So, what has happened since last here I did spake? The biggest thing is Lucy is not feeling well. I adjusted the brakes, and while they work, I'd like them better - tight adjusting stars, you know? Well, she doesn't idle anymore ...
So i figured I'd take her to this impressive sounding place - AutoWorks, for the royal treatment.
They called me back saying she had severe rust damage and couldn't be racked, or given the things they really should do it would be just way more than the car is worth fixing.
Oh woe is Lucy. Poor girl. Too long in the Midwest.
But I need a car that's happy enough to get around, and so, searching the Excite classifieds, I found a Volvo station wagon.
Now this is the car I need - an old car with a solid reputation, that never dies, and being a wagon it can haul shit around. I could buy lumber to build my bed and other shopping ordeals without having to drag anyone else, like Dave, along with it.
You see, shoping with Dave is not a good thing. He's even more of a guy than me, and the conclusion tends to be the first, nice, expensive sonsumer item. Well, by bedroom needs much more personality than that.
So, once I score a ride, I'm going to check this puppy out. It's stick shift even, and the $1,000 is right in my price range.
And so, Rene and Heather Norton are visiting, breaking in the new sofabed, making some use of the new DSL connection, putting some mileage on my shower, and leaving a nice female influence on the apartment. Not that these ladies are poster children for any female stereotype, running around crusading against the messiness that has encroached on the apartment, but things just seem cheerier with them around, for whatever reason.
This Sunday we had a party - a good handful of folks came to eat dead cow, and we made nice with neighbor Bruce, who has a grill that we used. It was a good party. Max was there, as well as Joe Gross and Jason Lindquist. Jason I'd never met before, though we've both given each other considerable shit online in the past. He was not at all unlike I might have pictured him, had I ever bothered to picture him. So that was kind of neat. Pat and Jay appeared from Tellme, others from Confinity, and Joe and Brandon Long from EGroups. Little Dave, who is also a neighbor, works for Hotmail, making him a FreeBSD administrator in Microsoft's employ. He mentioned that Microsoft was hiring. Somewhat tempting, and if I didn't already have this Tellme gig, I just might be hip to it. You see, it would be working for the Devil, but from the way Dave tells it, their FreeBSD operations are exceedingly hard-core.
As an illustration of how close the connections run between professionals out here, I met this guy, Sanford, who I think works for EGroups. At one point he was on the cell phone and mentioned that he was at a party with some Confinity people. He was talking to Rod, who works at tellme, who realized Sanford was at my party, and thus conveyed his greetings.
Uhmmm, yeah, so we hung around 'til sort of late mostly talking a lot. Joe had some cool stories about his life in his fraternity, something the rest of us had never bothered with. Then Joe and Jason told some other impressive tales of exploits from their undergraduate days.
And on Monday we rode CalTrain into the city. Joe picked us up and we bummed around Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf for a while, and visited the Ghirardeli chocolate factory for some Sundays. I got much flack for ordering a cheeseburger at a seafood place, but I stuck to my guns, as I just didn't feel like seafood, and wasn't hungry enough to spend more money on it. I had a cheaper dish at the sushi bar on Saturday for the same reason - sushi is fine by me, but I wasn't hungry for it to justify the expense, though in both cases both the seafood and the sushi looked awfully good.
And yet, I hate to see food go to waste, so I was stealing leftover fries
from Erik and leftover potatoes from Joe, even though I was as full as they
were. I guess I'm funny about food. I remember when I interviewed MikeyA
took me out to the same area, and while I had already had a meal
at
McDonalds, I ordered a steak, to be a good guest, you know? Well, as we
started eating, I paced myself nice and slow. Mikey thought I was not going
to finish. Well, I just kept eating a way, getting it down. Yum yum, eat 'm
up. I finished before him, and he was startled.
Vern has observed to Sharon that I'm funny about food. I'll have to get introspective about that and write up some bullshit about it here some time.
22 June
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