had an eye exam the other day. I went wearing a t-shirt, a track jacket, sneakers and some pants. The doctor made small talk.

Dr.: Did you have today off?

Me: No, I worked.

Dr.: Do you work at home?

Me: No, I went to the office like this.

Dr.: Wow.

I was looking through my lease today and noticed that there was a clause about how the owners may enter the premises (with prior warning) during business hours, from 7am-7pm.

I don’t remember doing this, but on the lease, I’ve crossed out 7am, written in 9am and initialed it. 7 to 9am is not during business hours; it is during sleeping hours.

Dave before the wedding

I just got back from 10 or 11 days on the east coast (depending whether you count from the time I left or landed, etc). The original reason for the trip was to go to Dave’s wedding, which was over Memorial Day weekend so I just extended it. I flew in and out of Charlotte, where my parents live now, and drove to Southwestern Virginia where the wedding was. (Though, couldn’t it have been in East Virginia so the song would have been applicable?)

The trip felt like four distinct parts parts and I’ll cover some of the highlights:

Pre-wedding:

painting the fauxtobooth

There was plenty of work left to be done when I arrive for the wedding, so most of the wedding party spent the days leading up to the wedding helping out in any number of ways.

We also needed to get the fauxtobooth v2.0–a DIY digital photobooth–up and running. Andy and Randy wrote code, I debugged a circuit and soldered some to fix it, Dave built the photobooth box. We all (plus Crystal!) painted.

no photos at the court house, but I surreptitiously took one of the application for marriage license

There was a lot of delirious laughing about things, about the situation. Dave was going so strong he forgot to eat on Friday and the rest of us didn’t demand food so we ended up eating our first proper meal at 10pm. A fierce-looking spider crawled up my shorts in the car the day before the wedding. My understanding was that I said some funny things in my panic—I was not focused on what I said.

Wedding:

goofy Jeff at the wedding
(more…)

Twelve year old brother of the groom and fellow groomsman at a friend’s wedding: I’m going to steal your hat and go into the [walk in] fridge.

Me: You’re going to go into the fridge?

12 y.o.: I already went in there. I farted in it.

—

Best conversation of the weekend so far.

I don’t know why I just remembered this, but one of my favorite toys growing up were the Centurions toys. I don’t really remember watching the show or particularly what it was about, but these bionic guys were great toys to play with. The swimmer guy (Max apparently), was the one I had and I just loved that guy. My brother had the flying guy.

I’m not sure quite why he was my favorite. I’m still a swimmer now, though. I think I have a point in here somewhere.

Update: My brother just reminded me of M.A.S.K. toys which were pretty incredible, too. I remember having Gator, which was one of my favorites.

Wow. Hours, possibly weeks, of my childhood, right there.

Is “home” where you have a doctor you like, a car mechanic you swear by and a barber you always go to?

I saw a banner today in Palo Alto in Lytton Plaza, a spot that often has some activist group or another:

The Truth about 9/11
And Cookies

The ‘O’s in “Cookies” were made of cookies. I’m not sure if they were trying to reveal the truth about cookies or if they were trying to use cookies to lure people in to hear the ‘truth’, but either way, I was laughing.

the 14 Mission

So I’m thinking it might be a fun project to ride all the Muni bus, lightrail and cable car lines. As you can see below, I have ridden a decent number but I have plenty to go.

I’ve decided that all iterations of one number count as one line; for instance, 14/ 14L and 14X all count as one line. I’m not sure about some of those 80-somethingX shuttle lines. We’ll see if they count.

Here’s the list of the lines, crossing out the ones I’ve ridden.

• F-Market & Wharves*
• J-Church
• KT-Ingleside/Third Street
• L-Taraval
• M-Ocean View
• N-Judah*
• S-Castro Shuttle
• 1-California
• 2-Clement
• 3-Jackson
• 4-Sutter
• 5-Fulton
• 6-Parnassus
• 7-Haight
• 9-San Bruno
• 10-Townsend
• 12-Folsom / Pacific*
• 14-Mission*
• 16*X-Noriega * Exp
• 17-Park Merced
• 18-46th Avenue
• 19-Polk
• 20-Columbus
• 21-Hayes
• 22-Fillmore
• 23-Monterey
• 24-Divisadero*
• 26-Valencia
• 27-Bryant*
• 28-19th Avenue
• 29-Sunset
• 30-Stockton
• 31-Balboa
• 33-Stanyan*
• 35-Eureka
• 36-Teresita
• 37-Corbett
• 38-Geary
• 39-Coit
• 41-Union
• 43-Masonic
• 44-O’Shaughnessy
• 45-Union/Stockton
• 47-Van Ness**
• 48-Quintara – 24th Street*
• 49-Mission-Van Ness*
• 52-Excelsior
• 53-Southern Heights
• 54-Felton
• 56-Rutland
• 66-Quintara
• 67-Bernal Heights
• 71-Haight-Noriega
• 74x-Culture Bus
• 76-Marin Headlands
• 80X-Gateway Express
• 81X-Caltrain Express
• 82X-Presidio Express
• 88-B.A.R.T. Shuttle
• 89-Laguna Honda
• 90-Owl
• 91-Owl
• 108-Treasure Island
• Powell-Mason Cable Car
• Powell-Hyde Cable Car
• California Street Cable Car

*I’ve ridden these lines more times than I can remember.

**I’m 99.9% sure I’ve ridden this at least once.

Update 4/24/09 rode the 26 Valencia, 67 Bernal Heights and J Church. (also, realized that I’d ridden the J Church once before last May).

Update 4/26/09 rode the 21 Hayes for half a dozen stops.

Update 4/30/09 rode the Powell-Mason cable car, the California cable car and the 19 Polk.

Update 5/3/09 rode the 28 19th Ave and the L Taraval.

Update 5/20/09 rode the 30 Stockton.

This is my last day without caffeine.

It’s been interesting. I had some caffeine on Sundays–usually one per–but otherwise I survived. I had two non-caffeinated sodas on other days. Some days I didn’t miss it at all and some days when I was a pile of yawns, I thought hard about having something to get me out of it.

Longer term, I’m hoping to keep it to a more reasonable level.

For the curious, in lieu of soda, my consumption of the following increased: water, juice, rooibos and beer.

I’m sharing this because I find it to be ridiculous.

6:00am: Alarm goes off[1]. Wake up. Think that I don’t need to be up until 8am. Go back to sleep.

6:07am: Wake up, realize the mistake I’d made. Re-set my alarm for 6:10am instead. Go back to sleep.

6:10am: Wake up, set my alarm for 6:22am because I didn’t want to get up yet. Go back to sleep.

6:22am: Wake up; get up.

[1] I wake up early on Tuesdays, because of my radio show.

I finished my taxes! I rule!

Given how much actual work it is, it seems that I’m always irrationally happy when I finish them.

“There’s a 4th dimensional you that’s already been through this.”

A friend helped me get through that tough time and a few more after that. The relentless passing of time used to comfort me. As long as I survived, time would pass and I’d get through whatever hard situation.

But, increasingly, I’m regretting the passage of time. Another day done when I didn’t do everything I’d intended. Another month closer to the date I wanted to finish something by without enough progress. Another year on in my life.

I’m not sure when the transition happened. I didn’t see it coming.

View Larger Map

The other day I was reading in the Juri Commons, the odd, slanted mini-park between 25th and 26th, Guerrero and San Jose, reading when the little map in my head made the straight-line connection to the slanted building at 24th and Capp near where I used to live. I remember talking to someone that suggested it might have been an old railroad route.

I looked into it more and found a cool graphic depiction of the route through the Mission, SoMa and Noe Valley, and some history. It used to be the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad which was later acquired by Southern Pacific. It’s essentially now Caltrain but they added the shortcut tunnels through the hills that made this Bernal cut, as they called it, obsolete. It seems the tracks were taken out sometime between 1906 and 1942–probably in stages.

There are some sites with some cool vintage photos, like this one with Harrison Street tracks, this one of the depot at 3rd and Townsend and this one already linked above.

What I did over the last week was walk along the path, at least in the Mission part. There are still a lot of remnants in angled buildings, rights-of-way and oddly shaped plots. I made the map above. You can see in the satellite view many of the angled buildings. I also took some photos which you can see if you click the placemarkers on the map.

Juri Commons

I’m not an activist. I have opinions about things, sometimes even strong ones, and I support some charities and volunteer time (though I suppose music DJing is activism in a certain light), but I guess I’m not programmed to be the type to be moved to work in an activist manner.

So it’s a little weird that today I joined an activist group, the San Francisco Bike Coalition. They’re very vocal in local planning, organization and transportation decisions. That’s fine, but given that I spend a non-zero amount of my time on a bike in this city, I appreciate that they make my life (and those of other cyclists) easier (e.g. free bike valet at events, working for more bike storage on public transportation) and safer (both by awareness and getting bike paths and lanes put in).

I spent 48ish hours in Pittsburgh a little after Christmas. It was my first trip there in two years. I’ve already posted a couple from the trip, but here’s a bit more.

I love Pittsburgh. I’ve lived in something like nine places at this point, but the longest tenure and most formative years were spent in Western Pennsylvania. I didn’t really didn’t think much of it while I lived there, but in summers of college and afterward on visits, I realized how much I liked it. Let’s say that everyone I know who didn’t grow up there thinks I talk too much about Pittsburgh for their liking.

When Pittsburghers say “Pittsburgh” to non-natives, they often mean Western Pennsylvania. Culturally, linguistically and in landscape it is a region that is pretty unique region. And driving to Pittsburgh from Southeastern Virginia, I could tell when Western PA was getting near–Cumberland, MD seemed very familiar. A shrinking town in a hill with similar architecture. And maybe it’s selective memory mixed with nostalgia talking, but I think if you lean your head against a car window and look out, through the trees and at the sky, you can tell just from that when you hit Western Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh surprises me every time I go back, both by changing and by staying the same. I didn’t expect there to be cyclists on the road or to have the same experience at a number of places that I had 8 or 10 years ago. Coming from a place where bars and restaurants and people turn over every few years, it’s odd to be in a place where something is still pretty new if it was built five years ago and many people have spent their whole lives in the region.

One of my favorite traditions is late night pizza at Mineo’s. It’s cheap and good and the company is unbeatable.

A newish place to me is Pamela’s Diner. They have great food at reasonable prices, compared to what I’m used to. I’d been introduced to the original (in the Strip) a few years ago by a friend from out this way who’d moved to Pittsburgh. It’s still good.

I’d been to Jerry’s and to Paul’s CD but I’d never been to Dave’s Music Mine. I don’t know how that hadn’t happened before, but it’s a pretty cool place. It’s got a good used selection and their soul records are pretty good.

I had a couple pinball aficionado friends that lived in Pittsburgh for a bit. One introduced me to pinball at the Beehive. I liked the Spiderman one. It had plenty of action but it was still pretty straight forward.

I love walking around the South Side. There are such great buildings. Also, there’s a sweet Salvation Army Thrift Store. I bought a suit for New Year’s Eve for $6.50.

I went back to the Church Brewworks for the first time since 2000ish. It was still good and, hey, possibly even better now that I can/ like to drink beer.

I went to Gooski’s for the first time. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but I can imagine spending a lot of time at a place that’s halfway between its hard scrabble Polish neighborhood and the hip and alternative side of the clientele. Next time I’ll have to have the pierogies.

Primantis is as good as I remember it, but I’m glad I have Giordano Brothers the rest of the year for my Pittsburgh-style sandwich cravings.

I rode the incline, had cheap draft beer at a dive bar, and watched a football game.

Oh and did I mention I got to have buckeyes for the first time in a while? They’re a Christmas tradition for me and the region for whatever reason.

Pittsburgh always seems to tease me when I’m leaving, as if to say, look, Pittsburgh can have enticing weather sometimes.

Finally, all my friends now seem to have GPSs in their car. These are pretty funny in Pittsburgh, with its convoluted roads, one way streets and difficult geography because the driver inevitably says/ yells: “Why does it want me to go that way?? No, no, no, this other way is much faster.”

Can you tell in figured out how to blog from my phone? Don’t worry, I’ll get tired of it eventually.

Just one week till Boxing Day! I’m so excited

I’d forgotten I came down with a cold last time I went to South Africa.

Also, the cough syrup is in a glass bottle. Who puts medicine in a glass bottle these days?

Probably the highlight of my day was that I found a home-made chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich in the back of the freezer. It was one of a a batch that I made for my birthday party at the end of August.

It was as good or possibly even better than I hoped it’d be. The ice cream had sort of soaked into and saturated the cookies, making them super cookies of sorts.

Judit and I made gingerbread houses again. I like this part of the year.

Mine:

Judit’s:

had construction worker’s hands, rough and dirty; a dozen microwave dinners and breakfasts, and Sleepytime tea.

It’s time to go grocery shopping.

This is the culinary equivalent of wearing dress socks because you are out of other clean socks.

I saw a Shell and a Chevron gas station both on the same side of the same main road (Whipple) across a small street intersection from each other. The Shell’s 87 octane gas was $2.89/ gal while the Chevron’s was $1.99/gal.

With little to differentiate your product and little advantage to the location, you’re going to price your gas 45% more than your competitor? That’s not how you succeed in business.

I went to my 7th wedding of the year on Saturday.

