Little Broken Bits

Around my house, electronic things haven't been working right lately. My computers are in bad shape, they keep crashing, and my attempts to correct the situation only worsens it. Tried to buy some more memory for my desktop box; it won't boot with the new RAM in it. The wireless adapter I bought for the TiVo isn't compatible. That's just a representative sample.

And my hands are taking a bit of abuse, too. Bled my knuckles reaching into the cabinet, then cut the same hand up on that crappy clamshell type plastic packaging. Accidentally deep fried part of the left hand, then scraped the burned knuckles fetching something from the fridge. I'm lucky I still have all ten fingers.

But despite all that, I now have cable, and tomorrow I'll have furniture, and a houseful of friends. So I'll bandage up the hands, and unplug the stupid electronics, and just get on with my day.

Inertia and Exile

It's funny how a week of forced vacation from exercise (I was in CA, and I didn't take my bike, because of the lack of a roof rack) can affect your ability to get back in the saddle. Couldn't bring myself to go unchain Fearless from the basement, and head out for a ride. Don't have the rollers at the moment, so I couldn't even be troubled to ride in the house. But I did manage to do my grocery shopping on foot.

And yes, grocery shopping. When my dinner plans for this evening got upended, I couldn't figure out what to feed myself. I always get this mental block about keeping leftovers around when I know I'm going to be gone or busy. With Thanksgiving this week, that's at least a couple of meals that are pretty well set. And what with the pending exile, I start to think "Oh, that'll just go bad before I can eat all the leftovers." So those factors sapped any inventiveness I had in mind for dinner.

What's that? Exile? Yes. That's right. I will very likely be heading back to England again in the next couple of weeks, for as long as four weeks in total. A lot of it depends on the holiday schedules of my counterparts there, as well as my own holiday planning. But the question is not "if?" but rather "when?" I don't particularly mind traveling (anymore)--I got used to it when I was doing it regularly, and even a trans-Atlantic jaunt is not terribly off-putting. However, I had thought that I was out of this phase of my work life. They say "be careful what you wish for" though, as I was just thinking "Gosh, it'd be nice to get up to 50,000 air miles this year, for status in '06." Whoops.

I'm Happy; Can I Blog?

After about six hours of driving, I finally made it back to Seattle. I am so happy to be back home. Already I can feel some of the effects--it's chilly outside, and I like that. My allergies aren't driving me crazy anymore, and my skin is no longer so terribly dry and itchy.

I'm loaded up on spices with which I can make my favorite Indian dishes. I scored some hooch, cheap, in California. (I should have driven a Trans-Am back, and called myself 'Bandit', but that would have required a bushy mustache, and too-tight jeans.) Plans are in place to hang out tomorrow night and watch my newly arrived copy of Madagascar. Life is good. Oh, and Cal won the Big Game. At the Farm! Haha!

One minor bit of crab, though. I found out earlier this week that I'll have to go back to the UK to visit a customer site, when I thought I was done with the travel gig. The questions now are not related to "if" but instead, "when?" and "how long?". And to ice that cake, there was a car on the drive today with a license plate that read O2BNDUK. No, I don't want to "B N D UK". GRR!

Don't Miss It

After spending a few days back in the Bay Area, I've realized that I don't miss it. Sure, I can talk about the sunny weather, and people in other parts of the country get jealous. But if the roles were reversed, I wouldn't be jealous.

I came to the Bay Area nearly 15 years ago. And it was during that period of rapid social development known as "freshman year" that I really got to know this place. Part of my memory association (nostalgia, if you want to call it that) with the Bay Area and Berkeley in particular is those cool, rainy fall days, football games with my college girlfriends, coming out of the computer lab into a crisp winter's night, etc. I didn't spend my first couple of college summers in Berkeley, so I didn't associate the area with that time of year. And being here for a week of 70 degree temperatures in November is just so completely jarring. I don't know if it's global warming or what, but this isn't the Berkeley I remember.

The collection of friends that I have here has, over the past few years, started to split apart and go its own way. Some couples got married, other couples broke up, some people bought houses, others moved far away. Grad school, new careers, etc have all tugged my friends to different places (whether physical or metaphorical). I've come into different spaces in my life, too. That's just the nature of life and growth and change. But it's another factor about what makes this place no longer feel like home.

What about the stomach, you ask? This week, I got my fill of most of the restaurants on my list. But today I had a craving for Seattle food. Yep, my new hometown has already imprinted itself on my appetite.

