I realised this Easter – why only after so many years in California, I don’t know – that you don’t really get chocolate eggs here.  Sure, you get the little, solid ones, and the occasional larger hollow one – though usually filled with peanut butter or some other such poison – but they’re just not really present.  Chocolate bunnies are about all you get.  That and baskets filled with cheap, crappy kids toys and basketballs (no, I have no idea why either).

Instead they’re relatively into the painted and/or boiled eggs thing.  I’m all for meticulously painted eggs – I’ve seen some that are truly impressive; genuine pieces of art – but eating a hard boiled egg, delicious or not, just doesn’t really cut it on Easter weekend.

So now I really miss Easter eggs.  Apparently I’m going to have to visit Australia (or Canada, or England, or probably any other western country in the world) at Easter some year, to re-indulge myself.

In fact it took visiting at least five supermarkets just to find Lindt bunnies.  Otherwise the options were pretty drear.  Who is really going to buy a Hershey’s bunny?  If you hate someone so much, why give them any Easter gifts at all?

Bah!  Get off my lawn!

But it was a lovely weekend otherwise.  Generally lounging around, scouring my iPad for any games or interesting apps worth keeping – I’m tired of having several hundred installed of which maybe a dozen I’ve actually launched even just once – and so forth.  And watching Castle.  Against all odds, Marisa & I were busy all week and Saturday was the first chance we had to watch it.

But I digress.  Easter.  ’twas fun. :)

I had forgotten how awful the acoustics are there.  Massive reverb, and a closed roof contributing to the cheap-speakers-way-over-driven effect.  Which was very unfortunate.  But nonetheless the show was entertaining.  It just had me sitting there thinking about so-called audiophiles lamenting that digital music doesn’t sound as good as the live version.  Well, yeah, because the studio version sounds good.

Anyway, we were a few minutes late to our seats, so Thompson Square had already started.  I think I’d seen the name pass by somewhere, perhaps in concert listings, but I had figured with a name like that they were probably some irrelevant hipster band from San Francisco.  Not the name you’d expect for a country music band.

Though we couldn’t really make out any of the actual lyrics, per se, it sounded like they knew what they were singing, and were comfortable with it.  So that was something. ;)

Darius Rucker, on the other hand, was the highlight of the show for me.  It was in the back of my mind that the name was familiar, but I had no idea why.  It wasn’t until Marisa looked him up on Wikipedia and showed me that I knew he was the Hootie & the Blowfish frontman.  His voice also was sounding very familiar, though he started off singing songs from his new country career, so that threw me.  He was overall less “polished” or perhaps the word is “processed” than the Hootie albums, at least the ones I have… which is apparently the distinction between mainstream and “true” country, the music critics tell me.  He sounded good, either way.

He did a couple of throw-backs to Hootie, with “Only Wanna Be With You” and “Hold My Hand”.  He also finished up with “Purple Rain”, which was unexpected, but rather good.

It was interesting that most of the people nearby seemed to know who he was, and his songs – especially the Hootie ones.  Lots of lip-syncing going on.  But there were a couple of groups of people who just watched patiently, apparent oblivious to or not interested in his music.  Their loss.

I also noticed, while looking around, that the two couples either side of us, along with the five people in the row in front, all had iPhones.  Mostly 4/4S, though one 3GS.  I saw only two Android phones at the whole concert, some ways off to our left.  Poor bastards.

So then this band called “Lady Antebellum” came on, whom you’ve probably never heard of… if you’re me, anyway. ;)  Marisa had showed me some of their songs last year – “Need You Now” and some others – which I’d liked, and she rather likes them so of course the night was really for her.

I’m not sure how I missed their existence completely, prior to that.  Granted I don’t generally listen to music, but I have to look at the iTunes Music Store front page occasionally… never seen them there.

Anyway… their entrance was supposed to be them rising up through a hatch in the stage, but the lift stopped half way.  I didn’t think much of it at first – just that it was a little bit of an odd presentation.  They had to clamber out themselves.  Later through the show they made references to it, such as “I think that was the most professional entrance I’ve ever seen”.  The lady of the trio, Hillary, also commented at one point about deserving props for having done the clambering in what were apparently very tight leather pants.  Alas back in the boonies were we were, I couldn’t really tell what she was wearing, so I didn’t really get that comment until Marisa explained it later.  In any case, I liked their sense of humour about it.

I was surprised though when they sang what I thought was a Bon Jovi song.  It appears (based on lyrics which sound familiar, and their set lists as past shows on this tour) it was, perhaps, “Our Kind of Love” – though I don’t recognise the studio version as anything like what they sang last night…. so it’s all very confusing.

They also covered Aerosmith’s “Sweet Emotion” later in the show.  I didn’t expect a band high in their successful career to do covers at concert like that… I guess I’m out of touch.

The best parts of the concert were the quieter, acoustic or vocal parts, because they were the only ones that didn’t overwhelm the crappy venue.  The opening verse and chorus of “Need You Now” was really amazing.  “Just a Kiss” was also really well sung.  Likewise with Darius Rucker, earlier,

Though I must say I’m a little suspicious of the lyrics in that song.  It’s 1:15 AM, I’m drunk on whiskey, and I really really want you to come over?  ZOMG it’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard!

Oh, and there was some random girl wearing a tiara.  So I guess I must acknowledge that tiaras are real after all.  Just incredibly hard to acquire.  [[ The background being that last Valentine’s day I tried to buy a tiara for Marisa, in reference to an in-joke we’d had a few days earlier, but despite visiting several major department stores and spending two hours hunting online, I could not find a decent tiara for less than several hundred dollars.  I found exactly one tiara in a physical store, and is was for ages 3-8 and was plastic and had a picture of some Disney princess embedded in it.  But I did find cupcakes, which was the other half of the joke, and the more delicious half, so it worked out okay. ]]

And I’m pretty happy with how the photos turned out.  Most of them were taken on maximum zoom (5x) on my wee little Sony TX10, the quality and especially low-light performance of which I’ve been ambivalent about since I got it.  If it hadn’t been so expensive ($400, basically, once you include extended warranty and tax), I’d be quite happy with it.  As it stands… worth it, but not necessarily good value.  I could have bought a Nikon D7000 (second-hand) with kit lense for only $100 more.

So we started off with that concert. We arrived about an hour or so late, at 6pm, so we missed Wolfmother and maybe one or two other acts. But we did catch No Doubt, Jimmy Buffett, Chris Martin (front man of Coldplay), Sheryl Crow, Fleet Foxes and Monsters of Folk. We also missed Neil Young because he was on last and the three wanted to go, as we had an early start the next day (as detailed later). Which kinda sucks, but then if we’d stayed for that one final act, it wouldn’t have just been the extra half hour of the performance but an extra half an hour (or worse) stuck in gridlock trying to drive out. We also didn’t get to see Adam Sandler, as he only attended the Sunday concert. He was apparently there Saturday night, though, oddly enough, and Matt played basketball with him Sunday – and got a free ticket which he didn’t even use, bah.

The concert was really good. Fleet Foxes and Monsters of Folk I had never heard of, but they were quite good. Sheryl Crow was surprisingly good – I was only vaguely aware of her newer stuff, but it was all good, and performed perfectly. Jimmy Buffett I had of course heard of, with his Coral Reefer Band – they play constantly in California – but I’d never knowingly heard them. Of course they closed with Margaritaville, which drew one of the loudest applauses of the night, so now I recognise that as theirs. :)

No Doubt were good, though they came out and just launched into their first song without a word, from a darkened stage, which was quite against the informal atmosphere the preceding acts had all set – lots of random banter and comments and whatnot, particularly from Jimmy Buffett about the Shoreline staple, the every-present smell of weed. :)

They were good, no doubt (ahahahaha, pun genuinely not intended but lovingly abused in hindsight), just a little distant, maybe a bit too polished. Also, Gwen Stefani is really really short. I was a bit disappointed she didn’t sing any of her solo stuff, some of which I quite like also, but ah well.

And I had no idea who Chris Martin was and hadn’t even sold the concert to Erick & Co. on the basis of his presence, but of course everyone knows him. He was the rawest of the acts and consequently I think my favourite… lots of random tinkering on his piano, a few false starts and all sorts. It made it interesting. Funniest was when he was half way through a song, absolutely nailing it, when the microphone in front of him, on a long arm, suddenly drooped down – a pivot screw not tightened sufficiently, evidently. He abruptly stopped playing (as did his accompaniment), commented “yeah, that’s happened before” to much laughter, fixed it, and then launched straight back into the song. It was totally appropriate for the mood, and just so well executed that you can’t help but be skeptical that it was really a random accident at all. :)

So that was that – all in all a great way to spend an evening. :)

So I did that, and spent some time during the week playing as well, and whatnot. It’s pretty much as I expected – grindtastic – though there have been a handful of genuinely entertaining moments. Precious few, though. Matt insists this is just penance for future PvP sins or somesuch – some kind of hazing, or character test before you’re allowed to actually get some entertainment out of the so-called game…

The game itself aside, the experience was just laughable, in a most definitely unfunny way. The trial client is buggy as heck, crashing constantly and often in such ways that you have to essentially delete the whole thing and reinstall. It’s just mind-boggling that they can release such a piece of junk, especially as a trial client which you’d think would be intended to encourage people into the game, but obviously not.

Despite that, against my better judgement I attempted to actually sign up once the ten day trial expired, only to have Blizzard reject every one of my credit cards. WTF? I emailed their support – the second time, the first being for the crashes, to which they replied – no kidding – that I shouldn’t send such reports to their technical support line. Huh? Anyway, the second email to support yielded a polite but completely pointless and useless boilerplate response along the lines of “you’re an idiot and/or entered your card details wrong”, which is patently false.

And yet, despite all this, I find myself even now running the fully paid up copy in the background, awaiting completion of tonight’s journalling before I venture forth once more into the very samey-looking¹ lands of Azeroth.

