Weekend Fun and Due Date

The best part of my weekends right now is that my honeypot is around. Otherwise he's at work.

I took it pretty slow this weekend. My energy levels are pretty low these days. Today's my due date (according to the 20 week sizing ultrasound.) My other due date was the 7th and that was based on my own information. Any day now I should be "popping." I'm completely ready and slightly desperate to have that happen. I'm really uncomfortable right now.

Yesterday I made a pair of purple yoga pants complete with a fold over top that I can wear right now, and when I'm not "big bellied" also. I only really have one other pair of pants that I can wear right now and I'm liking wearing them a lot more lately.

Earlier in the day we went down to San Leandro and hung out with my honeypot's sister while she unpacked. She moved into a house close to a new teaching job she took. It's a super cute house with a great back deck. It'll be great for parties.

Today I went to the Renegade Craft Fair and then had lunch at Plant. They both were really awesome. The craft fair had so many really creative vendors and inspiring artists. Quite a bit of the style of the crafts there remind me of Portland, OR. I bought a really cool purple coat even though it was breaking my rule. (I'm not allowed to buy clothes that I can't try on which means anything not maternity.) I couldn't pass this coat up, it's not something I would ever run across again. It's just that cool and creative.

Plant is this amazing restaurant that I'd heard about before from my honeypot. He ate there after a bike ride and loved it. I was also really impressed with the food. I had the garden burger, but the name doesn't describe how amazing it was. It was this lentil and beet patty with tons of other stuff (vegies and seeds) on really good bread with a side salad. They had lots of vegan options and everything just looked amazing. The best part is that they were still serving brunch and it was probably 2pm or so. Too bad it's not closer, we'd probably go there often. I'll have to do my best to remember it for when we're in the city and hungry.

Then we went to the park and played with juggling clubs, whips and just watched the dogs and people. Today was beautiful and sunny. I didn't last long in the park though because currently it's really hard on my body to sit without back support.

Cough, Cough

I might be patting myself on the back a little but..
I'm pretty excited about how far I've made it in the updates, rebuilds and overhauls of our computer systems. The first step was getting a much faster pc, and I did back in mid Sept. It can handle so much more than my old machine. It's great. Then there was moving everything over from the old machine to the new Vista machine, getting all the backups working and tested again, and finally moving my scripts for BASH. I also took this opportunity to tidy up some of my data too which always takes time.

A perk in all this is that I figured out one of the hard drives was very loud. And all this time I though it was the power fan. I got rid of that and now I can actually sleep with the office door open. It's really nice to not have the office sounds potentially affect my sleep anymore.

In the past couple weeks I've rebuilt the old machine with Ubuntu - which I'm pretty happy with. I'm such a noob. I know how to do stuff, and I just have to look up the correct commands, but doing anything is soo freakin slow sometimes.

I got our home network switched over to a new 802.11n router. This things is freakin fast. 160Mbps+. We can stream video through it to our living room. It's awesome. No more network cable in our living room!

My last step is to put OS X on the second harddrive of the ubuntu machine so I can start playing with iPhone development. I'm pretty interested in that and I have some ideas with it. Wouldn't it be cool to make an app that everybody's willing to pay a couple dollars for and tons of people use it? That would be pretty cool.

I did get Grub installed tonight so this weekend I'll work on OSX on the second harddrive. Wish me luck.

The picture above is one my honey took in the past couple of months. I like it, so I'm sharing it.

Burned by the Highway

For some reason people I usually drive with prefer to use the highway to get across town, rather then using city streets. For me, I prefer the variety of scenery and the usually less aggression required to drive city streets. But every once in a while I'll think that maybe they're right. Maybe it would be faster to take the highway across town. And rarely does it turn out that way. And yet I still try. Today I took the highway from my house to here and I don't think I went over 15 mph until right at the end. The worst part of driving that slow on the highway is the view. It's other cars, random people, and concrete. Yuck.

Last night some friends mentioned these services where you have to do a math puzzle in order to send an email at certain times, or not be able to drive or call certain people if you're too drunk. I think these are great services. They should take it a step further and make you blow a breathalizer to drive a car.