I leave for "home" (Seattle) tomorrow morning. I can't wait.

Collective Grumps

I'm going to have to take a hint from Krisanne here and divide this post into subheadings.

Yoga:
I went to yoga this morning; I dropped in on the class that I used to attend regularly. The instructor recognized me immediately and said "welcome back!" My delight at being greeted warmly quickly evaporated as we began the practice. This was the first time that I had done any structured yoga in at least six months. (By "structured" I mean being led by an instructor for over an hour, in contrast to 15 minutes of random poses or a couple Sun Salutations.) At one point as we're holding a Down Dog with bent elbows she says "See if you can continue to hold your elbows bent while bringing the bottoms of your shoulder blades together." Because of the exertion of holding the pose for so long, my "no" came out as a squeak. But overall, very happy to be somewhat more bendy again.

Road Rage:
My friends and coworkers who ride in my car here regularly comment on my road rage. I have no inhibitions about being vocal when I see someone doing something stupid and/or dangerous on the road. In Seattle, I can count on one hand (ok, maybe two) the incidents where I've felt like I had to use my horn or shake my fist at somebody 'cause they were being stupid. But within 15 minutes of driving Bay Area roads, I found myself back as Mr. Crabby. (To be clear, I only yell or honk at other drivers, nothing like cutting them off or chasing them down to freak them out or anything--that would only make the situation worse.)

No Off Season:
OK. If I still lived here, I'd have no excuse for not being a cycling badass. Spring would come, I'd be fat and slow, but with no good reason. Why? It's 74 degrees here today. Yep, that's right. It's sunny with a hint of breeze. Nothing at all to stop me from riding (except that my bike is 800 mi away). I talked to one of my coworkers (who used to race in his German homeland, years ago) about this weather. The conversation went like this:

Me: So, great weather for riding, eh? I wish I had brought my bike!
Claus: Yeah, but last weekend was crappy; it rained.
Me: Well, do you have a trainer?
Claus: You mean for indoor riding?
Me: Yeah.
Claus: Yeah. I've used it already (sic) four or five times in two years.

Bummer, eh?

Always Thinking With My Stomach:
I love to eat. There are many excellent restaurants in the Bay Area, and I used to frequent a few of them. As I drove down here, I mentally prepared a list of eateries that I wanted to hit while I was in town. At last count, the total was around 20, with me in town for four and a half days. It's so not going to happen. Oh well, have to pick the A-team and go from there.

Bay Area Traffic Is Awful

Ok, so Seattle has some pretty healthy choke points to delay you in getting from point A to point B (see 520 West over the bridge at 5:30 on a Friday, yum!). The thing about Bay Area traffic that just wins (where winning is a bad thing) is its scope. I was 45 miles away from SF today when the stop-and-go traffic began. For those familiar with the area, I was just south of Vacaville, coming in from I-5 when the brakelights began. The sprawl of it is what's astounding to me.

Later on, I passed one of the dynamic billboards that's used for posting information about traffic flow. It indicated a 20 minute travel time to Berkeley, and a 98 minute travel time to downtown SF. For contrast, if there's no traffic, I can get from my door in Albany (which is further than Berkeley) to downtown SF in 15 minutes. I can only imagine that it was holiday travelers returning from Tahoe or something, but in any case, it was horrible!

Not Fast Enough

Friday morning dawned sunny and (somewhat) clear. I siezed upon the opportunity to take a quick ride before breakfast, to really kick in the ol' metabolism. But I took too long getting ready, and I went further than I had planned, with the result that I ended up having to dodge skywater on my way back home. Fortunately, the rain only began about a mile from the house, so it wasn't too bad, but had I just been that much quicker, it wouldn't have been an issue.

Part of the reason that I took so long getting ready is that I couldn't decide what to wear. This wasn't the "Honey, our theater tickets are for the show that starts in ten minutes, let's go!" type of deciding what to wear, it was "How best do I prepare for the elements?" I could see that it was windy, and it was certainly going to be chilly. So I had to decide on "windproof" pants (but they don't have a pad, what to do?!), do I wear my rain jacket which is also fairly windproof, or do I wear a fleecy type layer instead, do I want sleeves, leggings, booties, what? I ended up with the AmFib pants and my rain jacket as outer layers. The trouble with the pants is that either the seam or the "breathable" layer on the backside of the leg is not windproof like the front is. And whether it's the Bernoulli effect or some other phenomenon making the wind whip past the outside of my legs faster, I felt a draft, right at the edge of that precious windproof barrier. And my gloves were sorely not up to the task, not to mention that they were still wet from playing ultimate the night before. Clearly, the alternate title of this post could be "crabbit complaints about cycling clothes".

