And What a Week it's Been

Wow, what a crazy week it's been. I felt like I was constantly running just to keep up with everything that came my way.
There were so many extra errands and so many more social events than normal for me. It was extremely fun, and also draining.
Last week I went to get the visa for my India trip and that took hours of standing in line.
There was this fantastic Girlz Night that I attended on Tuesday night. That was such a blast. It was a new group of friends and we hit it off really well. I hope I get to hang out with them again. An intriguing sounding movie called "The business of being born" came out of our discussions there.
Then on Wed morning we had an apt with our friend, who happens to be the real estate agent that sold us our Oakland house. There's a recently fixed up 4 unit place a couple doors down from us that we were interested in looking at. Slightly for investment purposes, and more for a couple friends that are looking to buy. This place was perfect. It's a reasonably priced spacious 2bd, has a huge yard and the entire building was recently overhauled. New foundation, new roof, new everything. It had been a rental previously. (If you're reading this Yar - what are you waiting for? We would be the perfect neighbors.)
I had two friends from out of town visiting this weekend. My Chicago friend arrived while I was at work on Friday and I didn't get to see him until Sat morning! I had dinner plans after work and a pretty large group of us went to Happy Shabu Shabu. The experience was interesting - the service not so great. Basically each person had a hot pot of boiling water in front of them and then you get served veggies and you make your own food! Sorta like Korean BBQ, except with boiling water instead of a grill. We had a 20 person group which might explain the bad service. The rest of the gang went on to the Cornelius show, and I went home. Before that my co-workers and I went out for drinks at 5pm to celebrate our success. we have about 1/3 of the staff, but we recently beat Zillow in unique visitors per week. It's a huge milestone and really demonstrates our growth, and our potential. Woo Hoo!
Saturday my Chicago friend, my honeypot, and I walked up to Rockridge for a lovely breakfast. Then we all went our own way and I bought supplies for the party we threw that night. It was a lot of fun with hours of gaming. The games went on until 5am! (I thought I was too old to stay up that late. he he he)
Sunday I finally got to see my other friend in town from DC. She was at the shabu dinner on Friday, but she was so far away I didn't really get to talk to her much. We had plans to hike but were both so worn out from our previous nights (she wasn't able to attend the party due to another show she went to) that we chose to walk around 4th ave and browse. It was a lot of fun. I don't really browse anymore. I probably didn't much before either, but I never do it now. Except yesterday. There's quite a bit of unique/weird stuff down there so it was good times. After our shopping experience, we went to Jupiter and had pizza to fulfill my friend's craving and some other friends met up with us. Then we went home, hung out and played some more games. It was fun.
Today I got up and went out to breakfast with my friend from Chicago and finally got some more time to hang out with him. Then I went to work and he prepared for his travels back.
Tonight I had dinner plans, but everybody was just too tired, so it pretty much fell apart. But that's ok. I'm tired. I'm really happy to be home and just relax a bit because I'm leaving for another adventure on Wed afternoon.

Our company has an off site planning week at the start of every year to figure out which projects are most importnat and make a tentative schedule for the year. This year we're all (60 people plus significant others and families) are going up to Tahoe on Wed through Sunday. My honeypot is coming up Thurs night and it sounds like it might get a little crazy. I expect good times!

The trip to India is official - I leave on the 31st and arrive back on the 17th and I'll get 5 days at the end when I'm not working. Also, I have a plane ticket into New Delhi and out of Mumbai.

Company Parties and Recruiting

This evening my company had a party. The idea was by having a good party with our building mates and prospective hires that we would build a reputation as being a fun place to work. And we are a pretty fun place to work.
Today's party was the first time that I actually hung out with everybody. Usually I'll hang around for 10 minutes or so and cal it good and go back to work. I decided today that I deserved to actually party with everybody else. Why is it that the engineers are usually still slaving away while everybody else is partaking in the fun activities that we have? I'm guessing it's a combination of the stereotypical lack of social skills thing and the sheer volume of work that there is. It was hard to not work while being at work and knowing how much there is to get done before the demo. And I'm leaving in a couple work days for a week.
After the company party I headed to the the orbit room to meet up with an old friend who moved away to Ann Arbor. She was briefly in town for a wedding. I'm glad I got to see her because besides being a really amazingly cool person, she always reminds me that I can be a better person in so many ways. I'm in no way stuck here, I choose every minute to be the person I am, right here and right now. In her past she really worked on herself and her issues as as project, and she came out of that a much happier, better adjusted and motivated person. She moved away to go to grad school and pursue a dream that I think all of her work made her realize that she deserved to have. And not later, but now.
She's one of my amazing and inspiring friends. My hat is off to her.