I went out with Matt this afternoon to see The Goods – also a good movie, though not as much as District 9, as it lacked any meaningful plot arc or conclusion – and afterwards, at our usual haunt of TGI, he convinced me once again to go for WoW. So I went to Target – GameStop was closed, lazy sods – and bought it.

To add insult to injury, which at this point I suppose I can no longer expect any pity for, acting like a self-destructive addict as I am, it then took six attempts over about as many hours to get the #$%@! thing to install. I can’t believe how buggy this stuff is. It blows my mind that they’ve not just released it as-is, but that millions of people apparently don’t mind wasting their lives just getting the stupid thing to work. But then, I suppose, if you’re intending to play WoW you clearly have no meaningful life to live otherwise, anyway.

So again, it’s kind of a trial by fire, in a sense. I suppose I passed, though I am inexplicably not satisfied by that fact. Whoda thunk it.

Grrr. Stupid WoW. I look forward to griefing many many people in an ignoble, solitary effort to bring the overall, average playing experience down ever so slightly.

1. Also, whomever does their height-maps really needs to get off this six discrete levels of altitude business, it reminds me of Bryce 3D. ↩︎

Anyway, we hit it off quite well, just chatting and whatnot. We ended up going out to Taxi’s (Mercardo) for gelato ’til the wee hours of the morning, along with Philip whom I’d met around the same time. Steve was away in China at the time, arriving back the following Monday or Tuesday or somesuch. We were pretty much the only people at Taxi’s – the janitor was there along with what may well have been his wife and a small boy, maybe five, whom was sleeping on a bench (and later in a car, and later – finally – at home). No sign of Marty, the night-manager Steve and I had met and talked a bit with the first time we went there for gelato, and had seen once more. The poor place looks to be struggling quite a bit – something of a lost treasure hidden in plain sight on the wrong side of the carpark, opposite the disgusting Starbucks that people flock to in disgusting numbers. Grrr, Starbucks, and their nasty yet inexplicably expensive coffee. And don’t even get me started on the hot chocolate (though bizarrely the Starbucks-branded hot chocolate you get from the occasional cafe is often quite reasonable).

I digress [perpetually]. The janitor character seemed quite nice, though we didn’t chat exactly so much as exchange pleasantries periodically – we were there for three or four hours, and the only people at that, as I noted.

I ran into the girls again the next Friday too, where we tried to repeat our prior method but were thrown completely off by Taxi’s apparently being closed. At 1:15am. The same janitor guy was there, but didn’t seem to recognise us at all; he was quite gruff, in fact. The door was unlocked though closed, and given it was something of a brisk night I thought well enough to try it, so upon finding it open was about to go inside when he appeared from out the back to say they were in fact closed. Apparently the “chef” doesn’t arrive ’til 2am. I don’t get it.

Alas, the golden weeks of Taxi’s may be drawing to such a premature end. I guess I should have bought more gelato. ;)

Anyway, that forced us instead to fall back to the IHOP, which is hardly my favourite place but then again at that time of night you’re tossing up between that and Denny’s (or Carrow’s, which is pretty much identical). I wish there were some form of actual nightlife in this country. Le sigh.

But that was interesting anyway – we were there until about 7am, I guess… I got home at 7:30, in bed finally by 8:30. I was really quite surprised how well I’d hit it off with the girls; such wee hours escapades are hardly typical, especially these days. But we did, it seemed, talking endlessly about anything and everything and who knows what – the repeated late nights hit my memory hard, such that I can’t even recall many specifics.

Mostly just Sam’s frog socks. And that Jenny has to yawn at least once per hour or else. Or that Tia can hold a fiercesome silence like none other. :P

Actually, one of many interesting revelations was that the naughtiness amongst the “Stacks”, as covered by Undergrads, is actually real; both Jenny & Tia work in libraries. Australian libraries clearly do not have the right idea about these things. ;)

Saturday night, after I’d slept most of the day and they’d done likewise, and/or chilled in some park, we met up again – with Matt, as well – to see District 9. Which was a quite thoroughly enjoyable film – not quite what I’d expected based on trailers and rumours, but in a good way. Afterwards we retired to B.J.’s for general civility and Pazookies. When B.J.’s closed at 1am we were booted out into the carpark, where we stood chatting for another two hours – even after the carpark’s floodlights turned off, plunging us truly into the Cupertino despair (or, if that metaphor is too ambiguous, let me explain: consider Cupertino the kryptonite of entertainment).

Anyway, that was really cool. By this time I was starting to feel strangely comfortable with this. The idea that three lovely ladies would want to socialise with me – I mean, after the first exposure – and repeatedly at that, is quite perplexing, honestly. And though staying out ’til the wee hours was taking its toll – I was entirely not chipper, as Jenny would say, through most of Saturday – it wasn’t nearly as bad as normal.

The whole time I was quite tentative about everything… off hand comments would fly by suggesting further rendezvous and so forth, to which I would try to hint affirmatively but subtly – as when you’re onto a good thing and don’t want to be too excited lest you scare people off. Kind of the same way I am at LAN parties, as Pete et al will attest. :D

So each night when we finally actually parted ways, it was a rather awkward and extremely drawn out goodbye, even after several such nights. It became quite amusing after the first few times, as Steve will unhappily attest – come Sunday night, though I race ahead, I just turned to him during the awkward silences, putting the responsibility solely on him as a change. :D

Times like this I wish I actually had a substantial vocabulary, instead of arsedly faking it, as waxing poetically feels shameful when you’re essentially churning out “Sam has a red ball” level material.

Where was I? Let me get a blanket for my lap and some fresh snuff for my pipe…. and you damn kids get off my lawn!

Now I’ve really lost my place.

At some point Sunday arrives like a … metaphorical fast moving and abruptly entering object. And that’s not an innuendo, if any of you suspicious-looking internet folk are reading this in the wrong frame of mind.

Sunday once more I slept in. The girls had mentioned they wanted to go up to the Castro and Haight-Ashbury, and there had in fact been an overt invite extended to me by Sam, but as I’ve previously covered, I didn’t want to be uncool, so I’d ignored it. Apparently that’s how you get all the girls, by ignoring them. ;)

Nonetheless, I mentioned I had some stuff to do – cleaning the flat, honestly, though I never ended up having time to – and that I’d get in touch once I was free, maybe catch up to them midway through their day’s travels. As it turned out, Steve had finally recovered enough from China to venture out again, and so I went out for an earlyish lunch with him to Amici’s. I hadn’t seem him in over a month at that point, I reckon, so it was just catching up and whatnot, and good to see him again of course. We were soon shooting the breeze about the usual choice topics, such as bad programming and the many failures of electronic engineers, though heavily laden with irony given I rarely understand any of the electronics he talks about… I thought we did a lot of power stuff at uni, but evidently not.

Afterwards I rang the girls, asking if they still wanted to catch up and if Steve could accompany me. They hadn’t met him at this point, of course. They seemed okay with that, though Sam’s phone manner is completely contrary to her manner in real life, which is to say, very flat, distant, quite fairly interpreted as disinterested. On the phone she’s quite lively… Haha, no, just kidding, other way round. She’ll probably never read this, but just in case – as people whom know me know, I have a high daily quota on sarcasm and digs against my friends. ;)

Since we drove while they thought it’d be fun to catch the BART from Millbrae (hint hint – it’s not), we ended up arriving maybe only five minutes after them. We met them on the corner of Castro & Market, and started wandering down Castro and around the surrounding streets. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in that area –

GOD DAMN WORLD OF WARCRAFT STOP STEALING FOCUS

– in fact the last and perha –

OH FFS

– ps only time was when we visited Steve’s place during WWDC, where Rick was staying for that week. So in fact while I’d seen all the porn and sex and comic book stores, only in the late evening, and never deliberately sight-seeing. (by way of comparison, the Castro is genuinely much like Sunset Boulevard in Holywood, just with more arseless leather chaps) It’s quite a fun area – a good tourist destination, as I’m oft told yet have studiously ignored – and the “Hot Cookie” place actually has really nice cookies. And chocolate brownies. And the chocolate penises on a stick are probably very delicious, but I honestly didn’t see them until after I’d ordered. :)

There was a guy on the corner of Castro & Market, Milk Plaza corner, selling thongs in the shape of penises. And so forth. For those that haven’t visited the Castro, it’s hard for me to convey it faithfully, as I’m pretty sure I’ve not been anywhere else in the world much like it.

There were of course a lot of gay guys everywhere, but surprisingly many women too, and of course a fair number of obvious tourists such as ourselves.

After wandering for a bit, the girls decided they wanted to get their nails done. They’d been suggesting I get a haircut a few times… the general vibe at that time was confusing – I did feel like perhaps I had over-imposed myself on them, though re. the haircut specifically that may just have been an appropriately subtle hint that I needed one. Six months ago. But as much as I wanted one, I didn’t think it’d be nice to them to neither ditch them temporarily nor force them to wait on me. So when they ended up in a beauty salon that did haircuts as well – after trying one purely about nails but finding a half-hour wait ahead – I was quite happy.

The place I didn’t get the name of, but it’s just east on Market from the south-east corner with Castro. The only person who’s name I got in there was Mario, the camp-as-a-row-of-tents guy who cut my hair, while a woman did the girls’ nails. And Steve sat nearby, doing not much – I’d teased him about getting his nails done, and perhaps had there been more employees available he would have, but as it was we were there for hours because the one woman doing nails could of course only do one set at a time. That and there’s all this feet-in-fruit-bowls-filled-with-rocks business, etc.

Worth noting is that Steve and I were aware of – in detail – acrylic nails, while the girls weren’t. That’s a pretty substantial fail on their part. :P

So yes, the important point of all this is that I got a haircut, finally. I’ve been a little uncertain about the result, given the reaction from everyone once I emerged from behind the dividing wall could be charitably described as “meh”, or more paranoidly described as “oh dear”.

