bloggedy blog blog blog

okay there's totally a pigeon in this coffeeshop. i have no idea how it got here as the doors are closed. it's sort of cute and people are chuckling at it rather than trying to shoo it out. even the cops here for their morning coffee.

in sadder news, keri has ceased to date me. for reasons which are not my fault, she says. so, .. bleh.

i found myself at a bar in the marina last week for a friend's birthday party. before escaping, i found myself in a discussion with an extremely drunk woman about textiles. the lady was some sort of international traveler who dabbled in fashion design. while visiting thailand she came to commission a run of clothing at a shop there. she told me how cute the girls who worked there were and how conditions were so much better than other places and especially better than the houses of prostitution from which the girls had been rescued from. even so, she was more than a little bit peeved that they were running late on the run of clothes she recently ordered... for $200 total. huh. i asked her if there was any such thing as Fair Trade textiles like there was coffee. like american apparel but with the 3rd world. people would be into that shit, i think. she shook her head and sighed like what a silly little boy i was.

bike suk

a better weekend on two wheels. i'm down to just my heavy training wheels after the crash at brisbane, but i did get some nice new handlebars. chris from the shop forbid me from riding on my old ones after seeing the shape (literally) they were in.

did these things factor in to my result at wente this weekend? eh, maybe. I came in 8th on saturday at the road race out of 90 which got me a bottle of wine and a tshirt. there was a breakaway which stuck midway through the race and finished about 3 minutes ahead of us. not feeling like i could do much in a break as my endurance is still not in top form, i was content to sit in the pack and sprint for whatever was left.

yesterday at the crit a bad crash happened on my back wheel. the course was sketch city. my nerves shot, i spent the rest of the race hanging around in the back trying to find a wheel that i didn't think would fall over. there were at least 2 other crashes before the race was finished and it took emergency crews 25 minutes or so to clear the course. the next race was crash-free, the fear having been put into them. i did win another bottle of wine in a preme early on there. so not a total loss.

and catching up, menlo park crit was a couple of weekends ago. not a super interesting course. 11th out of 30-40. eh.

The caltrain is moving at ~5mph right now. My fellow passengers look bored but mostly unconcerned. A woman calls someboy on her phone asking for any news of the delay. I don't think she got any news. I'm sure they same thing is running through mine, hers, and most everyone else's mind here: I hope it's not another suicide.

2006 has been a bad year for people, but why? Yesterday I experienced a different sort of medical-transportational delay. On the top of Mt. Tam, crossing the seven sisters on the way back down, someone had, well, gone nuts. He couldn't stand. In between attacking cars and people, he would fall over and hit his head. A few larger men in the gathering crowd were attempting to hold him down with mixed success. Floating back to where I stood 50m away, I could hear him yelling "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Eventually a ranger came with handcuffs and a stretcher and traffic moved again. *shivers*

Psychotic breaks aside, it was a lovely ride. I haven't been on Tam since the race last year. My knee, though it felt weak at times, held out and still feels okay today. Incredibly good news seeing as I went on a 50 mile fixed gear ride on saturday too.

race face

last week i rode my first advil-free race this year and it felt great. And then I got caught in a crash, bah. 4 stitches in my chin and some damage to my bike. frustrating, but not terrible.

and also...

new girl on the horizon. media blackout for a while, as usual, but I will say that she is very nice and likes bike.

As promised. Every band I saw or should have seen at SXSW2006

Bands I saw

I went to a chiropractor last night who also practices ART. He expressed great confidence that he can fix me and in fairly short order. I am pleased.

It's the first time I've been to a doctor like that and it was kind of fun. Like being tuned up all machine-like. Also hurts quite a bit, but that never stopped me from doing anything.

Doc also sez I should be cross-training. Which I know, but.. what other sport would I do? he suggested yoga. 2x a week. That seems like alot of yoga to me but I'm willing to try it because it sounds alot more fun than, say, running and doesn't involve a gym. Any suggestions for studios? Some kind of Hawth (Hoth, Hawth, Haath, sp? definately not bikram) he says.

recap

in lieu of a long and rambling blog entry catching up to what i've been doing the past few weeks, here's a long and rambling email i wrote to my father that does same thing. no use writing it twice, right? Next entry I plan on giving y'all a huge list of bands i saw and wish i'd seen at southbysouthwest. stay tuned.

Yess, I've been mightily busy and greatly apologize for my silence. Major happenings:

1. I moved! ... 3 blocks away :). I'm living with just Andrea and Joel now and the place is nicer and has a living room and (gasp) washer/dryer and a non-crazy landlord. I moved on the 1st, but my room is still boxes and piles everywhere. I've yet to spend a weekend at home.

2. Races. Which I see you've been following along with :). Nothing spectacular for me. The McLane races were a big wake-up call for what I need to improve this year (pack skills and I need my endurance back). Central Valley Classic in Fresno was just frustrating. In the road race , I got a flat halfway through and didn't manage to get it taken care of in time (despite the support vehicle behind me that came through with a spare wheel) and lost the pack. I finished that lap alone and then just called it quits. It was a boring race anyway. For me. The afternoon races had rain and hail and hellish conditions but I missed all of those. The next day, was a crit, and due to some bad instructions we missed the start of our race. Very frustrating. At least the race organizers let us jump in 2 laps into it (but not place) and refunded our money. Since it didn't count, I took it easy on the last lap and let the sprint go. Pretty frustrating as it was the sort of race I excel at (180°hairpin forces everyone to stop and then sprint out of the corner). I could have easily placed I think if I hadn't backed off when I did. Someone also crashed unassisted in front of me and another rider going into the last lap which messed up what could have been a decent breakaway strategy we had going. C'est la vie.

3. The knee is an up-and-down affair. It was feeling not-so-good on day 1 of central valley. But then after the race I had Rob, our massage therapist sponsor, take a look at it and work me over. He gave me a better run-down of what was wrong and did a few things to help. I actually felt better the morning before the race the next day than I did before the race that day. Unfortunately he works out in Alameda or I'd go to him. I do have an appointment today with a chiropractor/physical therapist who I hope will set me firmly on the healing path. I spent most of last week not riding or sitting cramped up in public transit for long periods of time which helped alot too. But wait, why would I not ride at all for a week?...

4. South By South West (SXSW)! I took a little trip down to Austin last week and had a grand old time. Saw too many bands to keep track of and met all sorts of fascinating people. It's probably the longest pure vacation I've had in over a year. Austin is a neat city made even more neat by being overrun with bands, music industry people, and giant music geeks like myself. And did I go alone? no I went with...

5. Girl! ...and then no girl. I'd been seeing this girl Lindsay for the past month and half or so and it was going really well when I decided to come with her to SXSW. A week traveling together was not nice on our budding relationship and we returned still friends, but single once more. We might try again.. it was one of those wrong place/time sorts of things. I'm a little sad, but it's for the best.

I'm sick. Hella sick. I have The Black Lung, the plague, the whatever virus that's been taking out every single person I know lately. I was fine until one particularly cold, wet race last weekend after which it just stomped me. I've taken 3 out of 4 days this week so far as work-from-home days (by which I mean I actually worked) and probably should have taken all 4. Unless I get miraculously better by tomorrow I might have to miss Snelling road race on Saturday which would be tragic. I like that race.

This is going to be a terribly bike-centric post. Sorry in advance. I'll dispense with the non-race-related content first before getting too deep into it.

movement

I'm moving. Not very far. About 3 blocks actually. It's going to be just joel, andrea and i with space leftover for a living room (finally!). Also, the landlord is not crazy, which is I think the biggest feature. It does have carpet, however... can't win 'em all. Speaking of crazy, some prospective tenants of our old place dropped a note in our box the other day saying basically, "Wow this flat looks great, but about the landlord... He's kind of weird. Is he okay?" I let Omid field that one.

In other passings, Rusty is no more. He met a tragic, embarrassing end a couple of weeks ago and is now little more than a twisted frame taking up space in my room. Pour a little out for Rusty, 'kay?

bikesuck

Okay, onto the races. I came in 4th in the final Early Bird Criterium which was enough to get me the Category 3 upgrade. After hemming and hawing a bit and wondering if I should stick around in the 4s and help the team (with cries of sandbagger ringing in my ears), I took people's advice and sent in my upgrade the next week. One week after that (last weekend) I rode my first cat3 race. It was a small, short, very difficult race and it was drizzling. The field size and distance mean it wasn't worth any upgrade points, but it was fun. Here's my report, for those with time on their hands:

Sausalito

Okay, so I had a list of excuses for why I was going to drop out after 3 laps or so. I'll give you them first and then get into how the race actually unfolded:

I felt terrible in the first lap. I wasn't feeling the pack, my focus wasn't there, and I was freezing cold. I pushed on, practicing the above excuses and apologizing for my scratchy brake to those around me. I remember what Kyle, Steven, and others had coached me on about the course: on the rough sections, stay to either side where the pavement is unbroken; the descent can be taken at speed if you start it on the outside; use your momentum from the backstretch dip to take you up to the stairstep on the big climb in the big ring. You can do the same if you've got a good line coming into turn 1 and make it halfway up the first hill in the bigring before you have to downshift, stand, and pump. I found that I liked the right side best on both climbs.

But I didn't figure all of that out until midway through the race. After lap 3 or so I looked around and saw one guy out ahead of me, one behind me, and nobody else very nearby. With still zero confidence, feeling like I'd blow my wad any minute, I held back and let the guy behind me catch up a lap or so later. Together we caught the leader and became one breakaway. One that was continuously splitting apart and raggedly reforming every lap, but a breakaway nonetheless. At some point people started calling out the gap time. 18 seconds and growing, what? Confidence building. And then I saw 3 laps to go with the pack nowhere in sight.

By this time I'd figured out that if I crested the hill a bike length or so ahead of the guy behind me, I would hit the straightaway 10-20 or so lengths ahead. Maybe he didn't like my line, maybe the scratchy brake was freaking him out, whatever, I was going to use it. Coming into the last lap, we topped the first hill together, then into the dip, and then I just gave it everything I had to crest the hill first. Cranked it into the big ring smooth as I could, dove into the descent. I was feeling pretty lightheaded and hardly there but I'd nailed that descent so many times I just rode it on autopilot. Looked behind me to see I had a gap, dug for 100m or so to see that i kept it, then sat up and rolled through.

The End.

well, only a few more hours of self-inforced sobriety. almost time to pat myself on the back and indulge in a well-deserved minor binge. my goal going forward is going to be a maximum of 1 medium-heavy drinking night a week with a two-drink maximum being enforced on every other day. this may seem permissive, but looking at my consumption in say December... well lets just not look at my consumption in December, shall we?

so how was it? it was fine. it's nice not having hangovers and remembering all of my nights. there were no random drinking nights. i don't necessarily miss them. alot of those were just about filling up dead time anyway. many of the others were about venting our grievances among friends in an environment where boisterous yelling was acceptable. coincidentally, there hasn't been much need for that this month, through no fault of alcohol.

sober at parties wasn't bad. it took me a bit more effort to be social, but people still like to talk in that setting and so long as there were interesting people to talk to, i wasn't bored. sober at bars is generally about as boring as the music is loud and the conversation is interesting, unsurprisingly. my inclination towards shouted conversation is rather low while sober.

i saw more movies this month. i played more board games. i went out to eat with friends. i had late-night conversations. i read half of how to win friends and influence people and even successfully applied some of the principles. these are all good things i hope to continue. i ate alot of ibuprofen.

knees, if you please

and speaking of ibuprofen, i'm still taking it. or rather, i went off of it for a while and tried to ride like my knee was fine again and had to go back on it. i received alot of conflicting advice. i think i'm going to find another doctor.

warning: bikesuk

and i kept riding. racing, mostly. i think i went on exactly one non-race ride on my road bike all month due to general aversion to knee-usage, and it was only for an hour and a half. i raced 4 times, however. this is a really bad training plan, btw. one of these races was a 44 mile road race up and then down a huge hill. i ran out of gas on the climb, got dropped, and thought i might not even finish. and... then instead i came in 6th. i've got my traffic-light sprint largely to thank for helping me pull that out of my ass.

i also placed 3rd in two earlybird crits. as much as i say i'm just going to take it easy this race, i'm not sure i'll ever be able to do it through the end. the last 3rd place i actually did take it kind of easy: i was the designated sprinter in our team plan for that race, so after some screwing around early on, i just sat in and let my teammates pull me around to where we needed to be until the last lap where they led me out into the sprint.

so last weekend was 2 races. it was also critical mass which i wasn't planning on taking part in.. but then there it was on my way home.. and then there it was going down the twisty part of lombard street, and then there i was going down it too on my brakeless fixie. my knee was not nearly as impressed by that feat as the bike nerds behind me. sunday night i put my wheel with the big cog back on the bike with the brake. and started taking the advil regularly. and icing my knee. i've got a lead on better doctors...

i am up for the earlybirds, it turns out. knee be damned. as always seems to happen, racing doesn't hurt me nearly as much as just walking/biking around town. so i feel okay about doing this. when racing i fall into a little zen realm where every energy expenditure is carefully measured and rationed for maximum smoothness. i'm back to riding brakeless, too, which i can't really rationally defend, but at least i kept the 48-18 ratio. spin spin spin.

i think i can check off some of these

i'm out of Girlfriend again. this would be status quo, except that last week (only) i wasn't. these are the times that i give the internet a great big hug and tell it how much it has meant to me all these years, even tho i never say it. i check my email late 2 wednesdays ago and find a myspace message from some girl saying basically, "hi, i'm in town for a week and i'm looking for fun people to hang out with. also, i'm perfect for you." i did a quick bit of research before replying something along the lines of, "nice to meet you. are you married yet?"

a couple of days later i found myself in bed with said girl discussing gear ratios and computer languages. referring to said topics she says "is this weird for you?" "well... kinda. but it's really hot." so that went on for a while before she returned to boston and was very, very nice. le sigh.

it's not a resolution, it's a Challenge.

month-o-sobriety is going well, i think. gffw kept me busy all last week, so not much of a challenge there. i'm keeping track of the price of coca-cola at various bars. it seems to range from free (if your friends are drinking) to $3. i have, in fact, purchased how to win friends and influence people but haven't gotten further than the forward yet.

i have yet to do sober karaoke. i have yet to go a'macking at terrible bars in the marina. i have yet to witness the life-cycle of a raging, slobbering house party. of those things i see the last as most likely to happen, but don't give up hope for me yet.

so my teammate has given me an alternate prescription for tendonities. it involves taking a fucklot of advil for two weeks and riding like normal. that is what i am doing now. fuck you tendonitis. i did not get you a present for your birthday.

so, who's up for the earlybirds?

for a variety of reasons, i'd been thinking that i should take a month off of drinking at some point. so, after blacking out the first 4 hours of so of 2006 it does begin. the idea is that i'll continue to go out and even buy other people drinks and such, i just won't partake myself. goals here include:

so, either i'll improve my life in some measureable way or i'll have alot of free time for a month and get lots of work done. i see it as a win-win situation.

the pirate lady who cuts my hair likes to tease me about what a furry old man i'm going to become someday while she trims the insides of my ears (yes). she also trims my eyebrows and understands what i mean when i say that my haircut is "too round." she is a good one and my hair is short and nice again.

yes you love the blog-from-airport entries that always seem to happen around this time of year. please enjoy another one.

going on hour 5 in this airport. just 3 more hours after that. how did this happen? it is a long-ish story. i'm fairly certain that it is not entirely my fault but i will share some of the blame for being a little absent-minded. i will lay the majority of the blame on the airline companies for being big, complex, incompatible, innefficient machines with very bad failure modes. for about an hour i had two ticket agents working simultaneously both on phones and computers, sometimes trading duties so that one person held both phones (on hold) while the other plied different avenues. i'm not going to go into great detail on how this all happened, but here is a hint: if you are ever forced to buy paper tickets, make sure they actually get to you. so far as i can tell mine were never sent out. Ship via: UPS and arrive in 2 to 3 business days. Tracking Number: Not yet available. Oops.

otherwise, this has been a pretty good vacation. there was an awful lot of drinking, as maine is wont to inspire. as a bonus, most of this was with highschool people i hadn't seen in a while. i now know most of who never made it out of yarmouth, who has kids already, who's gay, who died, and who actually did something with their life. it is a fun game that gets longer each time you do it with different people who have more gossip to add to the pile.

i was about to write that i didn't do a scrap of work, except that that isn't true at all. i did work more days than not, it just wasn't productive work. "you have to check this thing right now!" sez the emails. "it's still broken. carry on." i reply. the days that i did not login i tended to regret.

catching up on old times, drinking, working, ... what else? there were family times. i managed to sleep past noon every single day until today (trying to stay on westcoast time...). i played alot of sudoku. i didn't exercise and ate half what i normally do. my knee still sucks. the end.

i had one of those momento mornings today where i wake up feeling kind of lost, take in my surroundings, and slowly replay the events from the night before in reverse until i can figure out who this person is getting dressed beside me and why i took her home. answer? alcohol. very, very cheap alcohol and far too much of it. she thanks me for not taking advantage of her (really?) and eventually leaves. i recall that i have her number and had at one point promised to call. i don't really want to but i don't want to be that kind of asshole either so we'll see.

p.s.: andrea is evil. but we knew that.

tendonitis is not my friend. tendonitis is not invited to my pizza party. tendonitis has made a home for itself in my left knee.

"well, the good news," says my doc, "is that it gets better." how long? "well, that depends on how easy you can take it. anywhere from a couple of weeks to... well sometimes it just drags on forever." will a knee brace help? i'd purchased one a day previous with some hopes. he tells me a story about tennis elbow, about how players who suffer from it sometimes wear an armband around their injured limb. this doesn't actually offer any support, but it reminds them that the injury is there.

i leave his office with a prescription for horse-pills of iburprofen which i fill because it seems like a good way to get my insurance to pay for a fucklot of ibuprofen. like the tennis players, i'm wary of actually using the stuff because the pain itself is a constant reminder to stay off the knee. instead i wince alot and bike with one leg whenever possible (constantly monitoring the health of my other knee).

as i'm sitting in cafe abir trying to get work done, spandex-clad bikers go by and i silently cry, "i'm so much faster than you!... when i work!" *sigh*

i think that today the people whose party it was are going to wake up and go, "wait a minute, those guys were assholes!" but somehow we did not get kicked out at the time. There may have been incidents among adamnit, dave, some friend of dave's, and myself of:

i hit my head on the ground. adam was given a bloody lip. dave-friend was kicked and punched repeatedly for causing both of those things. and made-out with, leaving a trail of blood and saliva running down her chin which is my primary image from that night. my secondary image of that night is seeing this 20 year old dude that i'd met earlier sitting in the corner hugging himself shortly after i delivered the sad news that the girl he had been hounding really wished he would stop following her and creeping her out. the girl had asked me to tell him some lie or another to get him away but i figured, why beat around the bush? i don't know why there were weiner's lying around but one should note that leaving an open pack of weiners lying around a party is a good way to get a pack of weiners tossed all over the room. i'm just sayin'.

i think it might just be the coffee. but i woke up in a great mood today. my knee is getting better and people don't scare me so much just now. i rode to the train with both legs the whole way and it didn't feel like there were gremlins gnawing at my kneecap. and this too shall pass...

ack it has been sufficiently long since my last post that i'm afraid of posting really inconsequential items here lest their rarity be mis-interpreted. so i'm starting this entry by saying, no, nothing really important has happened lately. in fact, i don't really have much to say. i just wanted to draw a line now so that other posts in the near future will seem that much more casual.

things that have happened

lets work backwards. my knee hurts. it hurts because i rode 110 miles in one day after bashing it on the ground two days prior. i didn't ride this distance for any particular reason other than 2 of my teammates were doing it and inviting anyone else along. the ground-bashing occurred on monday when, while crossing 8th ave from the park, another dude on a bike ran the red light and smashed full-on into my back wheel. the wheel was destroyed and (jumping forward momentarily) i took it as an excuse to learn wheel-building and have already laced up a new one (jump back). the incident also gave me a chance to try out this great method of emergency wheel straightening i'd heard about wherein you pound the fucker on the ground in key spots until it can pass through the stays sans friction, allowing you to ride home but not much farther.

prior to that i engaged in some manual labor for a couple of days. cause was this cyclocross race my team helped put on because we have to help put on at least one race a year to remain an official team. cyclocross is alot like mtn biking except that you do it on bikes that look like road bikes and sometimes you've got to jump off and cary your steed while you climb up a too-steep hill or jump over a barricade. fun to watch. my body is not used to manual labor and very vocally let me know. in the middle of those two days there was a party for a kitten who desperately needed all of her owners' friends to get very very drunk and miss the thing they were supposed to be at at 6am the next morning.

also kiss kiss, bang bang is a good movie and you should see it. the end.

i'm sitting in a coffeeshop in portland, maine and listening to Sole on the stereo. the mix so far has been mostly stuff i've got on my computer and some things i haven't heard before, but should have. on the way over here i stopped by a tiny used bike shop that had a slightly-beaten bianchi pista parked out front. this is the first time i've stayed in portland (my younger sister now lives there) while visiting the family. there are all kinds of people everywhere, i know. [sub]culture is not so foreign or absent here as i like to pretend... there's an art school downtown. there are hip kids. it's just that the city is very, very small.

argh, i don't think there's much i can digest from the events since my last post. i partied hard, worked harder, and occasionally biked even harder than that. nothing really has changed. still at the same job. the system is gradually improving as things generally do when you put enough work into them. still trying to hire more people to replace me.

still seeing brooke here and there. i hope something happens there but i don't want to push things; there's some baggage-type issues i've got to tread carefully around there.

among the more notable party-times lately (of which there've been far too many, i think), was halloween weekend. one night i dressed as a dude from Insane Clown Posse which prompted alot of "are you..?" "yeah." "goddamn i hate that band." "me too." halloween itself i ran out of time and just wrote LAME on my forehead. the interactions went something like this: "and you're a cowboy and you're... lame." "yep. sorry." it was actually pretty fun. last night was the Metric show which rocked pretty hard followed by Future. a girl i met there may call me about a bike ride sometime which i would not be opposed to.

so andrea and i came up with the best pickup line ever. you walk up to the girl who's with her guy and go "hi. is that your boyfriend?" "oh... I'm better than him." and then you'll probably have to slug him. he'd do the same to you.

after striking out on the party hunt saturday night, adam and i were sitting in a neightborhood dive near my house and finally put into action his local tourist plan. we made the discovery on our trip north that it's incredibly easy to meet random strangers at bars if you just tell them that you're from out of town and looking for fun. why not do it at home, he said.

we only managed to keep it up for like 20 minutes before we had to tell them. we were having trouble keeping a straight face when they told us which bars to go to and why. it was a good introduction anyway. this caught us onto the party train which led us eventually to the super-unofficial afterparty from some slutty castro club night. the real after party was down the street, but our new-found friends diverted the steady stream of gay men into where we were. classy. luckily, the person who's party it was was cool with that. there was a jug of spiced wine which was smuggled onto the porch and became the main contributer to my demise. i high-fived alot of impeccably dressed men and talked to a woman dressed as the pope for some reason.

i woke up this morning with my clothes and shoes still on. my glasses were off because i had managed to break them in two in my sleep. doh. 1 message on my phone: our new friends trying to rouse us for the breakfast we'd planned the night before. this is how i found myself eating eggs and playing with a kitten on sunday morning with a bulldyke with a pink mohawk, her girlfriend, and their globtrotting friend from philly (adam had other engagements).

bikie wrapup

raced the mountain lion. decided my main tactic would be follow-the-leader which was good because i never would have found half the checkpoints or the dirt-path shortcuts that made getting between them quick. good times.

a woman next to me in this coffeeshop is working with an architect on her dream home. blueprints are spread and he makes tight little thumbnail sketches in the margins as they talk. works in progress. like my mouth. surgery today was mostly successful. my implant is capped, 2 of the old caps are replaced, but one is still temporary. my dentist didn't like how they'd sculpted it. back to the lab it goes, maybe with a little thumbnail sketch.

what's happening otherwise? i don't know. i try not to comment on unfinished features. work continues, fires are fought. joel settles and makes progress. i renamed a 2500 line main.m file puddleOfGoo.m and embarked upon rewriting the important bits it contains. that felt good. tonight through this weekend is bike film fest and saturday is a torturous hill-climbing alleycat that i plan on subjecting myself to. bikes bikes bikes.

okay, so, i've had this song stuck in my head for the last few days. well, just a section of it. the beginning of the refrain which goes "i had a bad, bad time tonight" with the singer crooning indie-boy-pathetic and i imagine him saying goodbye to a girl on her doorstep after the worst date of either of their lives. i've been there, man. it'll be okay.

this did not happen last night. or this morning, for that matter. she made me promise to blog the event. so there you go, liz, you're famous. the only un-missed connection ever in the history of anyone i know. huzzah

bikie wrap-up

last weekend: something of a disappointment. 3rd instead of 2nd in Mt. Tam due to a dropped chain. 7th instead of anything better than 7 (which would have given me points) at santa cruz due to bad positioning (should have moved up sooner). Also at santa cruz: suicidal pidgeon flew under my rear wheel and went *pop*. really fucking gross and sad.

joel had his first day today. huzzah.

racey foo

weekend before last i did nothing but party and race and other bike-related things and it was awesome. i'd intended to take it easy all week before the giro di san francisco on monday but i also planned to sabatage those plans by getting drunk at the party where you register for the Quake City Rumble, a labor-day alleycat-fest. so, of course i registered. and raced. and didn't do all that well, but that's not news for me and those kinds of races. this time it wasn't poor navigation that bit me but poor route planning and checkpoint choices. a big improvement!

parked bikes for sfbc sunday. that was fun. i should do it more.

giro i came in 5th (field: 76). which is pretty good, but felt like i could have done alot better. guy who won told me after that he thought i'd win this one for sure, since i beat him in the sprint all the time on the park ride. so here're my excuses:

anyway

after next weekend my racing season will be over and the contents of this blog will once again shift more towards girls, drinking, and technology.

let me tell you about VeloPromo. the people themselves remind me a little bit of a hillbilly motorcycle gang. if you're at a bicycle race in the middle of nowhere and you smell cigarette smoke, chances are it's one of them lighting up. and they're the ones running the race. who they are and where they come from is a complete mystery to me, but they put on half the races in northern california and therefore they are awesome. they have some of the best beards and moustaches of any race promoters around, but that's another story.

maybe they actually hate bicyclists. they certainly do organize some of the most grueling races on the calendar. like last weekend, the university "road race." said race was a 3 mile loop on the side of a great big hill. up, down, up, down, 15 times. there was no peleton by the end. i came in 3rd.

patterson pass i snagged third also. patterson pass is a mountain pass where they also have a huge wind farm. if you've ever driven out to tracy you'll have passed it. i do well on giant hills. this one had a 45 mph headwind by the top. funnn. we took the finish on that one with a 5man break.

other races.. a flat 4corner crit that i didn't do so well in (20th or so), and a 1-hill race with lots of flats--tires and roads. i swapped my flat for my teammate's front wheel, caught on after half a dozen miles, and managed to stay with the lead group for an 11th place finish.

anyway. my calves hurt. if i sit down for long, i have trouble standing up. mooooo.

don't drink and blog

i have this great 1cm wide stripe across my thigh where my bike shorts rode up a bit after i put on sunblock (and then rode 6 hours). it is a very dark red and i'm glad the rest of me isn't that color. Six hours is how long it takes to bike 90 miles if twelve of those miles are straight up a mountain (mt. tam), and you take a break here and there. understandably, i spent the rest of saturday drinking (tour de fat and beyond), and the following the day doing absolutely nothing. i should learn to go for recovery rides, but... i tend to let hangovers take precedence.

i worked alot. nothing else happened. the end.

unexpectedly hot moment of the day: a very fit women in her late 30s wearing a "Pirates arrrr great!" t-shirt. seen in the Apple cafeteria.

did not crash racing sunday. came in 4th instead. almost crashed twice in the nasty hairpin. several others did. including one of our own who broke his clavicle. poor sal. had to fight all of squadra and the one good alto velo in the cat4s for that place. squadra took most of the top 10 i think thru effective organization.

