Category: Personal

Day-to-day life and other ramblings

What I Like About Mondays

While, like any other working stiff, I can’t say I look forward to the beginning of the work-week with great relish, I realized today that there are things I like about Mondays when I get up in the morning:

  1. At the end of the weekend I’ve usually caught up on my sleep so I’m not dragging when I wake up.
  2. Coffee! I try to limit my caffeine intake somewhat, so I typically only make morning coffee on Monday/Wednesday/Friday. So Mondays I have coffee!
  3. Monday is the day for the new column by Mark Rosewater, my favorite columnist at Daily MTG.
  4. Similarly, Monday is Magic night with my friends!

Tuesday is a bit rougher, since not only have I been up later than usual Monday night playing Magic, but Tuesdays and Thursdays are my bike-to-work days. I like biking, but I can’t say I really look forward to it. Maybe the bike problems I’ve had the last couple of years have dampened my enthusiasm. (On the other hand, I’ve gone about 200 miles on my new, beefier rear wheel without any problems, so maybe they’re finally behind me!)

Spontaneous Socializing Weekend

It started when I realized that my friend Joar and his wife Karin are expecting their first child not sometime next month, but in fact next weekend. I realized if we were going to get together with them before sprog time then it would have to be this weekend. So we met them at their house and we walked over to Stacks for brunch. Debbi bought them a few baby gifts, and we had a good time enjoying the lovely weather.

Well, after we’d made those plans Debbi suggested that we get together with Mark and Yvette too, so we met them for dinner last night at The Counter, which they’d never been to before.

And then Deb suggested that we invite our friends Lisa and Michel and their daughter over for dinner tomorrow, so we’re going to do that too. All these people!

A nice change of pace after a turbulent week, which included my getting my ass kicked at a home poker game on Thursday. Someday maybe I’ll actually get good at that game… but not anytime soon, it seems.

Grill Fiend

Following my half-week of getting rid of stuff, we had a pretty busy weekend.

Yesterday we went up to San Francisco for a party/concert being thrown by Genentech, Debbi’s employer, for its employees. It was a benefit concert, part of a “giving back” program they’re doing this year. They rented out the ballpark (as they did for their Christmas party a couple of years ago), and had some surprise musical guests. We had a pretty good time (hey, free ballpark food!), but the music wasn’t really either of our tastes. Following an opening act by a former employee, the acts were Natasha Bedingfield (whom I’d never heard of, and who was an okay mix of pop, soul and hip-hop), The Fray (a straight-ahead alt-rock group who played one song I’d heard), and Counting Crows (the 90s alt-rock group whose early stuff I’d enjoyed, but they’re not among my favorites). As I’m more of a prog-rock guy, and Debbi’s a country gal, it wasn’t quite our thing. But it was a nice getaway day, and it’s the thought that counts, right?

Today we went for a bike ride through Shoreline park, having lunch at the Shoreline Cafe, and then ran some errands. And this evening I cooked dinner on the new grill I bought last week (a Weber Genesis E310). I assembled it over a couple of days late this past week, and this afternoon I hooked up the gas and ran through the tests in the manual to make sure there weren’t any leaks in any of the gas connections (I wonder how many people actually do this, or read the instructions at all, when they get a new grill?). I fired it up and it worked fine, so I grilled steak, asparagus, and red bell peppers for dinner, as well as some chicken for Debbi’s lunch salads this week. It went perfectly smoothly, and tested great, too! It should be a nice upgrade over my old Weber Q (which, to be fair, did a great job for me for seven years).

Now I need to figure out what to do with the one-and-a-half small propane canisters I have left over from my old grill.

Here are a couple of pictures of the new toy:

Where Does the Stuff Go?

This week the stuff is going out of the house. Specifically, today I sold a bunch of CDs and DVDs at Rasputin Music, tomorrow I’m taking a bunch of books to Bookbuyers, and Friday I’m taking a bunch of comic books to Comics Conspiracy. This will free up a considerable amount of shelf and closet space, and it’s way easier than selling stuff piecemeal on eBay.