Dates: May 25, June 14, July 5, August 2, August 10, August 31, November 29

Relations: high school friend, college friend (tEp), high school friend, college friend (tEp), college friend (tEp), cousin, college friend

Flights taken (total round trips) for weddings: 16 (5)

States and districts visited for weddings: 8 (PA, DE, CA, MA, MD, DC, VA, NY)

Number of weddings that were in San Francisco: 1

Number of weddings not in San Francisco where I met a singer of a San Francisco band: 1

Number of weddings with photobooths or faux-photobooths: 2

Number of weddings with the ceremonies in a church: 0

Number of weddings with significant religious components: 2 (Christian, Hindu)

Number of weddings with the weddings and reception at the same place: 4

Shortest ceremony: 15 or 20 minutes

Longest ceremony: 50ish minutes

Number of hilarious grandparents loudly asking questions during the ceremony (”How old is she?” “Where’s Danny?”): 1

Number of rented cars: 1

Number of nights in hotel rooms: 5

Percentage of Bischoffs I saw: ~82%

Percentage of friends I saw: I dunno. Lots.

Number of weddings during which I “danced”: 4

Number of weddings in which I wore a tux: 2

Number of weddings in which I wore a suit: 4

Number of weddings in tuxes at which I “danced”: 2

Number of weddings in suits at which I “danced”: 2

Number of speeches I made: 2

Best wedding music: dhol drum to accompany the groom’s procession (Indian wedding)

Holidays weekends (as determined by my company) during the time frame of the wedding dates: 4 (Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving)

Holiday weekends that had weddings on them: 4

Projected date of next wedding I’ll attend: May 23, 2009

Some weddings get rough

After a year off, I’m thinking it may be time for another winter beard…

I have an ambitious evening planned:

• make dinner
• eat dinner
• put away laundry
• put away other stuff/ tidy room
• do dishes
• see if there’s a new president
• go to bed a bit early

I’ll give you a guess as to what was one of the things I missed most when I was in Taiwan last year.

It’s pumpkin pie. When I realized that spending Thanksgiving there meant no pumpkin pie, I was practically distraught. I tried to have some around Christmas when I was back in American but the circumstances didn’t work out. And pumpkin pie just doesn’t work outside of the time frame of October-December.

So when I was at Mission Pie, one of the overpriced but very good places in the area, the other day with a friend and they had pumpkin pie, I was pretty happy. The two-years-in-coming slice was delicious.

Yesterday morning I saw my breathe for the first time in many months. It’s getting brisker here, but it’s overall still pretty warm compared to the eastern provinces.

The sunrise that morning, seen from the 2nd deck of Caltrain, starting around Millbrae or San Mateo and developing through Redwood City was one of the most beautiful I’ve seen[2]. The photo on my camera phone failed to capture it. It was red-orange on a light blue sky with plenty of wispy clouds, the kind that tend to spread the colors of a sunrise/set so nicely.

[1] Not really cold by any real standards. Just chillier than a few weeks ago.

[2] Just because waking up before dawn is generally the domain of crazy people, I usually avoid it. As such, I haven’t actually seen that many sunrises.

Sometimes I have my phone with me but not my regular camera and so I take camera phone pictures.

[click for bigger image on any of them]

I walked over Bernal Hill last weekend. This is a photo from the top with my neighborhood, the Mission, in the middle of the photo. (Bernal Heights is in the foreground; SoMa and downtown are to the back and right, Hayes Valley to the back and left). From the tall yellow building left-of-center, I live toward the viewer and to the left a little.

I went to an SF 49ers pre-season game a few weeks ago. This is the view from our seats.

I went to Camden Yards when I was in Maryland in early August. It was my first trip there. I liked the stadium a lot, especially how it was built into some existing buildings (or walls, really) in the area.

I liked this sign on Del Mar beach in the San Diego area. I was there in early July for a wedding.

Somehow I started a tradition a couple years ago of donating some money to charities around my birthday. Here’s how it worked out this year:

• 20% Catholic Charities, CYO, Archdiocese of San Francisco—local—I feel like they’re one of the better organizations serving the poor et al in San Francisco
• 20% American Red Cross (National Disaster Relief Fund)—national
• 20% South African Development Fund—international/ South Africa
• 20% African Medical and Research Fund (AMREF)—international/ Africa—they do research and have medical aid for AIDS and malaria, among other things.
• 20% Freedom from Hunger—international

Criteria: I like Africa and South Africa in particular. I like efficient organizations. (I only donate to four star charities.) I think international charities can help more people per dollar than American charities. My primary concern is saving lives now and in the future. At the same time, I think one should strive to help out locally and nationally as well.

Okay, that’s it, I think. I’m a little reluctant to post about this as always.

Seriously, every wedding should have the following party favors: gatorade and advil. Maybe just lined up by the door so people can take them as they leave.

I’ve noticed that there are a number of instances where I use different prepositions when some other people use “on”:

• “on line”: e.g. “Where are you? I’m on line for the movie.” I say that I’m “in line”.
• “on accident”: e.g. “I bought two of the same thing on accident”. I’d say that I’m did that “by accident.”
• “on the…station” [I've only heard this once, I think] e.g. “We are now on [the] Civic Center station.” I would say that we are “at the Civic Center station.”

I find it strange that the language hasn’t converged on one usage by this point.

I don’t know how to do this at all in one post. I spent the last 12 days in Boston, NYC and DC.

The best part was seeing people I don’t get to see very much. Everything else places after that.

Tourism and whatnot:

• New York Transportation Museum is awesome. It’s in a 1930s subway station. On the tracks are 20 or so vintage subway cars from across the history of the New York subway. It’s pretty great.
• Brooklyn Museum is pretty good. A decent collection but definitely a second tier museum
• Coney Island is a lot of fun. The Cyclone’s first drop is heart-stopping and the sliding cars on the Wonder Wheel are pretty amazing.
• Baltimore Orioles vs. Texas Rangers. We had good tickets (3rd row of the bleachers). It was a good game and Camden Yards is a pretty great ballpark.

Music and Film:

• My friend played backup as part of My Brother the Welder’s first show ever. It was a good time. Good tunes and impressively precise for a first show ever.
• Lars and the Real Girl is an amazing movie. Touching and hilarious and awkward all at once. I really liked it.
• American Teen is a documentary following 5 people (and a handful of their friends) over a year at a midwestern high school. I found this very compelling and I was totally engrossed in each person’s stories. It also serves as a lesson in parenting–many of the parents in the movie just say horrible things.
• Shaun of the Dead. I managed to see this as part of an afternoon of TV. It was good, but I think I liked Hot Fuzz better.
• At my friend’s mostly-traditional Indian wedding, there was a really good dhol drummer providing a beat for dancing and the procession. It makes me want to learn yet another Indian double barrel drum.
• Other Music is a good small record store. I liked their selection and the people working there seemed pretty knowledgeable.

Food:
I ate so much food. Where to start:

• Hallo Berlin is still really good for sausage and fine beer.
• Patsy’s Pizza might have drugs in the slices they’re so good.
• Horace and Dickie’s is a fish and chips/ chicken shack that serves ridiculous portions for next to nothing around the corner from the Red and the Black (see below). I liked my crab cake sandwich ($4.80!) and their sweet potato pie was delicious.
• Three brunches in two days: because vacation is for overeating.

Pure ridiculousness:

• At a sports bar in DC on Sunday night, two guys were watching the PGA Chamionship. They were more into the sport than anyone I’ve ever seen. Our dinner was oft-interrupted by cheers or jeers. One of my favorite moments was near the end of the event: “FUCK! FUCK YOU, SERGIO!”
• On the 6 line in NYC, a 30-something black woman got on at one stop and proceeded to preach Jesus (in a pretty compelling and rousing style) for one stop. Then she sat down and read a book.
• While my friend and his girlfriend were disagreeing about something, I asked them if they were fighting. They responded that if they were fighting they would be yelling into each other’s mouths. They then proceeded to demonstrate: they opened their mouths wide, locked them together and proceeded to scream. I fell off my chair laughing.

Okay. That was the trip. Or some of it, at least.

my favorite herb is basil. I’m a big fan. It’s a big reason I love san bei ji. It’s one of the reasons I love my salmon burgers with tomato, basil and feta.

Mark Twain didn’t say “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”.

I think the notion is quite silly. I think the coldest winter I ever spent was 1993ish in Pittsburgh when it hit -22 degrees F and with completely clear roads they canceled school simply because they didn’t want kids standing outside in those temperatures. (The only thing better than snow days is really freaking cold days…and typhoon days.)

But it is chilly here for summer. I leave the house in the morning with a light jacket and yesterday that wasn’t enough. As the sun set at the outdoor afternoon concert, I found myself thinking about the heat lamps that I’d thought were silly earlier.

I don’t know why I remember things like this sometimes.

One day when I was 10 or 12 my parents decided that I wasn’t getting enough protein with breakfast. I asked how I could get more protein. If they were so adamant about this, they should be able to come up with some things that were high in protein. Milk, yogurt, peanut butter, steak…

Wait…steak? I know it has plenty of protein, but breakfast?

And so my mom made me steak for breakfast everyday for a few weeks in 1992ish.

I had an odd childhood. I know: you’re surprised.

I live above a Peruvian restaurant. Not a lot of bad things about that (except the exhaust fan on Saturday mornings) and if I run out of food–hey, food downstairs.

A few weeks ago we went there to check the place out and say hi. I got pescado frito. You know, old school.

Anyway, we finished up and I’m at the register paying. There are these deserts with two soft, round, floury, sugary bits with a chocolate creme filling. Here’s the conversation:

Me: And could I get one of those.

Proprietress: sure

Me: And what are they called?

Her: Cookies.

Me: Oh…

I think I was swallowing my pride for much longer than I was swallowing the cookie.

The other day, I saw a ThumsUp! while eating at an Indian restaurant. I decided to have it with my Desi chicken flatbread wrap.

This is my rating:

It tasted old timey–like Coke with sugar or Pepsi Retro. I like that old time taste!

Two postcards were in my mailbox yesterday.

1. One from my friend Gums from Darjeeling and addressed to me, San Francisco
2. One from Donegal address to Stockton-on-Tees ,Cleveland. That’s not even in this country! How did it get here? To me? I can think of no reasonable explanation.

I literally groaned when my alarm when off this morning. Time to get more sleep, I think.

The other week I saw a photoset of a very cool building mural/ graffiti in San Francisco, based on an icanhascheezburger image (this one to be specific).

I was running errands in Chinatown during lunch and thought some things looks familiar so I went around back, down the alley and saw this:

It’s still there! As it turns out, the building owner consented to having that painted on there. It’s still pretty cool, though.

I’m not saying out this out of want or need of pity and I’m not here to use the internet as some grand confessional. I’m just stating a fact (that probably won’t surprise anyone close to me): there was a time when I had a lot of self-hatred. Do you know what helped me greatly in this regard? Losing my hair.

As a 21 year-old struggling with an immense pile of school work that never ended and problems or failures regarding relationships, faith, weight, and any pursuit that I once fancied myself good at, the realization that the hair at my temples was too far up to be normal was not warmly received. Self-love dipped even lower.

Five and six years later, along with the realization that once someone is a couple years past 25, they don’t really change much came the realization that I’m balding. This is life. I can’t change it (unless I want to vainly clutch at something that’s not mine), so why let it cause any stress or consternation.

1. challenging each other to eat cake after a large meal. mid-afternoon at a local diner, surrounded by regular patrons and served by a pleasant waitress. after finishing a meal that was larger than any of us thought it would be, looking at a dessert menu and practically demanding that friends get a slice. then: devouring despite the already-present stomach pain.

2. sitting on shaded grass, eating fast food frozen dairy desserts quickly. after the rehearsal, realizing none of us had eaten for many hours, deciding to sneak off before the rehearsal dinner to a close-by fast food restaurant. surreptitiously eating the chocolate shake-ice-creams while taking a minute to relax in the shade by the parking lot before sneaking one to the groom.

3. hugging pillows. with some having gone off to run errands and pick up supplies, watching mediocre TV filler and making inane jokes that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else (and often didn’t make sense to us) about hugging pillows (while hugging pillows)

4. frantic typing and nervous suggestions. mid-afternoon in a hotel room, people hurrying about and dressing. half tuxed, ten minutes left till we were to leave for the ceremony, groom and friend debugging and typing out a last-minute script to make the big project work. (it worked.)

5. radiant smile and glowing cheeks. early evening by a pond and many flowers, under the shade of trees. above a magnificent and flowing white dress, a radiant smile and glowing cheeks and eyes staring into her partner’s.

It’s Bike to Work Day and it’s going to be a hot one. I’m drenched.

Also, I think they forgot a very important aspect of this day: biking from work.

The left side of my butt chin is bigger and lower than right.

And you know what they say about symmetry.

1. Coronado, a beach near the Hotel Del. Mid-afternoon. Walking across that area of sand that’s firm because water has run over it recently and dipping my fingers into the chilly Pacific and pondering aloud if the military planes roaring overhead on their way to the base were Harriers. I don’t think they are.

2. A bar in South Park. Night time. Between local bands giving it their all on a small stage in the dark club and packed in among the local young hipster population, discussing merits of a variety of many recent bands on the scene with a new friend.

