What isn’t Apple, audiobooks, or alcohol is probably cats.
News and activities related to my wife.
“Honey, honey, honey! Let me tell you my great idea!”
“Look at the mess your last great idea got us into.”
“Honey, honey, honey! Let me tell you my great idea!”
“Look at the mess your last great idea got us into.”
Reflections on the state of the house during preparation for our NYE Freecycle party.
Today Rochelle received her notification letter from San Jose State, informing her that the two papers she submitted for culmination of her Masters program had been accepted as passing.
Today Rochelle received her notification letter from San Jose State, informing her that the two papers she submitted for culmination of her Masters program had been accepted as passing. This was her last requirement for her program, and so she will soon be graduating, adding a Masters in Library and Information Sciences to her Masters of Tequila.
Congratulations Rochelle!
Windows XP turned a slight mistake into a permanent file deletion. That sucks.
I just borrowed Rochelle’s flash-based pen drive to transfer a file from her old PC to her new one (some contacts data we forgot in the original migration). After transferring the file, I selected a couple of old files to delete, and dragged them to the trash.
It turns out, for some reason I had a third item selected, a folder of Rochelle’s, and it got dragged to the trash, too. No big deal, right, just hit Undo, or go into the Recycling Bin and retrieve it, right?
Wrong. Windows XP deletes items from removable drives (or at least pen drives) immediately; they don’t sit in the trash, ever. So hopefully Rochelle has copies of the stuff in that was in that folder. Otherwise, it’s gone for good.
Thanks Windows.
Rochelle found a new soul food place in San Francisco through the Chowhound.com message boards, Miya, out in the Sunset. They’re terrific.
Rochelle found a new soul food place in San Francisco through the Chowhound.com message boards, Miya’s Place, out in the Sunset. It’s terrific. Our first visit I ordered something I almost never order out: fried chicken. The fellow at the counter said “it takes about 20 minutes” and that was all right with us. Rochelle ordered the smothered pork chop, and off he went to cook.
When our food arrived, I took one bite of the chicken, and I was in love. Rochelle got a bite or two, but that’s mostly because the chef brought out an extra piece he’d cooked for her. I devoured my serving of four pieces, methodically eating every bit of meat off the bones. Rochelle remarked that she’d never seen me eat like that. Amazing fried chicken, the best I’ve ever eaten. (Rochelle’s dish was excellent, too.)
A return trip for brunch was equally satisfying, with my fried pork chop disappearing under a similar attack, and really good hash browns (a rarity in SF). Rochelle loved her biscuits and gravy. Now if they have a great chicken fried steak, Miya will be the only place we’ve found the trifecta which makes for a perfect breakfast for us: chicken fried steak, biscuits and gravy, and hash browns.
Miya’s Place is on the corner of Holloway and Ashton, two blocks from Ocean, where the Muni line runs. Parking has been easy, and the place is always less crowded than it deserves to be. Highly recommended.
Austin is a great city. One of my favorite things there is Opal Divine’s Freehouse.
On our trip to Mexico’s tequila region last year, we met the proprietor of an establishment in Austin, Michael Parker of Opal Divine’s Freehouse. Rochelle and I were thrilled to hear about a good place for tequila in Austin, and at the trip’s end, promised to visit him at his restaurant when we flew back for Thanksgiving, less than a month later.
And visit we did! We hit Opal Divine’s our second night in town, and liked it so much that in spite of a compressed schedule visiting Rochelle’s relations we found a way to squeeze it in again right before our return flight.
Opal Divine’s is quite a bar, with a truly fabulous selection of most liquors including tequila, a stupendous selection of interesting beers from here and abroad, and what must be a U.S. Top 5 selection of single malt Scotch — certainly the best I’ve seen (and we have a great Scotch bar in SF, The Irish Bank).
Rochelle and I certainly know how to entertain ourselves in a good bar, but what takes Opal Divine’s up to the next level, to our only must-visit in all of Texas, is the food. Really, there’s no requirement for Michael to have such good food — decent pub grub would be more than enough to make the patrons happy and coming back to drink more.
His food doesn’t need to be outstanding for him to be successful — but it is. We were reminded of that again this evening, when we made everything right with our day by going and having the tasting sampler of Scotch to start (six single malts from all the Scotch regions), and then eating a great chicken fried steak and an incredible patty melt.
We flew to Austin for Thanksgiving with Rochelle’s family today. The flight sucked, due to horrible passengers.
We flew to Austin for Thanksgiving with Rochelle’s family today. The flight was horrible, not for the usual reason, not because of anything the airline did or because air travel the day before Thanksgiving is near chaos. No, it was just horrible passengers.
It all started so well. We made it through the security line without a huge wait or hassels. We headed to the bar with plenty of time to down a couple of double vodka tonics each. And we walked onto our plane without any issues of overcrowded overhead bins, etc. We medicated ourselves further, and then settled into our audiobook, thinking this was going to be an easy flight.
Then some skate rat hits my arm and tray table on his way past, and knocks my red wine into my lap. Not so much as an excuse me. The flight attendant was great, giving me club soda and another mini of wine, but I still had to sit in soaked pants for the rest of the flight, and until we got to our hotel room.
Then on our approach into Austin, we had to turn off all personal electronics, and thus listen to our fellow passengers. Crying babies are one thing (and we had that going in stereo), but two tech people from the Bay Area swapping dot.com-era stories, in over-loud, penetrating voices from the seats directly behind us sent Rochelle over the edge. My god, hasn’t everyone told or heard that same damn story a hundred times by now? It’s only interesting the first time — except, apparently, to the person telling it to the stranger sitting next to them, who is only pretending fascination so they can tell their own story next.