3 hours of oral surgery later and my teeth are about the same as they were 3 hours ago. except now they're even more temporary. part of the process, hm. but i'm loopy and numb from drugs and endorphins so the apparent lack of progress doesn't phase me.

my dentist is unhappy with my oral health even though i brush twice a day and floss once a day religiously. she tries to to lecture me about how i should do it more or i'm not doing it properly or something but i'm floating a few feet behind myself in a nitrous cloud and can only manage a frightened puppydog look to express my understanding. please, medical professionals, try to refrain from lecturing your patients on their health while they are prone, medicated, and bleeding. it's not very nice.

went back to the track another saturday. battled my hangover as much as the other racers for the first few races. ouch. finally found my legs for the one, and even though i felt like shit i kicked everyone's ass in the austrailian pursuit. "congratulations, you're saturday morning champion," says the man running this training session, "that'll get you about... 3 seconds of glory. enjoy it."

other racing is going alright too. raced the last 2 weekends and got 7th place in both (field size around 60-70). 7th place is one off of prizes unfortunately, though i did win a tire in a preme this weekend. woohoo. mostly i'm really happy that my skin stayed intact. also of note, i took the time to count on my fingers all the races i've done and after forgetting and remembering a few, i come up with 20. yow.

4th of july came & went. bvernot came and will be leaving tomorrow i think. i reunited with him and a gaggle of cmu kids. some of them i remembered, some i didn't. two i knew vaguely from sophomore year, a year i'd like to forget most of.

bikie details

so, 2 weekends ago was the Burlingame Crit. We had most of the roadie team show up, which was great. after the first preme, i jumped off on an early break with (only, unfortunately) two other guys. we were a strong trio, though, and two of us had teammates blocking for us back in the peleton, so we managed to stay away for most of the race. gradually, we began to tire (a 3man break is way too small to make it for more than a few laps), other riders snuck around our blockers and bridged up to us, and we became less organized and weaker. with about 4 laps to go the field caught us. none too soon, that's the closest i've ever come to exercise-induced vomiting. i took a couple of laps to recover in the field before moving up towards the front. spotted teddy up ahead. peter i met midway though and barked at to jump on my wheel. i don't recall whether he actually did or if he came up later. at any rate, as we went for the line, it was peter, teddy, and me all in a row into the final sprint. 5,6, and 7th place. not too shabby. one might think with that many riders at the front that we could have pulled together some kind of leadout strategy but, shrug, things weren't that clear. teddy and peter both had other wheels to use and i, well, i was completely beat. i couldn't feel my hands to shift into a sprinting gear. nor could i see anything useful to do. i couldn't see any way to help my teammates. i thought maybe i could have gone harder and moved up a place or two, but not 3, and i didn't see much use in stealing the points from other meeces who need them more than me. mostly, i hardly had my wits about me, much less my legs, so i just tried to hold position.

funny outcome of that race. i thought i'd won a preme incidentally while on the breakaway (we didn't sprint for them, lest we ruin our pace), but it turned out a spectator had just rung the bell. lame.

this previous weekend, yesterday, i did the 4th of july crit in Davis. unlike burlingame, which was fast and crash-free, davis was supersketch and something of a meatgrinder. they actually stopped the race with 6 laps to go while they brought in an ambulance for an injured rider. nothing destroys your concentration like standing around in the hot sun for 15 minutes in the middle of a race, although being 2 inches away from a second massive crash on the very same corner comes close. the last few laps i spent very carefully minding my corners and calling out "inside, bro!" at anything remotely tight. i actually warned one of my nemesis about an incoming rider as he dove under me in the last few corners (nipping 6th place from me, doh). feeling jittery and unfocused, my game was not with me in the sprint and i hardly moved up though i had plenty of room and wheels to use. didn't start soon enough, didn't hit a high enough gear, the fire wasn't with me. 7th place, still, i'm quite happy with. i got out about what i'd put in, i think.

i have a straw chinese rice patty worker hat. because.. well, if you don't have the balls to tell off the guy who is clumsily sort of hitting on you, the least you can do is give him your hat.

i broke a pair of handlebars. see phone sez for details. in the process i ripped open all my wounds from 2 weeks ago and that hurt like hell.

i had my first session of velodrome training, and it was quite awesome. there were only like a few of us there today who were serious racers otherwise and we kicked more ass than was funny.

i'm growing a BFW, which, in this circumstance, means Beard For a While. Said while being until work eases up enough that i can take abit of a breather, at which point i get some free time off. vacation ideas anyone? until then i work 16 hours/day as many days a week as i can stand.

durrr

ps: pbplpblbplbplbplbplbpblbpblblbplplplplplplppppplplppppppllppppp.

insofar as the recent announcement:

comments on the inevitable: should someone figure out how to install iOSX on a generic PC. why this will not destroy apple:

i have more to say, but i fear i might slip out something which isn't either public or wild speculation on my part so i stop now.

goddamn but where do you find the time to look so hot? if i quit my job and gave up biking i could only dream to aspire.

motherfucker.

it's over. i'll tell you all the sordid details in the days to come as i get the time and motivation to do so. one observation to share: on my first day back at work I'm noticing that time seems to move alot slower. I can accomplish things between the time one hour blends into the next. things beyond deciding what i'll have for lunch, or buying yet another packet of tropical trail mix from the snackstand. it's fantastic.

i win 4 laps, peter wins one, someone else wins another one in there, and the first is neutral. thus were the hill sprints of today's parkride. boo. yah. this helps me feel better in the physiological wake of my decision to remove caffeine from my diet starting today (and continuing until i really need it again).

other news: trial still going. frustration.

my stomach hurts. i danced last night moreso than in a while. i should do that more.

roasters saturday, lombardi boys brought on the pain. flats challenged greater than hillsprints and my victories in latter were hollowed by their efforts in the former.

sometime in between my nap broke. probable fault my newly adopted caffeine addiction. i may wagonmount away from that post-jury. sleep this month has averaged 6 hours and maxed 7. not good.

court is over almost. i feel brain-attrophied somewhat. i can't concentrate 1 day weekly so i gaveup and only maintenanced then. i feel a workbinge coming on.

uhhh, what happened? my life has veered off on a tangent for a while. an idylic, san francisco-based fugue. if only Apple was in SF... it's almost over, though. i'll have to de-adjust.

in the meantime, i've gained the ability to consistently wakeup half an hour before my alarm sounds despite an average of 6 hours of sleep. regular injestion of coffee is helping this: 2 cups a day. when i go to work on fridays i need to drop it to less than a cup (damn strong apple coffee). i think i might keep up the routine for a while to see if it helps me at work.

bikies

lots of bike rides happened. races happened. i won two large canisters of sports drink (both disgusting) at two different races. fourth place and a preme on saturday. bunged up the finish on sunday so just got thirteenth. and a preme.

dipping my feet into the craigslist pool again lately. had one interesting, but ultimately disappointing date on wednesday (bike related). we shall see how long my enthusiasm keeps up with it.

i purchased new shoes. this is the only definitive accomplishment. some attempts though. which is encouraging.

i have a favor to ask. i would like everyone i know to use the word "vagina" in the sexiest context possible when in my presence. You could especially use the phrases "penis in my vagina" or "penis in her vagina" while speaking in a very sexy voice. there must be balance.

file under bizarro. i do my laundry at the sketchy-mat very close to my house. there is usually one or two of several neighborhood bums hanging out there, keeping warm, babbling to themselves, sometimes even doing their laundry (i guess). they don't bother me (unless they're particularly rank, then i just breath through my mouth and think of flowers and mountain streams).

anyway, so i was fetching my laundry a couple of days ago and one of these bums approaches me "excuse me. sir!" i mentally evaluate the change in my pocket. "sir." i turn, see that he's got his pants undone. "could you help me here? i sprained my wrist. could you help me button my pants? sir?"

well, what could i do? he wasn't gross at all about it, and the pants were freshly laundered. "thanks man. you cool." i left with my laundry on my back and the overriding thought in my head, well, that happened.

it's on

i've been selected as a trial juror. my service will last until around may 27th, meeting 9am to 4pm monday through thursday. you cannot begin to imagine how lucky i feel to be among the 12 people chosen out of a pool of around 200. at least jury selection is over (having taken the previous 4 days). as i said to one of my prospective jurors after the first day, my brain numbed by the ponderous repetition, "that was the more boring experience i've ever... experienced."

i found another example of the misunderstanding some people have that curry sauce is just wet curry powder. it sits in my stomach now, bitter and pungent, and refuses to digest. i hates it.

the stenographer is now the hottest lady in the room. she has strong, sinewy arms. the first day she wore a sleeveless top. i was sitting right next to her and spent the whole day staring at her arms and her fingers bouncing over the keys. i could have an affair with those arms and those fluid, coordinated hands. she wears impeccably stylish shoes. i don't understand how so many professional women manage to wear brutally pointed heels on a daily basis. jury duty opens my eyes.

before her departure, the blond woman was the most attractive. i spoke to her with some regularity at first. then came the day when we all stood up and said our names, neighborhoods, occupations, and living situation. it was like a live version of video dating. it became clear then (or maybe later for other reasons, or maybe it was all in my head) that we were of highly different stripes and she quickly gathered new friends around her to chat with during recess. now the big guy with the moustache is my favorite. fucking pacific heights.

when some people speak, i have a hard time not making strangling motions with my hands, though i keep them at my sides so only a few others can see. today at lunch i bought new pants. i will probably be on this jury and it makes me want to cry. i'll find out tomorrow.

my favorite Tiger feature

the new slideshow functionality—available from Preview, Finder, and the Spotlight pane—is really good for looking at porn.

it has dawned on me that i'm now one of those people that like to do active things. now when i judge other people i can't rate them down because they do active things. except triathletes. fuggin' triathletes. this exception brings about the point that i like certain active things for different reasons than other people like other active things. i had more coherent thoughts on this when e was soberer. whatever.

i've basically stopped oozing which is good cuz my next race is sunday. wish me nocrashy. middle of the pack on two wheels is always better than not finishing.

yes?

i want a girlfriend. i see these people on the street sometimes and in my head i ask them to go home with me but in reality i don't know what action to translate that through. critical mass today i couldn't think of a single thing to say to any of the hotnesses, but i may have recruited up to two guys to be on the mouse race team. yeehah.

beer goggles you fail me. i had a date last night and it was kinda lame. not that she wasn't a great person, but i knew as soon as she walked in the door and was sure 30 seconds after she started talking that this girl was entirely not my type. see, i was drunk when first i met her, durrrr.

i have new road rash. wente road race was going really well last saturday until right at the end a big pileup took out both me and my teammate. at least i escaped the broken collarbone that he ended up with. ouch. i skipped out on the crit the next day and that hurt me almost as much as showing and changing bandages do now.

jury duty started. first day served today, come back next week for the rest. woop woop.

i signal that the conversation is over by concentrating on my computer and avoiding eye contact. this is intentional. i think i've gotten better tho, from the last week. the time away in forced socialization has done me some good, even if adam did most of the initiating. lack of stress undoubtably helped as well.

yes?

so the last day in vancouver. you may have read from adamnit that vancouver sucks and we didn't do much of anything. this is approximately true. i think vancouver would have sucked less if our goals had included outdoor and daytime activities. there are apparently nice mountains and parks and shopping establishments. but damnit, it was cold and rainy most of the time and we had california jackets.

after everyone's insistence of what a great city vancouver was, we finally found a couple who would admit the city's flaw. "it's got no night life." "so where are you going?" "we've got reservations here for a private karaoke booth."

admiting that there were no good bars to slum it in, we headed to a show (the album leaf. i'd seen them before, but pickings were slim). it was exactly like a show of that type in any part of the states i've been to. we got bored eventually and left in search of a night club.

nightclubs and all drinking establishments in vancouver have a minimum age limit of 19. 19 year olds flock to the clubs in such concentration that it drives out anyone over 21. the dance floor looked like high school. adam fled. i refused to leave because damnit, i paid the cover for the both of us. i was hoping that eventually the older crowd would show up. there were a few. they sat up above the dance floor and glowered over their drinks at the little kids with the same mix of curiosity and horror that i felt. eventually i gave up and left.

that was pretty much the end of vancouver. the next day we left and adam drove all the way back without rest. i spent the following day alotted for my vacation not working.

no?

monday braved the headwinds and biked the 40 mile paradise loop on molly. which hurt me alot on the following days but felt great at the time. wednesday did a longride, which, while slow, left me in agony the rest of the day due to my poor, abused hamstrings which hadn't felt a long fixie ride in some months. i also brought along a new guy to the ride who i'd met on the train and thought might be able to hack it if we went kind of slow. about 18 miles in, we stopped for a bathroom break and he threw up in the bushes. a bit further down we politely pointed out a nice way to get over to the caltrain line and he took it.

yes.

also monday was party time. adam's former coworkers mostly, but there was enough non-casino and alcohol that the stories stayed interesting and funny. i actually talked to people, too, go me.

no.

okay. bored now. other things happened but i'm not going to tell you about them.

past tuesday there will be a period of sobriety. that period should last about a month i think. but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

seattle, part 2

on thursday, i made adam bike and he's still complaining about his butt today. we toured around union lake and ended up at gasworks park where we met a lovely duck and saw some big metal things. the ride plus a large amount of indian food put us out for the count until almost party time that night.

party time thursday was not nearly as dramatic as the previous night. we started at that bar w/ the mrs. pacman machine and quickly ran into nathan a guy we'd met at the hostel the previous night. we hung out with him and his friend amy for a while (psst, she's a LESBIAN, she wanted everyone to know). i think i enjoyed them alot more than adam, once i'd downed several beers in short succession. they reminded me of alot of the cmu artkids, just with some extra california spaciness thrown in.

after some time adam got bored and we went over to linda's (this is the name of the bar where we met diane, not the karaoke bar, i realized later). we met absolutely noone there. it was much busier and cliquier than last time. adam made a weak pass at a ridiculously hot girl there which did not gain us any drinking buddies but did gain us a new destination.

the war room is a decent little club. there was a live act playing dance music of pretty good quality followed by an okay DJ. the usual hipster crowd was there, including a couple of token break-dancers whose skillz i covet. "how long have you been dancing?" "about 11 years"

vancouver

after a bit of border difficulties ("you came all the way from san francisco without proper papers??" since when were canadian customs agents so angry?) we arrive in vancouver. Out of half a dozen available hostels i chose the cambie since it has a pub attached to it. the cambie, unlike all the hostels we've stayed at previously, is not run by hippies. there is no bad art anywhere. everything is in disrepair. the cleaning is done by immigrant workers rather than volunteers or backpacker bums working for their rooms. ah well. it's cheap and grants us backdoor access to the bar downstairs.

the cambie pub, however, is horrible. horrible. horrible. at least at night which is the only time we've been. it's filled to the brim with fratboys and a handfull of very lost looking hostellers. there is a line to get in and alot of security.

i'm still getting the hang of the one and two dollar coins that everyone uses around here. i feel like i need more pockets so i can split up the coins that mean anything from the change that is okay to throw at bums without thinking. i don't quite know how tipping is supposed to work here, but i don't see anyone doing it. plus, the setup in most bars seems to involve people lining up in front of a register for a beer. there is a tip jar... but it's usually quite empty. ehh, i'll figure it out.

so after the cambie we set out, a list of suggestions to hit up. tribecca was first, a little bar/restaurant. music was bad and too loud, but we enjoyed a beer with some random vancouverites who were enjoying their drunk a bit early. they helped us add another couple of places to the list.

eh, so that was okay, but not full of potential, we wander on in the general direction of other things on our list. i'd like to point out that it is very cold here, and also raining. vancouver likes to do that. i think we passed some other places on our list, but none looked very inviting. we got tricked into walking into one bar that charged me over $8 for a stella. ouch.

despairing, we stumble pass the other cambie hostel (the one without a bar attached) and adam notices that the desk girls are hip and cute. he regales them with our troubles and they suggest another couple of places. Both of them have relatively high covers that night, it turns out, due to live music happening. not in the mood for a show or a cover which would commit us to one place for a while, we return to the hostel to regroup and research. bah.

bars are a new thing in vancouver, frommers tells us. until less than a decade ago, only restaurants could serve drinks, so one had to either buy food, or have the intention of buying food to get served. this is why nearly all the bars in town serve food. very odd. we also learn of one last strip to hit up, water street, just a block away.

rain gear on, we head out for one last stroll. lots of clubs, it looks like. we've learned at this point to ask what the cover is when walking up to a place and we learn that every place on this street has one. despair. adam talks to a pair of hipster girls hiding from the rain.

these pair, it turns out, play in a band called Gang Bang who are on next at one of the places with steep covers (the lamplighter?). they offer to put us on the guest list. "we're not very good. you have to stand up front and cheer for us." and we do. and drink beer. and stay for the next act (alan astor, part of the new "post-ironic" *cringes* wave) who is actually quite good. fun to watch anyway. Gang Bang are busy tomorrow and cannot show us around the city. too bad.

we stop at the cambie for one last drink. it's still awful, but we spot some lost people and talk to them for a while.

anyway

this blow by blow tact is starting to piss me off. i promise not to repeat it for next update. other things notable about vancouver: you can buy pizza slices for a canadian dollar. they aren't very good, but they aren't offensive in any way either. i'll eat alot of these here i think.

also, people don't seem to know what we mean when we say dive bar. obviously the meaning is different here or just not a word used at all. yes, we say, the cambie is dirty and cheap, but it's also big and full of fratboys. yes, the lamplighter is full of hipster kids but it's not friendly and it's very clean.

i have to admit that it does seem sort of pointless to go to another place and seek out the same sort of experiences that we enjoy back home. my defence against this is a) it's a good starting point, we know how to operate in that sort of setting and can possibly find people to tell us where the real local flavor is, and b) there's some merit in the quest to find the very best of a thing you like and searching the globe for it. at any rate, adam is fearful of liver failure so we might find something different to do tonight. my liver and i have reached some sort of truce. i haven't been able to get really drunk for the past couple of days, but on the other hand i haven't had a hangover either. the beer just stops tasting good after a while and even though adam is matching me nearly drink for drink (and weighs more), he got plastered last night and i didn't.

adam harrassment is reaching critical levels now, time to do things.

i drank in 7 bars last night. that's ridiculous. but i'm getting ahead of myself; lets go back to portland.

portland

we eventually found the fun part of portland, but it took a little while. apparently, just west portland is so very clean and unexciting. east portland, though suffering from a slight case of sprawl, is where things get dirtier and more interesting.

we asked the hostel person where to go for fun and excitement. she said downtown for clubs, nearby for bars. i'm beginning to learn the hardway something which seems pretty obvious: if you want to find something in a city, you should probably ask someone who lives there (and not your fellow travelers or the hostel people who are working there so they can avoid paying for the room).

so the bars nearby were lame but we saw a couple of cute hip girls eating thai food in a mostly-empty restaurant so we walked in and asked them where to go. well, adam walked in after spending some time psyching himself up with redbull and cigarettes and i followed. "hello we are from out of town where do we go" surprisingly, this was well-received and effective. They told us one part of hawthorn which turned out to be somewhat dead (they were underage, i'll give them credit). we asked a bartender there where she goes when she gets off of work and she told us another part of hawthorn 10 blocks down.

that turned out to be fantastic. the first bar had 2.50 fat tire and grammas playing pool that bring their own cues in neat little bags. also the hottest rockabilly girl ever. and veggie corn dogs. we left eventually to another bar next door which was dark and crowded and full of young people who like the sort of bohemian dive-style bars that we also like. the music was not good, but we met some other hostelers (who had wisely stayed in the other hostel in portland) who were cute and fun and showed them the excellent values of the first bar. at some point we also wandered through some place with an excessively kitschy spaceship theme.

seattle

seattle is big. seattle feels very big in exactly the same way that portland does not. it has dimension. it has tall buildings. it has freeways that tie knots around the downtown. i turned into a mumbling idiot for a while as a combination of low blood sugar, hangover, and this new biggness took its toll. a bag of gummy bears and the best 5.50 bowl of curry i've ever eaten helped immensely. adam and i apologized for punching each other and rolled back to the hostel for post-curry quiet time. i am very appreciative of this trend for all hostels to have free wireless.

the seattle green tortoise is also big. it has lots of signs telling us to do things or not. most of them are reasonable or we ignore them so they stopped bothering me after not too long. free breakfast. free dinner and beer 3 nights a week. i approve.

seven

i'm going to see if can recall all of the places we went to last night.

oof. morning came. i got up at 830am feeling a little drunk still and made a b-line for pike place market where i ate and drank things in defense against the hangover. i think i was marginally successful.

unrelated: i see lots of messengers here riding '04 bianchi pistas. i feel vindicated. maybe they got them off of SF hipsters.

just a bit more bikiness i forgot. I came in second overall in the stage race 2 weekends ago. The third stage was a crit with two bonus sprints. I won both bonus sprints and finished third. That is all.

well, actually, this is the beginning of my travelogue, but since i'm bringing Rusty along with me, it will all involve bikes. hah. And also, before i get into that, i did a race last weekend, so lets talk about that for a bit.

yet another race

grrr, stupid, damnit. that's most of what i have to say about the race. with three laps to go i was feeling pretty good, a little fatigued but in control and i had enough saved for the final sprint. i'd figured out the giant hill in the middle of the course (power up half of it, drop out of theh big ring, jog up the rest), i'd figured out the turns (none very bad, don't worry about them) and i'd gotten pretty good at staying near to the front where i wanted to be. but then, climbing the hill, i got squeezed in between two guys, somehow managed to lock handlebars with both of them, and the three of us tumbled harmlessly into the bushes next to the road. by the time we were all untangled the pack had passed. i time-trialed the last 3 laps alone. bah. If this had happened 3 laps earlier i could have gotten a free lap. if i'd managed to get untangled and on my feet a bit faster i might have been able to jump in the pack. oh well. next time, next time.

and travelling?

but back to travelling. adam and i rolled out a bit late, took an unintented detour to sacramento, and got into portland oregon around 1am this morning. the drive was long. there were many mountains and many clouds of bugs. the bugs turned yellow when they hit our car. the mountains were full of silver trucks oozing like giant robotic caterpillars around the hills and switchbacks.

portland

the hostel is quiet and neat. i'd prefer dirty and exciting, but this is at least better than a hotel. portland itself alright so far. it seems to want to rain very hard on my for 20 minutes at a time whenever i'm out on my bike. luckily, awnings and coffeshops are usually nearby.

i'm surprised by how bike-friendly it is around here. the bike map i located with a bit of searching shows a pretty comprehensive (if unpredictable) bike network throughout downtown and the outlying neighborhoods. cars seem to be more polite here, they slow down and wait for me more than people do in san francisco. there are even cute little signs graphically showing what happens if you get your wheel stuck in a streetcar track.

it feels very small here. i think that has more to do with the landscape than the population. I can go from downtown to oldtown to where the hostel is without major obstacles. no neiborhood leers at another from the top of a hill and there are no major 8-lane arteries dividing things down the middle. maybe it's different in east portland; i've mainly explored the west side. the river down the middle is the one striking feature i've seen so far. lots of bridges. reminds me of pittsburgh.

but so far i haven't had any very portland experiences; i have no sense of the culture and scene here, yet. hopefully the bars and such tonight treat us well. more later...

this weekend is pilarcitos stage race. first two stages today were both time trials, the first a 30k hill course and the second an 11k flatland course. i came in 3rd on the hill stage with a time of 47 min 43 seconds. just now i figured out what that comes to in miles/hour: about 23.4. This seems ridiculous to me given how much time i spent in the granny gear (felt like 1/3 of the time). The winner beat me by 2 min. He also beat the winner in the Cat4 race. that is also ridiculous. i beat the rest of my team by 2 minutes (all 4 scored w/in 10 seconds of each other, oddly). i got fast, yo.

Average speed on the flatland was about 26.5 mph. Same guy who won stage 1 took this one by 30 seconds (retardly fast). I took sixth place, trailing 2nd place by 7 seconds. I'm pretty bummed our about that: they didn't have mile markers telling us when the finish was coming up, so right up to the finish I was holding back, resting up for when i saw the 1 mile marker. It never came and then all of the sudden I saw a little red sign up ahead and some people and cars. I thought it was a sharp turn and slowed down a bit. Still closer I read "Finish," cursed, and got about one pedal stroke of power in before I crossed the line. I think I might have been able to find 7 seconds somewhere if i'd known how close I was (or at least the 3 seconds that I trailed the 4th place tie by). But then again, so might other people who made the same mistake. C'est la vie.

okay i'm sticky and i need to eat. maybe someday i'll make a non-bike post.

all you kids who don't give a squat about bike racing can stop reading after the title down there, cuz i'm lazy again and am going to post another race report. i may as well: my life right now is mostly work and biking and i can't really talk about work.

onward to bikieness

This is my brief summary of Copperopolis: Ow. To elaborate slightly, I might simply repeat that over and over again a few times.

Kurt and I rolled up and parked on a tiny side street with extremely chewed up pavement which we later learned was actually part of the course. Awesome. Wandering around registration I ran into a guy I know from work who warned me about the final descent. "it's a real ass-pounder," he advised. True dat.

The race started at an easy pace and immediately the pavement turned to complete shit. Made the "cobbles" from Snelling look like nothing. These cobbles were thicker and chunkier and led us up huge climbs. In the worst parts it felt like half of your energy was being wasted just rolling over the bumps. A couple of miles out is the feed section which is on one of these especially bad parts. Made grabbing water bottles nice and easy.

Shortly after that is the Big Ugly Hill. Chunky, chewed up, and very steep. I dropped to my granny without the least bit of shame. Chris Spencer rolled up to to me and asked "does this seem... hard to you?" "Yeah." "Okay, phew, not just me." The front-runners and I kept up a brisk pace and apparently split off most of the pack right then and there. As we crested the hill I thought about how much it would suck to do this again.. and again.

Following Big Ugly is a long section is a long stretch of open fields with mild rollers and flats. Windy. A little bit monotonous and repetitive (wasn't this the last turn? oh wait, no, just one that looks exactly like it). We did a fairly good job of working together and keeping the pace high. Possibly too high, one of our group complained, and refused to pull very long at that pace. The leader of this group I remembered from other races, pulling the pace there too. Particularly the McLane road race leading out the front with Kyle. Scary strong, this guy.

There's a short hill following the flats and then the ass-pounding descent I was warned about which turned out to be ridiculously fun. Long, steep, twisty, bumpy, and for the most part, well banked. Despite the shitty road I felt sticky and secure and only had to brake in one section. Shortly after that is a small hill leading to the finish.

Big Ugly was even worse the second time but we scaled it without too much trouble. At every turn we saw riders on the side of the road fixing flats. At some point I ran over a rock the size of a softball which I saw later knocked my wheel so out of true it was lightly rubbing my brake (but I'm not using that as an excuse). The leader in the Masters 35+ 123 caught up to us here (why do they start them after us? seems very silly). On the flats I spent some time yelling at my fellow cat5s not to chase after and draft these guys. Mr. super strong seemed particularly keen to do this.