And “paranoidly” so is a real word, stupid Mac OS X dictionary…

As is “meh”. C’mon, get with the times. That’s been around since at least year 10 – it was trademarked by Lucas Clayton all through high school.

But it was reasonably fun – an appropriately low-key sort of afternoon given the successive late nights. After that we drove over to Haight-Ashbury, via Alamo Square so as to glimpse ever-so-briefly the Full House house. We arrived around dusk at Haight street, so a lot of stuff was closed or closing, but nonetheless I think the girls still got a fair exposure to it all. As in the Castro, they didn’t seem particularly inclined to actually shop… I forcibly wandered into some random trinket store – you know the type, filled with overpriced wooden furniture, strange statues, rugs and polished rocks of dubious spiritual benefit – but that didn’t seem sufficient to activate their shopping genes. In very stark contrast to Marie and Kristen many months ago.

We did spend a long time, admittedly, in Amoeba Records. That place is just nuts – you can genuinely find pretty much anything in there, if you have the patience to look. They even had a whole section on British TV shows, though the prices were highway robbery – $100 and up for many collections, which while ostensibly four or five seasons, perhaps, only constitute 24 or so episodes, which is just one season by American standards.

Jenny did buy “Bend It Like Beckham”, since it was $3, which is appropriate given her soccer roots. Saturday night she & Matt had gotten quite into the soccer talk, to the detriment of the rest of us whom don’t have the names of every English player memorised. I mean, who plays this soccer thing anyway? ;)

We ended up in a crepes cafe/restaurant at the end of the evening, for dinner and proper socialising.

After being there for a few hours we finally headed off. As is customary when in S.F. at night, I took everyone up to Twin Peaks to attempt to see the city. Though it was customarily hazy, it was better than the last time I was there, and you could actually see a fair bit. It was pretty cool, though [temperature-wise]. Luckily I’d had the foresight to throw in both my heavy jumper and my central jacket, so Tia & Sam at least were warm, while Jenny feigned indifference. Civility fail on my part there, though in fairness it’s hard enough producing a cover story for carrying two jackets by happenstance, let alone three. ;)

And Steve stood their emitting more heat naturally than a space heater. I may have hugged his bare legs at some point. I consider Twin Peaks part of the Castro. ;)

After staying there only a short while – self-explanatory, I should hope, given the aforementioned weather – we journeyed back to Millbrae to drop Tia, Jenny & Sam off. Knowing that Sam & Jenny were heading home on Tuesday afternoon, and Tia subsequently back to Placerville, this indeed looked like a real final goodbye. Though I’m now well used to it, having met so many lovely people travelling whom I’ll never speak to again, I still hate that feeling. Luckily, as noted, we’d been practising on every prior night, and in this case I could simply turn to Steve and see what he was going to do about it. :D

So after some awkward time doing that, they finally relented to actually going somewhere (with us). So to Denny’s we went. What can I say.

And there we spent our last few hours together, before Steve played party-pooper by asking to go home. Pfft, in my day, we stayed out all night. :P

And so eventually we did part our ways, with much less awkwardness than before, which in itself was somewhat awkward to me as I’d hoped for something a bit more… I dunno, distinguished, than just everyone getting in their cars and driving off. Ah well. Steve, hug slut he is, scored two from each thanks to the uncertain departures. I managed none – epic fail on my part. But in doing so maintained my rank as masculine alpha male. I wrote the first draft of this entry entirely in grunts, in fact, but relented to translate it for the wider audience.

I should clarify for my own memory at this point that I wasn’t hitting on any of the girls. Not from lack of interest per se – I liked all three in a uncommon way, in the same way that Emma & I had just clicked in New Zealand all those years ago now. In fact I don’t think I’ve met any women in the intervening time about which I could say the same, let alone three all at once (never rains but it pours, I suppose). But in any case I didn’t detect any extraordinary interest from them – that they wanted to hang at all perplexed me enough, as noted – and there wasn’t any safe way to approach one without upsetting the group dynamic. So I did nothing, which I think worked out well – we spent what precious little time we had together actually talking and having light fun, rather than wasted in innuendo and flirting and all that other stuff which really does seem so coldly just a means to an end.

I’m not sure where I’m going with that. It should suffice to dissuade the usual comments along the lines of “ooooh, you met a girl, ooh la la” that any mention thereof in my journal here invariably generates. It’s true, women exist, and periodically and despite their best efforts, they do bump into me. :P

As I’ve taken to saying, it’d be far better all round if I were just gay, because then I’d have a fine time here, but alas I am not. Damn my genetics/upbringing/insert-your-own-believed-reason-here.

Digression #2853, noted, stamped and filed.

After the three left I sunk into a genuine depression through ’til at least Friday. It was very bizarre – the kind of malaise and forlorn that I can’t recall since high school – you know, back when I wasn’t a cold, walled-off alpha male. It was of course compounded by other factors during the week, but nonetheless it caught me well off guard.

Steve reckons my new hair style looks like an emo Tobey Maguire.

Luckily things picked up by Friday night, where Steve & I caught up again and saw “Inglourious Basterds”. And this weekend, while by appearance fruitless and indeed hopeless – since I spent half of it simply working – was actually nice.

And that more or less covers the last two weeks – the significant parts, anyway.

Today I was back up there for about five hours cleaning, along with Ross, F1 and Tom. I was surprised at how well they’d done; the 2nd floor bathroom was actually pretty good by the time I got there, and Ross spent hours attacking the shower glass (with mostly success). Now that the place is all clean and shiny again, it looks good. If only it could have been like that for any of the eleven months inbetween.

There’s still some other odds and ends, and more cleaning to be done, which’ll probably happen later in the week sometime.

So the new place is only a few blocks east of where I was a year ago; once again just off Stevens Creek. It’s quite handy to work (especially now that I work in Alaska, rather than on campus), and it’s quite a nice place; a kind of two-bedroom flat in amongst a quadplex, where the four flats are kind of piled all over each other. From the street if you weren’t paying attention, as I wasn’t when I first came out to look at it, you’d assume the whole conglomeration is just one big house.

My new roommate is Milena, a personal assistant in her early thirties or so. She’s very personable and chatty, which is a welcome change, but also quiet when necessary, like at night. Though in the tradition of U.S. housing construction, this place has the sound insulating properties of a tissue, it’s been pretty peaceful thus far. The first night all I could hear was the guy downstairs talking to someone – his girlfriend or wife, seemingly, for hours.. that was a terrible coincidence, to have that on the first night. But I haven’t heard much from him since, so, I’m optimistic for the long term.

It’s warmer though – I’m glad summer is kind of winding down at this point, as the 40+ degree days would have been quite brutal here. Not that they weren’t uncomfortable at the old place (again, insulation of any kind is pretty extraordinary here).

The room itself is in fact slightly bigger than my old one, though square, and comes with a walk-in closet and a storage closet, so I in fact have quite a bit of room. I like the new layout, though the bed is up against the wall which I’ve never done for a queen size before, and thus am just now discovering the joys of trying to levitate myself in order to apply the fitted sheet to it. Mattresses should come with fitted sheets built in. That’s just common sense. And should be machine-washable.

Which reminds me that the minor annoyance – potentially, anyway – is that the laundry is shared amongst the four flats, which would be fine in itself, but is coin operated. Urgh. Where the heck am I going to get coins from? I’m going to have to go into a bank and actually buy money with other money. This is ridiculous. I hate cash, or at least any places which accept it alone, like the so-called cafe at work.

Oop, out of time – I’m off now to go see Funny People with Matt (and Josh, afaik). Followed by TGIs, so I can shake my head with jealous amusement and fake wisdom as Matt picks up every female waitress there. At least, the ones he hasn’t already.

The invite came in a few weeks back (via evite, which I’d only a few days earlier heard of for the first time courtesy of Web Side Story).

I figured this was some kind of typical thing for them, though a it turns out none of them had been there for as much as a decade. So it was more a nostalgia thing. There was general surprise at how generally average the place was, as compared to hindsight. Theirs, of course; as my first time I didn’t really have any unusual expectations, and it was pretty much like I expected – a few fun rides but way too many yawners, kiddie things or just too bloody rattly rollercoasters. I don’t really recall now if it’s just that I somehow avoided crappy, violent roller coasters through my youth, or if my lower back and skull somehow had significantly more suspension and padding. A couple of the coasters really did hurt enough to immediately sour their experience. I recall some of the ones at Six Flags (Vallejo) being similar, though not nearly as bad overall. The boardwalk down at Santa Cruz has that rickety old wooden thing which is also in that vein, though not nearly as bad.

Anyway, it was reasonably fun overall – I did get quite a rush from the Drop Tower, which was significantly more like bungie jumping than I’d recalled… last time I did one of those rides was at Dreamworld, I think… over a decade ago, perhaps?

The best thing in any case was simply getting out and hanging out. After we all tired of the park we went and grabbed dinner at El Torito across the way.

During the day Pete mentioned a little lan party planned for the subsequent day, for his birthday, which he invited me to. When she subsequently managed to catch me while he wasn’t there, Eyrene informed me the lan was a cover for a surprise birthday party for him.

So that gave me Sunday’s entertainment as well – hanging out at Chris & Ryan’s place, meeting Pete’s family and assorted other friends, including a guy blessedly named ‘Holden’ who’s name I will never forget – all people should be named after memorable brands, it would make things so much easier – and single-handedly wiping out a good portion of all the hors d’oeuvres. [[ also, that is a stupid word that’s impossible to look up in a dictionary ]]

There was some thing made up of marshmellow cream and [I think] cream cheese, which was altogether quite similar to a thick cream cream, but slightly sweeter and inexplicably delicious (and yes, that’s inexplicable despite the already attractive contents). Anyway, I’m pretty sure I consumed my monthly allotment of delicious sugary fat.