If only I'd known..

We recently discovered that there is, in fact, a pretty easy way to get across the bay after bart stops running. We tried it on Saturday night, and it was an astounding success.

There's a bus that runs around every hour, on the hour. It sweeps through the downtown market street corridor and heads across the bridge. Conveniently for us, it goes down telegraph and has a stop one block from our house. It's beautiful.

In other news, I finally got to meet Molly (and catch up with Kirsta and Bill). Molly is still "minus 2 weeks old." She was born almost 2 months early. Whoa. She's so cute and she looks great!

This weekend was busy, busy in a good way. I'm starting to notice the pressure for burning man preparations. I have lots of projects that I want to complete before then, but not so much time to really work on them. In the end, the most important will get finished and I won't even care that the rest got dropped. 34 days until the man burns, and about 27 before I pack and leave. Yikes.

Sunset Party

Today we went into the city for a fun day in the sun listening to beats and playing. We brought hoola hoops, juggling clubs and our bodies to dance and play with. It was a good time, albeit very windy. The fun part is that I got to see a new part of the city.

Half Way There

So after much learning, and thinking it would work when I turned it on (and it didn't)....

It Works!! (Well, half of it, so far)
The wiring of one set of colors, the blue LEDs are working!
The other color is going to be yellow for this prototype and there will be a total of 30 LEDs.
It was probably better that it didn't work on the first try - or I would have gotten too much confidence and possibly been sloppy for the next set. The wiring was a simple swap of some leads on the chip, and presto! It worked.

I actually shouted will glee when they lit up!
On to the other set, and then putting them all in the hoop and securing them in place.

LED Hoola Hoop Prototype

111 posts is somehow lucky.

Tonight, after weeks of gathering together the supplies and thoughts on the LED hoola hoop, I started construction. I realized I was missing some things, so tomorrow I'll have to go to Lasher's or this place as a last resort. I think it's pretty much going to work the first time, but I have plans to make even better ones later. This is going to be a hoola hoop year for me.

Tabbed Putty

What more do I need to say?
It's a fantastic useful tool.
Can you tell I'm working right now?

Urban Exploration - University in Berkeley

It occurred to me that I rarely do here what I do in a new place when I'm traveling or exploring. Basically, I just wander along for hours looking at everything I pass.
On Saturdy, a friend and I explored University Ave from Shattuck down to 4th Ave by foot.
It was utterly fantastic! Here's what I discovered:

• Everything Spanish Tile - I found the coolest little store that was filled to the brim with hand painted spanish tile. They had a variety of sink bowls, and everything else you could image painted in that spanish tile style.
• My friend brought me to this great little store filled with a large variety of cool screen print clothes. (I bought 3 T-shirst here, it's that good.)
• I discovered that this art store has a large variety of pre-stretched screens, and lots of ink too for screen printing. Don't forget Blick Art - they have good screen printing supplies too. I hope to one day get it together and throw a screen printing exploration gathering.
• I found this cool store with an Indian textile and jewelry import angle. They have a wide variety of things - specifically a good selection of bling stuff (jewelry and such with sparkly elements), lots of colorful scarves, metal vases, and homewares (like place mats and napkins in every color). This is a good place to browse.
• I also found my new favorite Indian grocery store. Nuff said.
• I found this huge everything Indian import store. Complete with the ornate chairs used in the big traditional Indian weddings and spices I haven't seen anywhere else. The upstairs book section was the best. They had every variety of Indian cookbooks that you could imagine. It's a lot like being in a store in India.
  

In finding these new places on Yelp, I'm surprised at how few reviews there are. These were well traveled stores, yet they aren't given much attention on yelp. I take that as a good sign. They're secret gems hidden in the University coridor of Berkelely. When I was asked Karma how long the store had existed, they said two years. The owner even mentioned that a neighbor came in recently and said she hadn't noticed the shop. And this shop has almost an entire warehouse worth of space, though you can't tell that from the store front.

Anti Ergonomics

It's friday now and I've been working here in India for a week. My goal is to teach the two developers here enough that they could manage a particular code base on their own. They've been "working" for the past several months on this project, but have been unable to successfully make any changes. Admittedly, the code is very complicated and I think it was unreasonable to expect them to figure it out on their own, without much real-time assistance.