3. Balboa Park, near the Moreton Bay Fig. Late afternoon. Lying on my back on the slightly damp grass, staring up at the deeply saturated sky, talking about finances and how it’s strange to be an adult with an old friend.

I’ve done awfully awkward “you too”s before. The guy ripping my ticket at a movie: “Enjoy the movie” “You too…if you happen to see a movie sometime soon…”

Well today, I was flying back to San Francisco. I slept the whole flight. I was drowsy when getting off.

As I was exiting the plane:

Flight attendant: Thanks for flying.

Me: Bye. Have a good flight.

I think I might have meant “night”. Otherwise I really have no excuse.

Zante’s Indian Food and Pizzeria. I went here on Saturday. Tandoori Chicken Pizza doesn’t necessarily sound like it’ll work, but it does and really well. It’s really tasty and their drinks are cheap too. I’ll take every one of you (that I actually know) there when you visit. (Note: this is only an offer to take you there, not to pay and in fact, I think this trade seems more fair: I introduce you to a great restaurant, you pay.)

–

SFist points to a Eater SF article about and summarizing points in a NY Times article about over-legislation in SF. SF is pretty crazy it turns out. Here are some of the points:

• Business owners must offer health care, typically a rarity in the restaurant industry except for managers, to all employees.
• Employers must offer 9 days sick leave to all employees.
• Chain restaurants must post nutritional information for all menu items.
• Minimum wage is $9.36, more than $3.50 above the federal rate, and will increase next year.
• Plastic bags are banned from supermarkets, Styrofoam containers banned at all “food outlets.”
• The Board [of Supervisors] wants to fine stores and restaurants that sell items with high fructose corn syrup.
• The Board proposed to prohibit new liquor stores within 500 feet of churches or recreation centers.
• The Board proposed to require permits and insurance for events including weddings, parties, and benefits.
• The Board proposed to fine office buildings that leave their lights on overnight.
• The Board proposed to make all lobbyists wear name tags when doing business.

Some of those I don’t care about: no plastic bags, fine. High minimum wage–doesn’t make any difference to me and it’s expensive to live here.

But other…I prefer products without corn syrup and sometimes go to lengths to avoid them but is it really the place of gov’t to ban them? I mean, this seems like a bit step beyond NYC. Trans fat by many accounts is very very bad for you. Fine, ban it. Corn syrup probably isn’t great but are there studies that show it to be the worst thing ever? (What I’ve read is pretty inconclusive.)

I think this is how it went:

1. start liking corduroys
2. start buying corduroys
3. stop wearing corduroys

[time passes]

4. stop buying corduroys

As a result, when I was unpacking this last time, I discovered many corduroy pants, including a couple pairs with their tags on still.

I’ve been to the Bed Bath & Beyond on 9th St. a couple times to get things for my new place. It’s ok, but one thing leaves me with a dropped jaw is their shopping cart escalator. It’s a pretty nice mechanism that catches the wheels with little pegs that pull out of the way at the top.

crappy cell phone photo

It appears to be the same model as the one in this video I found:

It’s like some curved escalators I’ve seen in Hong Kong and Macau. Those things are pretty sweet too.

When learning machining, turning parts on a lathe seemed so graceful and intuitive[1] whereas milling seemed much more cold and, well, machine like.

But after that initial time, I’ve had much more opportunity to mill than to lathe and so I’ve become very comfortable on the mill, to the point where I can do many things automatically. Today for the first time in a couple years, I used the lathe again. It was like coming back to a town you used to call home, that same very familiar feeling.

[Update: note added]

[1] Its overall intuitiveness didn’t stop me from confusing the r and z axes on three hours sleep once or twice.

I finished and efiled my taxes. I always feel (perhaps irrationally) happy and proud when I’m done. I do things that are quite a bit harder–in absolute terms–and I don’t nearly feel as accomplished when finishing them.

I don’t think anyone but my brother and I know about this. Maybe my parents knew, but I’m not sure. This story takes place after we moved to Pittsburgh, but before my brother entered high school, I think, so that’d put it in the 1989 to 1992 range.

When we were young we watched some TV, especially during those gloriously long summers between school years. There’d be commercials and they’d say “Call this toll free and we’ll send you a free informational video!” (Or information packet, or any number of other things.) And we’d say “Free video? That’s awesome!” and so we’d call up that 1-800 number and ask for the free stuff that they wanted to send people. A few days later it’d arrive.

(I have no memory of doing anything with most of the stuff once it arrived. The moment was finding it in the mailbox.)

We got information packets. We got a video about those beds that adjusted and tilted and whatnot with motors. We even got the Book of Mormon, which we gave to my mom, and though she tried to seem appreciative of the “present” we could tell she didn’t want it. (Looking back, that has to be among the top five most awkward presents I’ve ever given.)

I remember the day we stopped. There was an ad for a hair loss clinic on the TV. They wanted people to call to get their video cassette, so we did.

Here’s how that conversation went:

Brother: Yes, we’d like the free video from the commercial.

Operator: Uh, how old are you? Why don’t you have your dad call?

Brother: Oh, he doesn’t want the video. He’s got hair.

Operator: Why are you calling then? Do you know someone else that’s losing his hair?

Brother: No, we just like getting free stuff in the mail.

Operator: Oh. Oh! Well, then! <mumble>

<click>

And so ended our foray into free promotional materials.

I woke up today at “7:10am”.

Weird things:
a) I’d set my alarm for 7am and have no memory of hitting snooze.
b) After reading some email and heading to the shower (but not yet getting in) I realized it was 5:10am that my alarm went off and the clock requires hitting at least two buttons (”time” and “hour” or “minute”) simultaneously to change it. I have no memory of doing that either.

[I'm only going to have I love/ hate posts from now on]

I love when the barber trims my neck/ behind my ears with a straight razor. It’s so smooth! Infinitely better than any other shaving method.

I went to Willy’s Barber Shop during lunch today. It was possibly the cheapest haircut I had (in the U.S.) since living in Pittsburgh. (I wonder if Lenor barber is still $8?)

And it was great. The guy even gave me a one minute head/ neck massage at the end. I’m going back.

In the old days I didn’t like change. In the city days, there are many uses for change: street cars, subway, parking meters, etc. Gotta make sure you have change and small bills.

It’s been just over three weeks since I moved to San Francisco.

It’s been going pretty well. I like the place I’m living. It’s a nice space and my roommates are nice. I’m close to BART (and BART is close to work). The neighborhood is flat so I can bike around it without too much trouble. Within a few blocks I have a grocery stand, a supermarket, a few bars and a lot of restaurants (mostly Taquerias–I picked the wrong neighborhood given that I’m only so-so on Mexican food).

I don’t think I realized how much I disliked driving. It’s a semi-walkable city so even stuff outside my neighborhood I can get to by walking. Public transportation is decent but the Trip Planner is extremely useful. NextMuni is even better; bus and light rail times-to-arrival based off of GPS.

It’s not all roses. Things are more expensive. Yogurts, which I buy for my lunches, are about 2x the cost. The drive into KZSU on Tuesdays at 5:15am is some simple but intense sort of torture.

About 11pm at about 20th and Valencia on Friday, a guy half in my path said to me as I walked around him: “Come on, man. Are you going to go home and watch TV or are you going to be a real motherfucker?”

I really didn’t know how to answer.

The bulk of my dad’s cautionary advice has been about the following three topics:

1. avoiding going into debt
2. avoiding excess sun exposure/ skin cancer
3. avoiding excess sound exposure/ hearing loss

Last night, I ended up walking from the Sunset to my place via Tank Hill (that is, a steep hill to walk up and then down again; also it has a pretty sweet view of a large chunk of the city).

Boston you could walk across in a few hours and it was pretty flat so no knee problems or anything. I remember being exhausted after walking a lot one day and figuring out that I’d walked 11 miles that day. I was pretty pooped after yesterday’s 5ish (the above walk + some miscellaneous stuff) miles.

But I’m really liking being able to walk places. That’s fun.

Decisions: do I bike the Wiggle or take one of ‘em Muni buses?

Oh learning new things in a new city!

As of February 2, I’ll be a resident of the city and county of San Francisco.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles has certified me to ride “any two-wheel motorcycle, motor-driven cycle, motorized scooter, motorized bicycle, or bicycle with an attached motor”.

Fewer class restrictions! Victory for the proletariat!

I’m back in the ol US of A. The flight was surprisingly smooth and went by relatively quickly. It’s yet to be seen how I’m doing with jet lag but early signs are promising.

More later!

A couple weeks ago I went swimming. The next day my left ear felt a bit weird and my hearing felt muffled. I thought there was some water still in it. After a few days it still felt weird so I had assumed it had developed into a minor ear infection, “swimmer’s ear”.

After two weeks, I decided I should have it checked out. I’m going to be place next week where it’ll be even harder to go to a doctor, so with the help of some coworkers I went to a doctor this evening and he checked me out.

There’s no water, ear wax or ear infection in there. The doctor things it’s noise trauma. Basically (hopefully) short term partial hearing loss. (Ironically, I’d light-heartedly talked about thinking I was going deaf in my left ear because my ear buds were breaking about 3 weeks ago.) His instructions: no ear buds/ headphones and try to limit limit noise for a few days.

The short term is unpleasant: no ear buds at work (at night I can play music softly on speakers that I have) means no music and I don’t like being without music. It makes me antsy. I’m going to be on planes and trains for most of Friday, alone and that would be a particularly nice time to listen to some tunes. More than it being nice, at times I almost find it necessary. After a bad or long day, after a frustrating decision, when I need to drown out this foreign world or mitigate loneliness, music is often my first resort. It may not be the best thing to turn to but it’s certainly better than turning to the bottle. This is a bit distressing.

The longer term, the prospects, the possibilities, at least, are traumatizing. That there’s even a possibility of longer term hearing loss is scary. Music is a big part of my life and between being a college radio DJ and having a music blog it’s more like a vocation. That that might be endangered or altered permanently is not a prospect I look forward to.

Just to note, I’ve always been very careful about the volume of my music on earphones and other people who try my headphones often think I listen to music too softly. I wear ear plugs at concerts, even advocating them publicly. If there’s one probable culprit here it’s listening to music on the bus and/ or while walking along streets here. Both are quite noisy and can encourage a louder-than-healthy volume on ear buds.

I just made a sufficiently embarrassing phone call.

“Hello, [Hotel/ Apartment]”

“Yes, this is Adrian in room [x]. I managed to lock myself in my kitchen. Could you send someone up to let me out?”

Good things:
a) I have a cell phone.
b) I carry an address card for the hotel with me all the time. It has the phone number.

And, yes, for whatever reason, the kitchen door has a lock.

I’m looking for good charities for my annual birthday charitable contributions.

Charity Navigator is good at finding good charities that spend their money well. I’ll probably split it up 1/4-1/2 international (South Africa/ Africa focus), 1/4-1/2 national and 1/4 local.

I sort of thought that maybe I just needed to hide away in my room for the evening, that seeing friends wouldn’t help. But it did. Thanks, guys.

But it’s been too many. I’m only twenty-six after all.

Times like these make me think of this a e housman:

“Is my team plowing,
That I was used to drive
And hear the harness jingle
When I was man alive?”

Ay, the horses trample,
The harness jingles now;
No change though you lie under
The land you used to plow.

“Is football playing
Along the river shore,
With lads to chase the leather,
Now I stand up no more?”

Ay, the ball is flying,
The lads play heart and soul;
The goal stands, Up, the keeper
Stands Up to keep the goal.

“Is my girl happy,
That I thought hard to leave,
And has she tired of weeping
As she lies down at eve?”

Ay, she lies down lightly,
She lies not down to weep:
Your girl is well contented.
Be still, my lad, and sleep.

“Is my friend hearty,
Now I am thin and pine,
And has he found to sleep in
A better bed than mine?”

Yes, lad, I lie easy,
I lie as lads would choose;
I cheer a dead man’s sweetheart,
Never ask me whose.

Yesterday, I went to the Taiwan Cultural Office of San Francisco (in Sunnyvale) yesterday. They serve some consular functions and I was investigating visa stuff for the fall.

I got there and there are people sitting around, forms, papers and signs everywhere, but no one is speaking, reading, writing in English. It ended up taking me 15 minutes to find where to get the forms I needed.

I’m sure I showed a little of a deer-in-headlights look in my eyes, but my mental dialog went something more like “oh my gosh what am I doing?! how am I going to do four months of this when I’m having a hard time with fifteen minutes?!”

It was pretty sweet. I’m sure it’ll work out.

There are very few things I can convince myself to do daily. Brushing my teeth, getting dressed, eating and showering are about it and those I notice very soon if I don’t.

Things that take a longer time to see the effects of, I’m not very good. Physical therapy I can do for a while but it’s hard to stick with. Exercise I can handle on the times per week basis, but not on the daily basis.

Starting today, I’m going to start two things (that may or may not help me in the long run) that take 90 days (at least) to see an effect: Glucosamine and Minoxidil.

Glucosamine is a supplement that’s been shown to help some portion of the population’s joints in rebuilding. Now, I don’t have joint problems because I’m not old (and only old people have joint problems), but if I did they’d be left ankle, right and left knees, and right elbow and to a lesser extent left elbow, right and left shoulders. The dose that’s been studied is 1.5g (1500mg). This is a very large pill.