We continued to mix up with them going into to final lap. I was tiring by this time. Breath all ragged through the feed section. As we started up Big Ugly, mr. super strong still wanted to push the pace and hang with the masters. He was starting to lose me and the remains of the leaders pack (I didn't know how small it had gotten until much later). We yelled at him over and over to let the masters go and stick around to work with us. No luck, bastard. Eventually I completely blew up. Vision started dimming, hearing dulled. I dropped to the lowest gear I had and watched them ride away with our guy.

I thought I was done for. Will this be my first DNF, I wondered. There were only two other guys from the original break around me at this point and they seemed to be in a similar state. We should have just let that guy go a long ways back, I realized. Saved a little for the rest of the race. We settled into a death march up the hill at this point. Some guy with a red jersey, guy with a yellow bike, and me. Red jersey went up ahead for a bit, then fell back, never to be seen again. Yellow bike and I continued. I thought he looked more fresh than me and I worried about that, hoping he wouldn't leave me in the dust. He did not, and instead we slogged on into the flats, trading off the lead every 30s or so. One by one more masters passed us and occasionally we passed one of them. Nobody seemed to be in a particular hurry and this was good for morale.

Midway through the flats a rider from the original break caught up to us and went past. I jumped on his wheel and held for dear life. "I'd been saving my strength for the last lap and a half" he explains. Shortly behind him was another 5, and then another, until we'd re-coalesced a moderate-size break again. Chris Spencer, who had apparently stopped for a potty break at some point, was back with us. I was struggling with their pace and yellow bike fell off completely. Through the rest of the flats I astonished myself with my ability to keep turning the pedals. I was purely on autopilot, concentrating as hard as I could on the wheel in front of me. I refused to pull, "sorry guys, I've got nothing left." The last uphill before the descent came and I gave it up, settled back into deathmarch mode, and watched them pull away.

I did make it up that rise without passing out, and the descent was beautiful as ever. I half expected to be overtaken as I slogged through the final bit of flats but I was pretty much alone out there. Another masters guy came up to me and tried to ask me something. the words came through but I couldn't quite comprehend what he was saying. "whhaat?" he repeated. "whhaaaat?" he repeated again. "I'm sorry man, I'm hardly here." he chuckled and moved on. the finish line was the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.

So, mistakes include hitting a giant rock, forgetting sunblock (I'm a lobster now), and most importantly, pulling a pace I couldn't hold on the final lap on into the worst section on a very long and difficult race. If I'd stayed with the guys who eventually caught me, I probably would have had something left at the finish and would have made top 5 and been in the running for 2nd. As it was, I came in 6th (I win a tee shirt, yay!) because there was nooobody out there up at the front. A fun race. I recommend it to all next year.

i'm lazy so i'm going to post my race report from this weekend and call it a blog entry.

the sound of land park

...was the sound of many spectators shivering, the sound of labored breath sputtering through water as people tried desperately to hold onto wheels through the headwind section, the sound of many cat5's crashing on the three 120 degree turns, and the sighs of relief as people spat off the back were pulled from the race. curiously, the cat5 race was the only race to hit capacity (50) while the cat 4s weren't even that big. like the masters 5 race before us, the field got hugely split up. I'm told they pulled a good half of the field throughout the race but had no idea at the time as i stuck with the same 15 or so guys up at the front. the weather ranged from lightly sprinkling to pounding rain the whole time. my glasses were fogging up so badly i had to wipe them about twice a lap.

for fun, on the first prime i jumped off the front at the beginning of the lap and managed to keep a good few seconds gap until the long windy section leading to the finish. very hard to do much good solo in the face of that kind of headwind and several riders bridged the gap and overtook me, leaving me with a 3rd place that round. not very productive personally, but it did help to spike the pace early on and gave me a good sense of how gnarly that headwind was. the next prime i just happened to be near enough to the front and at the last minute went for it, narrowly stealing a little bottle of olive oil from the super-strong lombardi guy. i think he was lombardi anyway, i couldn't see shit. he spent a good part of the race commanding the pace and keeping the line nice and tight through the corners.

On the final couple of laps, the top 10 or so guys completely split away from the pack, helped in part I'm told by a big crash on one of the corners. The pace held up at a nice blistering level throughout the whole lap and finishing off the last corner just completely blasted off. I made two critical errors here, I think. The first was that i held on to the wheel i had too long after the top handful of guys had begun to drop him, forcing me to sprint into the wind a bunch to try and catch them. The second happened around that very last corner when i hit a bott's dot all wrong, went squirly for a second and barely managed to recover. That probably wouldn't have happened had I been able to see. When the smoke cleared, i looked up up, counted only 4 riders coasting and panting in front of me, and felt pretty happy with that. The rest of the field was nowhere in sight, and I felt pretty happy about that too.

in my dreams i'm on a vacation. or reading a book. i wake up and try to fall back asleep to finish the page i'm on.

spent the night at work last night which caused me to feel unusually horrible today. five hours of sleep is good, but could be better. "why didn't you just go to bed and finish in the morning?" "well, it was due last night. and i wanted to finish with the stressful task last night so i could relax today and help out with little things."

i had the best nap ever on the train home tonight. i was awake for maybe 3 stops and then nothing until i heard the conductor call 22 st. woke up and still felt like crap, but crap with vigor. blasted home with speed, form, and style.

man, it's been awhile. recap time.

bikie bike

following the last of the early birds, i got really sick and didn't ride alot for a while. that sucked. the sick days did give me an opportunity to scope out a few race teams and eventually join one, Team Roaring Mouse. which is a good name for a race team, i think, and the bike shop who is our title sponsor is apparently good, too.

roaring mouse scored points with me for:

racie race

since then i've done 3 races as a mouse (just 3 more races until i'm a cat 4, woo!). snelling, two weeks ago, i took 4th place (out of 50), which was pretty freakin awesome. i won a very nice brown tshirt for that. if you look around the roaring mouse website you can find my race report for that one.

following snelling, i did both races of the McLane classic (a crit and a road race). In these, the 4s and 5s fields were combined (and over 100 each). I may be stronger than most of the 5s, but i am not as skilled as the 4s. as brendan, a spandex-aquaintence of mine on the godspeed courier team put it, you can get away with with alot of shit in the 5s. In the 4s, every hesitation and tiny gap you let form puts you 2 places back in the pack until you're whipping around the tail of the pack and sprinting through the wind trying to regain places. this was especially true in the criterium which featured a narrow chicane section with very sharp-looking metal barriers (some dude tore his ear on one). both brendan and i finished around 30th in that one.

the road race the next day was less overwhelming but probably more disappointing. not enough people wanted to push the pace so the whole pack tended to bunch up at critical points, like the finish. i tried my luck with an outside line through the crawling mass, but got stopped cold by a rider in front of me who on the last couple of rollers decided to give up, stop pedaling, and make a bunch of new enemies (principally me). after an excessive amount of cursing, i got by him, and recovered enough places to finish about 30th in the pack. brendan faired better, slipping through on an inside line (which twice pushed him into the dirt) and finishing around 10th.

other bikie

the roastery ride is a nice 70-ish mile group ride. half of it is spent strolling through small towns and the rest blasting through foothills at race pace. a good ride. I did one of those a few weeks ago. Since rides didn't work out for me on races this weekend, i went out with a few mice for an 80-mile pain-fest over mountains in the southbay. it hurts my knees to walk right now and it kind of hurts to lift my arms.

other things

i got a great big disk. you are jealous of my big disk.

various dramas. all over now. unpermitted concert in the park. work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work...

i am completely fucking elated. this is one of the better days i've had all year. it was such a nice end to a horrible week. picture the story arc: going on around week for of the 6-day Tiger weeks, my energy is flagging. productivity is low. the time i don't spend working i'm racing, and i had a not-so-good race last weekend (crashed). each day i fight with my alarm clock longer and longer, so much so that my only long ride of the week (friday), i don't leave the house until 10am and don't get to work until 1pm. it was raining that morning, too, which was a little bit fun, but didn't help my mood. i skip party car to makeup for that. rolling home around 11pm, it is raining, and something slippery sticks to my back wheel. i notice, stop, wipe down my back wheel. i roll on, but notice a few blocks later that my traction is still lacking. is whatever it was still there? i test my brakes, cruising slowly down scott st... and completely eat it as my back wheel flips out from under me. note to self (you idiot), don't test for poor traction by skidding. i manage to land on exactly the same joints as last sunday and it hurts incredibly. one of my bandages starts filling up with blood. my chin is scraped. i walk the rest of the way home inventing new, obscene ways of saying "ow".

needless to say, the saturday at work was no picnic. my everything hurts and i've got a bit of a hangover on top of it. suck.

But enough of that. fast forward to this morning. general malaise. fights with the alarm clock. wrong turns on the freeway. BUT! the day is warm. the field is slightly smaller and not as squirrelly. i wear fingerless gloves racing for the first time ever... and i take second place.

there is nothing quite like the feeling you get sprinting to the finish line as the other riders melt away and the road lays bare in front of you. the surges started just after the final turn. i hopped wheels, staying in the saddle and spinning fast as a couple of waves of riders stood up and burned out early. i spotted one of the guys who had bested me in one of the primes and marked him as a wheel to be on. those last three things happened approximately at once, actually. i felt the guy in front of me losing steam, shifted, stood up, and started working through the last handful of riders. then melt...

because i have a little flare for the dramatic, i decided it would be fun to let out a battlecry yell as i moved into third, then seond place. it felt pretty good. i spent the rest of today bouncing up and down. apologies in advance to everyone i talk to in the next few days who couldn't give a crap about bike racing.

unrelated

i'm starting to really like sufjan stevens. i feel like him about like i do belle & sebastian (or did; i'm a bit tired of them now): i'm not christian, so i can't exactly identify with everything he sings about, but i appreciate the sentiment and the sound is quite beautiful. also, freezepop is my new official workout music.

so i ate it. sunday, my third race. to my credit, i didn't freak out and i didn't take anyone out with me, but it was pretty much my fault. let myself get closer to the guy in front of me than apparently my reaction time allows. someone in front of the group slowed down suddenly, sending back a compression wave through the pack. before you could say, "SLOWING!" (much less "protect your wheel!"), my wheel overlapped that of the guy in front of me. at this point if i'd been a superb practitioner of the wheel-touching drill i could have gotten out of this, but i've never done that drill. instead, as the group slid laterally i ground into his back wheel (bending his rear derailluer-hanger and several of my spokes), and in less than a second i was sliding to a stop on my knees and elbows and hangs, then waving said limbs in the air yelling "watch out! i'm down!" The time that it took for all this to happen was rather crucial, i think, in my not getting run over by any of my fellow racers. thing happen very fast in a crit. the peleton passed, i got up to inspect myself and the bike, thought about chasing the pack, but saw my front wheel bent, touching the brake. oh well. i walked to the finish, watched my race finish and the next one start, then found the guy with the bandadges.

damage: roadrash on both elbows, one knee, and my hip. one wheel in need of truing. a whole lot of shredded bike clothing. bruised ego and a race I didn't get to finish. i'm most upset about the last one. need a strong race this sunday to get myself back in the winning mode. of course, everyone else is saying that too; they're actually tracking winners next race. i expect even more crashes (there were 3 others in my race) and a whole lot more competition at the end.

marie was on the receiving end of a wheel-tap similar to mine and lost several spokes that day. her second crit out of four that she didn't get to finish through no fault of her own. bummer.

anyway

werkwerk. bikebike. getting a new roommate soon who is not joel. hopefully he is good; andrea found him. i went on a little internetcoffeedate last night and it went pretty well. part 2 happens next week when we go out dancing. am i really into her? asks emma. well, i could be. her style is a bit conventional for me, but her job makes up for it (and could be the reason for it, even). we shall see. i have no expectations for it; hell i don't really even have any time for it. werkwerk, bikebike.

sometimes i break down and lose the ability to make any progress at anything. luckily, when this happens at home eventually the internet will go out and I'll realize that an hour has passed and I really need to get out of these gross, sweaty clothes. oh shit, the internet came back...

i did another race on sunday and it was good. there were twice as many people, i did about as well (top 10%), and there were lots of crashes that i was not in. still need to work on my sprints and how to lead up to them. i think if me and the other top ten or so people would have worked together more effectively we could have struck up a brutal breakaway. instead, there were many little breaks where one person led for too long and the whole thing lost steam. i was in most of those. sort of a waste of energy but more fun than sitting in the middle of the pack and waiting for some fucker in front of you to crash and take you with him.

...and i worked.

...and our secret plan to get Joel in the house kinda went south. ammon, you need to move in here and be awesome. otherwise.. someone else does.

Got my first traffic ticket today. Go me. It was somewhere between a hilarious and humilating experience. Cop didn't like how early I pulled across all 3 lanes of De Anza to make the left turn into work (way ahead of the turning lanes, to avoid the pack of cars that would soon be coming). He probably started following me then. Then I made an illegal U-turn through the red light (I think I'll stop doing that in front of work, now...). Having no idea I'd picked up a tail, I continued into work, parting a throng of tourist-looking types on the sidewalk. As I got off my bike, I heard "You, on the bike, stop," and look around to see a police motorcycling cruising down the sidewalk towards me. Oops.

He only wrote the ticket up for the early turn, which is nice; red light violations are nearly $400 here. He was pleasant enough. It took a while. The tourist types laughed their heads off and took pictures. People I knew grinned at me as they walked in. The security guard came out and ogled the cop's motorcycle (a very fancy bmw of some sort).

He said something about being sorry to do this in front of all my friends. "Yeah.. they're laughing at me," sez I. He grimaces, "I think they're laughing with you." Probably right.

did my first real race today. well, real practice race. real enough to need to buy a racing license. real enough to kick my ass. after consuming many persons worth of food i want to fall asleep for a couple of days now. venue: the early bird criterium. practice race plus mentoring session. you don't get anything for winning and there are mentors who ride with you and give you advice.

They divide you up by how green you are and I was in the greenest group. I had have alot of power in my legs, but zero experience under my belt. I spent much of the race trying find a wheel to follow, getting bored of it, moving up, then finding myself involuntarily leading when the first few riders get tired and peel off. Criteriums are all about strategy, about positioning yourself near the front of the pack so that when the final sprint starts you can shoot ahead. And about not wasting your energy until that point. Mainly the latter. If I'd played things much more conservatively I wonder how much better I'd have done in the final sprint. Maybe not much more; I'm not a great sprinter just yet. Anyway, I came in around 4th (one guy nearly tied with me) out of a field of about 40-50.

Keeping to the front does provide one significant advantage, however: most crashes will happen behind you. I had 2 crashes in my race, one of them just a few bikes behind me. I heard the sickening kuchunk... kuchunk kuchunk as one rider went down and another one ran over him (somehow without crashing himself). That's what you'll get, i supposed, with us newbies. I glanced behind me, "what the fuck was that?" "a crash! KEEP GOING!"

Marie's group (the women's newbies) also had a crash, just at the start of the final lap. Much worse than either of ours, as it happened right at the front of the peleton (which they'd been much better about keeping together than we had). I was riding towards them on the sidewalk as it happened and looked up just in time to see half a dozen riders and bicycles flying through the air and piling on top of each other. Marie was in the middle of it but got through with just a bit of road rash. I was relieved to see her pink arm warmers bending over one of her teammates than sprawled on the ground. I think one person went to the hospital, but it wasn't too serious.

and people think alleycat racing is dangerous. sheesh.

and besides bikes?

uhhh.. i worked? mostly. and that's what i shall be doing for the next while straight. gnight.

yes adamnit, i do make an inordinate number of posts from airports. unfortunately there are no moving walks in this one. hello 6am. hello transit zombies stumbling stiffly with dry eyes, nursing old knee injuries. I've got till 7:15 to catch the first bus to maine. what to do..

man, and what have i done? i'm looking at my work todo list which also has a day-to-day log of activities and there's a big blank after 12/07. that's like 2 weeks solid of deep-hack mode. I think 12/08 was the day I was given access to the resources i needed to begin my latest flashfire project. it's amazing what you can accomplish in two weeks when you just don't really sleep or do anything else. i think i averaged a little over 4 hours a night this week and I feel pretty good this morning. I feel like I have Kicked Some Ass. It's like i'm back in OS class and we just handed in our kernel. Yesterday morning I rolled off of the futon in my office, killed time until my manager arrived. he had me make a 2 line change and then said, "this looks great. get out of here!" and after some piddling about i did. and then i went home, packed, and got on the plane. meeting deadlines gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling.

hello boys and girls, it's been a while. I don't have anything particularly interesting to say so i'm just going to get the ball rolling again by recounting the events since the last few entries.

can't talk now. deephack mode.

at the Jose Cuervo Taquileria, all beers come with an optional $2 side-shot which noone is taking today. usually they do, explains our barkeep, but today is sunday. I finish pint number three and marvel at the BlendTec automatic blended drink maker and it's violent operation. i am attempting to stay slightly buzzed from main to san francisco.

the periodic warning announcements in portland (ME) international jetport have a real imperative tone to them. "We KNOW what happens when you accept strange belongings into your posession. PLEASE don't let it happen again." you have to applaud their effort, made possible by being used as a jumping-off point for the 9/11 fly-boys, no matter how impotent. Most recorded airport announcemnts simply repeat the same refrains as every other airport announcements with the underlying message simply, "we were told to say this."

the moving walk voice lady at this airport has a soothing british accent. the terminal, in general, is one of the least-offensive i've ever been in. its ownly oddity is the generous use of vast open spaces, perhaps meant to evoke the open spaces of the midwest or perhaps just in anticipation of the vast expanses of the average person's bottom in the coming years. the urinal stalls were easily twice as wide as many san francisco club bathroom's i've been in.

my work binge has come to an end for the time being. the bits and pieces are documented and handed off to appropriate parties while i am away in maine for early thanksgiving. in the meantime, performance reviews came and went (well!) and there was a major shakeup in management above me. a friend of mine, ammon's roommate jon, is now the boss of most of our group. My old manager has shifted to another group, taking half of my old larger team with him. this is going to be very interesting in a number of ways, not the least of which is that jon is that most of my experience with jon has been drunk at a party somewhere. tho he's junior to most of us in age, experience, and education, i have high hopes for him; he's done a bang-up job in his old group.

in other news, joel is still living on my couch, he got a job as a bike messenger (and has managed not to squish himself so far), and i got a new bike. there's another alleycat race coming up, this one a relay. with joel on my team i will feel 50% less like a poser than i did at the last one. now i just need to learn downtown so i don't get fucking lost again.

i had the most retarded bike accident ever last night. full, head-on collision with some guy's dinner. dude stepped out between some cars without looking. we managed not to collide, but he threw his styrofoam container of mexican food up in the air and i took it full in the face. i'm not sure if he was aiming for that, but he did a really good job. a few feet down the road i realized my glasses were missing, screeched to a halt, and went back to calmly yell at the dude and ask him to help me find my glasses.

so, picture me, half-blind, standing in the middle of the road holding my bike in the air to stop the 2 lanes of oncoming mission st. traffic while my new friend scrambles around the street in full-on tweak-out mode looking for my glasses. "what kinda glasses you need, man?" "glasses! the kind that help me see! just help me find them, please!" I was only in half-tweak-out mode. I let a few cars through here and there, listening for sickening crunches as they went by. "these the glasses you need, man?" finally the dude found them. "yeah, thanks... why did you DO that?" He said something about me helping him pick his dinner up off the street, then picked up the styrofoam container and threw it up in the air. I took off without looking back. I swear my glasses lead a charmed life.

51% of you suck.

the numbers are all blending together, swiming in circles around me, calling me names, and daring me to make sense of them.

you just go and get yourself hit by trains, stupid cars. see if i care. only delay my attempted-early commute by (*gah!*) who know's how long...

and while i'm bitching, fuck you mr. report-i've-been-working-on-for-the-last-3-months. i could finish you today if things would just stop changing and being shitty in general. bah!.

lately

i'm attempting to slip into work-coma mode, like i used to do for months on end back in school. my friends keep pulling me back out, though, damn. also, i've developed a real sensitivity to caffeine. when did that happen? purpose of this transition is two-fold, firstly, to get that stupid report out the door, and secondly as a cathartic recentering exercise to get me back into being-single mode. probably not the best way, but it's my way. i'm tired and grumpy and this train still isn't moving. go away.

the very most annoying thing about a tv series marathon is that the theme song gets lodged in your brain. Firefly has the most abnoxious theme song ever.

time passes...

okay done. agh. that was a fun, if unproductive way to spend a sunday. go obsessive tendencies. at least the series only lasted one season so i'm free to doodle around in code-land with my copious free time. i kinda needed it, i think. something to distract me for a while...

excuse me? you're breaking up—

i'm getting better at these, i think. there were tears, name-callings, and i feel bad, but not horrible. accusations again levelled that i don't try hard enough, want things to just be easy. impatient, maybe a sincere pessimist in a few key departments. not wanting to fight for it to the bitter end with the screaming and breaking of plates. i've become much more forward about it, though. lay it out. tell her what's up. don't let it drag on, not calling, seeming distant. no, nothing's wrong, dear. till she gets fed up and ends it for me. that is the true cowardly way. i've grown beyond that at least.

it wasn't working. she is a beautiful person, inside and out, and i didn't want to change her in any way (not that i could have). but i could never see myself fall in love with her. i couldn't get close to her. our mannerisms, tendencies clashed and i'd have to take a step back. that little critical connection wasn't quite there. i hope we can work out as friends.

I said it before and I'll say it again, the feeling of having something hammered into your head is really, really weird. Hammer, to tap, to screw, all made of titanium or surgical steel or something else shiny. TINK, TINK, TINK! You can see the hammer and tap sticking out of you but somehow—thank you, nitrous oxid—it doesn't quite compute how this construction can be going on inside your mouth. Okay, now that I've reiterated that, let's move on.

There is a playing card stuck in the back spokes of my Pista with a rather raunchy, hairy threesome depicted on the back. I put it there. It was a party favor from the last checkpoint on (drumroll, dududududuh...) my first alleycat race. An alleycat is a messenger race. It's a little bit like the scavenger hunts you went on as a kid, just with alot of traffic violations, alcohol consumption, and strippers.

I finished at about the same time that as alot of really good riders who'd had to fix flat tires during the race, which is okay. After losing one group I'd been following, I spent alot of time squinting at my map going aw fuck where is this intersection? Eventually I hooked up with a very nice messenger (whose twice-patched tire was holding air okay) who showed me to the last few checkpoints. High points:

Andrea beat me, since she knew where the fuck she was going and is no slouch. She actually placed second amongst the girls. Go andrea.

i was a bit confused at first when they said they were going to give me gas for the procedure, but it wasn't long into it that i realized that without being high, i would be alternately very bored and very freaked out. i very intently admired the lighting fixtures very intently while they unpacked a large array of utensils and the dentist patiently explained to and instructed her assistant/apprentice. interesting new sensations: my whole head vibrating and being pressed back into the chair with the force of the drill as they bore into my jawbone; the feeling of having something hammered (with a cute little surgical grade hammer and tap) into my jaw. not-so-new or interesting sensation: the feeling of the novocain wearing off as they sew me up. apprently i go through novocain fairly quickly, lucky me.

debating...

there's an alleycat race tomorrow that i really want to do. i wonder if that's still a possibility. i'm going to stick to just over-the-counter pain meds today and see how i feel tomorrow.

some guy getting on the train with me: "are you going to 4th?" "uh, we're at 4th" "right, i meant..." He asked the same of the next person, too. Nobody's brain really works at 6am. i used to do this more often. it was okay with frequency. might start it again; it's nice to have light with you when you get home (even if you spurn it on the way there).

andrea moved in, and it was good. i haven't talked with my other housemates this much in a while. she's a good enabler for my repressed social side. she's a good enabler for my alcoholic tendendies too (as are most of my friends) so we'll have to find a happy medium somewhere.

weight of the report i've been working on off of my back for a bit, i had some fun this weekend. activities include:

a few pictures from the weekend.

poor moving walk, he's nearing his end. please watch your step. caution. thank you. i'm stuck in the pittsburgh airport with my new flight not departing for another 3 hours. i walk up and down the people movers in repetition. the illusion of forward motion is satisfying when i have so much sitting around to do.

in other news, i've consumed my first piece of solid food today: a pretzel. i think it'll stay down this time. vomiting 5 times should really be enough for one hangover. the most recent of those was in the airport bathroom, in preparation for waiting on many long lines and being transferred to a different (and much later) flight. should be the last time, yes, that pretzel is sitting well.

on a more positive note

the trip has been great. neither flooding nor tornadoes managed to stop me and the last 28x from reaching oakland (pittsbugh). waiting in the warm air and the rain was actually rather comforting. i do miss pittsburgh sometimes. the wedding was touching and very brief. they chose a Quaker ceremony (tho neither are religious) which was very fitting. no one presides in a quaker ceremony, the couple simply read each other their vows, talk about how they met and why they are together, make out, and cry. then all the guests sign the marriage certificate and hang around gorging themselves on tasty food to the point of bursting.

later, at the wedding party, everyone who did drink got very drunk and had a smashing good time. foolishly, upon leaving we unburdened the couple of a bottle of cheap champagne. The details of the evening past that point are very fuzzy to me. the bottle was emptied. some phone calls were made. my stomach was emptied (and so was adam's, and kevin didn't look very well in the morning either).

and on that note, i think it might finally be time for brunch.

i expressed doubt, and in questioning, found reassurance. things will be better for a while at least.

and now

waiting in the airport to fly to pittsburgh. emma's joyous unioning ceremony and such. probably will hardly see her, unfortunately, but it should be a grand reunion anyway.

and also

marie is safe. i will worry less.

marie is scaring me.

unrelated

horace is dead. i poisoned his children with penicillin. he was a bad, bad cold. spits on horace. when i was first coming down with horace, i came home one night, dizzy and tired, but also hungry, and decide to make some pasta. after adding the pasta to the water, i lay down on my bed to stop the world from spinning for a bit. 2 hours later, my housemate comes home, comes into my room, and wants to know if i've noticed that the house is full of smoke. just now i noticed this, sez i. i spent the next [sick-]day at home burning incense and keeping the windows open.

change of obsession

i've stopped over-obsessively reloading news sites and taken up webcomics. Over the past week or so I've read the entire archives of a few of them. These take a few hours each to get through. This is arguable a far more destructive habit than the news-reloading, but at the same time it feels so much more productive. See, with the comics I'm making forward progress through a story arc (well, usually, depending on the comic), whereas with the newssites I was mostly just reading the same stories over and over again from different sources. in any event, i think this obsession will blow over more quickly.

okay, bad news first:

as for good news, well, i had some great tacos with joel and adamnit. and critmass was fun. we went down lombard street and the tail end of the ride crossed over gg bridge (on the bike way). i took joel on the long ride to work and kicked his little-wheeled ass. i did more drinking and fun-having than i should have and it angered Horace so.

might be the weird flu that's been going around the office. spent a good ten minutes in my office feeling really out of sorts and wondering if people would notice if i collapsed in my chair. i've decided to take a sick day tomorrow to see if rest will make me feel better and to be closer to my doctor if it doesn't.

other worries

i can't seem to make any significant forward progress at work. the report i'm working on is overdue (in that ambiguous way that things that need to be done as soon as possible can be) but there are always more pressing and immediate matters. compounding that is the fact that i hate to write these reports and i've been taking every opportunity to get "real work" done each day before i pick at it.

muted tragedies

i tripped and stumbled and stepped on marie's frazzled feelings and now she has made the executive decision again that she wants me out of her life. for real this time. we had plans to go bike shopping the next day and that was to be the last time we saw each other. bike browsing was quick and successful and we stood outside the shop for a while thinking of what one says to the other for the last time. "it's hard for me to believe this is really it," i say, "after all the times we've been thru this already." yes, she says, but this is really it this time. the threshold has been reached. i think that i maybe believe her intellectually, but i can't seem to get my reluctant emotions to kick in. it's not even the nervous smile on my face, just a quizzical searching. i try to memorize the way her face looks right then, just in case.

better days

joel is in town and it is good. it is my secret plan to convince him to settle down here after his world tour spins down. i think he'd fit in really well.