Kitty Food and Natural Gas Cars

I just got my new car!
It's so exciting, I can't even describe it.

A friend of mine bought it brand new two years ago, and she's leasing it to me for the next year while they live in another country. The car is a 2005 Honda Civic that runs on natural gas. It can go about 200 miles on a full tank. Besides not using gas, I can also drive over the Bay Bridge without paying the $4 toll, and I can even drive in the car pool lane without having anybody else in the car. As somebody who commutes across that bridge everyday, and usually sits in the backed up traffic, this is pretty special. I'm really glad that I have the opportunity to check out this natural gas car. Maybe I'll go ahead and buy one myself in a year.

The other exciting thing about this car is that it's so new and nice inside. Ooooh La La. I've been driving beaters, or at least old cars, my entire life. For example, take my current car. It's a 1986 VW Jetta Diesel that has over 250,000 miles on it. Yes, that's a quarter of a million miles. Since I've moved to this area I've had 5 windows and 4 stereos stolen. Currently, I just have a hole where the stereo should be, and a bunch of wires hanging out.

We were driving to dinner tonight to celebrate and I was playing this great cd. I noticed that the music moved from one side of the car to the other, and I mentioned it to my honey pot. He made some comment about stereo music. I was listening to stereo music in my car with quality speakers!! How exciting! Yes, I've never had a car with stereo, or at least speakers good enough that you would notice such a thing. I'm so looking forward to rocking out with loud music in this car, my car for now. I'm going to sing at the top of my lungs.

The other exciting and mystifying thing that happened is that Stella seems to love her new food. She's a rather finicky cat, and we recently ran out of her cat food. The one she's been eating for 6 1/2 years. It's good food, made well, with good ingredients. That normally isn't such an issue because I would normally go out and get more. Not this time. The company discontinued making it. I immediately started envisioning my cat, near death, all waif like, refusing to eat because of her missing favorite cat food. Stella needed food, so I bought a random bag of other good food and worried about the future. But when I opened the bag, she seemed excited by it. So I put a scoop in her bowl next to what was left of her old food and went to work. When I got home, she had picked out the new food and left the old food cold and alone in the bowl. Stella seems to love the new food even better than the old! I'm so glad that this was a smooth transition. It could have been really difficult.

In other news, my honey pot and I leave in 14 days for Burning Man! I can't believe how little we've prepared so far. I have done nothing except realize last Sunday that I hadn't even thought about it. Usually by now my honey pot would be so into his projects that I wouldn't have seen him for 4 weeks already. But this is our year of no projects. I like it better this way. We'll be out there a little under 6 days. I was describing it to a co-worker and I felt myself begin to get really excited. It's been slow coming because of the large project we're in the midst of at work right now. I almost feel like I shouldn't be going because it'll be in the absolute worst time for this project. But I can't move this event. If I was going on a vacation that I could change the dates of, I probably would. But I can't. So it is what it is and I'm going.

Web 2.0 and Indian Food

Today was a good day.
I spent some time at the Web 2.0 Expo in the city and watched a really good speaker, but couldn't last through the entire presentation, despite it's relevance, usefulness and good delivery. What are people thinking when they schedule a speaker for 3 solid hours? Well, maybe I'm in the minority, but I can't sit still for a speaker for that long, no matter how great the content is.
Afterwards I went to Vik's. Yummie!
Last night I had a good time hanging out at the beach chalet. We played poker and engaged in various types of debauchery. It was pretty fun.
My punkinpie left for a business trip today. He'll be back on Wed.
We came up with the idea of a type of cocktail party where everybody has to wear white, or some other black light friendly color/clothes and also wear a headlamp. There would be no other light besides the headlamps and black lights.
Is this just a ridiculous idea? I think it could be fun. I might have to tack some hanging fish from the ceiling just to add some "flair". I've been thinking that I need to throw a themed party soon.