Minoxidil is just for fun. Any problem that it treats that you might think I have is a figment of your imagination. This problem simple does not effect me.

Menlo Park is dead at 10pm on a Sunday.

[personal thoughts, ramblings after the jump]

(more…)

I was talking to my friend Jesse on the phone. He was about to head to a bbq with some mutual friends.

me: Say hi to people for me.
Jesse: I probably won’t actually do that but I’ll say I will because it will make you feel better.
me: …

Thanks, pal.

I lived in Germany during the summer of 2002 and I traveled nearly every weekend. I arrived in Germany May 28 and left August 23. Sometimes I use this blog to put things down that are at the edge of my reach memory-wise, so I can make a record of them. I actually have all of this written down in a notebook, but I can’t find it.

• May 31- June2: Bremen, to visit Colin[1]
• June 7-9: Düsseldorf to visit my Oma[2], Frankfurt to visit Sam Breuning[3]
• June 14-16: nothing
• June 21-23: Solingen, Köln to visit the cousins Füser[4]
• June 28-30: München[5, 7], Bayrischer Alpen[6] for MIT-Germany/ MIT Club of Germany meet up
• July 5-7: Vienne, Strasbourg France for the Vienne Jazz Festival[8]
• July 12-14: Berlin, for LoveParade 2002 and visit with Justus[9]
• July 20-22: Hamburg[10], Lübeck[11] w/ Christian
• July 26-28: Karlsruhe for the “Savage Seven” ultimate frisbee tournament as a part of die Sieben Schwaben[12]
• August 2-4: Romantic/ Clock Road, Rottweil; Stein am Rhein, Switzerland; Rottenburg ob der Tauber w/ Meredith Gerber[13]
• August 9-12: Pittsburgh, USA for Colin and Heather’s wedding. Surprise![14]
• August 16-18: Köln (to see Bugge Wesseltof) and Frankfurt, w/ Sam Breuning[15]

Footnotes:

1. Bremen smells like hops when the wind is the right direction because of Becks. The Schnoor area was neat, with its small and odd houses.
2. My Oma didn’t realize I was related to her for the first hour of my visit; the Alzheimers had started to take its toll. This ended up being the last time I saw her. I regret not having stayed with her for the whole weekend, but at that point I thought I was going to visit again that summer.
3. Sam was a cool British kid also with a German father; he’d been on the Cambridge-MIT exchange. We ended up hanging out a number of weekends that summer. I’ve since lost touch with him.
4. My dad’s cousin (my “Tante”/ “aunt”), her husband and kids (my “cousins”) were all gathered at their palatial family estate in Solingen for a sculpture showing of a local artist set up in their gardens. At one point we all, including the artist, were sitting under some trees eating a snack and they asked me if I liked one of the statues near us. I said, in stilted German, that I did (it was actually one of the few I did). It came out wrong and they made fun. I said “echt!” in vain. At another point this weekend, another cousin-by-marriage of my dad’s who was also visiting announced, after having talked to me for five minutes that I spoke “perfekt Deutsch.” Right…
5. We all met at a Biergarten, all the current students and the MIT Club of Germany members. I was stuck at the Club table for most of the night, which was extremely awkward. At some point I excused myself and snuck over the student table. Seeings as it was social interaction with people I didn’t know well, it was still awkward, but not nearly as much.
6. We went hiking in the Alps and stayed in a rustic ski cabin that one MIT Club member had access to. Sam and I got a ride down with a guy who spoke with a typical German accent except, because he’d spent multiple years as a ski bum in the US, mixed it with ski bum slang and inflection all the time. At the cabin, I learned I was ace at splitting logs with an ax, usually splitting decent sized logs in one swing. During one of our day hikes we stopped at an inn, where a 10 year old kid was drinking a 1 litre “maß” glass of beer.
7. It was the day of the final when we got back to Munich and I had the surreal experience of watching Germany play (and lose) in a World Cup final with 10,000 Germans in a public square where they’d set up screens. Turkey won the consolation match so there was some celebrating. (Note: Turkish is the largest minority in Germany by a factor of 4, at least at the time.)
8. Vienne has a Roman amphitheatre with gorgeous acoustics. Sam knew the mayor of Vienne so we got VIP passes into the events, including into a VIP area the first night where we passed the London Times jazz critic. Vienne was about 450 miles from Stuttgart, a good 7 hours, which we drove non-stop on Friday afternoon, on half a tank of diesel in a pretty amazing VW Passat TDI. We still missed most of the first act. Also, French radio sucks. I bought a CD-tape adapter after this road trip.
9. The LoveParade is a parade along a mile-long route on which 40 heavy duty trucks with world-class DJs and sound systems drive for an entire afternoon. Estimates for my year were 500,000 in attendance. Oh and there were a lot of topless girls there.
10. My (second) cousin Christian lived in Hamburg at the time. He’d stayed with us in America in the early 90s and he was out to repay the favor by showing me a good time. We went out with some friends. On the way there, he’d talked to them and said he was bringing his cousin (”eine Cousine from mir”) with him. We got there and the friend said “this is your hair dresser (Friseur)??” See, they might sound alike on the phone; yes that doesn’t work in English and I don’t care. This was the first night that I drank more than one beer in a night, in fact, probably quadrupling my total beer consumption ever in just that night. The goal was to stay up all night and go to the Fischmarkt when it opened at 6am, but it ended with me falling asleep in a bar at 4:30am, having had multiple beers (mostly Heinikens while watching a crappy, but, let’s be honest, fun American cover band) and a good quantity of vodka. Incidentally, trying to explain complicated concepts in German wasn’t easy, let alone to a group of strangers in a loud bar while intoxicated. And, Malta, I can’t say your name correctly sober either; but you can’t say “squirrel” to save your life, so there.
11. The bells of the main church had fallen and melted from the bombings in WWII. They’d be left as a beautiful and poignant reminder. Lübeck in general is a wonderful small town.
12. “Savage seven” means no subs (the seven you have to start is all you have). Having gotten roped into this at the last minute, I played seven games of no-subs ultimate frisbee in two days. I can still remember the intense pain, mostly in my calves that I felt for the rest of the week. Walking on flat ground and up stairs, my right calf hurt intensely; my left calf hurt similarly walking down stairs. I couldn’t, and didn’t, win. Of course there were 6 flights of stairs between my office and the cafeteria/ train level at work.
13. This was a fun little road trip with another MIT-Germany person; Meredith was in Munich for the summer. We went to some classic historic German places. I also made my only trip to a Switzerland, to the town of Stein am Rhein, which was noted by the “strict” border crossing. “Passports? No, we don’t need to see those. In fact, you don’t even have to come to a full stop. Just roll on through!”
14. After the rehearsal dinner, I had some friends over, got tipsy on Mike’s Hard Lemonades and had to search for the right words to use in English. That I was thinking partly in German was a big step for me and I noted my progress.
15. Bugge Wesseltof had impressed Sam and I with his electro jazz stylings in Vienne. Plus we liked his awesome name, so we drove like maniacs (once again) to get to Köln by show time, only to be disappointed by his collaborative work with a female jazz singer.

“Now your gums are bleeding a little bit because you don’t floss enough.”

I’d beg to differ. I believe my gums are bleeding because you just spent the last half hour jabbing them with a crude shive.

Seriously, why do we take this from dentists? This is the 21st century and they’re sitting there with midieval steel tools ready to poke my teeth and gums. What’s next? Blood letting? I could probably have my gallbladder removed less invasively than having my teeth cleaned.

Dave and Tina were in town yesterday, so I headed up to SF to hang out with them in the afternoon and evening.

We walked from Ghirardelli Sq, down Columbus to Giordano Brothers, a restaurant that serves “Pittsburgh-style” (aka Primanti’s) sandwiches. I love this place. They do this style of sandwiches well and it always helps/ calms my nostalgia needs. There’s also some good people watching in the area.

We then walked down Columbus (past the transamerica building) and then down to the Embarcadero. From there we made our way down past all the piers (picking up a much needed Slurpee near the end) before going to Musee Mechanique. It’s on Pier 45, right at the end of all those piers by Fishermen’s Wharf.

Musee Mechanique is a collection of coin-operated devices: penny arcade games, photo booths, flip-card movie machines (“Mutoscopes”), fortune tellers, moving dioramas and music boxes and other music machines. The collection has items from the late 1800s up until probably the 1990s, but most of them probably come from the first half of the 20th century.

It’s an amazing collection. More importantly, it’s a lot of a fun. I’m a big mechanical geek so the intricate mechanical ones are really cool to me. It’s pretty cheap: free admission and the games are 25 or 50 cents each for the most part, so for $5 or $10 you can play a lot of them.

An ancient and gorgeous sounding disc-based music box

After that we headed over the Mission to eat at Walzwerk, the always-delicious East German restaurant. Good food, good beer, not too pretentious. Winners!

Mel’s Bowl rounded out the night. It was really quiet, save a bunch of Warriors fans in the bar. We were one of two groups bowling. There was this really cute old couple next to us. The wife was asleep while he bowled. He was slower but was obviously good in his day. He had a lot of finesse still and was pretty good (he could easily beat me). I was cheering him on the whole time.

I bowled pretty badly with a 113 and 115, but I still beat out Dave to be the absolute champion.

more photos after the jump (way below)

(more…)

I have interesting friends.

At an engagement party/ shinding tonight.

me, to the engaged: Congratulations!

him: you don’t look fat!

I’m training for one of the Alcatraz triathlons. Today and last Thursdays I’ve done biking and running in a row and it has hurt. Today was slightly better than the last, I think.

What I did:

• swimming:
  • goal: 1.5-2.0 miles
  • actual: 2x 1.0 miles = 2.0 miles
• running:
  • goal: 9-10.5 miles
  • actual: 2x 3.5 miles + 1 X 3.0 miles = 10 miles
• biking:
  • goal: at least 15 miles
  • actual: 1x 16.0 miles (+5x 1.65 miles to/ from work) = 16.0 or 23.2 miles, depending what you count
• brick (bike then run):
  • goal: at least one
  • actual: today 16 miles biking then 3 miles running w/ ~ 3 minutes transition time

I bought one of these this week. It was nice to have water on the longer runs, especially when I’m in the sun. It think it’ll also be nice to have if I decide to do something like run to the pool, swim, and then run back. It has a little pocket where I can keep my keys and maybe one of those gel/ goo/ power shot sort of things.

Next week, I should do something like:

• swimming: 2.0 miles
• running: 10-11 miles
• bicycling: 15.0-22.0 miles
• brick: at least one

I don’t want to over do it. I have been starting to ache quite a bit, both muscularly and in joints and tendons and whatnot, so I’m not going to push it much this week.

I went to bed last night. I always fall asleep to music. I wanted to fall asleep to Beatbeat Whisper’s song “Play Me a Time” (a lullaby, so very appropriate), but I also wanted to hear their “Old River” (3:55) and “The Cowboy’s Lament” (3:02). If felt like a century trying to stay awake for that 6 minutes and 57 seconds before “Play Me a Time” was to come on. In the end I didn’t make it. I think I got into the middle “Cowboy’s Lament” before falling asleep.

I’ve always been able to fall asleep easily. If I have my head on the pillow for more than seven minutes before falling asleep, it’s a truly extraordinary night. The only times I can’t/ couldn’t fall asleep easily, at least usually, was the night before my first final and when riddled with jetlag.

Last week I sent out my goals for triathlon training for this week (my training weeks go Saturday-Friday for this, for whatever reason).

They were and how I did:

• swimming:
  • goal: 1-1.5 miles
  • actual: 2x 0.75 miles = 1.5 miles
• running:
  • goal: 8.5 miles
  • actual: 2x 3.0 miles + 1 X 2.5-2.6 miles = 8.5 miles
• biking:
  • goal: at least 15 miles
  • actual: 1x 15.0 miles (+4x 1.65 miles to/ from work) = 15.0 or 21.6 miles, depending what you count
• brick (bike then run):
  • goal: at least one
  • actual: today 15 miles biking then 2.5 miles running w/ ~ 3 minutes transition time

The brick was a whole new experience for me. I’d only biked and run in the same day once before and those were hours apart. It feels very strange to do that to your legs. They’re already tired and then you ask them to do a different and (for me) more painful movement. The feeling was assaulting. It wasn’t pain necessarily, not acute pain at least, but just a general feeling of wanting to not be running at that moment and tiredness in my legs.

I know it’s no great physical feat and wasn’t about to collapse, but I’m not quite sure how I did it. I certainly wanted to give up. I think it was very mental: if I couldn’t do that today, then I certainly couldn’t ready and do a triathlon. I had to prove it to myself.

Really one of the things that got me through the run part of the brick was the great album from Beatbeat Whisper which I just posted about on my music blog.

Next week, I should do something like:

• swimming: 1.5-2.0 miles
• running: 9.5-10.5 miles
• bicycling: 15.0-22.0 miles
• brick: at least one

I scanned and uploaded a bunch of black and white photos to my picasa thing.

Galleries include Pittsburgh over Christmas, my first try at fisheye, the Oakland A’s last game of their sweep of the Twins in the playoffs, Jose Gonzalez @ Stanford, and John Vanderslice @ Stanford.

5 odd questions people (totaling 5) in my car were asked by a member of the MPPD after being pulled over for an out left tail light on Sunday:

• “Hey, engineer in the back, what operating system do you use?”
• “Are you brother and sister?”
• “Are you married?”
• “Saving on gas, are you?”
• “What do you have against the regular units?”