After the party proper died down, and most people left, we did actually set up for and play four-way Halo for an hour or two. It was still just as entertaining as I recall – hooray for not growing out of some things :D – and I surprised even myself as to how quickly I reverted back to pompous, high-school trash talk. Light-hearted and occasionally self-deprecating of course, no offence intended, but in any case particularly well received thanks to my so-called accent. I’ll have to be careful, even so, if I get into it again, not to get too carried away. :)

So that filled out the weekend very nicely, and though I did feel it on Monday – weekends are traditionally about catching up on all that lost sleep – it was certainly a good weekend nonetheless.

Anyway, Saturday; after hanging on the boat for the afternoon, Sean, Sket & I went over to Mike’s place in Napa for a few hours, before heading down into S.F. to catch up with Mike’s kids; Sean’s cousins. That was a bit of a pain to get to – didn’t take long from Napa, and it’s not a bad drive (though Petaluma <-> Napa is where it’s at), but once we got down to the Bay bridge, well, everything stopped as expected. The worst was after the bridge; once we go within ten blocks of pier 39 the traffic just stopped, utterly. It wasn’t that the traffic itself was bad, but that there were tens of thousands of people leaving all at once, having stayed solely for the fireworks. They were just flooding the streets, blocking traffic.

It took about two hours, from getting off 80 after the bridge, to get to a carpark. Not a whole lot of fun.

But we made it, and caught up with Sean’s cousins et al. One of them, Avery, was quite entertaining. They’d all been at the grog since early in the afternoon, and Avery was a wee bit worse for wear. A happy drunk, though, such that he largely just sat there, or stood in the middle of the moshpit dancefloor staring at one particular girl, who was amusingly oblivious to him. At one point he took his shirt off. At another a girl was trying to dance up next to him, overtly interested, but he didn’t even know she was there.

The place was the Fiddler’s Green, in a completely random spot just up from the cable car terminal. At least one of the bartenders was completely wasted, and kept having vaguely aggressive, painfully slow arguments with various patrons. Overall an entertaining little bar, but I wouldn’t bother trying to actually get a drink in the place.

So I think that’s the most eventful 4th of July I’ve had thus far. Though I think one was spent at F2’s place, which wasn’t half bad either. It was nice to get out into the festivities, even if I don’t care for the holiday itself.

The movie itself was surprisingly entertaining – fascinating in a lot of ways, and so authentic that it even felt too authentic; so much so that I readily noticed the couple of “we didn’t know what was around the next bend” moments which imply either some very creative remixing or a little bit of creative license.

Capping the surreal experience was the appearance of the band at the end, in the theatre, for the Q&A. I knew they’d be there, as it was Lance’s email stating as such that motivated me to go see it tonight. They were exactly the same in person as on the silver screen behind them.

I felt bad that the theatre was at 10% capacity at best – they really deserved a sell-out crowd. They did say though that the movie had improved their lot in life immeasurably, which is no trivial detail given how long they’ve been trying, and failing, to really make it.

And that was in stark contrast to the preview of Objectified I went to two weeks back, which also had a Q&A with the director and two of the designers interviewed. That was nearly full, up at the Kabuki Sundance in S.F. Though that was an interesting documentary itself, it’s a little sad that people round here are more into a movie about how toothbrushes are designed than a true lives’ story.

Alas they didn’t perform in the theatre; apparently they intend to in most of the forty or fifty theatres they’ll be appearing at, yet the Aquarius wasn’t able to facilitate that. They didn’t know why. I shall have to harass Lance on that one.

Though I’m not particularly into metal – I have only a handful of such songs, none from Anvil, yet at least – that really didn’t matter, as you’d probably think; you just have to respect these guys that have never stopped doing what they wanted to do. In the face of serious rejection, as the film shows.

I like what I do for a living, but I’ve no delusions about it; I know I’d be perfectly happy doing any number of other things. These guys though, they’ve known exactly what their lives are about since they were fifteen. They’re compelled to do it. That I am very jealous of.

We stayed at the Lakeside Casino & Hotel, which had the virtue of being relatively cheap but not a whole lot else… the room itself was fine enough, though nothing outstanding for that price point; the real issue was that they didn’t allow a rollaway bed; in the end Steve & Nils opted to share, which I graciously permitted them to do. ;)

Saturday was pretty good… the conditions weren’t nearly as bad as one might think; just compacted snow, but not too icy for the most part. It started snowing, and the wind did pick up, such that the summit was closed for the afternoon along with the gondola, forcing us to ski down to California Lodge and take a bus back. But that was fine, because it let me go down The Face and Gunbarrel, which were fun even if slightly tricky in the conditions. And I also discovered that California Lodge has a bar with live music, which was quite cool.

Anyway, that went fine; Saturday night we ate at the Hard Rock – Nils had never been to one – and saw ‘Knowing’ before retiring for the night. Steve had pulled a muscle in his foot, one of my toes was being temperamental and making me a little paranoid if nothing else, and in any case we were all pretty tired. That’s the excuse I’m going with, anyway. :P

Sunday morning we woke up to find a good solid snow cover – up to two feet at the Heavenly summit, we were told – which was great. The weather was a little iffy in the morning, but we didn’t get on the mountain ’til 11am or so anyway; it was clearing up by then.

Nils nipped off on his own from the start, while Steve and I started together but separated at the summit – intending to meet again, but I took Pinnacles down not realising it didn’t offer access to our meeting point on the Nevada side. I got there eventually, but in any case couldn’t find Steve because he interpreted “stay somewhere obvious, sit down if you must” with “go inside and find a table somewhere in the crowd at the back. Don’t answer your phone”. :)

From there I headed up over towards Mott Canyon and Killebrew Canyon, just following others who were randomly cutting across. I started down what I believe is called ‘Boulevard’ in Killebrew Canyon, and was really enjoying the fresh tracks in two+ feet of powder, when I found what was apparently the only patch of ice on the whole mountain. I was in the middle of a turn when I hit it, and it unsettled my standing such that when I hit the powder again moments later, my skis were no longer parallel. This is not wise in deep powder. I went A over T immediately, and tumbled down the mountain a good twenty or thirty metres.

There were two significant consequences of this. The first was that I hurt my shoulder immediately as I went over – I think my stock caught somehow and pushed my shoulder back quite hard – and I was then faced with the overwhelming task of trying to stop rolling, dodge trees and somehow avoid rolling on my shoulder repeatedly; all but the latter I was successful at.

The second consequence was that my skis disappeared. Completely. My poles both ended up next to me, even though neither were on my wrists anymore, but skis… nadda. After sitting for five or ten minutes until the acute pain in my shoulder subsided, and ’til I’d finished cursing the fact that I’d pretty much ended my skiing for the day, even in the best case, I started to search for my skis.

I found the first one pretty quickly – it was just visible through a gap in the snow. How it got on the angle it did, I don’t know – with the tip pointing up but downhill, as if it slid under and bounced off the compacted snow below.

The second ski, I did not, ultimately, find. I reckon the tumble occurred at around 1pm, thereabouts. At 3pm or so the ski patrol came through to ostensibly help me find the ski, but ultimately to help me get out of Killebrew Canyon as it was then closed. A good ten or so people, at various times, stopped to offer assistance; some took a moment to slide down in the rough area I’d fallen, hoping to reveal a submerged ski. To no avail.

Somewhat disconcerting was the number of people that just skied straight past, not even ten metres away, either oblivious or indifferent to my condition. I didn’t expect anyone to put aside their own activities to help me find my ski, but I consider it an important responsibility to at least stop and check if a fallen person is okay.

But I digress. Curiously enough my shoulder, while sore and very weak, didn’t give me too much trouble – I could still carry my remaining ski or poles, and was using it for those two hours to dig out a quarter of the damn run.

On the upside, I did eventually get a lift back to the gondola on a snow mobile, which was pretty fun and certainly appreciated given it was a couple of kilometres to walk. In two feet of powder. It took me a good fifteen minutes just to climb back out of Killebrew Canyon, even though I was at most maybe forty metres from the ridge. Hands and knees – to keep from falling four or more feet into the heavy drifts – while carrying a ski and two poles. I took some consolation in the rare style of exercise it provided.

When I eventually returned back down to the village, I went straight into the ski shop, and long story short bought the skis. Loss is of course never covered – too obvious a means for fraud – and while the guys in the shop were nice and sympathetic… that was that.

So I now own an otherwise pretty nice pair of skis. It’s just that I don’t quite know where one of them is currently. Perhaps by spring it will be discovered and make its way back to me.

Just to add insult to injury, the trip back took ten hours; 50 was closed for many hours, even though the conditions were surprisingly good and chains weren’t even required. Most likely the usual hicks and dipshits in their unweighted trucks, driving too fast and smashing into each other and the walls.

And at one point, while doing 65mph somewhere around Placerville or one of the numerous ambiguous towns through there, a dog stood on the road in front of me, off to the side of the lane. I swerved slightly to miss it, and it seemed to spook at the very last second and leap away, but it was kind of… I just wonder what kind of animal is so retarded as to stand on a busy highway?

It did have a collar though, so I was very glad I missed it. Hopefully it learned a lesson and made its way home quick smart.

Prior to departing Heavenly we sat for a while at Fire+Ice, while I consumed a slightly larger than necessary proportion of ice cream, and Nils, Steve & I conversed with the random people we shared a table with. They were quite cool, though we never bothered with formal introductions so I’m at a loss to identify them for posterity.

The point I was in fact attempting to get at was that, having sat there for a while, my arm became noticeably stiff and uncomfortable. By the time I got home at 3am or somesuch it was outright sore, even when by my side, unburdened and supported. When I woke up Monday morning and started the morning routine, I found I really wasn’t able to use the arm for anything it entailed, which while not incapacitating was certainly annoying.

But the real kick was when I put my shirt on. ’til this point I wasn’t too worried about it; I was pretty certain it was neither broken nor dislocated, and that while there was perhaps muscle damage, it was just a particularly bad instance of the pulls and strains I usually get while skiing (though usually in my legs, particularly hamstrings). However, when I tried to put my shirt on I found it required my arm to move into exactly the most undesirable position, and furthermore when I tried to do so the pain disrupted it, but by then I was caught so I couldn’t even back out. Long story short, it hurt even more than the original injury, so much so that I became immediately light headed, my feet were attacked by pins and needles, and my ears rapidly began ringing as if I’d been at a rock concert the night before.