Note to dot.bomb participants and victims: This is 2004, it’s been three years, your stories are officially boring. Find something new to talk about, please!
Billie has developed a new trick: hailing cab rides.
Billie is our littlest, sweetest cat. She’s a shut-in. Trapped in our bedroom by a roaming Basta policing the hallways (and any other room she’s not been chased out of), and frequently harrassed by a doting Luigi, who just wants to be her bestest friend, Billie retreats from the world when we’re not home, spending her time on her cat condo, under the bed, or in the closet.
That doesn’t mean she’s lost her curiosity, or thirst for adventure. She loves to visit other rooms in the house, especially the office, where we’ve set up a semi-permanent (but movable) bed on top of the printer, close to Rochelle. And she loves to go out to the back deck, and chew on whatever plants Rochelle is currently torturing.
But, how to get to other rooms, or the great outdoors, when the highways and byways of the house are controlled by the Evil Basta? There’s really only one way that’s safe from ambush: a cab rid on our shoulders. Billie loves to jump up — from the bed when she can, from the ground when she must — and cling to our shoulders, neck, or back, and be transported at a safe altitude to other, more exiting places. We’ve come to recognize the look on her face that says she’s coming aboard, and usually manage to crouch down lower, so her leap doesn’t involve quite as much claw when she lands.
The thing is, we’re often not in the bedroom. Mostly not in the bedroom. So, when we’re too far away, she’s taken to hailing us.
It’s a distinctive, insistent lowing that borders on a whine. She’s used it for some time to tell us she wants something, but it’s usually been food or attention. We know what it means in a general way, but lately it’s been more specific: come get me, and take me somewhere. Her chariot arrives, she leaps aboard, and the game’s afoot. Fun!
Tonight, she even started giving directions. When I came to pick up my fare, she kept on yelling, especially when I headed in the wrong direction. When I finally realized she wanted the back deck, she quieted, and lept off immediately when she arrived at her intended destination.
No tip.
“We?” “Yeah. I’ll watch.”
“We?”
“Yeah. I’ll watch.”
(In response to “We need to take out the trash.”)
“I’m an adult. I’ll be fine.”
“I’m an adult. I’ll be fine.”
I have a new girlfriend. Rochelle was surprisingly calm when I told her.
Rochelle was surprisingly calm when I told her. Of course, I spent the evening cooking with her, and made sure she’d drunk half a bottle of wine, and then we watched Arrested Development, which never fails to make us laugh. So she was in a good mood. Which, I have to say, I planned carefully.
So, then I told her, and she was a bit surprised, but then she just laughed. I guess she was simply accepting the inevitable. I’m a lucky guy.
Here’s a picture of my new sweetie.
That candy bar, that is…
Different kind of bar than I usually spend time with, but I didn’t do half-bad. The Name That Candy Bar game lets you look at a cross section of candy bars and guess what they are.
I felt like I did pretty well, considering a lot of the bars are not available in California. Some used to be, but there were quite a few I’d never even heard of. “Mr. Big”, anyone?
My overall score was:
However, of the 14 I missed, 10 were candy bars not in California, most of which I’d never heard of, or eaten even once. So, I only couldn’t identify 4 candy bars out of 14 that I should have known. Rochelle was impressed. (Well, maybe impressed isn’t quite the right word…)
Anyway, an amusing way to pass a little time…
Some of what we’ve been up to for the last four months or so…
Been awfully quiet here in the past few months, with my last active posting going on in February. That was when we started the painting project for the bedroom, which we did eventually mostly almost finish. Our original intent was to move onto the parlor and office, which are connected through pocket doors that are nearly always open.
We didn’t do that. Instead, we decided that we couldn’t take the various stains on the light blue-gray carpet that covered half the house. (Two years ago we got rid of the other half, by putting in hardwood floors, which we are still in love with.) Time for new carpet.
Rochelle and David had already spent months finding just the right pattern and color, so when Rochelle’s twice-yearly ESPP kicked out a chunk of change, we decided to go for it. This involved moving everything out of three rooms (including, once again, the bedroom) for a day. And because of the noise and the strangers in the house during the installation, the cats liked this less than the painting. Let’s just say that Billie didn’t stop at puking this time.
But the carpet was fast, in no small measure because we weren’t the ones installing it. We were moving furniture back into all three rooms by the end of the day. We got a lot of the big stuff, but three months later, we still haven’t moved everything back to where it should go.
This is because we’ve decided not to move anything until we’ve decided where it really belongs. Which means we’re throwing out crap, giving away crap, selling off crap, taking crap down to the basement, etc.
To go with the lovely new carpet, we also bought all new furniture for the office. It’s all from IKEA, so it was reasonably cheap. Two bookcases, a three-level horizontal filing cabinet, and two huuuuge new desks for probably less than a grand, and the office is far more usable. And if we ever actually paint the office, it’s going to look really fabulous, too. Which will be good for me, since it looks like I will continue to be self-employed (gainfully, really) for a while. It’s almost to the point to where I could have clients visit!
In the last few weekends, we’ve moved a bunch of stuff to the basement, taken a bunch of stuff from the basement and either thrown it out or taken it to Goodwill, and generally spent a good 30+ hours working on house organization. It’s starting to feel good!
We also had a friend, who is a professional contractor, come and paint, stain, and varnish our brand new back door, which is really beautiful, with small glass panels framed in wood, and lets far more light into the house. The new door framing and brand new weather stripping mean it seals far better than the old door; in spite of being glass, the kitchen is actually 10 degrees warmer than it was before. This is going to be great this coming Winter.
Anyway, all of this is to catch up, and explain a little bit about why no posting. We’ve been really, really busy!