And, yes, I’ve replaced the bulb; it’s fixed.

on the phone a minute ago:

me: hello, this is Adrian

caller: Hi, this is X.

me: Oh, hi X. how are you?

X: good. how about you?

me: good. how about you?

X: …

me: <awkward laugh> so….what’d you call about?

[fin]

Note to self: don’t let brain go into autopilot.

Happy New Year’s.

I don’t know if you’re like me. Maybe you went out and had a blast…NYE (as they call it in the business) is particularly geared, it seems, towards large parties. I’m not a huge fan of huge parties so that’s one reason I have a feeling of dread as NYE approaches.

The other thing about New Year’s is that pesky reminder that time is passing. I’d like to say it hasn’t always been this way, but I think that’d it’d be a lie; I’ve always been too ambitious, had too many goals, to enjoy the fact that time is passing and that I have less time to accomplish them. (Birthdays also remind one of time passing, but somehow I mostly avoid that same dread with my birthdays and instead I meet them largely with joy.)

Another thought: Weezer’s Weezer (the first one) is a dang good album throughout.

Andy said that yesterday: “I had embarrassing teen years.” He was going through some boxes of stuff that his parents wanted to get rid of to make space. I laughed at him. I’m not embarrassed by my teen years, I thought. I did alright with them.

Here’s one gem Andy found yesterday:

[yeah, I should crop this and make it a smaller file.]

It’s the original lyric sheet to the Where’s Luke theme song. This was when we were preparing for the coffee house that they hosted at Westminster Presbyterian. I think we might have just been asking Colin if he’d be our drummer.

Tonight I went through my drawers in my desk tonight. I was laughing again, this time at myself. Despite myself I did have an embarrassing adolescence. I found all sorts of ridiculous things that I saved. The pot of gold at the end of the embarrassment rainbow was the half-drawer full of love notes, poems and drawings from a high school girlfriend. I was smiling so much at the ridicilousness of it that I almost cried.

I walked out my back door this morning to grab my bike and head off to work. There was a lid of a container that had overturned and filled with some water. This water had turned to ice. I think this is the first time I remember seeing naturally formed ice in Palo Alto or Menlo Park. There was frost on the neighbor’s grass.

I need to figure out if I own gloves in this state. My hands didn’t work for many minutes after I got to work today.

I figured it’d be paying rent or doing my own taxes that’d do it. Or perhaps it’d be my first real paycheck. Or buying a more expensive product to get better quality so it’d last.

Well, I did those things and don’t feel particuarly like an adult. Yesterday, though, I realized it comes in steps. I realized this because I clipped my fingernails. I looked at my hands yesterday and saw that my fingernails were getting long and realized that I hadn’t bitten them, none of them.

Now I have nothing against biting one’s fingernails (or picking one’s nose) and I realize there’s a time and place where it’s not appropriate (in a client meeting, for instance), but, while I wasn’t doing anything about it, I also didn’t particularly like this habit. Well, apparently I’ve unknowingly stopped. I guess it was just time.

And so the realization that I’m one step closer to being an “adult.” Next step: talking to girls like they’re normal people.

and it’s warm in here. I don’t want to leave.

I’m back in Pittsburgh for the Thanksgiving holiday. Today I went up to New Brighton in Beaver County to grab lunch with my friend Chris Atwell. He’s been working at his uncle’s business, Ceramic Color and Chemical Manufacturing Co. They take metals (inorganic chemicals), grind them and combine them in various ways to make pigments, which are largely used in tiles and other ceramics. He gave me a tour of the plant, which is mostly within a very cool 200 year old building and it was a bunch of industrial equipment. Man, I love factory tours. Giant mechanical equipment is my thing.

(Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to take any photos of the giant mechanical equipment inside.)

I also think it’s cool that they’re doing what they’re doing: growing slowly, competing on the global market with a family business using local labor. That seems increasingly rare these days.

We ended up grabbing lunch at the Backdoor Tavern up there. (I must admit, I winced after I hit enter in google with the search terms ‘backdoor’ and ‘beaver’ (it’s in Beaver county) thinking I’d get a bunch of dirty results but I was actually able to find the place I wanted.) I got a really solid meatball sandwhich and a Penn Pilsner. The total for the two? $7. In Palo Alto, I might get a mediocre sandwhich for seven bucks…

After lunch, the following sign caught my eye and I had to check out the Rosalind Candy Castle:

That 3ft tall chocolate Santa was like a little person but jolly and made of chocolate. mmmmmm three foot tall chocolate Santa…. (give me a minute here.) I ended up getting a Santa chocolate lollipop and some dark chocolate covered pretzels which my family agreed were excellent when we had them for dessert tonight.

Then I walked through downtown Beaver before coming home.

I put more photos from today online

Either endearing or unbearably socially awkward:

her: Yeah, I’d like that.
me: Um, I don’t know how to do this. I guess I get your phone number or something?

Come on endearing. No whammies no whammies…

my goodness! gasoline is practically free these days.

It’s raining right now; I can hear it on the roof. It’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow. It was supposed to rain last night and this morning and I found myself wanting to go to bed so I could wake up sooner to see the rain—it was like Christmas in anticipation. It hasn’t rain in Menlo Park since May. This is every summer in Palo Alto/ Menlo Park: no rain, highs of 72-88 for pretty much the whole thing. I love it.

• Took a train across the country (Boston to Emeryville)
• Cycled around Lake Tahoe
• MIT
• Lived in Germany

maybe you believe in coincidences. maybe you don’t. maybe you ascribe them to fate or God or something.

I like coincidences. They make me like life.

Friday night I went up to the City to go to the m.ward show with Gums and Dasha. We met up for a drink beforehand at Toronado. We walked down to the Fillmore and when we got to the fillmore, I discovered m.ward had sold out the place (a place larger than Slim’s, which he half-filled last time through SF). Scalper’s wanted more than 2.5 times the face for a ticket, so I said screw that and started walking back to my car. On the way, I decided to see what people were up to in SF, since I was there anyway. I called dug, who was at the (birthday) party a girl I’d met once (at a dinner jwerberg threw when he was out here—she was the then roommate of one of jon’s former housemates, an acquaintance of mine) and he invited me. I was a bit reluctant to go, though the party was pretty close to where I’d parked. I was considering it though; after all, I had met her and, actually, another person I had randomly evited me to this party earlier in the week.

I was on the fence until about 3 minutes later when I got a call from yet another guy at the party that I knew and he handed the phone to none other than Zach Anderson, USC HS class of ‘00. Yeah, a guy I went to high school had heard dug mention me (first name and last, probably due to my relative unfamiliarity to the hostess of the party) and said that he knew me from high school. Turns out he was friends with the hostess due to them both currently being at Berkeley. That pushed me over the fence and I went to the party.

I’m glad I ran into him. It was cool catching up with him.

I’d run into another guy I knew from high school, Balaji, after a Giants-Pirates game, but that’s really not much of a coincidence, because after all both of us had a greatly increased likelihood to go to said game.

I’d say that was the second most coincidental happening in my life.

The first was as follows:

My brother and I were newspaper delivery boys back in middle school and junior high. One time my family was going on vacation so asked my friend John to deliver ours for us for that week, as he was also a delivery boy. I also happened to take piano lessons from John’s mom. Part of the piano education were these group lessons once a month or two months in which you had a lesson with people of a similar skill level and basically practiced playing in front of people. These lessons were at a different time and day from my normal lessons. So I was at John’s house at a different day and time from my normal lessons and the phone ringed. John’s mom didn’t normally pick up the phone during lessons, I think, but she did that time. Next thing I know she was handing the phone to me. It turns out that one of the people we delivered newspapers to wanted to stop her newspaper for a week while she was on vacation, so she found the flyer we sent out when John was going to be taking over for a week, with his phone number on it and had called thinking it was our number during the one hour that I was at John’s house on a different day and time than I normally was there and asked for me.

That was more of a cut and dry weird coincidence.

[note 1: I've been toying with the idea of writing a memoir of my time at MIT. I'm going to start posting some stories here as sort of a test bed. I don't have a writing voice, much like I don't have a singing voice, but I hope to find one.]

[note 2: What follows is, admittedly, a bit creepy, but it is not stalking nor was it ill-received by the parties involved.]

It was the Fall of 2001 and I was freshly a junior. A number of my friends had left MIT to live in and go to the other Cambridge across the pond. September 11 obviously hung heavily over that semester. I was taking a class in world music with the incredible George Ruckert along with the normal engineering classes and an incredibly hard German class (”Read this scene and memorize this speach from Faust by Thursday…”) with a woman named Dagmar which I eventually dropped after a month of struggle. I was living in 52 with Jesse which has a whole host of separate stories associated with it, but for now I’ll recount the story of the Lia Incident.
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Monday:

1. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
2. walking the Brooklyn Bridge (west to east)
3. Grimaldi’s Pizza and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with Paul Koh of earbud clip fame
4. wandering around [and purchasing foam headwear in] Chinatown and Soho
5. aforementioned PowerDinner(TM) at Hallo Berlin with mim, liz, jdawg, perlick and qwdgbo

Tuesday:

1. Empire State Building
2. pastrami and dr. brown’s at katz’s deli
3. rye playland! with liz and later jonwerberg and helene [who, I'd like to make clear, despite earlier implications is no way a freak and whose school is only sort of a freak fest]

Wednesday [are you ready for it?]:

1. B&H
2. the Met, the Guggenheim, the Cooper-Hewitt, and the Moma
3. watched a taping of Conan with jweberg and liz
4. pizza in Williamsburg [/Greenpoint?], Brooklyn with Jens Lekman in the catty-corner booth with the above plus mim
5. Jens show at Soundfix Records with the above
6. drinks at d.b.a. with the above
7. a savanna dry cider with jdawg back in the bronx

I apparently flew across the country to sit in the same heat wave that I hated in California a week and a half ago.

The Subway in Redwood City has in it’s soda fountain both Dr Pepper and Mr. Pibb.

This is not common, people! This might be the only soda fountain ever to do such a thing!

It’s bike to work day out here in the Bay Area.

I think they’re overlooking an important aspect, here, though: biking from work! I mean all those people have to get home somehow. Perhaps it should be called Bike to and from Work Day.

Am I right or am I right?

a month and a half after I dropped my glasses into the Caribbean, I finally bought a pair. they should be ready in a few days.

thank goodness it’s the original english formula…

I lost my glasses to the Caribbean a couple weeks back and I’ve been looking for new ones. (Meantime I’m wearing some backups.) One thing I’ve noticed in looking is that so many glasses just suck. There are bland ones that are bland. There are also fancy-looking ones that are just dumb. Can’t anyone just make a simple, stylish frame?

So I’m looking around. Maybe something like these. Or something like what I have but modernized. Converse All Star, surprisingly, have some decent frames.

These people have a good selection. I’m probably going to end up buying in a store, but that’s a good place to look around.

Any suggestions?

I got a new bike. It doesn’t have multiple gears or a free wheel.

more pictures beyond the break
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How can I be a total asshole to someone I know and very generous and nice to a bunch of people I don’t know in the same day?

1. drink
2. watch Lost in Translation
3. order crap online

it’s tradition.

As a bearded man, I appreciate this analysis of the beards of Roethlisberger and Plummer and their effect on the outcome of the AFC championship game.

Perhaps someday you will be flying a crap airline and they will strand you in Las Vegas when you’re trying to get home for Christmas. Perhaps they will put you up in a hotel (or perhaps they won’t). Perhaps it will already be one in the morning and you don’t want to wait an hour to get your checked luggage. Perhaps that will leave you with only the clothes you have on. Perhaps you will wish to wash your socks and underwear so you don’t have to wear them for many hours on end.

If so, you are in luck. I will tell you what to do.

1. Take off your socks and underwear.
2. Wash them in the sink. I use fairly warm water and shampoo (from the hotel bathroom). You can also use dish detergent, liquid soap or bar soap. If you’re washing many things, I’d recommend filling the sink with warm soapy water, washing all of the items, draining the sink and then rinsing all of them. On the other hand, if you’re just washing socks and underwear, you can just rub the shampoo into the articles directly. Either way, when you’re washing, rub material against itself. This acts much like a washing machine when it aggitates.
3. Rinse the articles.
4. Ring the articles out over the sink.
5. Use a towel to aid in drying. Take out a (preferably extra) towel and put it on a flat surface. Put your articles on one half. Fold the other half of the towel over it. Roll up the towel with your articles inside. Twist the two ends so your ring the water out of your articles and into the towel.
6. Hang your socks and underwear to dry overnight. Door knobs and towel racks work well.
7. In the morning, they should be dry. When clothing, especially cotton clothing, hangs out to dry, it becomes stiff and “crunchy.” Shaking the article vigorously usually makes it feel soft again.
8. If your clothing is not dry in the morning or if you need it to be dry sooner, just use a hair dryer or hand dryer, if one is available. If there’s radiator or heating vent, those also help dry things out faster.

Since swimming on Friday, my right ear has made an occasional, sometimes frequent clicking sound as if theres’ still water in there (though there doesn’t feel like there is and I’ve done the water-in-the-ear jump-dance and felt no water moving around). It’s as if it’s pressurizing and depressurizing like on a plane, but repeatedly.