Apparently this isn’t particularly extreme, but I’ve never experienced that before. After fifteen minutes of sitting down completely motionless, the symptoms (including the pain) had mostly dispersed, I determined that I would in fact need to see a doctor about it, if only as a precaution. So I did that.

I tried Stanford Hospital first. They best they could manage was Wednesday, which was no good as I’ll be in Vegas by the offered time. Waiting ’til Monday seemed pointless; by then it’d either have proven self-healing or otherwise, and might well be too late to effectively address in the latter case.

Luckily Palo Alto Medical Centre actually has this crazy system whereby you can go in and actually see a doctor, you know, that week, so, I was looked at. Three hours and two x-ray sessions later, I had little to go on other than a sling, a referral to a sports doctor, knowledge that nothing was broken, and that while a minor dislocation was possible, it wasn’t serious.

I didn’t get to work until nearly 7pm. I worked ’til 11:30 or so, but couldn’t get a whole lot done with one arm in a sling.

Today I went to work as usual, but managed to score an afternoon appointment with said sports doctor, which I attended and was told in short order – after some prodding and stretching and whatnot – that it was certainly not “the AC”, which apparently is on the front of the shoulder, and which I gather to mean neither a torn ligament nor a serious dislocation. The doctors – for I was indeed seen by two simultaneously, for which I’m sure I will be billed inappropriately – indicated I’d probably come very close to something – whether a torn ligament or a dislocation wasn’t made entirely clear – but that it should heal by itself in three or four weeks. Mostly; I’ll probably have to use this as extreme but entirely appropriate motivation to actually kick off a weights regime at the gym again. Once it has healed; I’ll have to wait and see if it does, though judging by how it’s improved – slightly but noticeably – over the two days already, I’m pretty confident it’ll be just fine.

If only I’d been a little less stupid as to how I put my shirt on, I could have saved myself the whole ordeal. :)

On the upside, I’d intended to try out some performance skis that day, but the guys in the shop never actually asked what package I wanted, so… at least I got a cheaper pair of skis. :)

And while I don’t particularly like sitting in a cell with little natural light, no running water nor food, it is convenient that I can do so with a sore arm with minimal disruption. Yesterday was problematic, as noted, but today I managed alright. I suspect by Monday I’ll have no problems in that regard.

So, that was my weekend. I had kind of positioned the ski trip, in my own mind, as my last one of the season, though I hadn’t intended that decision to become so final. This weekend it’s Vegas instead, which should have minimal physical exertion – though I had intended to wander about the Grand Canyon – and following that… who knows. Probably work.

Afterwards we went and saw “He’s Just Not That Into You”, the trailers for which are pretty ambiguous so it was a pleasant surprise that it had a good story and was very good.

Oh, and we had dinner at Outback, because I suggested it sarcastically and Julius missed the sarcasm. :)

When I was at Kirkwood three years ago it was snowing and raining simultaneously, windy as all buggery, and at best I think only two chairs were open – Snowkirk and [on the second day] Solitude. My impression of the place was that it was small and quiet. An impression that was about as far from reality as possible. Though there wasn’t a whole lot of snow (half a foot in places) and it was compacted and icy in patches, it was at least a really warm day (8°C or so, I think it got to). It’s actually a surprisingly large resort – I tried to do every run today, but didn’t come even close. Half, maybe. ‘course, the double blacks pose something of a problem… I was going to do one late in the afternoon to see how I went, but I ran out of time.

The ones I did manage, that I’m fairly certain of, are:

▪ Buckboard
▪ Bud’s Alley
▪ Elevator Shaft
▪ Happiness Is
▪ Herringbone Straight
⬩ High Whiskey
▪ Hole ‘N’ Wall
▪ Home Run (part of, anyway)
▪ Jane’s Jaunt
⬩ Look Out Janek
▪ Lower Monte Wolfe
▪ Lower Zachary
⬩ One or more of {Hully Gully, Cold Shoulder, Larry’s Lip} – they were so iced up I kinda skirted all over them all, I think.
⬩ Rabbit Runs
⬩ Sentinel
● Snowkirk
▪ Whiskey Slide
⬩ Zachary

I actually did a lot more than that, I know, but I can’t figure out in hindsight which ones exactly, particularly the blacks… e.g. I went up the Reut many times, but can’t be sure which runs off it I did. Most of them, but which ones, aha?

Anyway, I found myself favouring the diamonds primarily, though some of the blues were quite enjoyable by virtue of being easy and relaxing, and well groomed. The only blacks I had trouble with were the ones that were iced up, and I was hardly the only one; most people were sticking only to the freshly groomed trails. As noted, I was trying to do every run at least once, so I did plenty of icy ones, but it’s not so much fun.

A few falls, including one in the queue for a lift, worst of all [for my ego]. But the only real solid fall was the very last run, down Sentinel. The bus parked north of Timber Creek, but I’d worked my way over to Sunrise by the end of the day, and was then racing to get back in time to catch the bus. So anyway, I was doing alright, making good time, and had done Sentinel three or four times already earlier in the day without any issue at all, but, for whatever reason this particular time I lost it. Took a nice gouge to one of my skis in the process, too.

I’d seen a few people sliding on the icier runs, and it was quite impressive – they’d slide down for ten, twenty, forty metres…. no real harm done in all the cases I saw, but, I was thinking “boy, how embarrassing for them”. Ahahaha… stupid universal justice.

I don’t know how far I slid, but I was going quite fast and I had plenty of time to think about it while it was happening, so I’m guessing fifty metres or more. My first focus after falling was to balance out into a skid, rather than tumbling, which I did just fine. But after two or three seconds I realised that I wasn’t slowing down at all. It was a strangely curious and exciting feeling, given Sentinel is quite straight at that point and I knew I wasn’t going to hit anything. So I simply had to slowly spin myself round so I could dig my skis in (more seconds), and even then it took three or four more seconds to actually slow to a stop.

It really is memorable for the fact that I could think through the entire thing. Virtually all my stacks in living memory have been over before you can do anything better than flinch.

So anyway, that was embarrassing, but funny (despite giving me a brief headache from the sudden shock of being covered in ice), but also annoying because it was my last run and I knew I’d have no time to dry out or even change clothes before getting on the bus. Luckily I managed to stay relatively dry, and it seems that my cheap “thermals” are in fact pretty water proof, regardless of their thermal qualities. So yay for those.

And I didn’t break my camera, iPhone or wallet, which was lucky and fortunate.

Having to get up at 3:30am in order to catch the bus sucked, and the ride up was rather mediocre as the seat-backs were too short to provide any head support at all, so I couldn’t realistically sleep. Standard early-morning nausea combined with 100 miles of alpine roads saw me extremely happy when we arrived and I could get off the damn thing. :)

Going back wasn’t so bad… they played Austin Powers 2, which passed half the time, and the rest I listened to music and possibly napped.

As it turns out tickets & rentals at Kirkwood are half price through to next Friday, so what would normally be a good deal [via Nac Ski] in fact wasn’t. D’oh. Ah well. I probably should have picked a mountain and gotten a season pass, but, I do so enjoy exploring new terrain.

Photos are up, also.

Tomorrow alas I will be doing washing and working, yay, but next weekend it looks like Nils [+1] and Steve want to head up for both days, so that’ll be good. Then two weeks after that I’ll be standing atop Whistler!

Ooh, also, Kirkwood has actual restaurants. With cutlery and porcelain and tableclothes and waitresses. I was truly – and very pleasantly – surprised. I had a really nice pasta main, and possibly the best hot chocolate I I’ve had here in California (they can’t make hot chocolate worth a damn, for the most part :`( ). I’d definitely be interested in going back there again – again, a complete reversal to my previous attitude. I only went with Kirkwood today, over Heavenly, because it was cheaper [and I did Heavenly two weeks ago]. Haha. :)

I might look into second hand or ex-demo skis in the next few weeks… renting them up at Tahoe is just way too expensive, and avoiding that via roof racks doesn’t negate the cost in any reasonable time.

Oh, and minimal tree skiing – basically only when I had to. It was just too icy to do safely for the most part, and the minimal snow cover wasn’t encouraging either.

Friday night I got an email from dad informing me pop was in hospital. This wouldn’t normally bother me too much as it’s not an uncommon occurrence. That dad felt it necessary to send me an email, however, was unusual. When I spoke to him thirty minutes later – I’d been intending to call shortly anyway – I got very much the impression that this was not a run of the mill case.

But I was optimistic for him. It did really reinforce the costs of having moved here, overseas. Obviously my presence there would not have done anything useful, but for my own sake it would have been easier.

Anyway, I couldn’t really do much so I got on with things. On Saturday F2 messaged me about riding La Honda, which I thought was swell idea given the brief outbreak of lovely weather here this weekend, so we went and did that. Well, half of it. We rode from my place up to Alice’s, stopped there for fifty minutes or so to have a burger and some drinks… it wasn’t too bad getting up there, slightly easier than the first time I did it, and good to have F2 setting the pace, providing encouragement…

We’d been discussing in detail the route back, via Portola and Alpine, and were all psyched and ready to enjoy the fruits of all that hard work collecting gravitational energy. Alas, not too far down as we were going around a corner, F2 suddenly wobbled, hit the guard rail, and disappeared over the side. I slammed on the brakes, nearly lost it myself, ran over his bike, but managed to stop.

He wasn’t in good shape. He wasn’t trying to get up and his breathing was extremely laboured. There’s really no chance of surviving a crash like that without serious injury – we were going at least 30mph at the time, as measured by his bike’s trip computer, and metal guard rails designed to stop three ton SUVs don’t have much elasticity for humans. I hoped he was mostly just winded, and I think he was, but that really was the least of his worries.