"you could just leave it with us for the night. your warrantee's still good"

"mm.. but i want it tomorrow. just sell me the parts and i'll do it." but of course i didn't get around to it until the following night anyway, because i'm good at prioritizing like that. now it's way past my bed time and the bike is still not done due to my lack of leverage.

backing up, i went to the bike shop so they could check out the click my chain was making, and probably sell me a new one. turns out i was lonngg overdue for a new chain and had ridden the whole drive train into the ground. ah well. bought newer, better, and beefier (1/8"!) parts.

today i try and put the parts on, but i can't get the old (and incompatible: 3/32") cog off. everything else is ready to go, just that stupid old cog in the way. tried joel's back-into-wall trick to no avail. tried a chain whip, broke the chain whip, fixed the chain whip, tried it again, no luck. tried the back-into-wall method again for good measure. no luck. now i'm just tired and pissy and will not get to go on a long ride tomorrow, or get to the bike shop while it is open until maybe saturday. hrmph.

and work is lame right now... and i haven't been getting enough sleep...

i guess nothing else is wrong right now. may as well go to bed.

    

      
     PLAN PAYS  22429.00
      
  PATIENT PAYS    200.00
    

I'm not gonna go bankrupt! Woohoo!

like i said, i find myself obsessively reloading news sites, webcomics, anything serially updated. i can eat up whole hours this way. usually it happens just before i go to bed or just after i wake up. it's usually when i've had a bad day, or when i'm feeling particularly empty because all i've done lately is work and it wasn't fullfilling work. or because i'm not feeling satisfied with my relationships (usually because of my stunted communication skills).

i hardly ever find it though, that glimmer of news article or brilliant webcomic, something positive to make it feel like i made it through this day for a reason. it's very sad.

yeah anyway

i had a 3-pista ride this morning. should be a little pic of them on the fon blog. it was silly and i love it.

le sigh...

i have great difficulty communicating effectively with people, i know. now if you'll excuse me, i need to sit in a coffee shop, put on headphones, and code.

riding from the train to home i entirely failed to find an alternate route to cancun; freeway got in the way. it was the sort of night for it, though. slogging through the fog still bleary from catnapping on the train. the fog seems to deaden the city noises a little bit, like falling snow when you're cross-country skiing. i pass by the same cyclist 2 or three times because i don't really know where i'm going. we don't say anything becuase the weather just doesn't call for it.

alcohol consumption and going out are at an all-time high, while actually talking to people is approaching a low. this is strange to me and i feel i should reverse that trend. when i sit down to take a break i find myself obsessively reloading tech news sites and reading 5 articles about the same topic that i care marginally about. nogood. i've got a stack of books built up from christmas and i'm going to start on them to curb that habit. oddly, i'm not at all interested in video games for this round of obsessiveness.

worries

good things

there are more, and not all of them are drowned in cheap beer and fine wine, but i'm tired and shall go to bed now.

well things are improving. i rode the 50miler to work today with jonathan and the persistent headwinds from the last couple of weeks have nearly subsided. they returned every now and then to remind us we were human. i'm starting to adopt a more generous and productive riding style with jonathan, breaking the wind on the gentle uphills and flats into the wind, letting him lead downhill, and busting my ass at full speed to the top of the steep ones to wear myself out. he calls me a jackass every time i do the last bit but it puts us on a more even keel for the rest of the ride.

marie is talking to me again. well, rather we never really stopped talking (as much as she said we would), but now the conversations haven't ended in screams or tears for a while. she says she's more confused than angry at me at this point. i can't say i completely understand myself alot of the time, so that's fair. otherwise, she's doing really well and i'm excited for her.

and the other one.. who's lap i fell into at exactly the wrong time. i'm horribly frightened things are going to get completely cocked up there because of how it all started. i'm not sure how, we're running at pretty much full disclosure, but i fear.. if it weren't for the fact that she's way too awesome to let go i'd be tempted to say, "wait. not now. i just got off of a long term relationship and i'm not ready for this yet" (man, i hate that blow-off line, but it would almost be true here). just gonna roll with it and try not to spin out of control.

my grandfather died a few hours ago.

hello marie's friends, this is the fucking asshole here.

i ought to open my mouth even less than i do now, methinks, but the ball's rolling, so why not stop now? okay, the list needs a bit of explanation; marie really seems to want to rub it in my face. a few weeks before when i was just starting to really consider the breakup i jotted down a bunch of the reasons for (and a few against) breaking up, and then some rebuttals to those. i missed a bunch of big themes that were the real reasons that i eventually decided and left on a bunch of superficial reasons that were just me grasping at straws. in the end, that list didn't help me decide much of anything.

feeling defeated and fatalistic after the first round of breakup i handover the list when asked, unedited. yes, that was pretty dumb, almost as dumb as mentioning it in the first place.

and the rest is pretty accurate, if a bit deliberately hurtful. i win the cockup of the year award.

this is the first breakup i've instigated in practically forever. i feel like shit. i feel like a turd. feces. crap. poop. none of the self-righteous victimhood of being dumped to ease the pain, this time. it's all me, my fault.

seeing things from the other side of the event is always hardest. was it the right thing to do? i feel doubtful now. it took alot of effort to make myself finally do it, so it must have been what i really wanted, right? i pictured in my mind the perfect breakup. a smooth transition to singlehood. she'd understand and might have been thinking the same thing. we'd cry on each other's shoulder a bit and then i'd go home. we'd still see each other almost as much as before, simply out of habit, until we settled into a normal friend-like routine. it wouldn't be much different than before except the relationship part, the part that wasn't working so well, wouldn't be an issue anymore. and we'd all be happier in the end, so it would be self-evident that it was the right thing to do.

but obviously that's not what happened. she'll probably read this and think how stupid i am. perhaps she's right.

more realistically

i stood at the bottom of her hill for about 5 minutes, then walked down another hill further away just to give myself more time. i knew it wouldn't go well. i knew i had to present a strong case, both to myself and her, for why we ought to breakup, but at the moment it wasn't quite coming to me. it did make sense before, didn't it? i'd made a list of the pros and cons some days earlier when I was deciding and i wished i'd had them with me. was i giving up to soon? i almost chickened out. in the end i blindly trusted my earlier decisions and walked up the hill hoping for the best.

a long day calls for a big beer. but i'm short of cash this evening and the liquor store has a min credit charge of $6 so instead i buy 4 little wines.

speaking of drinking, i attended a fine 30th birthday party of one of my biking buddies, jon. jon lives in a .com loft half a block from the quasi-ghetto appartment where andrea used to live. we used to throw bottles from the roof in the general direction of his house, i recall.

before attending i was wondering if the party would be more 6th st. or .com. It was .com, too bad. jon's friends are all older than him apparently, and far more tame. He was the most drunk one there until me and my more 6th-st. crew showed up (i brought a posse, anticipating this might happen). it was really weird. i hope my 30th birthday party is alot different (and that my parents aren't there). his girlfriend is pretty cool, tho. good for him.

So, 34 minutes of saddle time (10.2 miles), 2 or 3 minutes of red light time, 13 minutes or so of shoot-the-shit time w/ the party car crew at mountainview because I thought I might have to be super-early to get a bike slot, and 40 minutes of train time. total time about 1hr 30 minutes. could have trimmed it to 1:20 if i'd known there'd be plenty of room on the bullet back today. Not bad. Including parking, you could spend that long on the commute driving if you were unlucky. I'll have to try again in the morning to make it. It's downhill and more frequently a tail wind but you really do need to get there 10+ minutes early to get a spot (or did last week).

chugga chugga chugga chugga wooo! wooo!

boston logan airport now. i stole a highlighter from security. i figured that was approximately what my time and annoyance was worth after the third time they checked my boarding pass. the wand guy wasn't very nice either. stupid, i forgot to take my belt off before going thru the gate.

the price of beer at this airport bar is surprisingly under-inflated. i've got a while to kill.

but maine?

janna is graduated. last of us leaving the nest. sort of. becca is living at home again. janna is deferring for a year to serve ice cream to little kids and play the oboe on random continents.

i played alot of video games. did a bit of work too. and family time. i purposely didn't call my few (2?) remaining maine friends just to simplify things. no balancing friends and family. no lack of sleep. no boring drives to biddeford.

my dad tried to give me money to buy food; his consolation to the all-seafood dinner one night. i refuse, politely. funny, because i had to earn every dollar i spent when i lived at home.

..with their laptop open among the family watching this movie. Emily has hers. I'm here at homehome to watch Janna graduate highschool. We're watching "love, actually". I like a good, drippy, romantic comedy every now and then just like I do a good teen flic.

That little kid's hair is way hotter than mine. I'm jealous. And the woman with big lips (ask Marie how i feel about big lips) is way hotter than my hair and that kid's hair combined.

yes, and so?

As people keep asking, yes my shoulder is healed. I'm riding once a week most or all of the way to work and that is lovely. Since I'm stuffing my face and not moving much all this extended weekend (2 days off work) I'm contemplating throwing in an extra solo ride come tuesday. Laziness versus compulsive hardcoreness.. we shall see.

I have become a terrible snob. I spent an aweful lot of today comparing portland to SF, sometimes outloud and i'm sorry for that.

but i can no longer be your pirate mascot, for i have a new tooth and new glasses.

why do you blow such large donkey nuts?

two serious coffeeshop bums are, as i type, confronting the creepy guy in the corner and asserting their right not to be ruthelessly stared at. they're really upset. i put on headphones.

There's a techsploitation column wherein analee newitz describes how when one realizes that it's a high-entropy day, it's best just to stay home. but i'm a workaholic so...

I woke up this morning from an awful dream in which i found myself trapped underneath a train as it rolled over, tho i emerged unscathed. so maybe it's just a day of close calls. nevertheless, clouds of blue smoke emerging from approaching tires is not a sight i ever enjoy. the light was green, wasn't it? a few miles later, the doors of a bus opened just a little too close to my left ear and i start to think what a great work-from-home day this would be.

In my defense, I heard the red-light-runner coming and was waiting for him to pass; either one of us could have been less vigilant and it would have been okay. the bus had been sitting for a while and had just closed its front doors, so i wasn't expecting such a late exit. i yelped a warning to the outgoing passengers but i was far enough ahead that it didn't matter.

calming down...

today i will buy a new laptop. and i will love it and caress it and buy it the most durable laptop sleeve i can find. i've realized that at this point i utterly lack the ability to get any development work done at work (too many bugs, meetings, destractions) so now is certainly the time.

i just now for the first time have whitnessed the "restroom is for customers only" rule actually inforced at a little coffee shop for someone who is not a junky or dirty homeless person. bitch.

i can almost bike normally again. i still cannot brush my teeth normally again. i fear i may lose the other tooth. my computer is dying and i may buy a new one.

but on the whole i feel okay. for some reason major accidents really infuse me with energy and a zest for life. i feel less awkward in social situations because i have something to talk about. i've been very busy at work.

hot today. really hot. traffic-stopping hot. the normally-snarling 280 on-ramps were quiet parking lots of people waiting breathlessly for their air conditioning to kick in. i missed a long string of timed lights and had a lot of opportunity to practice my one- and no-handed track stands.

improvements

oh yes, i'm biking again. rode to work for the first time today. mostly one-handed, though. several directions of force still cause shooting pains in my shoulder.

and the sling is off. i discarded it last week after i realized how much it was making my shoulder cramp up (which i figured was probably counter-productive). i feel it improving daily and i constantly find that i've regained one more function, though there is still the strange feeling that something is not quite put together right up there. hopefully that's just from the odd muscle usage. fun things i've found i can do with only my left hand, given motivation and concentration: 1) use a fork, 2) slow down, stop, and enter a track stand (thought that one i'm still a bit shaky one).

most of the road rash is past the bandage stage. my neck stopped oozing enough that i just let it scab over instead of covering it (and ripping up the scab every bandage change).

other things

marie and i almost broke up this weekend, but then we didn't and i'm glad.

i bought some new clothes and a new jacket to replace (and then some) the ones that were ripped-up, blood-soaked, and cut apart from the accident. and i bought some tight pants because i like my ass and want to share it.

impromptu drinking night last night. i was only going to go with some coworkers for a couple of beers but then everyone joined in. i ended up staying till last call raising hell in lower haight. worth it, i think. we met some excellent punks, a dog, and a guy with a plant.

Hey, boys and girls! it's time for another episode of unhealthy obsession with things we can't change now!

if only...

Instead

Outcome.

Anyway

I alternate between feeling really stupid for letting this happen, feeling really shitty that it happened, and acceptance. once i get a new pair of glasses I'll be alot better, I think.

last friday on the party car we sat around with the conductors drinking wine and eating cookies and pondering what one could possibly blow up if one were to hijack the caltrain. conclusion: not much.

also

I've been sick. that's not my excuse for nonblogging. that's just a fact. despite this I rode 40 miles at the asscrack of dawn on friday with a bunch of other silicon valley caltrain bike geeks (and felt like crap on a stick the rest of the day). But I got to see a family of deer and a bunny and kick everyone's asses on the hills.

and now

I'm coming to PGH for carnival. If you are too then give me a holler, and I'll see you there.

the 9:07am train is as full as the 7:25 train usually is.

my laptop makes my lap sweat. gross.

i have a strange impediment when it comes to covering my body entirely with some liquid, be it soap, bug spray, or what have you. my body is just not linear enough; i lose my train of thought and forget where i've been. showering takes a while. the first sunny day i'm outside i always end up with an interesting burn. such is the state of my legs today after a couple of hours of leisurely biking around the city. I have little half-moons poking out of a clean spandex-defined line on both my upper legs, and my entire left calf is lobster-hued. could have been worse, i'm sure. Ammon, who was with me, forgot to slather entirely. I wonder how he'll look tomorrow.

train: 725 express. with ammon in tow if he's able.

working on: no-handed track-stand. up to a few seconds now, and i'm starting to see how it's possible to do longer.

weather: for those of you not in they bay area, it's been fucking fantastic; summer came all at once.

wearing: spandex. second day this week that i'll be getting off at mountainview and making it a 10-mile each way ride.

last vomited: saturday night. sorry adam&maria's couch. i have no recollection of it happening so i assume i must have been unconscious (yow!). damn you, trashy tiki bar in the richmond. it was a fun night otherwise tho.

hi everyone. people keep bugging me to write stuff so i'm gonna do that really quickly.

i finally made the rattle on rusty's back hub go away (it involved the purchase of more wrenches) but now there's a rattle in the headset. boo. i'll make you whole again, rusty, i swear!

i went to a drinking spelling bee last night. i thought i was back at the shady house with the lounge rats.

ammon moved to the city. finally.

torrential, cathartic rain. i almost regretted taking the lights off of my bike. the bike car is unsurprisingly at sub-capacity. wet outer shells are drip-drying everywhere. i heard the words "snow day" followed by a pained giggle floating up from the front of the car.

further adventures in public speaking.

and much better ones this time. i credit this fact to extensive preparation and a good cup of tea. i'd like to add "a good night's sleep" to the list there, but 4 hours rarely qualifies for that. and maybe "extensive preparation" is stretching it a bit; I was still debugging my demo 20 minutes into the presentation while other people spoke. also, all I had to do in this presentation was run a demo and talk to it, then answer questions at the end. as one of my co-presenters point out, the best indication of success of this demo was that people actually asked intelligent questions at the end. afterwords i ate lunch and took a two hour nap.

and LA...

we came, we saw, we drank, we drove, we wardrove, we played gameboys, we saw movies, we hung out with melissas. a good time, but expensive. and i could never, ever, live there.

coming to los angeles, we make our best effort to pretend we're in san francisco. dumb luck lands us in a perfect, cheap, fleabag motel just a few blocks from hollywood & vine. wandering around looking for a suitable bar, we run into sasha, my friend's roommate who is down here playing a show on saturday. we follow her to a hipster bar which is another branch of a hipster bar that i frequent occasionally in my city.

LA hipsters are identical to san fransisco hipsters in most ways except that they seem to have more money. they must to be able to afford $6 draft beers at a normal bar. adam sez that this is the norm. I wonder if people just drink less here. probably going along with the having more money thing, everyone at the bar was dressed very well (which is not always synonymous with well-dressed, but mostly was in this case). if they were making a movie of the hipster handbook, i just managed to walk onto the set.

other things. jetblue is awesome. if they went more places i'd fly more often. it's a really re-humanizing experience to fly with them after sitting in an airport. also, LA is big. real big. and full of a whole lot of nothing. i could never live here. driving through west hollywood we saw one lone bikelane which died out after a few blocks. i cheered.

i've decided I probably wouldn't like anyone with the letters H A T E tattooed across their knuckes (like this man sitting in front of me at the coffee shop). Can anyone confirm or deny this?

lately

I'm sickly, lately. I worked from home friday and am doing so again today. Actually working, too, it's been good. I've nearly finished a giant documentation task that I'd been putting off for a while (I couldn't do much else from home). Good thing something's coming out of this other than a million used kleenexes

New band to chack out, Metric. I picked up their cd yesterday after hearing them a few weeks ago in a friends appartment. Think the Breeders gone Electroclash but less abnoxious than that sounds. Good stuff.

...is my new favorite word i think.

I've been on a roll, at work. This is why I haven't been blogging. I get on the train and open my laptop and get back to coding. I get home and open my laptop and get back to coding. I wake up and find that I've been dreaming about coding. This is a good thing, for the moment. I think I'm nearly done with it, for those who've found me a little distant...

9:06 not 8:46

I met a talkative and inquisitive man at the Sunnyvale station last night when I showed up for the non-existant 8:46pm train. We chatted about bikes, bike accidents. "The good thing is that more people are biking, because the economy is down. But they're driving faster; They're more nervous."

His other pet topic of conversation was, where would you go, beyond the states, when you got older, if things got too crazy here. I said I didn't know. Other people had varying answers. Italy. The South of France. Some spanish-speaking people had said Puerto Rico. Well-off Black folks had said South Africa. He seemed like an interesting guy.

ow. my ass. add one more item to ye olde liste of errors for my commute. don't assume cars see you when you slow down, signal to hop a curb on a congested street (looked like he was slowing down when i looked back...). Another low-speed collision under my belt (2 more and i get a toaster!). after screaming "what the fuck??" in a beautifully strangled falsetto, I stood in front of the van and started talking assertively about insurance. One guy got out of the van and the other parked it. No, I didn't need an ambulance. I couldn't find anything wrong with my bike. It was a company van, and did i want some cash? Give a number. I looked harder at my bike, spun the wheels. said $40. then man conferred with his partner. here's $50. we all walked away much relieved. $50 for a bruised ass isn't so bad. some people pay far more for that kind of treatment. today must be my lucky day.

i wish the rain would stop because i need to grocery shopping. how wet do you think you have to be before people look at you funny when you walk into a store?

NYE

i drank alot on public transit which i always enjoy for some reason. saw fireworks. watered some trees. went to a bar. caught a crazy taxi home.

okay, the rain stopped and i didn't really have much to say just now. one last thing: i went to a goth club on monday and it was moderately fun.

There are two vending machines in this terminal which dispense iced tea. One is near my gate. One is halfway down the terminal. I check both before making my decision on what to purchase (they happen to both have the same contents... at $2 a bottle) from the one nearest me. The machine nearest me is not accepting bills right now. The one further away does accept bills, but the ice tea is all sold out. But it does dispense quarters when i hit the change return. Back at the near vending machine I insert 8 quarters and make my selection. The machine is one of the nift new kinds with the clear front. I make my clearly-in-stock selection and the LEDs say "vending"... and then all my quarters come back out the change return. As they do with any other selection on that machine.

I have, since 10pm, consumed a cup of coffee, 2 cans of redbull, and a bottle of wine. Please note the time. I have not slept. I want an iced tea. I want to cry.

previously

I think I'd like to make some observations and annectdotes about my week in Maine but i'd better wait. Anything I retell right now is going to come out horribly cynical in this state and environment. To be very brief: there were alot of kitties and I loved them all. There was alot of food and I ate it all. There was alot of pot smoked around me. There was alot of cold. I want a nap. The end.

and yet it is nearly up. let me tell you about my seatmates while there is still time.

time passes...

okay, there wasn't any time then, but i'll tell you about them now. to my left was a rumpled hipster-type. meshback cap. very twitchy. touretts? speed? he had an old g3 powerbook and a sketchbook but he spent the majority of the flight reading. this didn't help my plan to sleep for most of the 5 hours.

to my right was a friendly, crunchy-but-down-to-earth middle-aged woman from santa cruz. she spent the majority of the flight curled up and sleeping sweetly and occasionally falling onto my shoulder. it was really cute; i wanted to pet her. We spent take-off making snide comments about the conversation of:

an older couple and a teenager traveling alone, behind me. the old man claimed to be the writer of such 5th grade band hits as "at the hop". upon boarding he began immediately interrogating the teen about his listening habbits. "what are you listening to there? CDs, MP3s? you burn that cd? do your friends download MP3s? have you heard of this new Apple Music Store? 99 cents a song!" the crunchy lady and i giggled and rolled our eyes. eventually i put in earplugs.

do you remember that game? when you were little? it was one of those mean little games like 52-pickup that are funny all of -1 times.

i was fixing marie's bike and completed the lube job with a spotty flashlight. Having nothing left to do after that we left the house to go wait for a bus. Other people had similar ideas; the sidewalk and park was full of dog-walkers and you could see people bumping about their apartments with flashlights and candles. Towards Market the sickly smell from the electrical fire permeated the bus we were on. Traffic snarled. Firetrucks struggled. Police in safety-yellow directed traffic and pedestrians wound through the impromptu parking lots. The sort of scene that san franciscans are used to with frequent parades and protests, but alot darker. The mood was curious, cautious. More creative (and gas-powered) businesses stayed open. We ate taqueria cancun by camplight, inhaling the poorly-ventilated fumes from the hot grease.

and then we fled the city and went to a cute little emo party / basement show in north berkeley.

previously

a hipster party. friday. invaded andrea's house. it was kinda hilarious and kinda grating. i got to help restrain a dumb hipster boy who was intent on beating up another dumb hipster boy. i stole some of his hair. people threw bottles off of the roof. cops came up and told people to stop throwing bottles off of the roof ("look, i don't care that you're having this party, but cut that shit out").

i talked to some people about some things i have no recollection of. there was a token suicidegirl there but i only talked to her friend (who i remember being pretty cool and cute) for fear of saying something completely idiotic.

egg nog. sangria. jungle juice.

when it got really bad we ducked out to king's diner for some greasiness. on returning i helped andrea retake the bathroom from a bunch of coke heads ("but i'm peeing!" "fine, keep peeing. everone else OUT!!"), and lent her some earplugs for the night.

dear self, please note that your commute home is not a video game. you do not get extra points for passing slow (but dense and volatile) traffic on the left. that is all.

on the other hand

they've ripped up another huge stretch of road in sunnyvale and riding home it is like mad max in a duststorm.

starting in on that less sleep more fun cycle again. need to stop that and crash out early tonight i think. in related news, the pattern continues as A number 4 enters my life. some things like that are just as awesome and amusing as they are retarded.

bits and pieces.

it has been raining off and on and i clad myself fully in dorktastic rain gear and slop it up. molly handles like a champ. purchases justified.

i've been playing now and then on the hills just south of the marina. these are the sort of hills that looks like walls from a distance, where the parking is all sideways and the street is made of concrete. i get to the base of them and my stomach drops and i wonder why the hell this road was built. i get to the top and i want to throw up. i can just barely make it up some with my load as light as possible. a jogger nearly beat me to the summit of one. "it's a little harder on a bike" sez he, "yeah, especially when you've only got one gear" sez i. i point to my drive train. he swears. i'm such a showoff. i call these my anaerobic bike rides.

there's been a bit of scandal, drama, and shuffling, but i think everyone is happier now.

a slightly botched haircut has left me with just one workable hairstyle: the straight-down little boy cut. it's actually awesome.

sometimes i feel that the online world is very real and very much a part of my life and sometimes i feel that it is an entirely separate fantasy. This goes both for the people i meet and chat with over IM and never see in real life, and the people who express interest in the t68i phone i have for sale but never follow up on it. I've finally sold my phone to a friend of mine at a reduced price after half a dozen people failed to make good on their interest in it.

the same goes for the ad's that i've placed on craigslist for the previously-available room in my house. after posting, I receive 10+ replies the same day and an exponentially declining number after. But the second posting often attracts the same responders as the first, even after they've expressed disinterest because of X crucial flaw.

even more pertinant is adamnit's practice of automatic dating. There are somewhere around a hundred girls on friendster in the vacinity of adam that meet a certain criteria. some percentage of them are interesting and attrictive enough for him to write to them. If he writes the same message each time to this subset, some smaller percentage will write back to him and some even smaller percentage will be interesting enough for him to respond, and eventually some even smaller percentage will meet with and hookup with him. I'd like you now to count how many subgroups a girl has to jump through for adam to actually have to invest some effort and force of personality in interacting with them. Fascinating.

Today i woke up at andrea's to the sound of continuing rain. I wouldn't have crashed there if it weren't for the rain which had settled like an unwanted houseguest the night before as we drank and watched movies. after watching the rain for a while and wishing it ill will in the extreme, i tied plastic bags around my feet, grabbed Rusty, and splashed home.

Chrome-Moly — Steel that has been alloyed with small amounts of Chromium and Molybdenum. My new bike's name is Molly, i have decided.

I've been trying to stay in the saddle more as I ride. It definitely takes some discipline. And strength. But it does force me to pedal through the whole circle and there's alot less wasted effort (though it's got to be a bit slower than standing and pumping). At any rate, it's certainly making my legs stronger. The hills around here get flatter week by week.

A personal milestone, on thanksgiving night i rode over pacific heights from the marina. Up 2 steep blocks of divisidero and then the rest on scott. My bike map tells me that's 2 blocks of >18% grade plus 4 blocks of 10%-18%. yeah, that hurt.

not bike

I am mildly allergic to strawberry-scented condoms, but not banana. i think this is pretty funny.

at the $1 drink hip-hop night, i tried desperately to get the aging, white, sportswear-adorned dude to join me in a little mosh pit. i find that little things like that, if effective, help aleviate my jadedness as i watch tragically unhip men prepare to hookup with tragically unhip women of various levels of attractiveness. he wasn't having it though, so i remained alone in my quest for irony. as much as irony is completely played in some arena's, it is severely lacking in others.

I haven't blogged much lately, and i have no good excuse. i plan on recovering, tho, so all 2 of you who have been reloading my webpage with baited breath can breath a sigh of release. Now, let's catchup:

catchup:

performance reviews came and went at work. I got a raise, and a nice little bonus. It makes me slightly suspicious of the recent little round of layoffs. America is sighing a dramatic rise in productivity lately, eh? I also note that the vast majority of my pay increase is eaten up by taxes. that's fine.