Sometimes it is made obvious that my daily trials and tribulations are trivial.

Some days the sunset is just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

From Saturday to Saturday here is how I accelerated my heartbeat:

• 3x 2.6 mile runs
• 2x 2.0 mile runs
• 1x 0.5 mile swim (freestyle)
• 2x 2.0 mile walks (to, from walk)
• 1x 15 mile bike (with ~1500ft elevation gain)

I really hate running.

I also got stung by a bee on my finger on Thursday. It is still swollen.

I shaved my week-old scruff into a chin strap or, as I like to call it, a moses (or amish) beard.

I’ll likely keep it for a day (as part of the beard for a day program) or maybe maybe a week. There’s talk and negotiations involving andyl paying me the sum of $20 to keep it for a week, but we’ve currently stalled at $18.

Me and the roomies have decided we’re going to try not heating our house in order to save money on the utilities and to just be badass like that.

But, in order to give us a break and something to look forward to, we’re going to heat one day a week. Behold Hot Thursdays.

I can’t wait till Hot Thursday. It’s freezing in here.

In overly personal news, I noticed today on someone-that-I-don’t-talk-to-much’s away message that the first girl I had a crush on got married today.

I didn’t really have a crush on a girl until into high school. So if you’re keeping track, crush 1 is now married. I think I heard that crush 2 is married/ engaged. Crush 3 has a 3 year old daughter but isn’t married and crush four was engaged as of around this time last year, so she’s probably married by now. It’s harder to keep track to the crushes (the numbers) after that.

I was in the City yesterday hanging with Gumbeaux near the Haight so I went to Amoeba and got a few CDs:

• Iron & Wine and Calexico In the Reins
• Stubbs the Zombie [Soundtrack] bunch of indie and mainstream bands doing covers of 50s songs for a video game soundtrack
• Low and the Dirty Three In the Fishtank
• Sigur Ros Takk
• Matt Pond PA Several Arrows Later

I should probably not buy any more CDs for a while…

I’m a bit sick. Both of my roommates were sick last week and now I am. I thought I could squeeze by without getting what they had but the late night/ early morning today was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. I’m going to go to sleep in a minute here.

The Steelers just squeeked out a win over the Ravens. They really need to stop taking these games to the final minute/ seconds like that. It’s not good for my heart.

I went to two concerts this weekend: Jens Lekman at the Rickshaw Stop on Saturday and the American Analog Set at Bottom of the Hill. Both really quite good shows. I’m going to write a post about them when I don’t really need to get some sleep and get not-sick.

You may leave your comments proclaiming your undying love for me. Also (if you’re female) you may leave your email address or other contact information. (If you’re male) you may leave contact information of available female friends.

I’m just outside of DC in Silver Spring, MD. My best friend Andy and I both have birthdays right around this Labor Day weekend and it’s a bigish birthday so I decided to make a big deal of it and fly here and invite people. Andy, Dave, Randy, Ian “the Mayour” Collier and respective significant others, along with my parents and brother came out for this Birthday Extravaganza.

I arrived Friday morning and I’m flying back tomorrow evening.

We did lots of fun stuff and some great hanging out.

Highlights include:

• the big birthday dinner on Saturday night with some sort of humorous but also tragic confusion between wasabi and avacado
• DC-9, beers with the friends
• the Washington Nationals game with special appearance of Dale
• cuban dinner with the fam and Ian and Ai-ris.
• delicious and relaxing BBQ at the parl
• Broken Flowers

ok. that’s all for now. have a nice day everybody.

Oh, and Katie, you didn’t scare me. I just don’t “talk” to “girls” “good.”

It was nice to meet all the new people I met this weekend!

Here’s a list:

• Start my Pentax K1000/ Canon A40 self-made all-manual digital SLR
• get a haircut
• Sell 2-4 Wurlitzer electric pianos
• order shirts for, make silk-screen for, silk-screen “Adrian is rad”* shirts**
• have a blast with jon werberg while he’s out here
• ask landlady about painting my room, pick colors, buy paint
• try to find a firmer bed, a smaller desk, a dresser
• learn php, get a start on internal online ticket giveaway system for KZSU

*The shirt came first, the blog with the same name second. I made it with iron on red letters a white shirt with blue ringers; the ones I’m going to make are basically the same except they’ll be silk-screened.

**Let me know if you want one (and your size). I don’t think I’m going to be able to swallow the cost on them so they’d be $8-$10 or whatever they cost me. I’ll see if I can get a picture of the original up soon.

Useful background:

• I used to only swim breaststroke. I was good at it.
• I hurt my knee in August 2003 and can’t swim breaststroke anymore.
• I hurt my elbow last April and didn’t swim from then till January.
• Now I swim freestyle with an elbow brace and some pain.

I don’t really time myself swimming anymore, but yesterday I was curious as to how slow I am so I did so. Slightly pushing it (but mostly just gliding along), I did 800m in 15:40. That’s not bad! I used to swim the same distance breaststroke in about 16:00—well technically I was doing 800 yards in ~14:30—if I was going at a pretty good clip. Now freestyle is a faster stroke (1/3 faster usually), so almost the same times for the two of them isn’t that great on an absolute scale, but considering I’m swimming injured and I’m definitely not swimming my fastest, I’m pretty pleased that I’m not coming in at like 18 or 20 minutes for that distance. Go me!

I’m swimming the 1.5 mile alcatraz swim in July. I think coming in <1 hour would be a good goal and <55 minutes might be nice.

I’m in the Charlotte airport on the way to london. I have a few hours here. I’m going to a cousin’s wedding. I won’t be bloggong a lot. (hopefully).

I saw low and pedro the lion last night at great american music hall. good show. low was interesting. lots more distortion and stuff, keeping with their new album.

I got 2 hours of sleep last night. I didn’t remeber to bring the british money my dad gave me and I don’t have cuff links for my french cuff tux shirt.

I am just downright sexy!

I have one of my dad’s old navy blue V-neck sweaters, a light blue t-shirt peaking out in the V and at the waist. Khaki cords and some blue leather adidas kickers round it off. I feel like just looking in the mirror all day.

Watch out, world, here I come!

I spent the weekend in Death Valley with Dylan, Andyl, and Dale. We’d heard that there was the best wildflower bloom in many years, some saying 50. When Andy originally suggested Death Valley, I thought it was about four hours away. Turns out that it’s about ten, maybe nine if you don’t stop for any breaks. California is quite large and there aren’t any direct routes there.

How do you fit twenty hours of driving and wildflower viewing and sleeping in a weekend? Well the last thing gets knocked a bit. We ended up leaving at 4:45am on Saturday; I’d gone to see Paddy Keenan on Friday night (to be blogged about later) and had ended up going to bed at about 1:30 and waking up at about 3:45 in the am.

We got to the park after stopping for breakfast and at the jerky guy previously mentioned on this here website at about 2pm or there abouts. We stopped in Stovepipe Wells, trying to figure out if we should camp there or go on–we didn’t get an answer from the rangers whether Sunset was already full so we decided to go on. We ended up finding a spot in the Sunset overflow tent campsite, which is basically a gravel parking lot. A flat parking lot with a nice view, but if you’re going, bring a mattress pad. Andy and Dale regretted they didn’t.

After registering for and claiming our tent site and setting up the tent, we headed off to some dunes that we’d driven by on the way from Stovepipe Wells to Sunset. Dylan has a bunch of photos online of our adventures climbing the dunes. We ended up making it to the top of a maybe 100 foot dune. It was quite a nice view over many dunes and into the mountains. We saw a muted sunset from up there and then made our way back to the car.

My big plan as soon as I saw the hills behind the Sunset campground was to get some PBR and go up into the hills a bit after dinner. Turns out the general store at Stovepipe Wells didn’t have any PBR, so we got giant cans of Foster’s.

Who could predict what would happen when we got into the hills and started in on the beers? I can. I will tell you what happened.

We invented a new sport. Competative rock stacking. The rules will be goverened by the IFRS (International Federation of Rock Stacking). The short of it: you must stack reasonably sized rocks as many high (serially, no parallel stacking) as you can. Dale won a tight contested match against Dylan 12 to 11 with a questionable rock 1.

We ended up going to sleep pretty early and waking up around 6:30. After breaking camp, we did a quick hike at Natural Bridge and a stop at Badwater Basin (lowest point in the US!) we hit the motherload. There are a couple areas between Badwater Basin and Salsbury Pass that are just spectacular, especially near the mill ruins and one right near Salsbury Pass. Fields entirely yellow, like velvet from afar.

I’ll develop my films in the next couple weeks and get them online.

I know I’ve been swimming enough when my lower back and back of my thighs are tanned. I checked out my backside in the mirror at the pool yesterday and sure enough: a light tan, but there’s a distinguishable lighter area where my swim suit sits.

I’ve been keeping up three times a week since early January. My old standard used to be five times a week but I hurt my elbow last year and decided in order to recover, I ought not to swim two days in a row. I’ve been swimming with a brace on that elbow.

It’s aching at the end of swims. This isn’t something new. That’s part of the reason I don’t swim on consecutive days. The other day I got some muscle aching in my right arm. That’s encouraging; I take it to mean that the muscle is the weakest link, not the ligament at the elbow.

Some people can run for days or bike up all the hills in the world. I can swim. I was never the fastest, but I could swim farther than you in four hours, especially if you’re Maggie. (ha!)

But, yeah, I’m swimming again. It’s nice. The water is so comfortable for me.

[note one: all of Stanford's pools are outside and heated. Yes, we swim in them even during the "winter."]

[note two: I mention maggie because she challenged me to a four hour swim-off a couple years ago. It never happened but she basically conceded after I swam 3.5 miles in two hours to see what I could do.]

probably a leftover from my time at tep, I don’t really open my mail until it’s overflowing. Many of my bills are paid automatically or I periodically pay them online.

well, yesterday, it was time to go through my mail. here are some conclusions, harper’s style. There were probably about a hundred pieces of mail from mid-november until now:

• number of rebate checks from amazon.com: 1
• number of items that were important enough that I felt they should have been opened earlier: 0*
• number of apparently identical capitol one credit card offers: 6
• number of other credit card offers: 3
• number of offers for additional services from credit card companies I currently do business with: 3
• number of apparently useless tax forms from Massachusetts, which I didn’t live in for any of 2004: 1

*I should note that I’ll look through what appears to be new mail (the stuff at the top of the pile) and open things personally addressed to me or with a return address of someone I know. As such, I had already opened a wedding invitation. I also open netflix.

for a day such as this.

It would seem so, except that it’s a depressing indie rock album by Seldom. I haven’t listened to this album much in the last two and a half years and it’s very strange to listen to it.

You see, Dear Reader, I listened to this album obsessively during the summer of 2002 when I was living in Stuttgart. Basically I listened to this and Neon Golden by the Notwist all summer since they were my only new music. When I listen to Neon Golden I hear the (awesome) music. When I listen to Romance I see those streets: the one going by Porcheplatz to Wollinstrasse in Zuffenhausen; the one going by the Bosch headquarters, Mauserstrasse and Behr buildings 3 and 4 from the Feuerbach S-Bahn station to work; the main street near the Hauptbahnhof and Stadtmitte. I’d listen to and from work on my portable CD player and sing along when there weren’t people close by; I’d listen when I went to the city center to see a movie on 4 Euro Tuesdays, buy something, or check my email at the internet cafe. It’s really very strange to listen to this album because in my mind it is so strongly associated with a few specific places in Stuttgart.

Perhaps sometime I’ll write about sense-related memories.

Here are the controls on our stove:

I’d always assumed that Hi was the highest (ie “4″) and the numbers were out of order, like old stick shifts for manual transmission cars, when they were on the steering column, which go 1-N-3-4-2. (I’ve only been in one of these cars once; the cabs in Hong Kong had these.)

Andyl, on the other hand, assumed the numbers were in order and Hi meant “1.” The numbers were ordered from low (”Hi”/ 1) being the hottest and warm (5) being the coolest.

Basically we were in agreement about Hi being hotter than Lo and Warm being the coolest, but not about the order of 2 or 3. Which is hotter?

So we conceived of an experiment without a thermometer, which we didn’t have. We’d fill the same, cool pot to the same level with the coldest water our tap could produce. We’d cover it and put it on the same burner, preheated to the setting. Then we’d time it to see how long it took for the pot to boil (which we defined as the time when multiple bubbles rose within a short span of time, which is not really boiling, but a pretty identifiable time in the boiling of water). We’d repeated this for both “2″ and “3″ settings.

The results?

• setting 3 36 minutes
• setting 2 13 minutes

So the numbers are in order and some how “Hi” is actually the lowest number.

[Update: People don't understand how I thought they were out of order and I'll tell you this: I can't understand how Hi is a low number rather than a high number. In temperature, 3 is hotter than 2 and 2 is hotter than 1 and "Hi" means 5 or 10 or whatever. Why does Hi have a number? Can't it just be "Hi"? Hi has to have an implied number if there are 2 and 3 between Hi and Lo.]

I just signed up for the Alcatraz Sharkfest Swim, which is a mile and a half swim from Alcatraz to Aquatic Park in San Francisco. The Bay is about 60-62 degrees at that time of the year.

I was signed up last year but an injury kept me from swimming.