When I jumped the railing to see if he was okay, the first thing I happened to find was $20 half-buried in the dirt. “I don’t suppose you can appreciate the irony that I just found twenty dollars?” “NO”. Fair enough.

When we’d been at Alice’s we’d been lamenting the lack of mobile reception there.

“Call 911-“. “Ah, yeah, about that… remember how we were just talking about no service?”

I tried to wave down the passing cars, and while they seemed jolly amused and slowed down to wave back, none of them seemed to make the connection “two bikes, one dude, trying to wave us down”. Morons.

Luckily F2 had picked a good spot to crash – right above Grandview Drive. So I rode round the corner and down to one of the houses. A middle-aged guy answered the door, already on the phone. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but could you call 911 for me please; my friend’s just come off his bike”. He nodded seemingly knowingly, told the other end of the phone he’d have to call them back, he had to take care of a bicyclist, and called 911. He provided the address and directions, and proxied a conversation between me and the 911 operator to get the various details. The first question they asked was whether a car was involved. This is not a surprising thing, sadly; it just proves what arseholes you can run into up on those roads.

Five minutes later, a fire truck and two emergency vehicles arrived from up the road, and casually set about the long process of processing F2. We were later joined by an emergency bike (I think), an ambulance, and a police car. They blocked La Honda for the thirty or forty minutes we were there, for which I feel terrible about for the hundreds of people stuck in queues up and down the hill, and to whom I can fully empathise having been on that side of the police line before.

Anyway, I kept well out of their way, holding an IV for a while (which they didn’t actually use), and the plastic board on which they eventually strapped F2 and lifted him up back onto the road with. He had sat up a couple of times initially, before I’d gone to call 911, so I doubted he had any kind of paralysing back injury, so the whole laborious process of trauma-stretchering him into the ambulance seemed kind of excessive, though in hindsight I wouldn’t have had it any other way – it’s not worth the risk of being frivolous with an accident like that.

I was actually more worried about organ damage, at the time – he’d hit and tumbled too fast for me to really grasp what happened, so – given he said it was his back that hurt – I figured he’d hit back first, and was worried he might have burst a kidney or somesuch. Broken ribs seemed a likely thing, too.

Anyway, the ambulance took him off to Stanford Emergency Center, one of the fire fighters took his bike back up to the fire station, and I rode back to Stanford. Nobody offered me a lift to the hospital with him, but, I’m certain they would have given as much if I’d asked; many of the emergency crew there didn’t realise I was actually with him – they presumed I was just some other random rider that had found him.

I made good time to Stanford though – probably my best yet.

It took a while before I could get in to see him – when I first got there I was only fifteen or so minutes behind the ambulance, which I’d seen go past me as I was riding up Sand Hill, and they didn’t have him in their computer system yet. The receptionist went and found him, though, and after a little while I was able to go in.

I was simply impressed by how well he was taking it all, that he was still perfectly reasonable, calm, humourable… in a great deal of pain, even for all the morphine and whatnot, but still in good spirits.

I stayed for two hours or so, until Danielle arrived and we had to tag ’cause of their 1-visitor rule. I’d called Follis, Danielle and his parents earlier, the latter of which was quite stressful since his mum couldn’t understand me to any useful degree at all, and his dad didn’t have much of an easier time. It’s extremely difficult to not freak people out unnecessarily when all they know is that someone they don’t know has called them from their son’s mobile and the only word they really made out was “hospital”.

Luckily, though it took some time and very careful pro-nun-see-aye-shun I eventually conveyed the whole story, particularly that he was going to be fine. Or at least I hope I did.

Once tagged out I figured I should get home, which I did, but only long enough to get my car keys and head to F2’s place to get him some clothes – they cut him out of all his, which seemed a little gratuitous – and head back to the hospital.

An hour or so later, we finally left the hospital, and F2 got to go home. The timing for this accident was particularly shit on account of the house party long ago scheduled for that night. Which went ahead – F2 wouldn’t have it not – but was a little put out by his absence for most of it; when I got there, shortly after he had, he’d just finished telling his hilarious tale to everyone there, before heading upstairs to rest a bit.

The party was very good, sadly for F2. I had a great time, though not too late a night – home by 2am or so.

On Sunday I went down to the Ski & Snowboard Expo in San Jose. I wandered around for a bit, checked things out, casually looking to get a snowboard set, and ultimately bought instead some ski boots. For roughly the same cost – $240 or so. If I have trouble again with my toes, with these boots, I’m going to hunt down the sales assistant and throttle him with their laces.

When I got home, I rang dad, at work, to see how pop was doing. I knew just from the few words Nikki said that something was wrong. It turns out, he passed away at what would have been around 2:30 this morning, my time.

Awesome.

And that pretty much brings us to the present. I’m determinedly not thinking too much about it right now, but there’s not much else to do that wouldn’t feel completely pointless or ridiculous or …

Pfft.

The older generations are really so selfish. ;)

There’s no ascii smiley, of which I’m familiar, that can express “I’m being facetious and irreverent in the absence of any other option”.

Now it’s just logistics, I guess – finding out when the funeral and everything else will be, and seeing about flying over there for it, if reasonable.

They didn’t play by the rules, though.

There ’twas also beer pong and flip-cup, which got everyone way to drunk way too quickly, and prompted Ross to eventually share his dinner with the rose bushes out the front of our place, when we eventually got home around ~1:30. Good thing I prompted us to leave when we did.

F2 has hinted at a sequel in a month or two, and Ross has announced intentions for a similar shindig here next month.

But, F2’s roommate Ryan, whom works at Google, snagged cheap lawn tickets, and it turned out there was a haphazard group of some dozen or more of us. Or something – at any given time F2 and I were accompanied by anywhere between zero and half a dozen people, non of whom seemed to be sure what they were doing, and all of whom seemed to be seeking better company elsewhere. Not insultingly, just… yeah, they were all over the place.

Augustana opened, whom I’ve heard of before – I think they toured through S.F. earlier in the year – but I can’t place a single song to them, so when the others were in no rush to get there to see them, I went along in laxadasialness (phonetics for teh win!). We first went to the Sports Page (bar) to meet everyone, where we also grabbed some bar burgers (lukewarm, a little soggy… exactly the kind of thing that would be craved irresistibly and, naturally, irrationally by very drunk people)… I think F2, myself and a women we met there were about the only people who weren’t from Google… and we were all from Apple. :D

We got on our way eventually, when we got word that Augustana had finished and Maroon 5 would be up after the interval. We thieved a trio of Google bikes from the bar in order to get to Ryan’s car… I’d forgotten that Google have a couple of thousand bicycles all about their campus, for people to use to get around. They’re mostly pink, in the classic 1950’s frame style, and in my case inexplicably had a basket, a big flag pole (sans flag) and, most entertainingly, peddles that weren’t even close to being attached straight. They rotated most disturbingly under foot as you peddled.

Oh, and fixed gear bikes, naturally, which I haven’t ridden since I was a kid, I think… very weird to be back on… I could barely resist the urge to skid every ten feet. :D Not that I needed to, since the whole setup was so irregular that just the idea of stopping suddenly was fearful, which it turns out was well-founded.

We ended up walking into the amphitheatre just as Maroon 5 took the stage. We found a reasonable spot fairly quickly – behind the special needs section, slightly off-centre, but basically on the lawn fence. I could see the stage largely without obstruction, but then at that distance it might as well be an ant farm.

In summary Maroon 5 were actually pretty reasonable… the lead singer actually does have more facial expressions than “I’m so god-damn sexy and go through fifteen women a day”, it turns out, and sang flawlessly. Not especially lively on stage – there’s only five in the band and it’s a bloody big stage, so it was oddly empty…

When the stage lights were lit on the audience I glanced around a few times, and discovered that – at least where we were sitting – pretty much everyone was either a high school girl, or a high school girl’s parents. It was kinda funny… but also a little disconcerting; did any of these girls even know who Counting Crows were?

We found out once Counting Crows started… within fifteen minutes half of them had cleared out. Most stayed to see how they were, for sure, but Counting Crows opened with an extremely soulful Round Here, very very ad-hoc, acoustic, live… to me it was too strong – like bad overacting, but, everyone else seemed completely taken by it; Ryan commented about that one bit in particular, the next day. But then subtlety never survives here anyway. :)

They went through some of their newer songs, of which I don’t have any great familiarity – they seemed to pick some obscure ones, imho – though they did play some of their more popular classics. Not Mr Jones, though, surprisingly – they slipped in a verse or so at one point, but that was it. They did play Colourblind, which was the only song that the teenagers seemed to recognise – the little hunting pack of girls right behind us were told very firmly to listen up ’cause this is the best song ever, by one of their number… so, I guess I have to give them damn kids these days some credit, though I bet she only knows it ’cause of Cruel Intentions…

They did the typical “okay, we’re leaving now, bye… no really, yeah we are, honest, guv”… then came back of course. It’s kind of cute the way every band here seems contractually obliged to do at least one fake finish per show, but, the effect is largely mooted by the fact that anyone who’s ever seen a live show in S.F. is well aware of it.

They ultimately finished up with Rain King, which while not my initial choice for a closer, was very very good.

By the end I was kind of… mixed, in feelings… I had high expectations, and I don’t think they were really met; certainly not exceeded, which is of course what anyone really expects when they have high expectations. Their performance was too ad hoc, too ‘live’… I’m all for a solid acoustic rendition of a studio song, with all the variations that entails, but… yeah, this was just too far. I just wanted to sit back and relax and rock out to some real solid tunes, not strain to some wild reinterpretation.

Mid-show wosisname, the singer, talked a bit about some of the volunteer groups they had given free admission to. He ended with one, which he described as most important [in his own opinion], which was some group associated with voting. Yep, voting. He actually gave a really eloquent little speech about the need for everyone there to vote in the upcoming elections. Heck, even I was inspired, and I hate that crap. That part of the show was way above any expectations. He certainly has a ridiculously successful career in inspirational speaking waiting for him, if he gets tired of the rockstar lifestyle. :)

It was a good night out, all in all; fun had by all, even if I wasn’t as satisfied as I could have been.