I went home last weekend to fulfill my turkeyday family obligations. my family holds ours early, for convenience. At the height of my adventures I visited all 2 of the people not related to me that i still know in maine, helped take a sick cat to the emergency animal clinic at 3am, and drank several beers at "the 50's pub" in biddeford (which was neither remeniscent of the 50's, nor a pub). I think i could count on one thumb the number of girls I saw there that I was attracted too. I blame this snobbery on my decreasing tolerance for poor style, the lack of sun, and the abundance of opportunity to wear baggy clothing in maine. Otherwise, it was lovely.

the person sitting in front of me is sobbing quietly. there are a number of reactions to this, but the best i can come up with, sadly (and the one i'm most equiped to respond with) is to pretend i don't notice. a little cold but...

speaking of cold, the temperature is dropping and the rain is beginning. i have equipped myself to battle these new elements with:

and.. yeah, that all adds up to a nice chunk of change. happily, this coincided with the end of the sallary freeze at apple and a nice little Panther bonus. good stuff.

...and walks right away with it. I'm really not sure what it was doing there in the first place, but he certainly took it. There's an odd confluence of bums around Muddy Waters in the mission tonight. Them along with the roving bands of mayoral cheerleaders make this night feel particularly alive. People seem to be rediscovering their wood stoves again for the first time... which reminds me i really need to order tickets home for pre-thanksgiving soon.

haven't posted in a bit. haven't quite been in the mood. I have been keeping a detailed log of events in my todo list at work, but that's not very interesting. but let's see, what important has happened...

halloween

i was human twister (the game. like you played as a kid) for halloween, which was fantastically successful despite the costume being last-minute and kinda shitty. twister is such an easily recognizable and commonly sexualized game and it tittilated and amused all the drunkards to no end. disappointingly, i couldn't get the dots to stick to my pants, so all good-natured groping had to happen above the belt (yes i'm a pervert, so?). on the plus side, the acrobatics necessary to put one or both feet on my shirt partly made up for it.

other things

things got busy again at work. for me. more entropy i can't really talk about. more scary departures too. we theorize that lightening won't strike twice and that we are safe.

housemate vanessa has not yet moved out as planned. which is fine because we haven't found a new housemate yet. so yeah, anyone want to live with me and 2 cool chicks? huge room, lots of light, near alamo squ. park.

counter-entropy

conversely:

upper haight street is probably the most touristy place i can tolerate in the city. i find myself here in a failed attempt to geek out in interesting locales with free wireless. i was speaking on the phone the other day with an AT&T customer service representative (*shrug*) who was telling me about her recent and brief trip to the city, and how she told her uncle, a denizen, of her plans to go to pier 39. "oh. why?" was the uncle's response. My sentiments exactly.

my wounds are healing uneventfully, which is fabulous. Tagaderm is marvelous stuff, and i curse Albertsons for not restocking it immediately when it sold out two days ago. it was the only sold-out item in the firstaid isle, incidentally. I'd fucked up my previous dressings the night before with a popscene date and ensuing debauchery, so I had to settle for some generic large gel bandages which are also pretty cool. the gel absorbs moisture from the would slightly faster than it can transfer it to the outside air, leaving a swollen, cushioning, pillow just over the oozing part. Pretty gross to look at but it feels nice.

i also called up the lady who hit me and asked if she'd like to pay for the modest cost of the Rusty's replacement parts. "sure," she says, "is that all? are you sure you don't need a new bike?" "...no," i hesitate, feeling the passage of an opportunity to seriously exploit the situation from someone who can probably afford it. best save up my karma for later. I sure hope i'm right in my assessment that the frame is undamaged.

yeah, got hit by another car... the blame can be shared between me who sped up approaching the intersection rather than slowing, the person in the car who hit me who didn't see me enter the intersection and didn't slow down when it was clear this would be a close call, and the guy who waved that car through the intersection when he had the right of way. There was also a bus involved, blocking everyone's line of sight.

I got hit squarely in the left pedal, the results of which you can see some of in my phoneblog. I made like a spiral-pass and flew-rolled to the ground some distance away, my hands up to protect my face (hooray for reflexes!), and my knees, legs, and elbow taking the brunt of the damage.

this time i did get all the other guy's info. the cop who happened to be 3 cars behind us made sure of that. he also gave me a lift home. he did not, unfortunately, have any good idea of how to try and make the hitter's insurance give me money, just that i should try and ask someone who'd done it before. We'll see. I've already ordered parts to replace those damaged and the total wasn't too great, so i may just call up the hitter and see if they'd just like to reimburse me and be done with it.

so yeah. yet another mark on my map of places to slow the fuck down going through. and i learned lots about cranks and bottom brackets and 3M Tagaderm transparent dressing. and i'm tired now and will go to bed.

latest obsession: moveable type. i want to move away from my homebrew solution to something less hacked-up, but i want to keep the special features of my old blog. Things I've gotten working so far:

you can see what i'm tinkering with here and here. eventually the page you're looking at now will be powered by MT.

also

hanging out w/ amanda again tomorrow. everyone cross your fingers for pseudo-date (or not) number 2.

feeling the need for some closure to the whole amanda debacle, i decided a surrogate rejection was in order. at a party last night i was arguing with this girl who under more sober conditions i wouldn't have talked to. as she left i suggested we continue our debate some other time. she, diplomatically said, sure. I asked if she would like my number (and that's fine if you don't), she said no. success! unambiguous rejection. I told her it was good to meet her and walked away grinning.

i fixed the autolinker. it's now at least 10x faster too, but you don't really care. lemme know if anything's broken (besides the layout in IE 6 :-P).

i took the weekend off. my first full one since labor day. probably shouldn't, but i think it was justifiable. i think it was my most successful weekends in ages in all the aspects in which weekends are normally judged. A quick eventlog:

the date

I had a little friendster date planned for that evening. can you even call it a date with friendster having the pretense of friend-finding? lets call it a datester. it went really well whatever it was and i look forward to seeing her again. i was going to write a whole bunch about her and the date right here, but i'm afraid of jinxing it and i probably told everyone who would care to listen all about it over IM yesterday.

update: bah, i am jinxed anyway. looks like that one might be DOA :-(... at least for now.

and,

yes i know there's some linky weirdness in the previous entry. that's a bug in my autolinking code not a typo. harrass me enough and maybe i'll fix it.

yes, fine, i suppose i could do some of that. it's been what, like 2 weeks?

i've mostly been working (surprised?). i did not go to big sur with adamnit. i was nearly molested by a drunken irishwomen at a southbay party. i did throw out both of rusty's brakes in favor of one really good brake up front. i did see mogwai. i did not get the info of graybikegirl who no longer takes the caltrain but did show up at the aforementioned party, tho i did spend a large portion of the party talking to her. i did acquire some lovely saddlesores and later readjust my seat and start wearing spandex on my commute. i did clean my room finally. i did not get my bike squished like joel.

i did lose alot of sleep and i think i'm going to nap now.

wow, i don't really remember making that last post. i actually mean to talk to andrea about last night and see if i'm forgetting anything. i don't remember biking up the hill to my house which is unusual as it's a pretty intense hill on Rusty. lets not do that again, shall we? felt pretty shitty all day today...

Spent the early afternoon bumming around the mission. Crazy/eccentric people struck up largely one-sided conversations with me and i was feeling too sick to fight them off. Actually, they were both very pleasant folks. I purchased a pair of jeans. There are manymany bicyclists in the mission and it warms my heart. I need my own bike posse.

somehow i made it home from andrea's house. i know it requires significant effort todo from andrea's house so i hope she gives me credit. and i hope her friend gives me credit cuz she's totally hot. yes. that often happens. i don't feel this blog is going anywhere so i shall now sum up work (the majority of my life): shit still sucks often. goodnight.

~snaptogrid

PS: for those wondering, i'm not dying; i'm just paranoid. and like 5 pounds lighter than i remember weighing in pittsburgh.

..says the trim southasian man as i cruise to a stop next to my house. SF bikies represent! yeah, that's what i'm talking about. I still maintain that the mission is one of the most fun hoods to bike through on a fixed. also, somehow my fixed-gear trackstand improved remarkably through the liberal application of bud light at el rio. i'm a lil drunk and i like my bike to an abnoxious extent. the end.

no days off this weekend. left too late on friday to make the party car. haven't really hung out at all much, save one trip to the eastbay last night.

i did accomplish some things, though, besides alot of work. i lost sleep worrying about the weird lumpy things under my skin and the next day found a doctor to make an appointment with (3:45 pm, sept 11). i rode rusty alot in fixedmode. i finished reading that book finally, that i'd started last year around this time...

and i had a birthday. 24. woohoo. celebrated with many rounds at zeitgeist (and some eastbay action).

ah dunno. I haven't been taking my computer to work when I ride rusty, lately, so the journal entries are fewer and far between. I'm sure there are things i meant to write reams about a few days ago, but i don't have much to say about them now. i'm tired. i hope i'm not dying of cancer. goodnight.

and in that week i feel like a slightly different person...

I had real, honest-to-goodness work to do. And I did it, mainly. I also insisted fervently on my right to have a life outside of work. True, I missed buffy night for the second week in a row and had get a ride w/ Ammon to the Mum show, but I feel that these are small compromises for leading an overly full life this week and last.

Actually, thinking about it, I mostly worked. And went drinking after. But damnit, I did both to the fullest extent possible! Yeah... I'm a bit drunk as I write this still. Ironically my running TODO/did list at work has the details of this week's adventures better than I can recall them now.

Didn't make critmass (because of work), but I made the party car instead, which was enjoyable as always. Full of vim, vigor, and sierra navada, I set out throught the streets of central san francisco in search of rowdy packs of bikers but succeeded only not in getting squished by traffic (thank you), though it was a lovely hour-long ride.

Nobody seemed to want to leave their rooms tonight, so I finally sat down and converted Rusty to a singlespeed with my beautiful new wheel. Immediately as I was finishing this up, andrea called and declared tonight's bar, So I got to take Rusty for a test-spin in his newer, nakeder incarnation. I'm not sure about the freewheel ratio I've chosen. I was indeed able to pump up the hill to my house without much problem, but going downhill and on the flats it was nothing but spin! coast... coast... coast... spin! I'm really curious now to try out the fixed side.

comments on Rusty's conversion: I'd actually been putting this off for a while until I had the time and nerve to do it in one sitting. i was a little squeemish about the whole operation. Those of you who spent their highschool study halls browsing the sample texts of BME/hard might be able to sympathize with the hesitation I felt as I sat down with my tools and my bike in the stand thinking, "okay, removing this seemingly-vital parts is a step forward, right?" I had only my faith in sheldon brown to see me though.

I must say, though, despite the gain ratio issues I'm having currently, it's really a beautiful feeling to pedal your bike and have such low mechanical resistance in the drive train. It's so.. quiet. And direct. I can accelerate from a stop really fast. Try it sometime.

Night now.

if there were such a thing, I'd be a hack at best. Why go home when you can BART all the way over to Berkeley (which is a LONG ride from Milbrae, btw), even though you'll have to get up at 7AM to make it, hungover and bedraggled, into work at a reasonable hour? Why indeed... And why go to bed early when you can go get drunk with your friend, recently returned from europe and hear all about it? ... here's where i fall asleep in mid-sentence

Coming into Sunnyvale station yesterday, the conductor was looking longingly at the new track and telling me how it would all be better eventually, how we wouldn't have to slow down right here, see? I could see the pain in his face evertime the brakes were applied. I can't wait either. What will I do with the extra hour (more? less?) a day I'll have to myself? Get an hour more sleep? An hour more work? The possibilities are endless.

not really, but that is my fear. and i wanted to make a reference to the show i went to on monday (BOTH&parkside, lookitup). so clever, see?

After reading about the benefits of a higher cadence, for the last two weeks I'd been trying to arbitrarily increase mine. The thing I forgot todo,however, was find out how high mine normally was. After my knee started hurting on monday I finally counted my rpms at a "normal" pace and found that my base cadence was actually pretty good, so whatever I had been doing to stretch my limits couldn't have been that great for my knee. My tendency to pull hard out of stoplights from a trackstand always with the same foot forwards probably didn't help either. Nor getting hit by a car... At any rate it feels more like I just overstrained it a bit. Time to change some habits.

somewhat ironically, i found that my forced gentle pace of 18mph through the southbay seems to be the perfect speed such that I never wait at any light. hrmp.

other ironies, just when work is starting to really pick up, so is my social life. that's the way it always is, right? raining & pouring. I blame friendster.

something on my bike is rattling and I'm not sure what. I had Stans true the front wheel and someone with stronger upper-body strength and a better sense of leverage twist the brake lever back into place. The wheel was all nice and straight, but 12 miles later and about half a dozen spokes had twisted loose of their nipples and were rattling free. I tuned those to about the same pitch as their neighbors which left me with a mostly solid but slightly wobbly wheel. I can't feel it so I'm ignoring it for now, except for that rattle. I'll have to check it out sober.

adam and i went out tonight. first thursday for us in forever. unfortunately adam wanted bed by midnight and was in a cranky mood so we left early. whatever. the cat club was okay but i didn't find any accessible girls i wanted to hit on. at least not just then. but I was having a good time.

Blogsurfing found me reading another article on friendster and its creators conflicts with users. This undercores the need for someone to come up with a distributed friendster alternative. It would plug into your blog or personal website. There would probably need to be some central service for bookkeeping and searching (unless you got all gnutella about it, but that would exclude non-cgi-enabled bloggers), but most of the data and bandwidth would be provided by you. It would be like blogrolls on steroids. Someone should implement this, has someone done it already? I haven't looked.

I should sleep now.

...nope. He nearly hits the car just in front of me, pauses, then continues, smacking me broadside. Just the sort of crash I've been narrowly avoiding every time I ride past that safeway (really poor visibility pulling out of the parking lot). I blame myself a little for not having on a headlight, but then he nearly hit that car. Either way, the headlight is going back on as soon as I finish this entry.

Damages? Well, i was pretty pissed. I made sure to swear at him alot. And to point out the car in front of me he nearly hit. Then I made him wait while I inspected my bike for damages. I should have made him give me some money; the front wheel is a bit fucked up—moreso than I realized at the time. I probably also should have gotten his contact info... because that's the sort of thing you do after an accident. But I'm really not into... talking to people, yknow? Then I swore at him some more, disengaged my front brake, and rode away.

There's a slight scrape on my left ankle and my calf is rather sore. I remember putting down my left foot to try and regain my balance but must have gone over anyway, scraping my ankle and whacking my calf on the pedal. I jumped right up fighting mad and it's probably a good thing that I didn't have a pedal wrench handy (like I wished that I did at the time). I hope I left some nice scratches in his hood.

lets do an eventlog, shall we?

Thursday

Goodbyes. Popscene. I forget why we went. I think ammon was really in the mood or something. There was a lame band that started too late which we enjoyed by standing outside and pretending that we smoked. Disappointed smokers by having none to spare. Out of the crowd pops Kat and her friend Vickie, back for one last popscene before they flee to seattle. kat won the wet tshirt contest: her's was the very wettest. And then again out of the crowd comes neal, also for his last popscene. He is fleeing for seattle, having just gotten back from touring with sleepytime gorilla museum. They'll get him the hookup for jobs out there, apparently. Hugs and goodbyes were exchanged between all.

Friday

Party car! Okay, it's the 5:19pm (sunnyvale) train on friday, remember. And I should bring a sixpack of my own next time, not that people weren't trying to get rid of their extras by the end. It was the best. There was rowdiness. There were calls for cecession of california from the rest of the US. There were most of the cute girls I'd seen riding the bike car in the past few weeks. I need to do this every week.

And then, 3 beers down (plus one at work), I switched bikes and pedalled over to the bjork show. Which was good. Bjork wore silly clothes and danced awkwardly. Fireworks and columns of flame messed up the rhythm. Matmos was adorable. Afterwards, me and a small mob of others descended on Mel's. Using my madd courier skillz, i got there 15 min before everyone else and reserved some tables. And then we all went to bed.

Saturday

I did laundry. And was bored. Then I got really drunk off of cheap beer and wine with Erin and friends of hers who have been crashing at our house.good times.

Sunday

I went to work. For a long time. Yahoo. Adam went to LA. damnit.

Monday

I rode my 26-mile/day commute really fast and thought my kneecaps might pop off, so today I do the 12-mile route. It seems so short. There are some fun crazy people on the train right now who have decided to make me their friend. I tried to take a picture and send it to ye olde phonebog, but i think it failed like it does sometimes.

Nothing else happened. The end.

I was severely passed this evening on foothill expressway. First time that's happened on a normal commute ride in quitesometime. my macho bikie-ego recovered quickly when I realized they all had matching jersies and shorts (and i think even bikes) and were riding a tight double-paceline (unfair advantage!). I felt a little foolish for trying to stay ahead of them as long as I did, my breath getting ragged and my pedaling sloppy.

There's something really bizarre about looking behind yourself and seeing another rider about a foot from your rear wheel. It's even more bizarre when they finally pass you and you realize it's actually about half a dozen riders. Caught off guard, I completely fell off the end of the line and failed to catch their draft. The double-paceline formation has a special name which I wish I remembered. I was reading about it the other weekend. It's not so much 2 lines as it is a ring. One line moves slightly faster than the other, so that when the leader of the fast line gets tired, they drift into the slow line and are replaced by the rider behind them, so the whole thing rotates. Like a regular paceline, the group moves at a much faster pace than any rider alone could maintain.

In other bike-related news, I was shown another good bike-friendly bar. This one in SoMa. Cassidy's Irish bar. Not as big as Zeitgeist, but the crowd was at least as good; plenty of pretty punky people and their bikes strewn all over the place.

I arrive in palo alto with a dry face and a dripping back and feeling mildly faint from the effort of resisting a steady, relentless breeze for 12 miles straight. my cyclometer tells me the wind only dropped my average speed by about 1mph which makes me wonder how many more calories than usual I just burned. I passed a thick, cohesive line of spandex-clad bikers going the other way on foothill expyway and thought about yelling, "how's the tailwind? bastards!"

I'm about 15 minutes early to palo alto from looking at the wrong stop's times on the schedule. It's a bit cold now that i'm not riding.

I haven't had anything real to do all week and it's starting to get to me. which it shouldn't; there's a million little low-priority things i've been meaning to do at work that i'm finally getting a chance to, but I feel so left out.

Concerned about the health effects of eating pizza for dinner every night and having no particular reason to stay late or get home early, I've begun my series of Long Rides Home. And a bit longer to work, too. It's nice and meditative and it gives me an excuse to wear spandex again. I still haven't managed to get an 8-hour night's sleep in this week, like I swore I would last week, but I feel better (except for monday morning). I had a conversation with a stranger on the train yesterday, even. good stuff!

i've been feeling a bit untethered lately and not sure if there's anything to it. Lets look at the factors.

reasons to be paranoid:

reasons to be happy:

...

Yeah, I dunno. I started that entry and I felt kinda shitty, but 12 miles on my bike and some cooling down time and I feel okay again. Maybe it was just my headache. Looking at that list, I'm thinking it's a draw, I should be about neutral. It should take at least 75% paranoia to make me really Not Okay. Okay.

do not go see tomb raider 2. it is awful. i'm tired and shitty-feeling and it is all lara's fault.

52T/17T, I can do it, but is it too hard to do it for long?

That works out to about 42T/14T with smaller rings. I got a 15 also just in case. Plus a 16T for the freewheel side.

$250 vs $60. The amount I paid for Rusty vs. the amount I just sent to harris cyclery for a special wheel with flip-flop fixed/free singlespeed hub, plus cogs and other extras. Can you guess which is which? Do you think that's obsurd? Whatever, Rusty is going to be awsome. eddy, should you ever read this, you should be proud.

i'm getting hard just looking at all 4 bars of signal from my wifi hub.

I had a whole 20 minutes of Chilling With The Flatmates time last night. It was lovely. Maybe there's hope yet that we'll make that appartment a home.

I was supposed to meet ammon and friends at this show at BOTH last night, but it inexplicably sold out. Erin (who works sound there some nights) and a superjaded scenester pal of hers gave me a lift and managed to get me in the door anyway. The show was kind of lame, except for the opening act who i'd come to see in the first place. Mr scenester(jason?)'s car was some sort of authentic lowrider, an impressive relic which reaked of nostalgia (for a time before he'd been born) and came complete with a working 8-track in the dash. Which we listened to on the way. I have to wonder about people who keep and maintain these artifacts: what do their grandparents think?

Friday night was beerbash, μ-ziq show (which we left mid-μ; watching one guy diddle on his laptop, no matter what impressive sounds come out of it, is not that fun), and some random party in berkeley. which was alright.

Saturday I saw Dirty Pretty Things, which was worth seeing. not incredible though.

Sunday I backed adam up in his meeting of yet another fster girl. This one was fun, cute, and creepily well-adjusted. But she rides a bike, so i think adam should persue her :).

i found out what my turning radius is at medium speed with the inside pedal down. clunk! luckily i was pedaling quickly so the bike just bounced and i recovered. No apparent damage to the pedal.

this is much more than i can say for the person who previously owned the pedals previously on Rusty. the bottoms were all scratched up and the left one takes some effort to turn. the ones i replaced them with aren't as high quality, but should serve my purposes better. i also replaced rusty's chain, which of course meant that i had to make a bracelet out of some of the old one. :) it's been quite a while since i've worn anything on my wrists.

the coke machine downstairs is rejecting my quarters but counting them anyway. mmm... free product (and a dime). that almost makes up for the train not opening its doors at my stop this morning.

mmccurdy has the new t616 and i want at&t to start supporting them so i can get one.

first weekend spent in the new place. I helped erin move in and she seems cool. that was the last time i saw any housemate the whole weekend. when they say "never really home" they mean it, huh.

i bought some new pants. plain and brown.

that is all.

this is what I yell behind me at the girl in the trendy pants and the cellphone in the middle of the sidewalk. this is seconds after we rub elbows at 20mph. i saw her half a block away but she saw me 20 ft away and thought she ought to react. she was also crossing against the light and holding up traffic (which i was dodging around). excuse me, miss, may i see your license for walking? huh, i thought so.

in other events, andrea is now legal. we celibrated that fact by getting her totally wasted at Zeitgeist, a most excellent biker (both kinds) bar at the top of the mission. I'm going to have to go back there. they have a giant outdoor area in back with beerhall-style tables and hooks for hanging your bike. apparently it's a favorite among the messengers. the place had a respectable crowd for a wednesday night. some random dude decided that andrea's first legal drink should be a long island ice tea and bought her one. everything else was on me. at the end of the night i somewhat-literally dragged her home, fed her pizza and water, and made sure she passed out in bed. good times.

erin should be moving in this weekend, provided we can track down a 4th key. it'll be nice to have someone else in the house; vanessa hasn't been home for days and karilyn is in peru for 2 weeks. I've taken to sitting around in just a towel like i used to in san jose. I haven't actually met erin yet, aside from phone conversations.

So most of what i've done the last few days has involved moving. Very exciting. Except friday when i shirked on my packing duties to go out with adam, kat, and kat's roommate whom they were trying to set me up with.Everyone but the roommate (vicky) was in on that fact, which was perhaps a bad idea. She apparently talks even less than i do, and held no outward interest for me, so... that was dead in the water. Too bad. We went to the cat club for club fake which was good. There were alot of hot girls who danced exclusively with each other and i was jealous of lesbians everywhere. There was a band too that was pretty fun and the music otherwise good.

Move!

I helped pick out roomie number 4 saturday morning. Met alot of fun people that i wish we didn't have to send off somewhere else for livingspace (and a couple of people i'm not sad about leaving behind). in the end we appear to be going with the one person i haven't met (though i talked to her on the phone). Sorry, Zev. Mebbe we'll be bikie buddies anyway. Mebbe. The whole process is weird; it's like interviewing for friends (or you hope they'll be). When our applicants get their rejection letters they'll exclaim to their sympathetic friends how much they don't really need this room, and their cooler than us anyway. I wish we could throw a little party and invite all the runners-up and assure them that they're still awesome and lets hang out sometime. I wonder if people more devious and motivated than I have used the Roommates Wanted ad boards as a sneaky personals service. It seems like it could work.

so with 2 sets of people and 3 different cars i moved my stuff from point A to point B in 2 days. and my stuff is there. in boxes. and piles. moved in mostly. I don't think i'll feel really moved in until my dsl gets here (2-3 weeks, hrmph). there is wireless to steal in the meantime, if i don't mind sitting in a little nook in the hallway.

how have you been. sorry i've been neglecting you. much has happened.

move!

if you had your heart set on having me as a roommate then i'm sorry to dissappoint you but if your name isn't karilyn, vanessa, and possibly erin then you lose. Sometimes you spend months searching for a place to live and sometimes you spend 3 days looking for place and move in the following weekend. That seems to be how it works for me. I'll be eating a month's rent again. I'm good at things like that.

the place is at scott and fulton, just across from this little park. There's no living room, but my room is fucking huge to makeup for that. Rent is about what i'm paying now. The best part about it is that there are no screaming children or adults, or even crack dealers sitting on my stoop (I've got a real stoop this time, too!). There will be 3 roommates besides me (one is yet to be decided). Both knowns are big into the sf indie scene (i actually found the room through an sf indie rock mailing list), and neither are around much. Wish me luck.

hey there.

"Hey, I'm in San Francisco!", sez Shahrzad as she calls me on monday out of the blue. We met up at the Hemlock tuesday night and talk about old times, pittsburgh, things to do in SF that don't suck, and of course friendster. Because every conversation now adays eventually turns to friendster. And um, if you're reading this and you're not my friend(ster) yet, add me. :D

bike

my good bike is still in the shop so me and rusty are bonding. Today I tried to take the long way to a train station one up from sunnyvale but via some spacetime anomoly on grant street ended up just taking the really long way to sunnyvale. oh well. it gave me a chance to realize how much neither me nor rusty were not in optimal shape. i think i'm going to try and get off at 22nd st. and bike up through the mission for extra punishment. And also to avoid packing just a little longer.

I experienced a bizarre anti-beer-goggles effect on thursday when I went out clubbing w/ some apple peeps (at the cat club). The longer I was there and the drunker I got, the less attractive everyone seemed to be. It was very disheartening. Mebbe all the hot people just left when it got too crowded.

Have you noticed that all I talk about here anymore is booze, girls, and tech. Well... deal with that for a bit. I haven't been feeling incredibly philosophical lately.

But onto more booze: July 4th, last night, found me and andrea in the appartment of some neurotic (they were worse than me at leaving) irish summer-workers. They insisted we drink their alcohol and then somehow we ended up ditching them as we scrambed to make the fireworks, and didn't catch up with them again. So... um... thanks for the vodka? The fireworks were alright as viewed from the median strip of some road going to the warf.

And in tech i am now the proud owner of an iSight. Why? Well... I don't have a webcam yet and this is possibly the best one out there. And I get a discount. And it's pretty and shiny and new. I did a one-way video chat with my folks back home and they got a big kick out of it. Also, if you're ever wondering what i'm wearing as I chat with you, now you can find out.

And who needs a roommate? I could be YOURS! Trying to get out of here by August 1st.

My phone would like to show you some things.

I'm sorry about last night, really. If you had eyes to see how much fun we had, you'd agree that it was worth it. Well, except for that second bottle of Chimay, probably.

boobies!

Started the night with the dyke march. It was festive and full of pretty girls and bare boobs and beers in paper bags (mine: Optimator). Why are boyish lesbians so attractive to me? It's not fair. Andrea kept on leading me out into the march as we tagged along until a slightly uptight lady informed us that "our brothers should support us from the side." pfft.