I swam yesterday, starting either my third or fourth week back swimming since I hurt my elbow last April. I’ve swum since April, but not much; I’ve probably swum as much since the beginning of the year, about three times a week, as I did in all the other time combined. My elbow is a bit tender, but it seems to be holding up alright. I won’t swim on consecutive days (yet) to try to rest it between swims. I’ve been swimming with an elbow brace as well.

Overall I’ve been feeling pretty good in the water. I’ve been swimming fairly conservatively and trying to glide a lot. I feel like I’m swimming pretty slowly, but I pass people who are trashing around (and look like they must be zipping through the water) so I can’t be going too slow. Could I swim the race tomorrow? I’m pretty sure I could swim 1.5 miles in the pool if I had to, but in the cold water with waves and without the benefit of turns (which save energy and time)? I wouldn’t like to try.

Every time I seem to be doing alright swimming, I hurt myself. I hurt my knee in August of 2003 at the end of a 2 hours, 3.5 mile swim in the MIT pool (I was seeing how much I could swim in two hours). That put an end to my breakstroke, which I loved and was so comfortable swimming (and I was pretty fast for a breastroker—I’d regularly pass free-stylers). Last April, I hurt my elbow playing tennis and frisbee golf and swimming. Let’s hope my joints can hold up till July.

Things I may have to get:

• triathlon wetsuit. the water is 60-62. that’s really cold. most people wear wetsuits.
• prescription goggles. they tell you a SF landmark to swim towards and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to see it without

I decided that I wasn’t going to watch TV today.

It’s weird. There are many times that I turn it on and I don’t think I notice. I was like “what am I going to do while eating lunch?”

I decided to read, but something else came up, which I’ll blog about later.

Jon Werberg put it nicely on Sunday. Some teams just stick with you. The BoSox, the Steelers. It’s the history, it’s what the team represents and it’s to a large extent, the fans. What the team means to the fans. It became national news this fall what the Red Sox means to Boston and the Red Sox Nation.

Pittsburgh is more insular though. The flux of people in Boston, adding to the Red Sox Nation, is not common place in Pittsburgh. But that doesn’t stop every home game to be sold out. That doesn’t stop the largest crowd to ever watch a Steelers home game from showing up in sub-10 degree weather to see their dream team fall.

I haven’t been to Green Bay or Chicago (and I was in Boston when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl), but it’s hard to imagine a city more devoted to its team. Or a city more crushed by their team’s loss. Pittsburgh doesn’t get a lot of good news. The city is bankrupt; the county will be too soon. People and jobs move away. My team—my boys as I call them sometimes—lost and I’m sad. But almost moreso I’m sad for my home town. I don’t think anyone that isn’t a Pittsburgher can understand how much joy this team gave them; the bouyancy that Pittsburghers had during the seasons; and the hopes that were rested on the team.

In the words of fans of the losers that always get so close “next year will be our year.” And I think it may be. Plaxico is leaving but it seems most of the rest of the team will stick around. Roethlisberger may come back from his only loss in the NFL and be better for it; he may have a sophomore slump. Time will tell.

Was I glad I went? definitely. I’d probably even do it again knowing everything I know now.

Mean time, I think it’s about time to put my name on the season ticket waiting list. In 10 or 15 years I may actually be back in Pittsburgh by the time I get them.

Alright, so I’m crazy.

I bought tickets for $$$ on ebay to the AFC championship game. I bought a ticket to Pittsburgh for $$ as well. Looks like I’m going. Let’s home this guy on ebay is for real and I don’t get utterly screwed.

Pretty much as soon as I bought the ticket I had a bad feeling. I’m not too superstitious, but up until that point I was 100% sure that the Steelers would go to the Superbowl (and win). Now, I’m not as sure. Like me going is going to make the Steelers lose.

Don’t tell the Steelers I’m coming! Then they will still win.

I’m getting in Saturday night and leaving Monday morning. I’ll be in Pittsburgh for less than 36 hours. Pittsburghers, if you want to hang out Saturday night after I get in, after the game Sunday night or have lunch on Sunday, let me know.

Part of me really enjoys being young and dumb and reckless with my money. Another part of me wants to check my bank acounts and formulate a good plan for saving after this.

Here we go, Steelers!

[Update: my dad has the tickets in his hand, so the somewhat sketchy guy came through. I forgot to mention Jon Werberg is driving down from New York to go to the game with me. He lived in Pittsburgh for a bit over a year so he's got the Steeler's bug and a few friends in town.]

I spent basically the whole weekend doing the MIT Mystery Hunt. It’s a puzzle competition that’s pretty famous at this point. People fly in from around the country and the world to MIT to take part. My team, Project Electric Mayhem (or just Mayhem), has a west coast branch that operates out of the Bay Area. I hunted my four years at the Institute and now this was my second year out here.

The sort of puzzles that are in the Mystery Hunt are pretty intense. Usually it’s just a set of clues with little or no instructions or hints on what to do with them. One puzzle I got was something like this:

Hypoblast
Ohio College
US President
Witch Location
expressed differently
… [35 total clues]

01942
19025
19230
… [36 total]

the list of numbers was obviously zip codes. You look them up and you have 37 cities and states. Then you had to anagram (mix up the letters to get a new word) the city and state pairs and the anagram forms the answer to a clue. For example, look up 19025 and you’ll get Dresher, PA. That anagrams to rephrased which is the answer to the clue expressed differently. Now do this 35 times. Order the produced words in order of the original clues (which was arbitrary, the zip codes were in numerical order) and read down the first letters and you get HERBTARLEKDARRINSTEPHENSORKIPWILSON. And you have one zip code left, 56510, which is Ada, MN. You anagram that and look at the clue and, what do you know, Herb Tarlek, Darrin Stephens and Kip Wilson were each an AD MAN. And that’s your answer for one puzzle.

And there were probably about 120 puzzles this year.

And you take the answer to the puzzles for each round and then use those as the clue to solve meta-puzzle. There was an additional layer of meta-meta puzzles (not strictly true; we ended up calling these “super puzzles”) for each round this year as well.

Here’s a great write up of the sort of stuff that goes on during Mystery Hunt. I remember one year people made Rhett call up Noam Chomsky at home to ask him about a linguistics puzzle.

Mayhem did well. We had all the super puzzles except one solved. We suspect if we’d solved that we would have done a meta-super puzzle with all the answer from the super puzzles (and maybe the meta puzzles), the gone on the runaround in which you try to find the coin, which is hidden on campus somewhere.

Yes, hundreds, if not over a thousand people, do this every year and all for a simple prize; if you win, you get to write the Hunt for the following year. There is no second prize. When the coin is found, you pack up and go home.

Alright. Time to sleep.

[Update: Wally’s got a nice write up of the Mystery Hunt, including a nice piece of writing he did for the Technique.

After disconnecting my battery to do the starter replacement that I’ve mentioned before on my blog (and that I’m not going to link, because, honestly, who’s going to want to read me writing about replacing my starter), my radio went into “SAFE” mode, an anti-theft thing to prevent it from being stolen, or, rather, being used, if it’s stolen. Easy to fix if you have the correct code to unlock the device.

I, however, did not. The code I had was wrong. I tried many times (which is a pain, because you need to leave the radio on for an hour between every two tries and considering I almost never drive for an hour straight, that’s difficutl.) I went to the dealership* yesterday and they pulled out the radio, found the serial number and the VIN number (on the body of the car, not on the radio) and looked up the correct code, which is not even close to the code I’d been entering.

As it turns out, driving without music sucks. A couple times, I took out my laptop and put it on the passenger seat and played music from that. So much for silence.

Which reminds me of a time when I was living in Germany. Sam Breuning and I went to the Vienne Jazz Festival (an entirely different story), about a seven hour drive from Stuttgart, most of it through southern and eastern France, passing through Lyon and going a little past. I didn’t have a tape adapter for my car so I couldn’t play any of my CDs and as it turns out, French radio is horrible. My next road trip, down to Stein-am-Rhein, Switzerland skirting the Schwartzwald and hitting Rothenberg o.d. Tauber on the way back, I bought a tape adapter and brought hundreds of CDs.

*I link because they did it while I waited, were nice about it and didn’t charge for which another not-so-nice VW dealer was going to charge $60.

Ian’s (Le Mayoure) in town visiting his mom, so we grabbed some food at the Alpine Inn and then went bowling at Mel’s Bowl in Redwood City. I wanted to check it out to compare it with Palo Alto Bowl, hoping that it was more divey. Shad and Dale joined us for the bowling.

It is a little more divey than Palo Alto Bowl (PAB), but I haven’t been to PAB in a while, so I can’t compare too well. It was of course expensive compared to rural American bowling alleys, but I suppose not too bad considering it’s the Peninsula. If I remember correctly the games are cheaper than PAB, the shoe rentals about the same and the beer more expensive.

We played two games. My scores were a respectable 147 and a disappointing followup, 127. The first game, I had a Turkey (three strikes in a row) and the second, I picked up four spares in a row, but failed to get any strikes.

The highlights of the night had to be Ian’s incredible sooper-spin style with the 6 lb. ball, the style of the guy two lanes down (he’d sort of run and then stop and lean backwards while he slid toward the line and then drop the ball), the Turkey and making movies with Ian’s camera. I’ll try to put a couple of those up here if I have a chance.

My life is a movie. A perfectly scripted movie. I have come to an obstacle and fallen, only to persevere and be rewarded in the end.

Pittsburgh-Las Vegas-San Francisco. Easy enough. I can do that. Easy. Nothing to it. The first flight was at 8:45am. I arrived at the airport at seven am. I waited outside in the cold, the twelve degree cold. You do not make up a temperature like twelve degrees; you make up a temperature like nine or sixteen. I saw the line inside. It was long, too long. The line outside was shorter, but still long. Maybe a third the inside. I’ll wait outside. It’ll take forty minutes. Maybe forty-five. An hour tops. You must check in half an hour ahead of time. Relieved! It was eight twelve when I handed my driver’s license to the skycap. SFO via Las Vegas, thanks. Woo. That was close. Twenty minutes and I’ll be through security. It’ll be tight, but I did it.

Expletives! Expletives under my breath! Expletives muttered aloud! They thought it was past eight fifteen! It’s not! Can you not see my watch! Do you see a five or a six or a seven in that time! No, you see a three at the end so it is clearly not quarter past! You are clearly mistaken. My computer has shut that flight down; I can’t do anything about it. First one locked out of the flight.

Seconds! Missed it by mere seconds. Perhaps many seconds, perhaps one hundred or two hundred, but not five hundred. Not one thousand.

Another line. My feet are warming up at least. My feet are freezing. Blocks of ice! Another forty-five minutes in line. I was on the Las Vegas flight, eventually to SFO. Oh, you won’t be able to get there till tomorrow. Tomorrow? I work tomorrow I’m being picked up today! I am being picked up at half past two today! Don’t you see?

I’ll see what I can do.

Minutes past. Where is she? I think she’s eating breakfast. Surely she cannot be working on my flights still. She cannot be still seeing what she can do. I look around for commiserating glances from people in line, people at neighboring check-in counters. I only get blank stares ahead. Everyone is tired, exhausted.

My supervisor wants to put you on the ten fifteen Charlotte and the evening flight to SFO. You’ll get there at eight fifty-one. Tonight. I can do tonight. Maybe Dave can still pick me up, maybe not, but I’ll get there tonight.

Standby.

Still on standby. Bischoff, there’s one seat on the flight if you want it, unless you want to give up your ticket for a voucher and another ticket. No no, I’ll go now. I’ll go now. Thanks.

I’m that guy. I’m the last guy on the plane. I’m the guy that everyone stares at. Where were you? they burn at me with their eyes. Sorry. I’m sorry. I wanted to be here earlier. They wouldn’t let me on. I was standing out there ready but they were not ready for me. I have a guilty look on my face, but I can’t help it; it’s not actually my fault.

But do you see? But do you see where I am now? (This is where the rewarding for perseverance comes in.) I have been rewarded. I am four hundred miles from San Francisco and seven miles off the ground and I have leg room. I can put my ankle of one leg on the knee of the other right in front of me. Do you want to see me do it? Did you see that?! It was great. I’m done doing it now though because I am typing and that is not comfortable for typing. I did it just to show you I could. I just ate my third snack—cashews, chocolate-covered wafers, pretzels—and I’m on my fourth drink—heiniken, coke, water, coke. Do you know what the people had for dinner in coach? Nothing. I had stuffed chicken with and excellent salad and an impressive, but not untoppable, pecan pie.

You cannot make up a story like this—you can actually and people did and then people stopped because they thought it was too far fetched, too cliché. This is it though. It happens. Persevere. Persevere and be rewarded.

1. explaining why jokes are funny
2. explaining any slight connnection someone or something has to Pittsburgh
3. self-deprecation

1. reading lips. Over many years I noticed that I read lips in addition to listening to people when they’re talking. I have a markedly worse time on the phone than in person for comprehension
2. recognizing people from afar. When recognizing people from a long way off (say 500 ft.), I use a person’s stature and any tell-tale articles of clothing, but I mostly recognize people’s walk. Ody walks with a lot of angular movement of his shoulders. Amrys has this long, loping sort of stride. Greg, at work, has this very pronounced toes-hit-the-ground-first shuffle.