At Rasputin’s today I shopped around the store while they were appraising my stuff, and of course found some new stuff. Most notably I found a hardcover copy of the graphic novel Star Trek: Debt of Honor, maybe the best original-cast Star Trek story between Star Trek III and the stuff John Byrne is doing today. It has some warts (Chris Claremont’s prose had gone deep purple by the 90s, and Adam Hughes overdoes the photo reference although his art otherwise looks gorgeous), but it’s still a lot of fun. It evokes the look and feel of the original series and the better movies, while revealing some details of Kirk’s life beyond what we saw on screen.

At least I came home with a lot less than I went in with (and with a few extra bucks besides – I sell good stuff!).

I Survived The Heat

WWDC went well last week. Everything I’ve been working on is still under nondisclosure 🙂 but it seemed to be well-received. I spent my usual shifts (plus a few hours) in the labs, which were low-key for me compared to usual (and my cow-orker who works in my same general area had the same feeling). My biggest success was figuring out that someone had somehow ended up with a corrupted install of his developer tools, and figuring out exactly what was broken (although not why). I did come into the office on Wednesday and did a quick turnaround of an issue my managers wanted me to look at.

I always sign up for the 9 am Friday morning lab shift, partly because it’s fun to get up with Deb and carpool up with her to get dropped off at Caltrain, and partly because it leaves me with the afternoon free to do stuff. I went to lunch with friends (some from work, some attendees) afterwards, and then took BART over to drop in on Borderlands Books.

I was grateful that the heat wave of the previous weekend broke before the conference started, since walking to and from Caltrain is no fun in 80+ degree heat. In the normal cooler weather, though, it’s quite nice. Plus I get to do some reading on the way there and back.

I was less grateful when a new heat wave moved in on Saturday, as it dampened my enthusiasm to do much stuff around the house. Though neither heat wave was as brutal as the ones we’ve had in the past. And we did get out to look for a new gas grill; I ended up buying a Weber Genesis E310 from OSH, which was having their periodic “we pay the sales tax” sale this weekend. Between the grill and various other things I picked up, I saved a bundle of money in sales tax. Now I just have to put the grill together…

Back to work this week, but it’s a pretty low key week as everyone recovers from WWDC. I biked in today, and had a flat tire when I came out of the gym after showering. I walked it over to the bike shop to get it repaired (I could have repaired it myself but decided I’d rather have a pro do it since they’re not far away), and learned that the nut which holds the nozzle in place can cause the tube to rupture if you tighten it too far, which I must have done. I also learned that the nut is not really needed, so I got rid of it. Success!

Lastly, we’re moving offices again on Friday (the second and final stage of our big office move, staged this way I think mainly because our building has gotten substantially remodeled along the way), so I’m packing today, and then taking the rest of the week off to catch up on some of that stuff at home. And then I’ll have another new environment to get used to!

Antisocial Networking

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference starts today. Many of my cow-orkers were already heading up to the city yesterday to finish preparing for it (or so their tweets said), and also to hang out with each other and with their friends in the developer community.

I always feel like an outsider during WWDC. I don’t know people in the developer community, I don’t go to the after-hours gatherings at the conference (neither parties nor bars are my thing), and most of my interaction with attendees at the conference is helping people in the labs. (This is rewarding in its way, but not exactly a good way to get to know people.) So I’m envious of my cow-orkers who look forward to WWDC with enthusiasm, since it seems like I ought to be able to share in that enthusiasm, but I can’t.

I’ve felt similarly in other communities where it seems like I should fit in, too. I never really connected at all in the comic book community (other than hanging out and shooting the shit at my local store on Wednesday), and I often felt like an outsider in science fiction fandom, too, despite going to many conventions in my 20s. Most of my fannish friends I didn’t connect with specifically through science fiction, but in other ways, and my main interests in science fiction – hard and far-future SF – seem like a pretty small niche (as media SF and fantasy have come to dominate the field). It seems like there should be some community where I can talk with people who are also into my kind of science fiction, but I’m not really even sure what such a group would look like.