Also, wosisname looks quite a lot like Osama bin Laden. It’s true.

Two random points – when Maroon 5 left the lead dude threw his guitar way up in the air and let it crash back down onto the stage. It hardly seemed to hurt it, though – I don’t even think he snapped a string. It was amusing though. And he then handed it to some random girl in the front row, which is a pretty sweet souvenir… I didn’t even get a poster. :( Though, I presume she then had to hold onto the darn thing for the next two hours through Counting Crows et al as well, which might have been interesting… fighting off rabid groupies…

Another interesting point was when F2 and I were joined for a while by some random girl – friends of friends of Ryan, I think – apparently dubbed ‘Morgan’. She noted when she sat down that she didn’t want to talk, else she’d talk our ears off, and within a minute was indeed doing exactly that, to F2. She seemed really nice, a point which I think F2 also picked up on, ;), as he seemed to be looking for her for the rest of the show, once she disappeared ostensibly to visit the bathroom; she never returned. I didn’t ask overtly, though, and he didn’t deny overtly, either. ;)

So that was that… there are much worse ways to randomly spend a week night, for sure. :D

Anyway, that critical analysis aside, the meta recursed, what was this carnival? It was a variety of acts, at an otherwise nondescript place called the DNA Lounge, hiding in the industrial area around Best Buy, near 101. I would never have found it if I hadn’t been looking for it; it’s not the kind of area you’d expect night life in. Apart from rats, maybe.

The acts included miscellaneous dancing, a rambunctious singing clown troop, a pseudo-chorus-line dance troop, pole dancing, beat-boxing, sword dancing… acrobatics on hoops, up in the air… acrobatics with the two lengths of material, whatever that’s called… much the kind of stuff you’d find in a circus, or a somewhat morbid and satirical Cirque de Soleil. Or however it’s spelt.

It was quite entertaining, in any case. And now it gives me a label to apply to Damien, Anton, Jon, and so forth; I don’t know if they’d accept it, and it’s not a perfect fit, but it’s more accurate than “odd”, which was the reigning term prior. ;)

There was plenty of entertainment all round. Some of it came from Steve directly; e.g. when it was announced the pole dancing would be up next, he made a bee-line for front centre-stage, which the dude playing announcer aptly noticed, and gave him playful grief about afterwards, dubbing him “strip club guy”. :D

There were two girls there, in the audience, whom had on [presumably ;) ] fake moustaches. At one point they were making out for a while, which Steve turned around and looked at, laughed, looked at me looking at him seeing what he was seeing, laughed some more, then begrudgingly diverted his attention back to the stage. When talking about it afterwards, he was apparently completely unaware they were making out; he insists he laughed only at the moustaches. I guess it’s hard to appreciate the humour without having been in the moment, but, it’s just so unbelievable to me that he couldn’t have noticed. :)

Anyway, yes, it was quite weird by normal standards, but then it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen or lived with before, so, … I guess it was nostalgic, a little, though also the fact that I would inevitably leave and go home to somewhere completely elsewhere, where none of these people would be, allowed me a much more accepting perspective than had been available back living with Damien & Co.

It was also I suppose the latest night I’ve had in a long while; we left about 2:30am or so. I felt crap for the rest of the weekend though, as a result; the usual dehydration, exhaustion, and over sleeping…

Urgh, sometimes I really hate my stupid iPhone. Objectively it’s very, very good – but it’s those precious few imperfections which, by their very being as imperfections in something so close to perfect, ’cause so much frustration.

So, Saturday I apparently slept through the alarm. I’ve never done that before (the phone alarm). I’m not entirely convinced… it’s possible, but I think the volume was down low for some reason. I’ve never quite understood how volume is controlled on the damn thing; it’s not the same as on a computer… anyway, whatever, okay, it happens. But then Sunday, the alarm didn’t go off at all because of a bug in the Clock app which caused the alarm to be set for AM instead of PM. I hate that. It’s such a stupid bug.

It appears that oversleeping is my primary enemy, which is a sad irony, given my other current enemy of health is lack of sleep, thanks to Francisco’s penchant for watching weird TV shows, and listening to music composed entirely of bass drums, from midnight to 3am…

I’ve always thought of openers as friends of the band, getting to abuse said friendship to steal a few minutes of fame… i.e. definitely musicians, but not made for greatness. Not that it’s always been true, really – some, like the High Kings that played before Celtic Woman, impressed me enough to buy their stuff. But there’s always been an unmistakable gradient between the openers and the main act.

Not so much this time, though that’s entirely a compliment to the openers, not a criticism of Joshua Radin. Hana Pestle’s ‘Creep’ was quite good, and her own song or two she sang afterwards weren’t half bad. But it was her rendition of ‘Hallelujah’ that really got me. Now, this Rufus Wainright¹ classic has been covered nearly as many times – who am I kidding, way more times than even Stairway to Heaven, and most of them are terrible. Truly terrible. There’s maybe three or four that aren’t horrible, top of the list of which is now Hana Pestle’s. Sadly her live performance was substantially better than what she has available on iTMS or MySpace. 😞

After her came Erin McCarley, whom was also really good. An almost humorously strong voice for such a tiny girl. Alas she only has a single available on iTMS. I hadn’t heard it before – ‘Pony’ – but it’s apparently been around a bit.

Anyway, Joshua Radin was great, as expected. Seemed to get off to a shaky start, funnily enough, but quickly got into it and the whole performance was really good. I was a little disappointed for him at the somewhat sparse turnout, but from the way he himself talked about his career it sounds like he’s still on the up… I’d assumed he’d “made it”, so to speak, given I’ve heard several of his songs in many TV shows or movies or wherever else – heck, it was ‘Winter’ on Scrubs that had me discover him to begin with. But apparently not; he’s only been playing for five years, writing for three and a half. Pretty impressive.

And as always all I could do was shake my head and chuckle when he did the standard thing of saying goodbye and walking off stage, only to come back on a minute later… I don’t think I’ve yet seen any performance in S.F. where they don’t do that, yet I noticed a few people did leave in the interim, apparently unaware of how this works here. :) Anyway, his second last song was Winter, his first ever written, from [bad] memory. His last was apparently the first song he ever learned – I didn’t recognise it, and don’t know the name, but it was notable if nothing else because he jumped down off the stage, walked to the middle of the crowd, and played it entirely acoustically. Very well, I should add, especially given he quite had to raise his voice to be well enough heard by everyone.

So that was all really good.

1. Yeah yeah, so it’s originally written and performed by Leonard Cohen, but, I don’t consider that the definitive version. Sorry dude. 🙂 ↩︎

It was in a way actually unexpected. My landlady went back on the idea of selling the place, so the immediate impetus to move was neutered, but that she was thinking about it obviously placed me in something of a limbo. Though I had been looking, I sort of let the issue lapse for a while. I was amused when Ross, somewhat abashed, asked one night a week or two back if I would be cool with them considering smaller places, without me. I honestly didn’t mind at all; that he was asking at all was humblingly thoughtful. But anyway, then randomly last week he got in touch again about another place they were going to look at, a six bedroomer, to which he thought my attendance would be prudent. So I did, and I liked it. Not flawless – it’s a little pricier than I’d generally like, and it’s up in Redwood City, about ~18 miles from work, which is probably going to be a little tedious, though it’s not far from 280 so hopefully traffic won’t bite too much…

Anyway, it’s a big 35 square, three story place, which was immediately dateable to the 80’s thanks to the rather fugly kitchen. But it’s relatively pristine and new compared to the majority of places around here – it seems the average age for homes in the northwest valley and the peninsula is something like 40 – and I can see myself liking it there. No pool, alas, or any backyard to speak of really, but, you can’t win them all. The master’s ensuite does have a spa, but I very much doubt I’ll be going after that room; we (sans David, whom was absent) agreed on the street outside, having looked at it, to some form of tiered pricing for the rooms, and while the master would be very very sweet, the pricey would be sickly so. We’ll discuss that, naturally, in the coming week or two – we couldn’t with any honour make room allocations without David involved, obviously. That I still think we should have just voted that he get the smallest room. ;)

The move in date is the 15th or so, but I intend to retain my current place ’til the end of the month anyway, partly to give my landlady more reasonable notice, and partly because I’m thinking it will be significantly more convenient – I can switch over my mail, move things without a rush, buy things I need as I discover I need them, etc.

So yeah, that’s going to suck up a weekend or two this month, but, hopefully it goes swimmingly.

It wasn’t a terribly long show – hour and half or so, plus thirty minutes or so of the opening band, the name of which I cannot remember but whom were themselves pretty good – but then, they only have one album out thus far. They did play one or two new songs. What was quite nice was Sara’s commentary, ranging from random rambling to introducing the band members (two or three times each over the whole show) to talking about her inspirations for some of her songs. That part was particularly good – added a lot of depth to them. e.g. ‘Between the Lines’ is about loving someone that doesn’t love you back, ‘Fairytale’ was inspired by the end of Cinderella where she rides off for her honeymoon, without apparently a suitcase or any idea where she’s going – so the song’s from thinking about what comes next. And while she didn’t explicitly say it, it sounds like ‘Love Song’ was inspired by more or less the event it describes; she credited that whole crappy affair with launching her to stardom. And the new song, the name of which I didn’t catch, came from her thinking back to the time she walked in on her then-boyfriend cheating on her.

So yes, good stuff.

Note to self, also: if you’re going to a concert and haven’t listened to the band’s music in a few weeks, the drive up would be a really great time for a last minute cram. :)

Again, I liked the venue – sound was good, place was hot but not claustrophobic, and the music was good. I initially passed up Jimmy Eat World when I noticed them a month or so ago, but now I see they’re at the Fillmore and I regret not buying a ticket. They’re sold out now. :/

I’ve also come to suspect the wisdom of browsing the iTMS the morning after a concert; the ringing is gone now but everything still has that dull sound. But then, probably for the best, given I managed to scrape together another $70 of stuff anyway. Hooray for credit cards and flippant financial management! ;)

That or have a self-cleaning bathroom, like self-cleaning ovens.