We were talking about football at the dinner table tonight. I am going to watch the Steelers game tomorrow with my mom and explain how it works (and I suggested she drink beer and smash the can on her forhead as well, but she didn’t like this suggestion) and as to illustrate why, I’m going to excerpt some of our conversation from dinner.

Mom: Why is the quarterback so important?
Dad: Because he directs the play on the field. He throws the ball.
Mom: He always throws the ball? They always give it to him?
Dad: I thought I didn’t know anything about the game. I’m an expert compared to you!

Yeah, that’s how it is in the Bischoff household. I think my mom finally figured out the rules of baseball though.

that I’m not above snooping around, poking and prodding presents and trying to find yet-unwrapped presents hidden to see what I’m getting. I hope I’m never too old to do that.

On my flight from SFO to Las Vegas (where I stopped enroute to Pittsburgh), I was seated next to (well, practically underneath) a bulbously obese woman. Her arms overlapped approximately 1/3 into my 18″ wide seat. I was uncomfortable trying to sit all the way to the opposite side of the seat and trying to keep my arms cocked off-axis. More than once I was awakened by her moving her arms or shifting in her seat. I don’t think this is fair to me. I think I pay for the privilege to sit in a seat with my back firmly in the center of the seat and to be able to move my arms unobstructed within the confines of the seat.

I’m not bringing up this because I’m annoyed (though I am) or I have something against obese people (people can be fat or thin or whatever as long as it doesn’t affect me). It got me thinking though, what’s fair or permissible in regards to charging or seating obese people differently. I’ve made a list of ways that airlines differentiate people:

• children are charged less for seats
• unaccompanied minors are charged an extra fee
• infants may ride for free as an infant-in-arms
• people in wheel chairs are helped on an off the plane and are given priority storage space, but I didn’t find anything about priority seating, except in exit rows (Here is a set of rules for carriers with regard to disabled passengers)
• smokers are told to go shove themselves, even on the longest flights
• first and business class passengers pay more for the service and added space

Now, is there any way to differentiate people who are, say, over 24″ wide in their widest dimension? I see nothing in the disability literature about priority seating (if you are going to consider obesity a disease). I’m sure if you were seated next to a person without the use of his legs, you’d be incovenienced, because it’d be difficult to get passed him to the aisle. But then again, you probably wouldn’t be constantly uncomfortable.

I don’t think charging obese people more for a wider seat would go over well because the airlines would be sued under the American Disabilities Act (ADA) for sure.

On the other hand, effecting does allow differentiation, at least in the case of smokers. There is the added fact that second-hand smoke can be a health risk to those around the smokers, but I don’t know if the law requiring flights to be smoke-free was enacted after the second-hand smoking research was done or not. I’m betting it was enacted because a lot of people complained and it is socially acceptable to make laws against public smoking.

(A thought provoking thing I once heard: A guy was in a bar with some friends/ colleagues and started smoking (apparently not Boston or San Francisco or many other places, or it was a while ago) and they started to tell him that smoking was bad for him, etc etc. And he hypothesized that if he turned to a portly colleagues and started berating him in a similar manner because being fat is a health risk, it wouldn’t be as socially acceptable.)

Children are charged less for seat and they use less of a seat, but I believe that these two facts are not effect and cause (respectively).

Any thoughts on this? I haven’t come up with anything thing that I’m satisfied is fair to all parties involved.

I opened up one of the Wurlitzer’s last night and re-wired the power (the 206A was a student model so they were all powered from the Teacher model). It was pretty painless. I powered it up and it worked first try. This particular one sounds really good. The bass is heavy. I’ll try to record some stuff so you can hear how it sounds, but I won’t be able to get that online until after Christmas.

I’m flying to Pittsburgh tonight. I’ll arrive early tomorrow morning and I’m leaving on the 28th fairly early. I’ll probably blog some at home. We have wireless so it’s so easy!

As I will be home, I won’t be doing a radio show tomorrow night. I’ll be back on the air December 31st from 0000 to 0300.

I got some sandals made out of tires from Lauren Owens (a friend of mine that’s doing Peace Corps in Tanzania). She’s back in America for the holidays. I tried to get a pair of these sandals in South Africa but they wanted R150 for them. That’s about $25. In Tanzania they apparently go for 150 shillings, which is about 15 cents. These ones are pretty skillfully made and fit pretty well.

• Bought boerewors for my parents and other sausages for a bbq at Dittmer’s Wursthaus
• Bought beers (including a fine Schwarzbier) at Bev Mo
• Had a last-minute bbq with a few of them teppers (as my dad would call them*) namely Dylan, andyl, Raag and Leo.
• Open up one of those Wurly’s and check out how the new power wiring will work with andyl. A common ground is already established. Yay.
• Slept for 6 hours.
• Watched Shad install a new starter in my car. (”Install a new starter in my card with Shad” would be a blatant lie and “Help Shad install a new starter in my car” would be a fib; I did hand him a wrench a couple times.)
• Work.

*Which got me thinking: there are these things like this where originally people do things that annoy me and then it becomes part of my picture of them. I’d correct him to say “teps” but now if he called them “teps” I’d be disappointed. His “error” has become endearing.

I took a large sum of money out of my bank today in cash. I gave them my member number and they proceeded to give me what I wanted, without ever asking for ID.

Anyone could have my member number.

My playlist for this week.

I am feeling a bit under the weather so I asked for a sub. No one wanted my prime slot, so I decided that if I was going to do it, I wasn’t going to do my normal show. I’d pick a bunch of oldies beforehand and then just basically sit back while my show happens.

As it turns out it’s been grueling. A bunch of 2 minute songs means I always have to be on the ball and ready with the next song. As to illustrate: I normally do about 41 to 43 songs in my 3 hour show (sometimes as few as 35, from further investigation). I did 44 oldies songs in the last 2.25 hours alone.

It’s been good, though.

That’s right. I’m the big winner. Andy, you should have jumped on it while you could. Instead, it will be hung above our toilet at the Purple Zone.

• Buy a new starter for my car. The current one doesn’t like me.*
• Buy surplus electronic parts to fix Wurlitzer 206A Electronic Pianos (21+ of them!!!!!!!!!) at HSC
• Call Uhaul to make sure they have my reservation for a truck to move aformentioned keyboards.
• Write and send christmas cards
• Write liner notes for lauren owens’ Lauren6 mix CD and send CD
• Add comment preview to blog for Andy
• Open up my receiver and find the loose connection (the speakers go between soft and loud as I move the receiver around)

*so Shad’s going to help me replace my starter and I was thinking it’d be funny if he comes over and is like “are you all ready to replace it?” and I said “almost” and I go inside and then come out in grease monkey jumpsuit, grease smeared all over my face and a big old monkey wrench hanging off my belt. “Alright, now I’m ready.”

I have coined a term for something that is retro-stylish, yet it hasn’t ever gone out—Like converse all stars—nowtro.

Feel free to use it, as long you give me proper credit.

Proper use in a sentence: “Those Vans are so nowtro, as coined by Adrian Bischoff. “

I saw the Incredibles at the Capitol Drive-In in San Jose with Andy.

The drive in seems a good one. There are 6 outdoor screens—I thought there were perhaps 3—in this multi-plex of drive-ins. It’s got a good location, right in the path of planes landing at SJC and right by the train tracks. I’m not being facetious; this is exactly where I’d want a drive-in to be. If I wanted a clean, sterile movie-viewing, isolated environment, I could find that many places. It’s about 40 minutes from Menlo Park, so it’s a drive but it’s not totally unreasonable to go to occasionally, especially since they appear to be open 7 days a week all year long. (Many of the New England ones were open weekends for much of the spring and fall and 7 days a week in the summer peak.)

The Incredibles was good, great even perhaps. I’m sure everyone else has told you this as well. I thought it was a very entertaining movie and that stuff that people say about it being the best Pixar movie might be true. Someone told me it was one of the best movies of the past few years. I don’t subscribe to that, but it’s worth seeing if you haven’t. The plot is interesting, the animation is good (duh), the characters are, given that they’re super heroes and animated, believable and human and it’s all done with a good dose of humor.

[update] The Incredibles, much like another very good movie, Sideways, is not very good necessarily because it’s great!—brilliant!—genius!—but rather because there is nothing wrong with it. I came out of both movies not overwhelmed by the film, like I did with Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or To be and to Have, but at the same time I had no criticisms then and I don’t have any now.

We had our work Christmas dinner at Kuleto’s in Burlingame. It’s a pretty fancy Italian place with good food and the service was, well, unnoticable (in a good way–unobtrusive and my food just sort of appeared). We did a gift exchange. It was one of these things where you can pick a present or take someone else’s present and people kept taking my presents, except I ended up being able to take anyone’s present at the end. I got something pretty sweet.

When I found out about the company party last week I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go to Iron and Wine scheduled for the same night, the tickets for which I bought in September. Then I figured if the party ended by 10pm in Burlingame, I could be at the concert by 10:25 or so and if the concert started at 9 and there was an opening band or two, I would be alright. Turns out I missed about 15 or 20 minutes. I gave Judit a call as I was on my way up and she made her way over from where she was in the Haight to go to the show. She was ‘on call’ for the show.

It was just Sam Beam and the acoustics in Great American were great. He did some great versions of his own songs, not necessarily sticking to how he recorded them. He did a few of his songs that are unreleased (one of which I liked a lot, but I can’t remember for the life of me enough about it to look it up on the internet). He also did a few covers, one of which was of course “Such Great Heights” (Postal Service), which he closed the encore with and Judit just about died, and the other, more surprising one was “Love Vigilantes” (New Order). A really solid concert overall. I wish I’d seen all of it.

I’m often complaining about how squeeky clean and character-less Palo Alto/ Menlo Park are, so I decided to make a list of all the things I like about this area of the Peninsula.

• Classic one (or two) screen theaters: the Guild and the Aquarius. Normal (expsensive) priced tickets, but good movies in classic theaters.
• Silent movies at Stanford Theater over the summer. Complete with live accompaniment on the Might Wurlitzer organ.
• Old people, cheap snacks, and artsy movies at Spangenberg Theatre
• Crazy people and punk kids at the Pit. I’m glad some people aren’t middle-aged silicon valley professionals.
• Beer gardens: the Oasis and Alpine Inn (aka Zott’s). You got your locals and your Stanford students. You got your bicyclists, motorcyclists and BMW drivers.
• Peninsula Creamery Dairy Store (on High St.). Not to be confused with the Peninsula Fountain and Grill (on Hamilton and in the Stanford Shopping Center), this is vintage and not retro, cheap and not pretentious.
• Sandwhiches: Pluto’s and the Prolific Oven. Fancy sandwhiches, but still reasonable value.
• Rose and Crown. You’re paying pub prices, but at least they have Hoegaarden and Franzikaner on tap.
• Ridiculous safetey. Just yesterday I parked my car on the street unlocked for the entire day, with CDs and other things sitting on the seats and nothing was gone.

[incidentally, this is talking about my bicycle commute] I don’t think I can get from home to work in much less than 8 minutes. I didn’t stop from door to door (usually I stop at 2 or 3 traffic lights) and I had a pretty good pace going, though my tires are currently a little low on pressure (I’m probably riding at around 70 psi instead of 110) so who know what it would have been on full tires.

stay up all night, sleep intermittantly for the morning, sleep solidly from 1pm to 8pm.

I haven’t walked the tarmac to an airplane in america in a long time. today I did.

the body shop: cranberry is back!. I didn’t know it was gone. thanks for clearing that up.

orange juice doesn’t need ice people.

I was tired enough on the previous flight to just sort of wake up in cincinnati. I don’t know when I fell asleep. I’m not actually convinced that I remember much after getting on the plane.

whenever I’m on a plane. I always hope that every cute girl that gets on the plane wlil sit next to me. they don’t, but I assure you: if one did I’d do a great job of not talking to her.

I’m at my gate to cincinnati. short flight there and then to sfo after a short intermission of sorts.

Last night was my 5 year high school reunion. In many ways it was exceedingly weird. I went down with andy, dave and randy. we stood awkwardly in the have-to-yell-over-the-music loud sports rock cafe. we played the who’s that? game and then talked to various people for a few hours. I talked to kirstin richardson, lekse, ben jewel, and kristen werner mostly. A few people didn’t recognize me at all. I guess I do look pretty different from high school.

we headed to mineo’s, a great tradition among us. it’s a classic greasy pizza joint that’s open late. kirstin met up with us there having left the reunion before us. we ate some pizza, drank some pop and–this is the best part and probably the keystone of the tradition–we read the City Paper and didn’t talk to each other besides reading sections of various articles aloud.

we finished off the night with half of the big lebowski at kirstin’s and then andy and dave crashing on my couches while I packed and showered. my mom and the two of them came to the airport with me to say bye.

good times. the reunion, I may remember as awkward, but this day I’ll remember as a good one– we did good on this one.

1. my boy scout uniform. it’s just one of those things that I’ve spent a lot of time on (not the uniform but earning the various patches). I guess it’s just important to me.

2. my soda can collection. I’ve got some sweet ones in there. do you remember crystal clear pepsi? of course you do. do you remember tropical fruit pepsi? yeah, I thought so.

3. my baseball card collection. it’s just one of those things that moms throw out and then is worth lots of money.

4. my yamaha electone yc-25d portable organ. this is one sweet keyboard.