I had andrea take some pictures with the phonecam (i felt weird about doing it myself). We'll see if any are worth posting.

rockshow

The march dumped out into a giant street party in the castro. We walked through it on the way to a) a liquor store, b) a shady place on some steps to consume chimay bottle number 1, and c) the Balazo gallery for Madelia and The Boy Explodes.

Being and excellent indie venue, they sold beer and mixed drinks inside and nobody was carding. We talked to lots of people and drank several beers waiting for the show to start. Some 17yo-ish girls and some other people I remember even less of. I thoroughly rocked out through both band's sets, which seemed to be appreciated. Sometime during Madelia's set 2 of the teenagers I'd met earlier decided that I was good for grinding against while dancing. I quite shamelessly enjoyed and encouraged this. In my back pocket this morning I found 2 copies of the latest Madelia EP and a sticker that says "Uncle Fester ATE your posse" which andrea informs me came from the lead singer. I remember some of that... I also remember andrea and I helping them with their stuff and then somehow getting the address of a party.

Some party...

Before we left I snagged bottle number 2 of chimay from its hiding place by the door and drank quite alot of it. I don't remember how much I shared but it was certainly empty before we set out for the party.

At this point my memory gets really hazy and I kick myself for my automatic "oh, there's still some X left? I'd better finish it" response. I think it was a good party. I probably even talked to some people. Andrea left before I did and somehow made it home. If I'd had any sense I would have waited for adam to get out of work and summoned him to the party. As it was, he called as I was walking home and gave me a lift from somewhere in the mission (was I even walking in the right direction?). Good fun, good fun.

it isn't quite clear from the pictures, but the previous two pictures in the phone blog are actually of poeple doing double-dutch. this is how we amused ourselves between sets at this party slash show in some guy's (Ray's. adam met him by backing into some awful person's car. long story) apartment in soma. I'm not quite sure how people usually find out about these things, but all the usuals were there. The people that Dave/Alex knew through L&C, the opening act for Deerhoof at the hemlock (they've got the party bomb), and pretty much everyone we've ever met at El Rio. Also some crust punks that I talked with for a while about The Future.

Yesterday evening was eddy's party at which I drank many beers and aquired a high-powered squirt-gun. Eddy's friend PJ was there along with many apple people and many berkely people. I don't remember clearly much other than that.

and no

I didn't quite manage to hit on the girl (i think her name was Anne) with the beautiful fixed gear bike at the party just now (though I came very near to it). Nor did I make any real advances at the 2 attractive girls at eddy's party (one was clearly with the boy she arrived with, the other was mobbed by other men and not all that interesting besides). I don't have any good excuse for not talking to anne(?); I just got chicken at the last moment. Mebbe next time.

and also

All this week I've been at wwdc. It's alot like school except everyone there takes it more seriously and they already have jobs, most of them.

I hit a car yesterday. On purpose. With my hand. It was more of a spanking, really. Eddie and his friend pj and I were concluding a long bikeride with a quick jaunt up the hill which happens to feed the car-rollercoaster known as Lombard St. There is a line of nearly-parked cars with people in them waiting to enter this street and live their favorite car commercial. There is also enough room for people going other places to ride/drive around them, which is what we are doing. Someone not familiar with this queue or thinking he can bypass it drives up behind and then around me. I think he's going to turn left at the top of the hill or some other sane car-action but instead he pulls sharply to the right just ahead of me, nearly boxing me in as i still have forward momentum as he puts on the brakes and marks the spot were he'd like to sneak into the manned parking-lot. Consider also that this is a very steep hill. After a moment's thought, I devise a solution which will both satisfy my rage and keep me from falling over as I try to get around the guy: I turn hard to the left, coming within a foot of his bumper. I slam my right hand on the back of his trunk and use it for balance as I pull the rest of the way around. I give him the death-stare and I think shouted jackass as I pass his window. He has a really intense look of shock and anger on his face but I'm nearly at the top of the hill before he gets it together to shout, "Faggot! Don't touch my car!" (man, we're all so eloquent when we're angry.)

So, i realize that that was really imature and stupid (which is why the moral of this story is "always pass on the left"), but damn was it ever satisfying.

other news

i'm only working one day next week cuz of the much-anticipated WWDC, I'll be in on monday and that's about it. And eddy's leaving next week. and Ivy's leaving the week after that (for china!). i think this means i need to start finding more friends :/.

there is not one but two hot bikie grrls (not together!) on this car and one of them was seriously checking me out as i bungied up my bike. but there is nowhere to sit near them for making googlyeyes or chitchat. hrmph. thus ends another epsiode in snaptogrid's sexual frustration...

to depress myself further, i posted 2 ads on craigslist last night, one in m4w and one in w4m, at about the same time (around 1:30am). both were about the same quality (a bit halfassed), but that was sort of the point. As of 7:30 am when I got up, my fictional female counterpart was ahead by around 15-0. I'll have to go thru those later and see how many real responses I got and how many were just stock come-ons. I'll post the stats here later :).

i worked today. got a ride down to the city from another apple guy who was also stuck working today. "all hands on deck" the emails said. that's fine. there were things i'd meant to do on friday... that i still didn't get to do today.

hearts out to reb2 who was stuck in the airport all day. i tried to send you back an email and call you, but i guess it didn't work :/.

andrea and i got another lead on a place that might match our exacting specifications. it's a bit of a dump and there's no common space but the kitchen, but the rent's dirt cheap, the people are laid back, and the landlord lives in mexico most of the time (and is cool anyway). it's a very small step up and i'll probably move again in 3 months, but it might be worth it just to get out of this place sooner. also, they have lots of bikes in various states of assembly and functionality. i like that.

i talked to the interns and it went okay, except for the really excruciating portion in the middle where i lost it and trailed off and kinda stood dumbfounded and stared at my notes trying to figure out what i was saying. so actually it was awful. ahead of time, all i knew was that there'd be some other speakers, one of them was a returning intern, i'd talk for 5 minutes or so, lunch would be provided. i figured i'd meditate on it for 5min beforehand and wing it; that usually worked well for interviews. noone told me that this thing was actually kind of a big deal and that i would be speaking between Steve Sakoman (co-founder of Be, alumn of Palm), and Bud Tribble (NeXT founder, former Eazel VP, former CTO of Sun-Netscape).

so it was probably a bad thing that i went out to popscene the night before (although the cute, nerdy girl i danced with was good. no i didn't talk to her much or makeout with her. shut up). and i probably should have thought through my speaking points a bit more (most importantly, transitions between them). but the interns laughed a bit at my jokes and bud tribble quoted my best-put piece of advice as he started his portion (a big deal, said the H.R. ladies later as they thanked me and tried to massage my ego back to vitality). also, i got a free tshirt.

otherwise, adamnit got play last night from an internet girly and i'm jealous. and here's what i wrote on the train yesterday morning as i tried to collect my thoughts for the intern talk, should you find that interesting.

There was this woman on the train just a stop ago that I was watching who had this most sublime look of contentment on her face, like she was really enjoying the bike car. Did she just have a good day or was she checking out all the hot frames? It was kind of hot.

Every couple of rides I see people (generally women) sitting up in the bike car who clearly did not ride (high heels). I have to wonder if they sat there because it was the first car they walked into or for more prurient reasons. Otherwise, there are fewer seats available and it's a little stinky.

Also this week so far I pissed the hell out of an ornery engineer and received his verbal wrath. One of his teammates apologized for him to me later, saying basically that he's like that sometimes, don't take it personally. I've noticed the amount of profanity that everyone is using has been going up steadily as WWDC approaches. But that's pretty much normal.

i did some serious geeking out this weekend with MIME::Tools, HTML::Template, fetchmail, and OO perl and now I have this

it's surprising how little difference there is in the amount of yelling that goes on when the shawnsandkids are actually fighting or just playing around. and how constant the volume is.

i'm chipping away at the blog reconstruction project; i figured out how i can send updates (mainly pictures) from my phone, should i feel the need. we'll see how that goes.

i also went grocery shopping, did my laundry, did a little work, and went to see dismemberment plan. man, it sounds so productive when i put it like that.

for fun i got a little camera attachement for my phone. it takes craptastic pictures and i love it dearly.

i made it easier (but still not easy enough) for me to post pictures here. I took the two here on Tusday. Enjoy.

summer smacked me in the face today and i didn't have a spare dry shirt. yuck. pushing hard I just barely missed the express train and now I want to throw up. so that's fine.

on the train to work everyone within two seats was struggling to maintain consciousness in the muggy, suffocating heat. including the very subtly attractive indian girl sitting across from me, to whom i could not come up with anything to say.

fresh meat

the interns are arriving. wahoo. they're so cute. all brighteyed and bushytail. they don't stand out quite so much as precollege kids do at CMU, but the effect is similar. my team got one. a tall, bland-looking guy whose name i've forgotten. mark, or dan, or something. he'll loosen up, i bet; i don't think we hire total squares.

young impressionable minds

after saying hello & such my manager informs me that someone named Jennifer was going to track me down and ask me if i'd like to say a few words at an intern presentation on transitioning from intern to full-time. "huh," sez i, "...probably not." "That's the spirit!" sez he.

jennifer finds me a bit later and i try to weasel out of it without seeming like too much of a party pooper, "well, if anyone else wants to do it more..." She counters with "well, we're trying to get someone who would be more of an... interesting exposure." cute. hey kiddies, work for us long enough and you can become cool like me! so i guess i have to now, huh? :) i told her i'd think about it.

otherwise

the next 3 weeks are going to be rather stressful at work. crunch season. the program office is expecting us to start doing a bit of work on the weekends. hrmph. simultaneously andrea and i are searching for a new place in ernest. we're taking a look at one tonight.

too bad it was memorial day and thus something else was going on at El Rio. We weren't sure at first that it was going on all night so we went and got a burrito first. The taqueria was full of people who looked like they were headed to El Rio, including one girl who looked suspiciously like that Siri girl I'd talked to at the party. I figured I'd see here at the bar (and perhaps talk to her with a couple of drinks in me).

so of course we went back and asked at the door and they definitely were not doing Dollar Day that night. not wanting to pay $5 to get in, we just went home. the end. blah.

"Sex on a stick"? There are some things that only sound good plastered at 4am. My hips reminded me the next day that I'd been dancing enthusiastically through Calla's set. If someone told me today that I'd been the only one doing so, I'd probably believe them. Oh well.

And speaking of moderation, it's almost time for $1 night at El Rio. :)

Let's recap. Friday I got home in time to drag andrea and kimberly to the Black Eyes show at 214 valencia. It was awesome and awe inspiring. Every scenester I know (all 2 of them) were also there, despite the incredibly small size of the venue (an appartment converted into an artist's studio). Everyone had their own large beer in a paper bag, which was excellent as well. Kimberly went home as soon as the show ended so we poop on her :-p.

I wasn't really planning on doing much today, but stuff to do found me anyway. Went to see the Cremaster Cycle (3) with Andrea at the Castro which was sublimely random and bizarre and worth 3 hours of my life (but do drink some coffee before you go; the beginning is a bit lethargic).

I dithered on whether to go out following that but gave in to activity when I convinced Ivy to come with me to see Calla at the bottom of the hill. Calla is sex on a stick (for anyone posessing of even a single man-liking cell in their body) I must say. If you haven't heard "Televise," shame on you; go buy it right now. Calla is getting serious ass because of it.

Speaking of which, me and Ivy played some great rounds of "So, who would you makout with?" and eventually decided on the girl with the stripy shirt who would eventually disappear with the lead singer for backs of vans unknown. Pooh on them. In retaliation, we followed the band from B.O.T.H. to party (at 214 Valencia! Thanks heartily to the random mexicans we hitched a ride from), and then another party at market and laguna (I think...). After that we lost the band, but had a blast hanging out on the fire escapes and kitchen chairs of people whe had no connection to. A cute girl named Siri (sp?) who lived there fed me some of her cheesy, mushroomy pasta and it was excellent. Somehow she knew someone attending U. Pitt. and we talked about PGH like it was old times.

Yeah, I'm tipsy. It's bed time. Ammon, you should have come out with us :p.

I'm going to get to work exceptionally late today, but that's alright. My manager has been too busy to give me anything to do for a while.

Last nigh was my first PopScene as a single boy since moving to the city. It was fun, but a bit frustrating. The only people who wanted to dance with me were either minors or male and the most of the people I really wanted to dane with were pretty clearly not into boys (but one can always hope). One girl was really convinced that I wanted to get with her guy friend. I must have done a bad job conveying that I didn't. Flattering but frustrating. I think the Cat Club may be calling my name next thursday.

In other news, the Shawns and the kids are gone this weekend and it is ever so quiet and nice.

There are some excellent drag queens ahead of me in the bike car. Nothin' like big men in minidresses to start your day off right. I don't think they actually rode to the station today.

There were also some excellent bikie girls on the way to the caltrain. I did not pass them abnoxiously between every light. I think I'm getting better about that in general.

On Monday, Adamnit, Kimberly and I hit El Rio for their excellent $1 night. It's actually a really good scene. A gay bar any other day of the week, $1 night attracts the mission's finest (and poorest) hipsters of all persuasions. The DJ isn't too loud and there's a great outdoor back patio. It reminded me a little of the L&C party many weeks ago. We played a game of "so, who here would you makeout with?" (refering the the crowd as a whole) with everyone who willingly stood near us for long enough. It was a great time.

I'm thinking of moving to a new appartment. Anyone know of any openings? I still like Lower Haight.

following writing the previous entry and moping to some people on AIM, I felt better. I felt really okay, actually. It comes in ever-decreasing waves, sez adamnit. Probably right.

last night I went to two different party/barbecues and did nothing but alternately stuff myself with food and alcohol. Getting between these two parties involved biking over some really intense hills (hrm, it looks like Delores goes straight there. I'll just take that, I say to myself before heading out). That was really fun with a stomach full of veggieburgers, beer, and dirt. Anyway, it was fun overall. I got to hangout with Rachel and then Ivy which I don't do enough of anymore.

She didn't even have to say it. I thought it might be coming. All she had to do is turn to me and sigh and I knew everything. We went through the motions anyway. "So, do I get reasons?" I knew the reasons. I probably would have been in her place if things had kept going the way they were. But I still had hope. I thought things might be okay for a while longer anyway. I wasn't quite ready.

Anyway

Yes, yes. Mope, mope. What else have I been up to? They're ripping up and repaving the 2 miles of De Anza Blvd that I bike to work on. Wary of the chunks of metal and debris that plagued me the last time I had "Uneven Pavement" on my route, I took the sidewalk for a while. Then a pile of glass ate my back tire anyway. I spent a while (2 tries) sitting on some grass to fix it. The sprinklers came on and I beat up the one nearest to me. The patch didn't end up holding through the train ride anyway. Today I decided to screw it and got a nice butt massage from the uneven pavement.

Other than that... Not much. I filed a prodigious number of bugs. I wrote some code for the first time in weeks. I was mopey. "I feel a breakup coming on," I said to Adamnit last night. Well, at least I was right about that and can maybe move on to feeling better now that it's actually happened. It's always nice when you can pin your depression on outside forces and not just your inner, uncontrollable demons.

Anyway, grmph.

I don't think the lady who works mornings at Cafe International knows me not hungover. Her endearing word for the day was "baby-doll". "Do you need anything else, baby-doll?" i could really only grin, most of my energy be used up trying to preserve equilibrium.

On a similar note, Shahrzad wishes to note (for whatever reason..) that she was not in fact drunk at all during the times when we hung out during carnival.

but i certainly was last night. 26 Mix was nice, but lacked hot chicks, so we sauntered over to the cat club, where it was industrial night (unbeknownst to us). I wasn't necessarily wearing great clothes for it, but the music was good, there were cute go-go dancers and even some good civilians as well. My still-damp jacket this afternoon attested to how much I danced. I felt that I was on fire at the time which makes me wonder just how much of a drunken, flailing idiot I looked like to everyone else. Eh well, it was fun.

also of note, I finally broke down and bought a cellpone. It has bluetooth and an ample supply of scary babies; it is hott. If I haven't told you the number yet and you feel you should have it, IM me or something.

says the man looking forward out the front of the train as it travels into the sunset.

"Yes," says the conductor as she inspects tickets behind him, "but I saw something out there once that I don't want to see again, so I don't look anymore."

I don't think the man heard that last part.

I got this in my email this morning:

Damn, I rule.

In a rush to get home for the weekend, I left work not long into the beer bash and made the 5:19pm train. It was raining and my ass was wet. Deep was there. I sat in the lower section in case interesting people should want to join me.

Jump ahead a few stops and there are 3 or 4 different kinds of beer being passed around. I end up having 2 during the course of the ride. Every few people who got on the bike car had a sixpack with them it seemed. We packed as many people as would fit in the lower section and noone who wanted a beer went without. I heard all about everyone's childhood injuries, entertained theories on the origins of beer and bread, and learned about a peculiar alcoholic beverage which must be consumed within 48 hours from the time it comes from the tree (palm wine). It was the best train ride ever.

catch up...

not intending to be interesting in this part

last weekend i went to another apple party. only brought one cabload of people to that one, though. it was still fun. helping that was that the other people there i mostly knew and were my age. and rachel madeout with one of the hosts, which is excellent.

then i played alot of video games and finally beat No One Lives Forever and made my wrist hurt. i mostly worked on the responsiveness report this week. still. and it's still not done. bleh. i took one day off to battle an oncoming cold and i think mostly nipped it in the bud, though it threatens me with a dry cough or a sore throat every now and then still.

and i finally verified that stupid perf regression and got it off my plate for good i hope. having taken so long in doing it, maybe my manager will not ask me to do another ;).

this weekend there was no apple party but i did see Xmen2. which is good and you should go see it. i was listless and played lots of video games instead of working on my report of doing any of the millions of productive things i could have been doing. kimberly and i redyed my hair so i am pretty again. and i did laundry. and saw The Postal Service and Cex.

I was just walking to the bathroom (here at work. note the time), to brush my teeth and ran into my manager, walking to the bathroom, also to brush his teeth. There are two sinks in the bathroom and we each took one and brushed. Gosh, this is too weird; it's like we're married or something, he says.

I went to a party this weekend at an Apple person's house. Not sure how exciting it would be, I invited everyone I knew in the area and they all came (except Rachel. sorry :\ ). And they invited others. There were alot of really stoned and drunk old people there, and us. We brought and drank an impressive quantity of Sierra Nevada and had our own little party in the kitchen, complete with Human Knot and Spin the Bottle. I think there are pictures floating around somewhere...

The children of CMU are now pulling out their hair wondering how they'll make up for 3 days without thinking of school and I am on my way back to San Francisco. With a couple of notable exceptions it was an excellent trip; complete success. I feel like such an effective person.

The flight is now over an hour late in leaving. Some trouble earlier in our original aircraft's trip. People are subdued. I saw many CMU faces that I'd never talked to. A young mother let her child play with her cell phone and it was so adorable that I made the awww face involuntarily.

Major goals accomplished this weekend:

I didn't see Jo Ma's new band play. I didn't quite manage to get the check from Chez Esther. I didn't have lunch with Jolie. Damnit.

Event log.

tedious bed-to-bed account of my trip

Thursday. Arrived in PIT airport. 28x is now $2.25. I don't have a quarter but someone at the bus stop gives me a $0.25 bus voucher. That's new. I get off the bus early and head straight to Hot Rod, my old piercer's, to buy something airplane-safe and fashionable to replace the scavenged 0g beads in my lobes. Next stop, Emma's. Hello. Welcome Home. I have the use of Q's old bike for the weekend and it is invaluable. We bike around for Dave&Andy's, Q, and burrito. I make some phone calls and talk to some answering machines. The bike has some severe tire damage but seems to be holding together well. The orange-vests say no bikes on the midway. I narrow my eyes, say okay, and ride in the other direction around the booths. Then around campus. I run into Marc, we patronize Kiva Han and I make some more phone calls. Jennica is there. Jennica chafes me, but she seems to be everywhere I am for the remainder of the weekend. Marc's phone buzzes; score one phone hit. I trade Marc for the Lion and the evening begins. We circle the neighborhood, hang out by the midway and run into people walking through. Sharhzad joins my to-call list. Booze run. Some place in a backwash township I don't remember and a sketchy place with a really excellent selection of bottled beers that you can build your own sixpack out of. Hit the shadyhouse for a bit. The place looks nice. I have a beer and figure out how I'm going to get my stuff shipped off (thanks leslie). Then to Paul's (pretend there's an accent over the u). It's so fortunate that the Lion's car has been revived from the dead. And that it has a bike rack. Party, but not yet, we're early. More beer. Porn. Cartoons. And eventually manymany people. All my favorite artkids. Some of the beer I picked out was double-proof (mm.. optimator). Very blurry. Lots of fun. Me & the Lion kicked out of their at some point to meet a friend of hers and some gothy scenesters that I sort of knew. Walking to the meeting point we stopped briefly at another party. Or two maybe. They were bad I think. We took a cab to eat'n'park. This is really funny in context and retrospect. I stole someone's lighter for comedic effect and forgot to give it back. Mikie was there and even more drunk than I. I know this mostly because I found his number scrawled on a scrap of placemat in my bag the next day. Sometime around 5am we walk back to the Lion's car. It's raining. I crash out on the couch. Hard.

Thoughts. I'm really glad I got to spend so much time with the Lion. It was good, a little weird, it felt a little like we were dating again (the good parts). I could almost pick out the pauses in conversation where we would have made out if we had been. I wish I hadn't drank so much for the sole reason that my memory of most of the party is less than swiss cheese. See further.

Friday. I wake up feeling like death. Like hungover death. Like death with bad cold and a cold sore the size of his pinky nail on the inside of his lower lip. "Yeah, beer makes those worse," says Emma. Good to know. Emma and I have some excellent hummus and soup at Ali Babba's before I head up to Squill to take care of my remaining possessions (thanks again, leslie). Finishing that I bike around some more and manage to just miss Jo's band play (the first time). Damnit. I run into BettyK, before heading back. Later, went to visit the techarts opening. Roger warped time, mr. Ben Vernot made wine, and I "maintained an erection" long enough to make the red light go on. They Might Be Giants. Pretty so so. I did meet some fun crust-punk friends of Emma tho. They were more entertaining than the band at times. We eventually ditched that for tea. Emma almost came out to party at the WRCT thing but didn't make it out of Kiva Han. I almost saw Jo's band play but got there too late (man, i suck) again. I cut myself off at two beers but nonetheless did join in the hiphop partiness upstairs. And took pictures downstairs of the bands. And ran into manymore people I knew. Including this cute girl who I'd met briefly when she visited for the previous carnival. I saw Jesse drunk, which was weird. Esther was summoned. Being drunk, she bit me (for old times sake). I follow some people to a party at Marc's house and arrive long enough to hang out for a bit before the cops come and break it up. Rudely. Sharhzad, Katie, and Matt Toups arrive just in time to say hello to, and get yelled at by, the cops. I join them in a quest for diner food which eventually takes us to Tom's Diner in the southside. I have to ask for hot sauce but at least they have it. I'm feeling alot like a lump of poop and am really glad that Matt Toups happens to live where I'm staying.

Thoughts. I'm really pissed that I missed Jo's band play. It wasn't until the next day that I realized that the schedule had been completely changed and I'd missed my last chance. Anyone get any good pictures? Video?

Saturday. Went with Emma to an IndyPGH meeting to deliver my old computer. The meeting was actually pretty good (I've become a connoisseur of meetings lately) and they all thought my old computer was hot shit. Afterwards to the Quiet Storm for food and tea and another meeting which I don't join. I leave before the meeting is over and get a little lost on the way back. Joel is there and I join him at his midway WRCT set until my camera runs out of battery. Back at the house I make the mistake of reading my email and find an e-bitch-spasm from my flat-mate/landlady. I fire back a response and several investigative emails and do a cursory craigslist search for a new apartment. I'm not happy and don't feel like people, so I ride around campus a few times then hit Si Senior for some rice and tofu. Eating in my favorite wall-spot I run into Ashley. Just like old times. Mood improved. Back at the house there is Joel and many others for barbecue. Joel is itching to Do Something. Some amount of investigation later and we settle on a trip to his new place, a musical event and at least one of two parties. The house is pretty nice. It is next to The Tracks and has nice, ambient train noises. Kiva Han is the venue for Pulse, a small Manny Theiner showcase of electronic acts. Joel's soon-to-be-ex housemates are there too but they drone endlessly about religion and politics. We head to WRCT to coordinate and run into Jolie on the way. Then to Tara's house to gather the troops. Most of the troops (Ben, Shahrzad) are pretty drunk and I'm jealous. It's a bit of a long walk to the party. We are instructed in the proper way for a girl to pee on the side of a hill. At the party there is food: Rice&beans. Fried Plantains. Bread. All parties should have great steaming pots of rice and beans. And beer in the basement, but I'm abstaining this night. There is a van, we hear. A large van. Traveling between parties with as many people as it can hold. 21 on the last run. We mobilize soon after and manage to fit 25 or so. Noone really knows of a better party, however. We drive in circles for a while then settle on a lesser one (but there's enough of us to make it fun anyway). I realize after a while how sober I am, and how sick. I almost leave a few times, but eventually hop in the party van instead as it heads back to the other party. More party. More people. I run into J who is as surprised to see me there as he was to see me in San Francisco several weeks before. And there's Matt Toups again, drifting in for the last bit. I eventually get a ride home with him.

Thoughts. The best thing about party hopping is that you keep running into the same people over and over again. "Helloooo again!" you say. Maybe not at the next party; Probably at the next night. Adventure and community. This is also the first time in forever that I've been sober through a whole night of partying. I like that in that I remember everything. I'm sort of self-conscious, but the fact that everyone else is drunk helps. I need a special alcohol that will not make me forget everything.

Sunday. I don't manage to have lunch with Jolie because she is asleep, and then in an urgent argument with someone. Emma and I go out for a picnic lunch instead. Still no word from Jolie, I pack, and Roger shows up. We grab tea and lounge. Roger offers to drive me to the airport. Rock. Some amount of time later we head out there with Joel along for the ride. Much construction and spaghetti detours nearly make me late. Nearly; I would have made it. But just in case, my flight is nearly an hour and a half late in leaving.

It's yellow. Apparently it's orange day. Who knew. It's 5:40 AM at SFO and the half-dozen people here with me are quietly chewing their bland, expensive airport breakfasts. And any one of them could be a terrorist. Watch out for suspicious activity. Don't be afraid to turn in your mother.

Kimberly helped me stay up for the shuttle, so I'm actually in a decent mood despite the hour and location.

continues to bounce to The Postal Service...

So, what I'm doing is satisfying the public perception

I met a nice police officer on the road from sunnyvale last friday. I ran two red lights and shortly thereafter heard a *bwoop!* *bwoop!* behind me. The cop got out of his car, grinning. Did you have to do that right in front of me? he said, I've got all these other cars behind me, watching me... I agreed that it was good for him to be seen appearing to reprimand a law-breaker and we parted ways. I think it's time to buy a rear-view mirror.

no donut

police in oakland yesterday shot up a bunch of peaceful protesters and dockworkers with prettymuch everything nonlethal in their arsenal. not cool.

this weekend i got really drunk at some party for a hipster website and talked boisterously with many strangers who i don't remember. a prelude for things to come this weekend :] .