There’s way too much concrete around here. I’m starting to understand now how all these Americans can die in so-called “heat waves” every year… the heat’s amplified so much.

Anyway. The weather broke yesterday afternoon, including a curious sunshower which I’ve never seen happen here before, that I recall, and today has been much more liveable – mid-20s with a nice breeze. I just got back from riding up to the reservoir and round and back, which in some respects was easier than in past, though was still exhausting… none too surprising since all I do presently at the gym is cardio stuff, no weights or anything, so.. but it was lovely, and now I don’t feel like I’ve wasted another weekend inside. I’ve been trying to convince Ross & F1 to hang by their pool with me, but F1’s girlfriend’s in town so they’re probably preoccupied (he’s not responding to IMs, though, I get that a lot ;) ) and Ross is working or somesuch. Bah!

I digress. The point of this post was meant to merely note that I saw Get Smart Friday night with Erick, Steve & Amanda, and The Love Guru last night with Erick & Steve. Followed by ice cream! As the weather’s warmed up I’ve begun to miss ice cream more and more… I’m day-dreaming of Napolitan ice cream with sprinkles and maybe even Ice Magic. I don’t even know if you can get Ice Magic here. I must investigate… :D

Get Smart was actually very good, and wosisname the main dude didn’t actually spoil it – far less subtle than the original 86, but, together with Anne Hathaway’s more sarcastic and ‘Miss Independent’ 99, it actually worked. The Love Guru was not so good.. amusing, sure, but, it was a little flat feeling in the humour.. kinda like the sort of thing you’d expect from a TV miniseries or something like Saturday Night Live (coincidence?). Not a waste of time, but, I doubt I’d bother seeing it again.

I think that’s about the news to date. I finally ordered a Wacom tablet last week, which should arrive around about Tuesday, so that’s my toy for this month. I look forward to seeing how decrepit the creative side of my brain now is. ;)

I kinda figured it’d be the same sort of deal as the previous party I’d attended with them (+Tom), so I wasn’t particularly interested for it in itself, but I also figured I need to get the hell out more, so, what the heck, right? It was only supposed to be two hours long anyway; I figured I could survive that long, worst case.

And I did, though, it kinda sucked. I was a bit of a third wheel, which was ultimately no-one’s fault but my own… but it really wasn’t my kind of scene. Mainly because it was predominantly a) web guys b) Y-Combinator startups and c) associated trophy wives and golddiggers. And so I’d do the usual “hey, so what do you do?” and they’d explain about their totally-original-and-completely-not-a-Facebook-rip-off social website, or whatever, and then reciprocate the question, to which my answer of ‘Apple’ would invariably yield a “ohhh..ohhhhhhhh” response, as in “oh my, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked… I hope you get better”. I was very much the dinosaur in that crowd, which while amusing at first has limited novelty value. It was also pretty ironic given that a lot of the people there had at some stage worked at Apple or some other large company, and their kind of elitist attitude may be deserving of the lifestyle choice of doing a startup, but certainly not by the value of their products – I mean, some of the people I spoke to have been in this startup scene for years and still have nothing to show for it other than some good tales and a “I Was There When Nothing Happened” shirt.

There were some cool people, nonetheless. All working on things I don’t know anything about nor particularly care for anyway, but certainly very talented. Unfortunately it’s a bit of an incestuous crowd, the whole startup scene, so everyone’s talking about people and events that I’ve never heard of or been to, and that dampens things as you can imagine.

As a result of this I eventually gave up trying to lead a conversation and just loitered around F1 & Ross. They ended up talking for quite some time with the guys (termed loosely; 1 girl included) from “I’m There”, which is actually a site concept I could definitely get into, though a cursory glance at it reveals it is seemingly broken. Ah well. :/ Anyway, I was saddened and amused by the fact that there were three of us, and three of them, but they also had their third wheel guy who just stands nearby and drinks slowly and says nothing. You could tell we were both thinking we should, like, talk to each other, or something. But we didn’t. It was hilariously cliché. :D

I put up with that standing-around-doing-nothing-for-ages for quite some time – about an hour longer than I would have liked – simply because Ross & said random girl where getting along rather nicely, which I was inwardly cheering Ross on for. But my patience is finite, so eventually we left, after a bit of prodding and poking on my part.

It was kind of a wasted night for me, in summary, and I was a bit cranky by the end of it, but, it was pretty much exactly like I expected, so I can’t fault anyone but me. At least I gave it a shot. I doubt I’ll bother with any further such events. It makes me wonder if I’m getting too old. ;)

It did actually give me something of an epiphany though, when I thought about it later… I realised that half the reason I can never really be bothered going out to a random bar and meeting girls, in the potentially-biblical sense, is that it’s not my idea of where to find love. I am too romantic, I have concluded, though with much amusement and sense of irony… I want to meet someone through some series of crazy events, in a crazy place, in the very cliché fashion portrayed by your typical Hollywood romantic-comedy. Meeting a girl in some random local bar seems like a great way to get stuck in a rut that’s “comfortable”, which I kind of feel I’ve done and the idea of revisiting it makes me ambivalent between pining and detesting.

Which furthermore has kicked me in my own arse to actually start looking at travel options this year – not expressly for that purpose, but certainly to facilitate it, perhaps. Thus far I’ve really only checked out Contiki’s tours, which seem like a good bet though I would like to try something a bit different perhaps, but… anyway… I started looking at Europe but the decent tours there are really 3+ weeks, which probably is not going to happen, especially if I want some time back in Australia as well… but then I noticed there’s an Egypt tour for nine days, cruising up and down the Nile, which sounds both timely, exciting and decadent. True, I’ve been trying to really focus on Europe, but, I have always wanted to go to Egypt – it was probably my most favoured destination as a child, come to think of it – and it does seem more convenient. Alas, kayak reckons it’ll set me back only about $6,000 or so for the flights… granted kayak is pretty useless outside the U.S., so I’m sure there’s much better available, but, it’s a pain because it means actual leg work. :/

But it’s a nice idea, anyway. I’ll be looking into it further this week, I’m sure.

Alas I can’t really say much about it, NDAs and all that jazz. The session I co-presented went quite well, I think – nothing more than a few misspeaks and whatnot on my part, which is hardly atypical. No, it went well. And now I will never have to repeat it or rehearse it ever again, which is also fantastic. :D

So, the bits I can detail… Monday night I met up with F1/Ross/Tom at the the Minna Gallery, which is actually a bar that happens to have some artwork around the place. Nice, but the official designation of ‘gallery’ seems overtly pretentious. Which kinda suited the event, I guess – there was some tech meat-market party going on there. It was really terrible, actually – lots of dudes standing around just trying to run into the wannabe-celebrities of valley tech. The shindig was hosted by Buzz someone, who is apparently… someone. Meh. Wil Shipley was there, as was Kevin Rose. He was notable only for the fact that he was perpetually surrounded by girls that could be at best described charitably as having low standards and realistically described as gold diggers.

Well, it wasn’t that bad, really – good to see F1/Ross/Tom again, and better than just heading straight off home, as I did subsequent nights because I had to rehearse. A little loud, though, for general conversation. There was also a funny moment at some point where I ran into a girl and we both straight away had the “wait, I know you” look, though we spoke only briefly and never figured out what the connection was. My leading hypothesis currently is that she was an intern last summer, but I’m far from certain. It was mainly just funny ’cause it was the whole “two strangers’ eyes meet across a crowded room” kind of thing. Admittedly, I was standing out more than usual since I still had my pastel blue Apple Engineer conference shirt.

The other event I attended was of course the beer bash (I skipped Stump the Experts, alas :( ). It was of course the biggest to date, and was really really packed – probably around ~10k people in Buena Vista gardens. The band this year was the Barenaked Ladies, which was somewhat surprising – I expected some random band I’d never heard of, like last year’s Ozamotley or whatever the heck their name is – so it was a pleasant surprise. And, they actually played really well, albeit not for that long – the beer bash is waaaaay too short now that it’s up in the city. :(

They did make one particularly funny joke that pretty much got everyone laughing out loud – during or after or whatever singing “If I Had a Million Dollars” they were talking about the Kraft Dinners line, and they said something along the lines of:

A: “Oh yeah, we actually did live on those Kraft dinners for a while…”
B: “Right, with the ends of little sausages in them. Yeah, it was a real sausagefest, like this.”
laughter
A: “How does it feel being the girl here?”
hilarity ensues

It probably doesn’t come off nearly as good in writing, but it was great. :)

The very first beer bash, three years ago, that I went to; I was immediately struck by the fact there were girls there. Not attendees, of course, but girlfriends and wives of the engineers. At the time I figured this was the big occasion where everyone brought out their trophy wives for show. I was a little more cynical and naive about the valley back then. :)

I caught up with a few people at the bash – including James (of Loopt), whom had been running the demo phone during the Keynote. He was pretty stoked about John Gruber’s comments about their demo, it was pretty funny. :)

But, yeah, that’s about it. Good, busy week, but it’ll be nice to go back to some more regular hours and to get back to work work.

As an addendum, last night I also caught up with F1/Ross/Tom for bowling & TGI entrees, as is their habit – they indirectly conceded that the only reason they really wanted to go there was because of some waitress they collectively seem to have a crush on. :P Bowling was good – I actually got over 125 in the second game, which is pretty unusual these days, so I was happy. The problem, alas, with mixing a bar with a bowling alley, one that serves substantial food of typical greasy American style, is that all the bowling balls are nicely greased up and very difficult to actually bowl properly. It’d be somewhat amusing if I wasn’t nearly convinced I could end up throwing the ball into another lane if I’m not careful.