I have rarely felt like a member of a community in my life. I don’t think I’m very good at it. (I’m reminded me Batman saying, on the founding of the Justice League in the cartoon version, “I’m not much of a people person.”) I’ve always been a fairly inwardly-turned personality (my mom once described me as “self-entertaining”), although I do have many friends and I seem to be one of the more gregarious people in the office. By and large I seem to be outgoing around people I know, and not around people I don’t.

As far as WWDC goes, I wish I could get into it as much as some of my cow-orkers do, since it’s something I attend every year as part of my job, so it might as well be fun, too. But however everyone else is enjoying it, doing the same is something that eludes me. (And yes, I know not everyone from Apple to work at WWDC enjoys it like those folks do. Perhaps I’m focusing excessively on a particular group rather than the norm, I don’t know.)

While I’m usually perfectly fine with feeling like an outsider, WWDC week is one of the few times that it gets to me.

Submarine Days

Busy times at work lately, but fortunately winding down at the end of the week into what I was calling “submarine days”, referring to the old observation that being in a submarine at wartime involves long stretches of calm punctuated by minutes of sheer terror. In other words, while we’re starting to look at the next thing, we’re waiting to see if there are any urgent, last-minute things to do for the previous thing, and whether there are isn’t really known until someone discovers it. And then there’s WWDC this coming week, which is always a pretty big change of pace from my usual life as a software developer.

In addition, now that the unusually late rains have finally wound down, we’re in the midst of a heat wave this weekend! Oh joy! Actually it wasn’t as bad today as I’d feared: Today we went to the Sunnyvale Art & Wine Festival with our friends Lisa & Michel and their daughter, and although it was warm, it wasn’t really uncomfortable. We even had lunch outside at Thai Basil! I closed up the house while we were gone (we don’t have air conditioning) but I’m not sure it was necessary. We’ve had worse heat waves than this. It looks like it’ll stay this warm (highs in the mid-80s) through Monday, and then start cooling off slowly.

Of course, that means my walk to the train to get up to the conference could be a little sticky on Tuesday.

Other than work, life has continued apace. Our tomato and cucumber plants in the back yard are growing now that the rain has gone and the sun has arrived. Weeds are trying to take over the front lawn, and I’ve been pulling them up a few at a time. (If that doesn’t work we may need to re-sod the lawn.) We got together with Subrata and Susan last night for dinner and games – their family has been sick it seems almost continuously for three months, so we haven’t seen them much other than me seeing them at gaming.

We’ve done a number of little things in recent weeks that I haven’t written about: Gone to a nearby park to throw a frisbee around (Debbi has gotten a lot better at throwing than when we started a couple of years ago), gone to the coast and ridden our bikes on the coast trail, and I’ve started biking in to work regularly (rain permitting).

But I haven’t had the time and energy (at least, not both at the same time) to write new entries lately. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into it in the next couple of weeks.

What’s With This Weather?

In the 12 springs I’ve lived in the Bay Area I can’t recall it raining more than a trace amount as late in the spring as May, yet tonight we’re having our second substantial shower of the month. On May 17! And Debbi says it was showing for most of the day up where she works, closer to San Francisco! Bizarre!

Not that I mind that much, since I like the rain, but hopefully it won’t interfere with my biking to work tomorrow morning.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been too busy lately to post much other than my usual comic book entries. We did get out to do a few things this weekend, though, notably the A La Carte and Art festival downtown on Saturday (otherwise known as “the small one”, as distinguished from “the big one” at the end of the summer), for which our friends Lisa, Michel and their daughter Isabella joined us.

I also downloaded the game store Steam, specifically so I could play Portal (free through May 24!), which is at least as much fun as I’d always suspected. A 3.8 Gb download is a bit much for my wimpy little DSL connection, though.

But that’s about it. The rest of the month will also keep me pretty busy, but hopefully things will quiet down come June.

Maybe it’ll stop raining by then, too.

Anniversary Weekend

Friday Debbi and I celebrated our 9-year dating anniversary with our traditional dinner at Don Giovanni (where we had our first date), and then ice cream at Rick’s.