I picked up my bike from the shop yesterday afternoon and it happy again. the damage:

It's so nice now. The new pedals are top-notch and better than my old ones ever were. I need to stop myself from running recklessly red lights and stopsigns I feel so in control. I think friday I'm going to skip out on the beerbash and go to critical mass.

also

i now have DSL. wahoo.

and

for those of you in PGH, that's where I'll be Apr 10-13. bring out the 40's...

well, now that san francisco is beginning to resemble a police state, i suppose i should post an update. it's really astonishing how quickly it becomes normal to see platoons of cops in riot gear when you walk down the street. I saw little squads of 6 stationed at the corner of every major intersection on my way to work this morning.

so what happened? If you've followed the news closely enough you must've seen the arrest counts for the past few days. Check out sf indymedia if you want the grueling (if sometimes spotty and sometimes exaggerated) details. I was only there for some of it.

Thursday I read the news, felt ill, and then called in sick. I thought maybe some fresh air would help so i went for a little bike ride around the city and then a long long walk.

at least that was the story I'd concocted in my head about that day. but it's total bullshit and really lame. I left work early wednesday to meet up with the ANSWER march/rally and see what the plans were for tomorrow. It's on, they said, call in sick and hit the streets. I was already feeling a bit ill, having heard the news on my way out of the apartment. "hello america. hello britain. hello congress. by the way, we've started the war," was about what I gathered Bush had said. *boom* *boom* *boom*. I got back and called/IM'd a bunch of people (sorry ammon), then went to bed.

I met up with eddy bright and early and we biked out into a very surreal thursday. The first couple of intersections were blocked by people chained together, their arms linked inside metal pipes and (i assume) handcuffed inside. A gaggle of cops stood around them and at one intersection they were beginning to cut them apart.

continuing on, we met up with a couple hundred other bikers for bikes not bombs and set out on a little morning critmass. Except not quite critical mass; I don't think normal critmass blocks intersections for so long or takes up the whole road, sometimes going the wrong way down 5-lane one-way streets, or spends quite so much time dodging critical densities of police. It was a blast though, I'm going to have to do it again sometime.

I left the bikepack at one point and followed one of the larger marches, fleeing around the group at one point when the police looked ready to make mass arrests. Eventually I met up with kimberly. I debikiefied and we got some food then joined a major march leaving the civic center.

...and marched and marched and marched. I don't know how many started out, but there were estimates of up to 6,000 around the height of it—pretty fucking big for an unpermitted march on a weekday. Around and around the city all through the afternoon. We walked up nob hill on some ridiculously steep street and had a great view of the thousands of faces behind me. great feeling.

It was starting to get dark when the group headed towards the onramps that lead up to the bay bridge. The protesters had been eyeing the bridge all day. (for those not familiar with the bay area, it's a major traffic bottleneck and even a small slowdown will turn miles of highway feeding into it into a giant parking lot. When the bikes and had i teased at the onramp earlier and were instantly met with a very stern-faced line of cops in cars and motorcycles. With up to 6,000 people behind them, people tend to get a little more bold. At three different intersections, the most brave were beaten back and tackled when they slipped through. At the third, ramp, an offramp, two dozen or so climbed over cars around the police. They frolicked and waved to the march down below before being beaten about the head by riot cops who didn't share their enthusiasm. I think most actually got away without being arrested, surprisingly. at least rachel did (go rachel!).

...and we marched and marched and marched. and eventually the march went within a few blocks of my house and kimberly and i made our exit and ate food and passed out.

lately i've been getting more done on the train ride to and from the city than i have at work itself. wherever there's an internet connection I have a hard time not checking google news every 15 minutes. and indybay.org for announcements of protests I want to attend.

happenings

I went to the protest on saturday and continued on in the breakaway march. it was festive and civil. The police eventually got tired of jogging along beside us and stopped the head of the march around 8th & mission. Most went onto the sidewalk, a few sat down to be arrested. It was over without incidence before too long. walking back home i somehow managed to miss the rest of the marchers start to gather on market street and the subsequent mass arrest of everyone who happened to be standing around in that area. I hope the tourists and shoppers had fun in jail.

kimberly got her septum pierced and it is Hott.

my new puter came and he is Sexy. Sexy shall replace Pretty and Pretty shall go on to help indymedia pittsburgh. Sexy's partitions are named XXX, Live, Nude, and Girls. that is how sexy he is.

report is done and higher-ups have read it and seem pleased. I met with one of those higher-ups today for a sort of "hello, i work for you now" meeting, and she mentioned she was pleased. robot is happier.

i ordered a new little laptop. it should be here next week. i think Pretty is jealous; she's not acting right. I backed her up in case she decides to commit suicide in despair.

tomorrow i interview someone. i've never done this before. luckily i'm not interviewing them alone. should be interesting to be on the other side of the conference-room table... what should i ask?

and it really does suck. i was 3 blocks away and all my exposed mucus membranes were burning. someone apparently decided to set off a canister of it in front of Molotov as i was leaving Movida, down the hill. still don't know why. people fled the area, a fire truck came, and i went somewhere that didn't burn my throat.

i did nothing this weekend.

lately at work i've been feeling like i'm wasting my time, but that project should be finished today (though i've been saying that for 2 weeks now, it seems). the basic idea of it is that one party is developing a new feature and its progress is something of a concern to higher administration. So they charge my manager, head of us mercenaries, to take a look at it. This translates into me banging on it, then writing a really in-depth formal report. The former took a reasonable amount of time and was sort of fun. The latter has taken painfully long, and i have a strong suspicion that it's going to be scanned once and tossed aside by the people for whom it was intended. I'm not convinced that it matters much at all to anyone but my manager. this makes robot grumpy.

i set a new personal record by seeing 7 bands perform in small venues throughout the course of a day. that was saturday. I met kimberly and her friend at one afternoon show at the bottom of the hill (4 bands. 1 beer).

after that we followed her friend to his job at thee parkside (3 bands, how many beers?) where he worked for shitty pay and free beer as a sound engineer. purportedly the suicide girls were going to be performing some sort of burlesque show ("naked ladies!" exclaims kimberly), which was our main motivation for hanging around. as it turned out, the suicide girls were not performing and i'm still not sure if they were even supposed to. they were just on the bill and hanging around the bar talking to people. (kimberly: so where are the suicide girls? me: mm... there they are. see they're wearing the colors and i, uh, sort of recognize some of them. kimberly thinks this is pretty funny).

so instead of naked ladies we were treated to some excellent keyboard/laptop rock courtesy of the small hours and dealership. dealership came out of nowhere and totally rocked my socks off in a cute little emotronic way. you should all go out and buy their cds so that they can become rich and famous and put out more cds. they wore hott 80s tennis costumes.

there was an actual burlesque show scheduled for later. After leaving for chinese food we came back and hung around for part of that and it was cute and had boobies. we left a couple of songs into the hot writhing rockabilly hips of devil dog and hoofed it over to the Cat Club (no bands, weird porn on the video screen, yet more to drink...) for some 80s dancin'.

so that was alot of music-related entertainment. my back hurt from standing around so much. we eventually did get out of bed the next day. we even saw a movie (daredevil. it was alright). such accomplishments.

it was simple, see, i just moved to san francisco. and while that's a gross oversimplification, i like to tell it that way to people :).

my poor blog. how i've neglected you. let's kiss and makeup, okay? about the date last thursday i started writing an entry that went like this:

why haven't i heard of this girl before. people like that should have fan clubs. she is awesome. i will be seeing more of this one. so far adamnit is right.

and it continues that way. kimberly rocks my socks off. i won't bore you with a lengthy description here, but she does, k? the other thing i like to tell people about my move is "well, i get alot less sleep, but i'm having way more fun," which is wholeheartedly true.

for the record

saturday i went biking with the monkeys and adamnit threw up alot at the top of a hill. later i went to a show in a church basement with ammon and andrea, then came back to lower haight, met up with belind, some more of the SJ/santa cruz crew, and alot of vodka. we hung out with the bums in front of the pizza place and hit people with a big plastic bat.

sunday the hangover fairy played a mean trick on me and turned ~6 shots of vodka into 20 in my stomach. i don't know how. i spent the day throwing up and lying, shivering, under alot of blankets. i had my first solid food that night and it was the best burrito ever.

monday i still felt like crap, and certainly not moving with any efficiency, so i emailed in sick. then i went to san jose and slowly, with many time-outs spent on my back inspecting the ceiling, cleaned up my old apartment and turned in my keys. i saw "he loves me, he loves me not" while i was there. it was good; you should go and see it without reading any reviews or even a summary. it has the girl from amelie (audrey toutau or something) in it. you'll like it.

tues-wed afternoon was one solid workday wherein i finished all but a few details of the report i've spent the last weeks working on. huzzah for blurry days.

wed night i got together with kimberly again with the excuse of seeing a movie, but instead we split a bottle of $2 wine and she spent the night.

yesterday i got very little work done, took a lovely nap, and converged with kimberly, ammon, adam, rachel on popscene. it was fun for pretty much everyone but rachel who threw up alot (i detect a theme).

umm.. and today i got up late (cuz there was a warm, cuddly girl in my bed) and took a two hour long lunch with half my team but it's okay right now because my workload is light.

now i need to pee.

The electric busses in SF still fascinate the hell out of me. There's just something so surreal about the bus stopping and everything going silent. Silent, that is, except for the sweet, soulful pep-talk that the bus driver is giving to the homeless-looking woman behind her. I hated riding the bus in southbay, but i kind of enjoy it up here. it's the little things like that, and the fact that everyone seems to be so much more attractive up here. i'm serious. people always say it's just a grass-is-greener sort of thing, but i still believe it after living up here for almost 3 weeks.

Sunday was the giant protest in the city. I took a packed subway downtown with Andrea and her friend Belinda (sp? i'll just call her B from here out), grabbed an anti-SUV sign from the environmental bloc, and joined in the fun. B, who lives in santa cruz (a pity), crashed in our flat the night before and got to experience the tinymonkey crew in full drunken form when they stopped by to hang out for a while and drink all the vodka and keep up the houseguests :).

the rallymarchprotest was great. very slow but it was a fun crowd. police presence was almost nonexistent, it seemed, but then i couldn't really see the edges from the inside of the parade. the mood was very positive. attendance estimate came in at around 200k. i think next time i'm going to have to make my own sign.

after the rally i headed back to lower haight with B to eat some crepes and see her off. i had in my pocket , given to me by the Militant Anarchist Bloc (as i shall call them) a small flyer for an unpermitted march for around three and so figured it might be interesting to bike downtown again. I didn't get far before i heard the sirens and a half dozen police cars merged into my lane. They had the marchers and the associated sidewalk gawkers walled between two lines of cops in riot gear. on the pretense that i was actually on my way to somewhere else i slipped inside the lines. It was very tense at first; the cops really didn't know what was up and some of the MAB had brought smoke bombs, firecrackers and other interesting amunition (though they were the smallest minority in the crowd). I think there were a few arrests in the first clash but then the crowd just kept getting larger and the cries of "no violence!" from the sidewalk louder. The police backed off after that. The horses and most of the copcars (some now with broken windows) went elsewhere leaving the two double lines of riot police to maneuver around and attempt to corral the protesters onto the sidewalk. After a couple hours of that and the police withdrew their lines, and after a bit the crowd took over the intersection again (they were really intent on "shutting down the city", or at least market st.). The cops surrounded this, of course, and about thirty people sat down to be arrested. The cops and they crowd were all pretty chill at this point and actually having a good time. They very meticulously arrested all of the sitters, one by one, which took a ridiculously long amount of time (all the while completely blocking traffic, much to the amusement of the protesters). Standing in line to be processed with their assigned cops, the arrestees led chants with the crowd.

damn this got long, i'm almost out of battery and train ride. i've got a date tonight with that girl from the club last week. i'm kinda scared about it; it's been really way too long. on the upside i hardly know a thing about her so i don't actually have my hopes up for anything. we'll just see what happens :).

"it's today," she said.

"awe, fuck that shit," said I. and then we made out.

So i've been living in SF for like 2 weeks now. I like it alot. I don't get nearly enough sleep though. I'm still riding on the high of having moved, so it doesn't bother me so much yet. even when i get home at a reasonable hour i still can't stand to go to sleep so early. too much to do. now it's the nights i crash at apple that i actually get a good night's sleep.

Last night was popscene again, 3rd week in a row. I decided it was a healthy habit to get into, though maybe i should invest in some low-profile earplugs. I managed to drag adamnit and rachel out of the house for it finally and a good time was had by all. and if you happen to have my email address written on a napkin then you should definitely write me because you are a good kisser and hella cute :).

i find that i don't really mind the train. I actually kind of look forward to it. It's relatively comfortable, there are interesting people to look at . and everyone is very quiet and subdued. It's sort of like hanging out in a coffeeshop for an hour fifteen before work and after. I can even get real work done if i feel like it. which is not today; tooooo little sleep.

sometimes i'll sit down at a computer, open up a web browser, and the default homepage will have some news blurbs on it and i'll get very sadscareddepressed. there's a few protests this weekend; i think i may go.

i drank my liver out. and moved to san francisco. and didn't sleep much because of those two things. but it was excellent. probably one of the best weekends i've had out here.

friday i was dead. i think i blogged friday.. yes i did. i made it home and passed out for a few hours. not enough, but i didn't feel like sleeping anymore. dinner found me at Iguanas where i was surprised by andrea and friends and did i want to come drinking with them a bit later? ohhh.. sure, why not, i did. nevermind that i could barely carry on a coherent conversation. all the better.

drinking with andrea and friends meant bernardo's parents house in east san jose (a.k.a. "the ghetto". but i laugh at that), a big bottle of vodka, and a few random other people. among them melissa who is cute and whom i hadn't me before. i think we killed a fourth of the vodka and it was good and verymuch like highschool in only the best ways.

we did it again with a much larger group the following night and many fine bottles of liquor met their maker. i'm sort of hazy on the details but did exuberantly discuss 80s retro synthpop bands and screwed up american politics. and porn. and since that came up we of course had to go watch some on bernardo's computer. that got boring after a while. there were four of us lounging on bernie's bed and it turns out that that's exactly how many fit lengthwise if they cuddle up like drunken, giggling sardines. especially if one of them is cute and named melissa. we woke up this morning still drunk in scruffy, slept-in clothes, and hiding from the sunlight. bernardo, ironically, had had to slept in a guest bed. i thought this was weird, but it apparently happens alot.

the older cat, who's name is flame, is quite convinced that i'm hiding a lap under my desk and is put off that he can't get to it. flame watched with great interest as i unpacked this afternoon. he made sure to inspect every new object that i added to his space. today the bulk of the moving took place. and boy, did it suck. i was hungover and overcaffeinated (3rd double espresso of the weekend) and sort of astonished at how much shit i'd managed to acquire in six months. which admittedly is very little, but i like to delude myself sometimes into thinking that i could really just pack up all my shit into two large messenger bags and take off, just the same way i arrived here. now i think i need to find some more furniture to hold all of my things. packing took a long time, as it always does. for me, it's the process of sorting through everything i own and idly pondering why i own it, and what does it say about me, and which box should it go into. needless to say this is really maddening for anyone who's there with me and trying to help. andrea got very impatient, but we eventually put everything into the truck, save my futon and bike.

saturday was not a big moving day; we dropped off a few things and then went to the comic-con that was going on: APE, the alternative press expo. i met the man behind bob the angry flower and he told me about this really great porn that he was a fan of and did a little dance when i bought his book. i found out how jhonen vasquez really pronounces his name and what video games he's been playing lately and confirmed that he really is a funny motherfucker. i sat through two panels in which drunken comic book authors answered questions from their adoring fans and then made fun of them. it was all around a blast and i have far too much to show for it (oh well).

ah shit. i haven't blogged in ages. i'm getting sick of my blog. i wanna tear it all down and make something new but i don't have the time right now. i will eventually.

here's what happened

i'm moving to san francisco. tomorrow. and the next day. and as many trips and change-of-address forms as it takes. i'm moving into an appartment above a club in lower haight with a friend of mine, a girl couple, 2 little kids, and some random guy who plays guitar. it's gonna be loud and chaotic and dirty and everything that my place right now isn't. The lease is just a 3 month Term agreement so i can move on after that if it doesn't work out.

all this week instead of work i was in cocoa class. not a whole lot i didn't know already, unfortunately, but it was a nice change of pace from real work. a little departure back into school zone where all the problems have elegant solutions and all the information needed to solve them is readily available. it was kinda fun; i did the exercises like it ws a race. And i got lots of stuff done on other things.

last night i went to the thursday clubnight at popscene and it was a blast. Johnny Marr of the Smiths was there signing autographs and talking to his fans but i wasn't one of those so i just danced and drank beer. i was a fan of the cute girl (who could rrreally move) that i danced with for the better part of an hour but never worked up the nerve to talk to (and then she went away and i kicked myself alot). see, the problem was that although i was pretty certain she was dancing with me she never really made eye contact so it would have been hard and really awkward to try to start up a connection... i dunno; i'm a coward, i know. it's a running theme... mebbe next week :).

i got home at 5am and got up to goto the last day of class at 7am. i'm not even pretending to be functional enough to do real work today, despite getting back from cocoa class really early.

yes. climbed some rocks, carefully avoiding several dozen children running around underfoot. some birthday party. tables of cake and softdrink and an ornery activities leader as well. i manage to bloody my elbow and confirm, i think, that i haven't gotten magically better over the work-week.

girl aint nuthin' but a hoochie mamma

this evening's after-climb activity is dinner in sunnyvale, followed eventually by (once again) the cover band that EJ knows. this time at Toons, one of the many SJ clubs that i've been hoping that i'm too cool to go into. i think i was right, but i'd have to admit it was kinda fun anyway.

i made friends with the bulldyke sitting next to me in the dance-floor audience seats. she was admiring my piercings and my dance moves (the band had blessedly long breaks). she also had piercings and that made two of us on the whole place. do you come here often? she sez. never, sez i. i explain my relationship to the cover band and she explains that she knows the bouncers and gets in free. and wants to boink the bouncers. okay, not bulldyke, maybe a hag. i play gay to keep things copacetic; she says i have nice eyes.

sometime later i was dancing and working on my footwork and really wishing that someone was breaking so i could watch them and steal some moves. instead i turn around and some girl is dancing with me, around me, kinda trying to grind with me. okay, she's kinda cute, but hooochie and i'm not nearly drunk enough yet (and still sort of in i-hate-you-all mode). i stop dancing and give the, no. what are you doing? look as she writhes in front of me. then i give a little wave—hello, i have stopped dancing. the whole thing is terribly amusing to me and i start laughing and she runs redface back to to her friends, also giggling. the not-bulldyke and her friend and my coworkers are all practically rolling on the beer-sticky floor.

lessee, memorable people. the very large, drunk man who really wanted to make friends with everyone sitting in the spectator-seats. the two unrelated men who were dragged out (literally) on unrelated occasions for grabbing asses. see, this is what happens when the ratio gets too out of balance, says one of my coworkers. the 30something woman who played with my hair and (correctly) deduced that i was part irish.

and then i home. and beer makes robots sleepy. gnight.

i've been having a bad case of the whatevers this week. my bike was out of service for two whole days because i didn't feel like leaving my desk to skip off to the bike shop. nor did i get much done at my desk; i'm rolling on to a new set of projects and things are at the none-too-exciting, "sooo, what exactly am i doing here?" stage. i think i'd be happier if i got assignments more along the lines of, "write this thing. you have 48 hours. go!" (then i'd take the rest of the week off, of course :) )

i went to the hemlock for the first time last night to see deerhoof, a fun local band, and two other crazy little groups. high hipster concentration, and in a good way. as i walked in i thought my clothes were going out of style. but then i realized that was impossible because the general fashion theme going on was so motley that it really couldn't leave anyone out. there was a guy with excellent 70s porn star hair-and-mustache playing pool and i watched him in awe as i waited for the bathroom.

i've been getting alot of passive exposure to Blog Culture. it's like radiation, i think. makes you a bit queasy if you absorb to much of it. i'm saddened to say i know what a blogroll is (though i'm going to call it a "cool list" to piss you off, if you ever bring it up). so cliquish. so pompous. so sure they are the second coming of the Web. i really want to boycot the whole scene, but....

the aweful part is that i still believe it is relevant. i just wish people would get off their high horses, cut the jargon. maybe it just hasn't settled out yet. i'm sure people talked about usenet the same way, before AOL users started posting. Personally, my feeling is that the signal-to-noise ratio is way to high out there for me to really read most any stranger's blog. i've got better things to do than be a sponge for other poeple's opinions.

but this is still me venting here. i'm not going to stop my blog, and i'll probably even develop it more (read: tear it down and start fresh) once my personal project queue is a bit lighter and i've had time to take in the state of things globally. i still want to roll my own, but there's no point in being incompatible with existing systems that people actually use or reinventing wheels that have become old hat by now. i'll do something cool. stay tuned.

</rant>

this weekend i went rock climbing at a gym and then drank until... i don't remember. sunday i recovered and that's about it. i'm still sore and i think my liver is mad at me. hilites:

anyway. work calls.

i went to macworld expo yesterday. instead of work. well, actually, 10 people (including one of my managers) left from work to go to it. it was, um, market research. yeah.

so, mingling with the mac faithful i was struck by a number of things:

i've been boring. that's about it.

today is christmas again. it's awesome.

the keynote

i won't go into the geeky details. for those not geeks: there is a mac convention going on this week in SF. this morning there was a keynote by steve jobs (apple iCEO) wherein he announced lots of new shit from apple. alot of new shit. i was in a room full of Apple engineers watching it on satellite and you could practically hear them all blowing their loads at several points. good keynote.

if you're a macosx user, i command you to go download safari right now. why? because it does not suck and that is amazing.

ergotized

my new chair and pointing device came today and they also rule. the came during the keynote, even. i came back and was jubilant.

visitors

tinymonkey + emma have left the building. my building. it was very crowded, but not uncomfortably so. i came home last night and everyone and their stuff was gone and it felt very lonely. i was looking online yesterday at roommate-wanted postings.

...you will be spending the newyears on the train.

and we did. the train was rather crowded and rambunctious with much passing of joints and swilling from flasks (well, i was swilling from my flask. i think everyone else just busted out with the Solo cups). there was less chaos in SF than i thought there might be, but then we had no idea where we were going and we got there after midnight. much walking around drunkenly and aimlessly was done and then we took alot of transit home. it was fun and crazy, but not halloween crazy. the end.

backing up. tinymonkey is here, mostly. floor is crowded. much pgh luvin'. today we toured SF by car looking at neighborhoods and doing drive-by apartment shopping. i was slightly hungover and got carsick. the end.

the ritual of the trip home is complete. jared and i had a couple of beers in a maine bar. it was loud and crowded full of yuppies. one of them accosted me saying, "can i touch them?" and making sparkly motions with her fingers. "you may," sez i, and she fondled the metal in my face for a bit. this is the appeal of going to bars, even crappy bars, that i find hard to explain to my maine friends.

i also patronized bull moose music and videoport--two excellent portland institutions--as well as the new, quirky little book&coffee shop above them, which i think is one of the few new developments in portland that i like.

it's just not a vacation home without running into emily lenz looking for drugs. emily was a girl that i found myself hanging out with a bit around the end of senior year in high school. there was a summer camp connection and a sort of thing between us that never actually got off the ground. She was the sort of person i had no right to see again and again as the years went on and all of my other highschool acquaintances dropped of the face of the earth. but i did, repeatedly. holidays when i'd go home for the familiness and then run away from yarmouth with jared when that got to be to much. walking opposite directions on exchange street in the oldport. or this time in the liquor isle of shop'n'save. the first time she was looking for e. next time she had pot and we went up to some hill overlooking the town and people smoked it. today i had my bottle of taquila and she was picking up beer with her new girlfriend. she'd just turned 21. time marches on...

i find myself suddenly feeling very lacking in the girl department. not quite lonely, not quite horny, just anxious, frisky. i think i kinda accidentally hit on emily lenz in line at the shop'n'save. and i really really wanted to go barhopping tonight, despite my denizen friend's assurances that the scene was dead as it looked from the outside. we went moviegoing with a flaskfull of tequila instead. i've been having some really intense dreams. maybe if this keeps up i'll actually do something about it when i get home.

it aches. my father and his mother-in-law are sitting in the other room eating dinner and talking about the syrup they are using. they've been at this for a while. i don't think the two of them ever had terribly much to talk about.

last night i had a spark of energy and went out to photograph the backyard at night. grainy, time-exposure goodness. if i ever get around to posting pictures again, look for those :). today's spark of energy had me biking around the woods behind our house in near-dusk. it eventually got too dark to really see the branches and rutts i was riding over and i fell and bloodied my knee. not bad.

ach. they're back to the syrup. i'm debating whether headphones would help my headache.

other than that i've been pretty listless. wandering around, occasionally sitting down and adding a feature to one of my pet projects. or reading an article or book that i trip over. or playing with the cats. or eating the never-ending supply of candies and chocolates that my mother brings home from her students around the holidays. quite a bucket of fun i am.

the trip here was long and i endured it with a flask-full of vodka, later to be added to a bottle of fruitopia (hey joel, remember the frutopia bottle of drunkenness?). There's still a bit left and i'm seriously considering chugging it before heading off to the christmas church service that familial duty demands i attend.

tomorrow shall be the ritual go-out-on-xmas-night-and-see-how-dead-it-is get-together with some of my friends who are either around for the holidays or never quite made it out of here. quite the blast it shall be.

it was magnificent. i saw her coming through the metal detectors, ducking because the top was about at chin level for her. she is joel++. indian, or middle eastern or something, but she looks more like a benevolent tree-creature from some fantasy world. also interesting to watch--at 6am with no sleep--was the woman carefully applying eyeshadow to her 5year-old girl

almost as good as hoodie kitten, but not quite. a guy just walked into this coffeeshop with jacket doggie. the dog didn't look very furry; i can see why it would want to be stuffed in there. despite my going skating this afternoon in nothing but a tshirt, it's actually pretty cold. oh, who am i kidding, it's mildly chilly at worst. tomorrow at this time i will be huddled by the heating vent at my folks house in maine, i'm sure.

the mob

i did my xmas shopping yesterday. all of it. by the end i think my brains were leaking out my ears and nose. so many people. so many idiots. the morning and afternoon i was on my bike and very thankful for that. coming into valley fair mall i tried to be a polite little vehicle until the security guard directing traffic yelled at me to, "just go down the middle!" ohhhhkay, i said, and thereafter proceeded to break all traffic laws without worry. inside was worse. people ran into me alot. i pushed back. i really would like the superpower to turn any crowd instantly into a punk concert and be able to jump around and kick people in the chest with relative impunity.

this morning it was raining as hard as i've seen it rain here yet and i rode through it. jsut before i got to cupertino, though it was sunny. half an hour later, it started hailing in cupertino. i guess i was lucky.

i scored an excellent pin from the BJ's cashier girl who always works the takeout counter when i go in. it says "Pizookie Love." i think that officially makes me a regular.

this week i am stuck being quicklook lead. this means, not only that i am busy and pressed for time, but that i get very little done. in addition i've been doing alot of extra-curricular coding lately. And not much else. i lay down to bed after a redbull-inspired 2am hack session and immediately get back up to fix or implement something i figured out as i tried to sleep. dunno how long this can hold out. hopefully i'll have a bunch of really cool hacks when it's done and also that my next obsession will be equally productive.

there are protesters camped out in front of the federal building near where a live. and a across the street a copcar camped out on the sidewalk. i took pictures of them both and got the weird-eye from many concerned security guards and slow-patrolling police.