The other speed issue I have to contend with is the dreaded D-word. "Dialup." Yes, on my way to the Bay Area, I've stopped to visit my mom in Roseburg, OR. Mom's lappy is hooked up to the 'net with a good ol' phone line. Fifty-six K just doesn't seem to get what it used to.

No Pictures For You!

Sorry, folks. The fixes to my phone problem have rendered my pictures unreachable for the time being. It'll just be a bit of wrangling to get the DNS sorted, but in case you had all waited until today to try to surf the photos, you're out of luck. Update: My domain registrar rocks, and the DNS is all fixed now. Surf away!

Yo! E.T., Don't Call Here....

For a week and a half now, I've been living without a phone. Well, not really, since I have my cell phone. But after my DSL installation was complete, I got my gear for the VOIP connection I had ordered. Great! Got it plugged in, waited for things to settle, and then I had dial tone! Yes! But within about five minutes, I lost my Internet connection from my home LAN. Uh? That was a quick fix, but then the VOIP didn't work. Uh, I have to choose one? I choose tha INTARNET! So I unplugged the phone rig and headed for the tech support web site....

Thus began the support saga. Only *today*, 10 days later, do I find out that the IP address used by the phone accessory is the one that I had been using for my server. Well, ok, sure. I get a second one for free as part of my DSL package, so let's see, reconfigure, change firewall rules, done. No web. No surfy. No iTunes Music Store. But the phone worked! Maybe I can go back to dialup. How messed up would that be? DSL connection for VOIP to use the phone as a modem to connect at what, 56k? NO! So I'm back to no phone, and my old IP address (so the photo links at right will still work), until I get the next magic trick from the tech.

Even a Ride Couldn't Fix It....

Tossed and turned most of the night; too much on my mind, I guess. Woke up in a black mood. I figured that it was the usual problem: low blood sugar. After breakfast, the clouds were still looming over my head. But the clouds outside were not, so I thought that maybe a ride would fix it. Got out my kit to cope with the weather, and got outside. I pushed hard to try to tire out the bad mood, but even that didn't work. Came back still grumpy. Now I guess it's time for some NIN or Limp Bizkit.

Not Hot Enough... Or Too Hot?

Last night, I hosted a little housewarming gettogether. But, because I plan these things foolishly, nearly all of my invitees couldn't attend, because of prior obligations. You know, midterms, out of town trips, living in another state, that sort of thing. However, it has to be said that this was the only weekend that I have free all month, and then it's December with holiday parties. So, to hold a housewarming in January, three months after I moved in felt, well, dumb.

Never one to be daunted by these apparent setbacks, however, I forged ahead and did the best I could to make my handful of guests feel welcome. Busied around the house picking up, organizing the place, and doing prep work for the real star of the show--the food.

Last night we began with some chips and dip appetizers, coupled with cream cheese stuffed dates, and cream cheese slathered between two slices of dry salami. After the guests arrived, I put the next appetizer in the oven--bacon-wrapped dates. This bought me time to assemble the pizzas. I dug into my Cheeseboard Pizza Collective cookbook for a few of the varieties that I always remember fondly. There was tomato, feta, and lemon zest pizza, roasted potato and onion pizza, and finally prosciutto, goat cheese and kalamata olive pizza. Jeff had to settle for stealing the olives from the last one, since he apparently "don't dig on swine...."

I'm pleased that the kitchen is large enough (with lots of counter space) for me to entertain in my usual style, which is by feeding people. The adjacent breakfast nook/dining area allows guests to loiter and chat while I'm busy in the kitchen. Two thumbs up for the new joint!

But the last tenants of this place were total weenies! I turned on the heater early to ensure that the place wasn't a popsicle inside when the guests arrived. The heater kicked into "ok, I'm programmed for such and such temperature on a Saturday afternoon". Sure, and I know the place runs hot, so I clicked it down to 66 (I knew I'd be baking, too). Around 6pm, the "evening" setting came on. I thought, "gosh, cooking is really adding to the heat in here, but why is the heater still coming on?" I checked the display, and the aforementioned weenies had programmed the "evening" setting for 78 degrees. Hello?! Reminds me of my grandma in Missouri--she'd heat to 80 in the winter, and cool to 60 in the summer. Pick one, and go with it, I say....