We’d planned to then have a quiet weekend, but it ended up being surprisingly busy:

  • I finally took the time to do all the after-winter cleaning of the back yard, weeding and trimming and such. I’ve been doing a little here and there, but I got it all done this weekend.
  • Turned over the soil in the planter.
  • Debbi changed the sheets on the bed while I was doing that.
  • Stained the back section of the planter.
  • Bought and planted tomato and cucumber plants (surrounded by marigolds) in the planter.
  • Went to the comics shop for Free Comic Book Day.
  • Hit the library on the way home to pick up a book I had on hold.
  • Went to the farmer’s market on Sunday, bravely fighting our way through the hordes of morons to do so. I swear, every stupid driver and pedestrian in the area converged on the farmer’s market that morning.
  • Made a big shopping run to pick up clothes and bathroom items.
  • Went for a bike ride through the park, since I’d gotten our bikes tuned up on Friday.
  • Finally finished cleaning the last few things from when Dad visited.
  • Grilled herb-and-onion hamburgers, with grilled potatoes and carrots, while watching the Phillies beat the tar out of Johan Santana and the Mets on Sunday Night Baseball.

We did get some downtime in there (slept late on Saturday, dinner & reading at Cafe Borrone, random downtime on Sunday), but it was a busy weekend. We certainly got a lot done, and had some fun along the way, too, but it was hectic at times!

Dad Mark Four

Dad visited me recently – if I’m counting correctly, I think this is his fourth trip out here since I moved to California. We’ve done most of the major things to do around the bay area in his last few trips, but we didn’t have trouble finding more things to do this trip. It perhaps wasn’t as hectic as past trips have been – we had more downtime – but we still packed a lot in.

Dad flew in on Thursday the 15th and we had lunch and dinner, with a walk on the Stevens Creek Trail in between. Then Friday Debbi took the day off and joined us to go to the California Academy of Sciences in the morning. We managed to sneak in ahead of the crowds and stayed for about 4 hours. They have a nifty special exhibit called “Extreme Mammals”, which is about the ways mammals deviate from the baseline norm (if there is such a thing). This was our last visit at the Academy for the day, and if we hadn’t been quite so tired I’d have liked to spend more time there. We had lunch in the Moss Room, which seems a step up from the cafeteria, though if I’d known we could have made reservations ahead of time and not sat at the counter. Still and all, an excellent outing for the day.

Saturday the three of us headed to Livermore wine country, visiting some of our favorite wineries. And Sunday we had the champagne brunch at the Moss Beach Distillery, which Dad really enjoyed – of course, it’s tough to beat good food and the oceanside view, but he liked the classical music and sitting on the patio afterwards, too. We also went for a walk on the coastal trail.

Monday we had breakfast at the Original Pancake House (which I think Dad wanted to go to twice on his last visit), and then drove over the hills to Big Basin Redwoods State Park: It was chilly and foggy at the crest of the hills, but quite nice at the park headquarters, where we saw many great redwoods. I’m not sure it’s necessarily better than Muir Woods, but it’s different. We left heading south and went to Santa Cruz, where we got coffee downtown and then walked along the beach by the boardwalk, out the wharf and back, and then stopped at the lighthouse for the view.

Tuesday morning it rained pretty good, but stopped by the time we headed out, and ended up being a really nice day. We had breakfast at Stacks in Menlo Park, and then headed to the city to the De Young Museum, which was quite busy. I’m not really a fan of fine arts, and I think this met my need for exposure to fine art for the year. There were some nice pieces (the collection of historical American art – which we walked through backwards – is quite good), but it didn’t take long for me to see all the impressionist, modern and abstract art I needed to see. Afterwards we took a stroll through the botanical gardens, which I always enjoy, and we wrapped up with the obligatory visit to Ghirardelli Square for sundaes.

Along the way Dad and I got a number of long talks in, and we ate a lot of good meals that I haven’t even mentioned (we sure do have a lot of good places to eat around here). And Blackjack took to Dad quite well which was funny since Dad isn’t a pet person.

The rains finally came on Wednesday when I took Dad to the airport, but his trip home was apparently uneventful (other than a seating snafu). The week sure went by fast, which is a sign that we had a good time. Now I think it’s my turn to head back there next.