i was having motivational issues this morning, sitting in my bike clothes saying to myself over and over, "okay, lets go...", but when i rolled out the door and saw the sky, i felt instantly energized. it was an angry sky. a seething, disgruntled sky. it looked like me after 2 hours of sleep and 2 cups of coffee. "come on and ride under me," it said, "i spit on you." and then it spat on me. just a little. enought to let me know it was there, that it could split open its sides and let loose a torrent of water with a single crash of thunder. a marvelous, electric feeling.

tonight found me, 2 40 oz's of OE, and 2 san jose denizens on a hill overlooking the city. it was really quite cold. could see all of sillyconn valley in its sprawl-tastic greatness. i took pictures. i think we also discussed community design patterns an how they differed between mexico and northern california.

also, i ate cuban food. i felt realy special in that there was a vegetarian section on the menu with a grand total of one item. i ate that and it was bland. but fried plantains are always good. two of the people i was with are native speakers of spanish. this is always interesting in resturants in the valley where the staff is generally, exclusively native mexican. my spanglophonic compadres speak for me whenever the waitstaff comes around which is both helpful and unsettling. "oh, we told them to spit in your food." not really.

the beers are unusually strong. notice the increased frequency of typos, probably. there is a new resturant in our parking lot. it is named BJ's (insert obligitory fellatio joke here. we always do). i'm serious about the beers though. some of them were more than twice the proof of the std. alc/vol for their type. they brew them themselves.

tonight they are not officially open. that comes this weekend. this is a fundraiser. with free food (limited menu) normal drink prices, going towards cycstic fibrosis (go bob flanagan! err, and all his camp sunshine buds).

this is making no sense. damn their beer. i only had two even. i feel ba about not writing lately, so i'll keep going.

previous

there was alot of code. it came out of my hands. my hands hurt now. i think alot of that was from when they hit the pavement. hard. last night. along wth my elbows and thigh. they hurt also. i've noticed i don't really buise. i've also noticed that some cracks in the pavement are taller than my skateboard wheels and that it is dark on the sidewalk.

thanksgiving happened. for me it happened a few weeks ago, but then it happened again and i was it a very nice house. very nice. with many wealthy techy bachelors and their toys and a giant pot of boiling oil. they put things in it. some birds. and some donuts. the donuts made a carmelized shell. it was like donut candy. mmmm.....my friend ivy was there was there. sorry ivy. it was boring and we had not much to eat. i played video games and ran over people with tanks. no one drank my beer.

the cooode

that came out of my hands. you can play with it if you have mac oh-sex. get the ball of tar here. bring some more emacs to your macs. it will progress, at that link, as time goes on. there is a readme.

also

what else... there was a mall. a big mall. an eeeevil mall. it was like disneyland, with alot more money. and police. and biiiig. and not finished. it was boutique-tastic. the best part is that that above all the stores are appartments. which make the place not only unhumanly large, but you ever have to leave.

and then i went and bought a flask and some earplugs at the surplus store. nice combination, says the cachier.

ow. okay. sorry, hands. more later perhaps.

as punishment for biking so little the last few weeks i've taken up an alternate route home which is 2.5 miles longer than before. it is very flat and the lights are all on sensors so that late at night i can blow through nearly all of them w/o stopping. avg speed for this evening was 19.4, pretty darn good for me.

but back to the cold. it's the sort of cold i wouldn't even have noticed on my 2-mile commute in pgh, but over a dozen miles, wearing nothing but spandex, it starts to seep in. it makes my jaw hurt and makes my arms stiff and makes me hawk mouthfulls of thickened saliva into the street. upon getting home i hopped into street clothes and hopped on my skateboard to get a burrito and found that my legs had been transmuted to clay. ass-over-teakettle i went at the first bump.

tomorrow is the last day of yet-another 3day week for me. only it actually feels more like the end of one six or 8 day week, as i worked most of last weekend on a personal project. since i won't be going home, i just have a 4day weekend ahead of me. if you see me online too much, be sure to bug me to stop coding or gaming, ok?

i woke up yesterday morning in my old bed, with a start. i think i might have yelled. "ach! ... uh ... disoriented..." i said to my sister, becca, who had come down to wake me. it is actually her room now. i'd promised to help her upgrade her computer that morning.

my old room is my younger sister's now. a transplant of a college dormroom over my highschool bedroom. here and there some of my stuff was inexplicably still there. "hey, that jewelry file is still on this shelf. oh no wait, i think i kept it on this shelf here above it." my two copies of the marilyn manson autobiography (don't ask. please) were sitting about where i'd left them.

Outside my room sits a pile of boxes. the things i'd left behind that becca couldn't find any use for. i was supposed to have sorted them out and left instructions. i tried for a bit, but was hit by such an unpleasant wave of nostalgia, ghosts, baby pictures, blood stains... that i put it off until christmas.

changes

emily and becca (older and younger for those keeping track, then there's janna, the youngest) both have steady boys now who joined us for the pre-thanksgiving festivities. i must say i like them both. inexplicably, em's boy (in chicago) and i share 2 connections, one from my work and one from cmu. "the geek world is smaller than you'd think," we agree.

monday's activities included storming the school, which is being torn apart and rebuilt, bit by bit. we fetched janna from study hall and cruised between portables and disconnected, recently remodelled classrooms visiting our old teachers, those that were still around. i take it as a good sign of post-columbine healing that we were able to do this.

Seeing the teachers was strange. Very little of the highschool as i remember it is left, save them. i could go into length about each one, but i think i'm happy keeping highschool a dim memory.

stay the same

Last night my sisters and i concluded the visit with a tour of the oldport at night: coffeeshops and my old favorite record store around here. there used to be more stops on the ritual tour, but they've since closed up. i think i'm being pessimistic when i take them as a sign of the decline of maine culture, but i'm not convinced. I'm going to have to seek out new sources of hope when i come back for christmas.

i stepped in some snow just now, stepping off of the plane in chicago. it was a magical, sentimental experience. it's nearly 5am here at the k-gate. it is quiet, nothing is open, and the air smells faintly of vomit. i wish i had my skateboard. i wonder how the airport staff would react to that.

is it dinosaur act time yet?

i saw Low on wednesday and they were spectacular. i bought a tshirt, yellow, for bonus irony points.

woah, that's cute. the little courtesy carts that drive old people around the airport here have bird chirps instead of sirens. i approve.

looks like the airport is waking up. someone turned on the TV, damn them. i'm too zoned out to write anything more intelligent right now.

there's something about geeks, or maybe it's just people who work in offices in general, that makes them jump up and help you, en masse, when you come to work one day and say, "hm. i think i'd like to run dual displays on my machine". It was just an idle thought this morning, but then it turned into 4 or 5 of us running around to various labs, grabbing unused prototype video cards and old monitors, whatever would work in my main computer.

In the end I ended up with a gforce4mx, an old dim, 17" apple monitor with too much blue in it to compliment my big old, blurry 19", and a decent chain of adapters for each. not bad for an idle procrastinator's thought.

sloth

it's been nearly 2 weeks since i've been on my bike. nearly rode last night but was defeated by a flat that would not be fixed by wimpy stick-on patches. luckily it's drying up for the time being. i had a nice evening skate waiting for the bus. manage to grind a nice bit of parking lot into my elbow (which is still stubbornly gray-ish even today).

today i bought glue-patches. so after this eveing's Ritual Tuesday Buffy Episodes i will atempt the ride home again.

in the last few days i've watched the quantity of flegm i cough up in the morning start an exponential droppoff. it is a good thing.

also in the last few days, it's been raining. winter is officially here. i'm told that once it starts up like this it pretty much keeps it up all winter.

a coworker informed me, excitedly, that the rain meant snow for the nearest (3 hours away) ski mountain. rain also means the end of skateboard season. water ruins the bearings i'm told. this means that on the days i don't bike to work, i've got to walk to the bus. feh. getting to skate on cupertino sidewalks almost makes the bus worth it.

excitement abounds

i purposely did very little this week. rode the bus alot. went to be early. found out i have to fill out a performance review (joy of joys). drank several gallons of tea. i went grocery shopping one day.

i also saw punch-drunk love, that movie with adam sandler in it. it was really, surprisingly, good. i found out later that it was by the same guy who did Magnolia. adam sandler plays a sort of gritty, damaged, real-life version of the character that he's played in all his other movies. and he like, acts. it should be an indie film, but for some reason it's not, and i think alot of the teeniebopper friday-night-at-the-movies crowd that was there in the theatre with us got ambushed.

i am ill. it came about on wednesday. it was one of those days when i thought it might be better to work late than go home at a decent hour. of course i'm generally wrong about this; this time that wrongness took the form of starting to feel feverish and sickly towards the time that i intended to bike home. i eventually bussed it, catching the last bus home and feeling miserabl-ish waiting in the cold for it to come.

all hallows eve

that same wednesday i started to feel ill, my friend invited me to come with her to the castro district (in SF) for halloween (thurs). i said sure, why not. i mentioned these plans to some people and they advised me to procure alcohol ahead of time. sure,why not.

come thursday night, my cold be damned, i found myself yelling, screaming, and urinating in public with approximately 300,000 other people. this number was quoted to me the next day, and thinking back on it--the blocks and blocks of the castro packed tighter than a sold-out concert--i decided that this was probably true.

somewhere along the way, half of a 750ml bottle of vodka made it into my bloodstream. this as well, i found out the next day. shortly after i vomited in a parking lot and felt much better.

also, somewhere along the way, my friend and ride ran off and left me wandering and stranded. my hopes of finding a hyperactive, 5-foot tall zombie among 300,000 people were pretty slim, i thought. i befriended a lovely peacock lady and hung around her scanning the crowd, talking incessently, and taking her picture with the people who would hand me their cameras.

eventually the crowd started to thin. i nearly ended up sleeping on the peacock lady's couch (thank you peacock lady!), but ran into my friend on the way back. she was with other friends of hers and it was on their couch that i crashed that night. morning was slow and painful and lasted most of the day. luckily there was a beer bash so the day ended at 4pm.

weekend recovery

i drank a prodigeous amount of tea yesterday and cleaned my apartment. i accomlished little else and went to bed at 10. waking at 5am i decided to go skating, bundled up and did so. returning, i passed out until 1pm. extrapolate, and that is my weekend.

i'm still i awe over halloween night. how many people fill the french quarter for mardis gras? as far as i could tell there was no main event, no official schedule. people entertained themselves and each other.

police were there, but arrested fewer than 30 people (for drunken disturbance sorts of things). they also directed traffic and defensively blocked off streets as the crowd swelled. i wonder how much i saw was complete anarchy and how much was controlled and carefully planned for outside my drunken field of vision. i wonder how many years it can go on. i wonder how many years it has gone on?

this is a test. only a test

the end.

someone said tonight; there aretimes like these when the southbay just proves itself worthwhile. this was true somehow tonight. it was a great little party. white trash with indie cred spitting out the seams, somehow. there was a keg, a book burning, a trampoline, projected video composition, (briefly) a live band (till the neighbors and cops shut it down), and a hot (and taken) straightedge bartender that i spent a good while talking to.

being halloween this night, i dressed as a dot-com era job applicant. this was spookily successful. it's also really fun to skateboard around town in a suit, if you've never tried it.

my hands are a little bloody. i think it must have happened skateboarding (drunk) home, though i don't recall the incident in particular. it was not a short ride home. my legs are a little sore, but it's all good.

i now have long-sleeved and full-legged biking clothes. i look like a superhero when i wear them. a superhero with a padded crotch. especially when i spend half an hour (poorly) fixing a flat on the side of the road.

last night i saw spike&mikes sick&twisted festival of animation. it was excellent.

imma go sleep now. gnight.

my spoke made a little pop sound as it snapped and broke loose this morning. kind of like the sound an empty soda bottle makes when you drop it. i was just a block away from work when it happened and didn't figure out what it was until i was already at my office.

and the i forgot to get it fixed before the bike shop closed because it was one of those days. actually i completely forgot about the spoke util not half an hour ago when i finally kicked my ass into gear in a homeward direction. on the bright side, this is my favorite bus driver i all the VTA: he's superfriendly and puts out magazines on all the seats for people to read on the way home.

I've been showing off my work at work to various people. reactions have been good, but for every person i show it to, i get 5 suggestions for improvement and additional work. that combined with a recent redistributio of tool ownership has turned my TODO list into a very large dependecy tree, not one leaf of which is particularly urgent.

ketchup

other things i want to remember:

there was a beer bash yesterday. Applications people put it on. Which meant the ever-elusive, close-lipped iApps people and Emagic. Emagic makes Logic, a music composition suite, as well as great big keyboards and control panels to make using your computer more like working in a sound studio. we, apple own them as of not too long ago.

we saw them arrive i the afternoon. thought it was a tour at first, but most of them has badge. many weren't even temp badges. something about them made them stand out. i think it was their youth and the not-as-skewed gender ratio. They had a look of excitiment about them that i usually associated with apple-tourists, but less of the stangeness or obsession. there were even cute girls sporting apple badges among them. this is where i melt.

several members of my group and i happened to be walking past the balcony overlooking the lobby as this gathering occured. we rushed to the railing like kids at a zoo and oogled the strange crowd. they looked back at us with a similar curiosity. my god, we all need to get out more. later, at the beer bash, i remembered that i'm not good at strangers and darted among them (making eye contact and then having nothing to say), and the rest of the apple crew, wishing i'd been blessed with the gift of gab.

other things

on the more functional side of things, i saw Bowling for Columbine and it was excellent.

friday

black heart procession was good. the first opening band was dumb; sort of reminded me of Khan, but not as gay. next band was grizzly and raspy and dressed like dusty miners, but with a castro st. edge. black heart procession built on their vibe nicely. many instruments and machines that made desolate clanky windy noises and cute girls in the crowd to look at.

and one gothy one dancing next to me kept on rubbing her hip against my hand and i'm not very good at saying things that mean "excuse me but you're seriously invading my personal space and i don't mind in the least." she didn't give any furthur signals and i didn't come up with anything suitable to say before the crowd pushed her away from me. maybe she just likes to rub up against things while she dances, i consoled myself, or maybe she has no feeling in her left side. on a side note, thai beer goes really well with spicy thai food. go figure.

saturday

the cowboy bebop movie had been sold out for 3 or 4 days, so we fled the money-sucking metreon for a bookstore in little italy. i bought a book even though i'm stalled halfway through 2 already. maybe it was that the 1st two pages i read were really good or maybe i just felt like i owed something to that bookstore. it was a really excellent bookstore: "city lights."

and food (italian. good.), and the movie "Rules of Attraction." which i enjoyed immensly. combination of "Go" and "Cruel Intentions." it's the sort of movie that assures you that the world is completely fucked up in exactly the ways that you had hoped. i think i need to see it another time or two to figure it out; the story is told in unordered pieces.

and some random party in a converted warehouse. people who all knew each other almost exclusively from chatrooms, i gathered. i kept hearing "craigslist" mentioned apologetically through snatches of conversations. i didn't stay long enough and get drunk enough to get really conversational. there was an awful punk band and then we left.

l8r sk8r

having the time and resources, and needing a new hobby that didn't directly abuse my wrists, i decided to take up skateboarding. this is not in any way related to the Positive Skate Experience, with all the agile 8-13 year-olds, taking place every other week 2 blocks from my apartment. no, not at all.

sunday i walked into the skateshop and said something to the effect of "hi, i know shit about skateboarding, but i'd like to start doing it. give me everything i need." As me and the hot skateshop-counter-girl were picking out parts and putting together my new board, 4 of the aforementioned munchkin skaters came into the shop and started harrassing us. they were really cute. they advised me on what to get. they are much better skaters than i am and only half my height. one of them called me a poser; his friend, the sensitive intellectual of the group, told me privately later that he didn't mean it. cute kids. i waited until i was far far away from them to try out my new board so they wouldn't see me fall.

recovery

so i've been doing that when i get home. it's fun. i don't completely suck. it gives me a decent reason to go home, which is good and very useful. i should develop more hobbies like that.

my right wrist is recovering from last week's work-fest. this week, in addition to going home, i've started mousing with my left hand. which also has the affect making me mouse less, period. goodgood.

onward

last night found me at a show at the gaslighter theatre. this is to southbay what the Rex is to pittsburgh. but smaller. and no free beer with admission (bastards). it was cool. tonight is Black Heart Procession in SF. should be good. saturday is westcoast premier of the cowboy bebop movie (yay!), and then some random party with geeks i don't know. yay for social life.

also next week my dad's going to be in town. funfun.

my family has always been sort of passive-aggressively explosive. out of all the extended family members i know, i don't think any of the full-grown ones live in the same place. Except for my sister and one unkle in chicago, but that's more coincidence than anything. The DeWans and the Wines all seem to make very happy and nice not-dysfunctional-looking families, but as soon as the children are out of college, they run several states away and don't look back.

There's some sort of weird non-bonding that occurs between parents and children. maybe it's a distrust of authority, maybe general social dysfunction, i'm not sure.

I was not very close to my parents. We stopped having screeming matches sometime when i was in gradeschool and just never really talked much after that. I don't know if my mother dated before meeting my father. i don't know what either of them were like in college.

From pictures and the contents of their collective libraries, i picture them as some kind of paradoxial breed of straightedge hippies. There was alot of interesting literature scattered around the house when i was young. me an my sisters would make a great game of pouring over every mildewed, crumbling box and dusty shelf. I found an excellent resource on becoming a consciencious objector (how my father avoided viet nam), many old college yearbooks, instruction manuals for photographs, textbooks, a very beatnick artist-book titled "SEX". also, the delux, illustrated Joy of Sex, a very picture- and poetry-filled guide to sensual massage, Understanding Sexual Inadequacy, a sequel to Our Bodies, Our Selves, and a quirky little anthology of erotic literature by female authors.

I have never, to this day, discussed any facet of sex with my parents and i think it would be weird to now.

change your taste in men

I was out with some coworkers last night at our favorite quasi-irish bar in mountianview. mountainview has one real nightclub, a yuppified place called the LimeLight with dress code and perpetual half-block line of hoochies waiting to pay high cover for entry. I guess the cool kids go there to dance. Everyone else crowds the 20' x 20' dance floor of our irish bar, molly magee's. It is a sweating, pulsating, meat-market of tech workers (and i guess the people who like to date them). No straight woman ever seems to leave alone at 1:45 when they kick everyone out. the 2-1 M-F ratio adds an extra bit of gross the situation.

I was pushing past this crush on my way to the bathroom and girl grabs my arm and says, "Eminem! Eminem! what time is it?" having no watch, and still (drunk as i was) being christon dewan, i gave her the evil eye, took back my arm, and continued to push through. i think i may have growled at her later in the night. other issues aside, i think this means my time as a bleach-blonde shall end. i have a bottle of black dye and i'm not afraid to use it.

my wrists hate me. i am mean to them. i make them use the mouse and they don't like me. i have "forgotten to go home" too many nights this week. i am out of spare changes of clothes. bad bad bad. something inside me doesn't seem to understand that the work and the little projects will wait for me to return. if you see me online past 7pm my time, ask me if i'm still at work and kick me if i say yes.

that was this week. over the weekend i went to SF and stopped by amoeba and marvelled at a mass of CD's larger than my mp3 collection. if it was near my house i would go broke.

i slept at my office just one night this week and have vowed not to work any this weekend. my wrists will thank me. yes, i think i should be worried when food seems like an interruption.

i saw Das Experiment. it caused me pain; you must all go see it. I also saw Secretary. it was funny and good but a bit too long.

i watched the totals rise on the number arrested in DC as the news reports came in on friday and i vowed to make it to critical mass in SF one of these days.

something positive. i was walking to the taqueria by my house and there were these people crowded around a car. as i got closer i realized that the hiphop i'd heard was coming from the car and the people standing around it and not the taqueria. i think it was spillover from whatever musical event had happened that night. they were really good. good in that way that makes you stop and remind yourself that you're only standing on a street corner at 1am.

today i ate a pastry with green tea filling. yesterday i had some green tea ice cream. i haven't managed to go home at a reasonable time yet this week. i sit at my computer working away, and then someone will come to my door and say "Dinner?" and i'll glance at the clock, and i'll glance at them, and i'll sit for a moment. Dinner, it is that time, yes. yes... dinner.

this weekend i:

i think that monday is a good day to come in late.

buying my bagel and coffee and the fire alarm goes off. "I guess it's breakfast outside today," i say. The coffeestand lady agrees. we spend a while standing outside, away from the building. Steve Jobs and his posse stand right in front of the building, looking amused.

last night i watched Resident Evil with ammon. it left me tired, a bit nauseous, and paranoid of death. so i slept under my desk again. i'm amazed at how effectively i can crash out down there. I had a really pleasant dream, i think.

some things i failed to mention that i want to remember:

i just touched an awful lot of someone else's damp underwear. i hope they fix the other washer soon.

i've been spending alot of time reading. part of it is job, part is i got an rss-reader to aid my news-addiction, and part sheer transient fixation. but you should read these two things: a good article on american corporatism to make you feel bad and 11 comics of temporary anesthetics to make you feel a little better. i think i'm developing a small RSI in my right wrist from scrolling through web pages and bug reports. time to reevaluate my ergonomic strategy.

file further under misadventures in adulthood: catastrophic circumstances conspired to strand me in a club in SF until 7:30 am last night (at which point i caught the first bus home). i was very tired and cranky and my stomach hurt and i don't think i'll be able to listen to trance again for another year or so. oh, and People Are Scary(tm), still. :\

on a sad note, i guess crop dusting is a commonly used term in some places. boo, i liked it better when i thought it was something only strippers did.

i had a largely uneventful weekend. i bought a canopener, some kitchen knives, and several pots and pans. i did a real grocery run for the first time this year. i did my laundry. i had burritos with someone in person that i'd met online. that was probably the hilight.

and spent a couple of hours revising/retelling two more days of burningman. enjoy:

the first part of this was written on the ride home. later portions i wrote at cafe matisse. see if you can spot the switch.

this is going to be long. i may have to change batteries in the middle. i'm in a minivan driving slowly out of burningman. my clothes are saturated in dust. my little computer appears to be nonfunctional. i think (hope) that that is just the battery. i was going to bring a little baggie of playa dust with me home, but that might have been a little redundant.

so lets see if i can recap what has happened.

thursday night

this was when ian got here i think. ian had been stranded somewhere on his way in due to repeat mechanical failures. through much concerted effort--our only like to the outside world was IRC via the satelite<->wireless connection that some nice people setup. this was used to get people out in civilization to call ian's cellphone--a ticket was purchased for him and he was told to accept it. unfortunately ian's car held many supplies and structures for the camp, but this was not fatal. there was much fanfare when he finally arrived.

then we went out wandering. i think later i took rachel's bike out and roamed until the sun came up. it wasn't as cold this night.

friday

I had some of my best and worst times on friday. they say it's not uncommon to have a microbreakdown in the middle of your burningman experience. i think this was may day to have that.

Having gone to bed after the sun was up, i missed breakfast. sitting around the shade structure muncing on nutrigrain bars, a camp meeting started to happen around me. it was long and boring the way meetings often are. i sat there silently wishing it were over so i could go back to soaking up the heat in silence.

after the meeting rachel and her friend zach (another CMU drama alumn) were headed to some massage tent and zach invited me along. walking across the esplenade (the mostly-empty center of Black Rock City) i got my first taste of the necessity of dust masks and goggles. Just a couple of little dust clouds. I took the picture of the red horse during this.

freebeer!

Also on the way we stopped at my soon-to-be-favorite free bar. it's worth mentioning the different economies of BRC here. Money is banned. you get kicked out if you're cought selling anything. Bartering is okay. many people bring bags full of trinkets to trade with for drinks or rides on some of the more elaborate art cars and such. some places would require you to "bribe" them in this manor. not having anything to barter i quickly fell into the group who found this practice disgusting and completely against the spirit of burning man. The last and most prefrerred economy is the "gift" economy wherein one gives freely with the expectation that karma will return the favor eventually. in summary, some things were free and some things weren't, and in this place i was dead broke. this bar was free and thats one of the reasons i liked it :) We got a couple of drinks at this bar and sat around in the dust soaking them up.

The massage place, i think it might have been called heebee geebee's (or some derivative), specialized in reiki (sp?), and there were tables in the back where people practiced and tought this skill. It was also a really great place to lie around and cool off, socialize and peoplewatch. someone i met told me once that she thought everyone at buringman was beautiful because they wore whatever made them feel best (be that a costume, body paint, or just a few tattoos). i think this can be true if you're in the mood for it. the massage place certainly fostered that mood; the place exuded zen.

cropdusting

rachel took off by herself to wander after a while and i accepted zach's invitation to come to his camp for a dinnersnack. zach's camp was on the outer rim, away from all the theme camps. BRC in this area made me think of kansas on acid. like a trailer park full of only tattooed white trash (not in a bad way). there were lawn ornaments, even. and zach's sister who was magnificently and unashamedly a stripper. as was her friend, also camping there. Over PB&J i learned my favorite euphemism of the week: cropdusting. this is when you're dancing in front of a guy and you fart in his face. i almost spit up my sandwich.

the dust storm

the wind started to pick up and i thought it prudent to go back and make sure my tent was well-staked down. I stopped by the freebar on the way and had a drink first. "you'd better go back and make sure your tent doesn't blow away" they advised over the wind. i said i would.

it wasn't so bad at first on the esplenade. in the shelter of a van i took a few pictures of artcars riding thru the dust with no horizon to be seen. i climbed up on the thunderdome to try and look over the dust. Death Guild yelled me and the others down from there after a bit as the dust got thicker. danger, pshaw.

I walked along the edge of the esplenade with the people to my left keeping me oriented (by sound only). visibility was about 5 feet. I was wearing a pair of big ski goggles over my glasses, a non-disposable dust mask, and a bandana tied cockeyed to stop dust from getting into the goggles. picture darth vader held together by string.

it's a good mile or two across the playa to my camp. there were many others walking through the storm. it was nice. like walking inside of a pillow. the dust dampened all sound past about 20 feet. i felt obsurdly safe even with people and bicycles and artcars and me dodging to avoid each other.

About midway it started to get dark and i got a little scared. i ducked behind one of the giant penis towers in front of jiffy lube with a middle-aged couple and a man in blue body paint. "it is a good cock," i said, patting the cock. the middle-age couple agreed.

eventually i got bored of the cock and went back out into the dust. i clapped in time with my footsteps to warn the bicycles.

downhill

the storm was over by the time i got back to camp, but the weather continued to snarl and spit for another few hours. the sunset was awesome. some of my other campmates filtered in, similarly playa-colored. we traded dusty stories.

dinner was served and i started feeling tired. deathly tired. i ate, took a caffeine pill, and established myself in a hammock. the others planned their activities for the evening (an obsurdist raid on the crowds in front of the Man), and i declined to come. at some point i fell asleep and woke up in darkness; the generator had run out of gas. people filled it and the lights came back on and i fell back asleep.

i woke up a while later with the caffeine snarling in my head and everyone gone. i packed a bag and set out to wander the desert. I walked all over but didn't stay in any one place for very long. my brain was in full-on peoplearescary mode. i didn't feel like dancing. i rode around on some art cars and walked out to the ducky (3-story yellow duck which is also a jazz bar and also a mile out from the main city).

someone handed me their drink ("i don't know how to mix my poisons this evening" he says with a wry smile), and that lifted my spirits a bit for as long as it lasted. i'm not sure how long i wandered. i hug around a place where i knew some of my campmates and zach were supposed to meet but didn't see either of them. eventually i retired to my camp, sulked, wrote a i'm-having-a-horrible-time email, and passed out. and yeah i'm leaving out a few details and reasons but my trasient depression isn't all that interesting :p.