I spent the early part of this week going through examples of our template system, and giving them all the information they need to do work.

It's been very interesting to be doing this because of the bizarre dynamics I've experienced. One of the employees is very engaged and seems to be very excited about learning how to work on this code base. I think he's going to work out great. The other one, who happens to be senior to the first one, hasn't done anything except pretty much ask unrelated questions and request that meetings get pushed back (which I finally stopped doing). Supposedly he's a good developer, but I haven't seen any evidence of that. My judgment is that he likes to waste time and not work, if he can help it. If it were up to me, I think I'd get rid of him.

Everyday, after work, my co-worker and I have done some sightseeing or shopping.

Tuesday we went to Dilli Haat Market - which is this very cool market where each state in India is represented in terms of what's for sale. The variety was really impressive to see.

Wednesday we went to Karol Bagh Market (image on right) - another crazy market with less variety, but lots of interesting things to look at. I ate Puri Chaat from a street vendor here (picture below). I'm fine, I've had no problems.

Thursday we went to Akshardham, a swarinarayam temple that was built recently. (That's the picture above). It opened a year ago! It's amazing.

Tonight we have plans to go to this other market near our hotel and hang out with one of my co-worker's friends formerly from Cupertino, CA.

Tomorrow we're leaving at 5am (!) to make the trek to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

Snow, Travel and More Crafts

We were up at Squaw Valley this weekend playing in the snow. My company had its yearly planning session up there during the week and then we got to stay up there through the weekend. What an excellent fringe benefit! My honeypot came up on Thursday night and we skied on Saturday. It was the most perfect conditions because it basically snowed the entire time I was up there, but amazingly enough, it stopped snowing for the entire day of Saturday and was relatively warm. Perfect!

Something I realized on our way home from there is that I leave for India on Thursday. Whoa, I haven't even begun to plan for this trip at all. Besides not having prepared my materials for what I'm teaching while I'm there, I haven't even begun to research where I'll be going and what I'll be doing with my 5 days off at the end. I'll be back on Feb 19th.

My honeypot lost the last hat I made him, so I've been working on this new hat design. I've never crocheted a hat from the center out radially before. I'm following the pattern in this new book my mother-in-law gave me for xmas. It's been a pretty great gift. I'll let you know how it comes out.

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.

Latest Craft Project - 4 Color Crochet Hat

My mother-in-law gave me this fantastic crochet book and some yarn for my birthday. The yarn is really nice and the book is awesome. I chose a pattern and made this hat this past weekend. I'm really happy how it came out. I've historically avoided patterns because they can be too restrictive. With this project it really helped me learn the correct name for various stitches and the end result is something much nicer than I might have come up with on my own. (It's hard to see the difference between the orange and red in this picture - but you can see the difference in person.)

Four Post Cage

After work on Friday I met my honey pot at the ramp with another friend and had a drink.
Afterwards I spent the rest of my evening hanging around the house. I can't even think of what I did exactly.
Saturday we went out to breakfast and then ran some Burning Man errands. We only have this next weekend to prepare. Tick tock.
Later on we went to our friends going away BBQ at her parents house. I'm pretty sure that they purchased the house brand new and it was very large. They mentioned how the birds were less frequently around there as the developments were being built further down the canyon. My honey pot mentioned how it was so similar to Southern California. There was a hill brown with dryness and the sun was hot and bright.
Today we had a burning man meeting and organized ourselves. I really like that our camp this year doesn't include any new burners, and that there aren't any crazy projects. I say this because it means our camp is so simple. Everybody knows what needs to be done to get there easily and be well prepared, and there aren't any crazy projects consuming tons of time.
After the meeting we went juggling, and I passed with a group of 7 people together! I didn't last very long, but it was pretty fun. I burned out playing pretty quickly because the throws I was receiving were so much harder to catch than the great ones my honey pot throws. I think when I get more comfortable with clubs, I'll try passing with the group again.
Afterwards, yar came over and we hung out. We played some games and brainstormed bm projects. There's a lot of creativity flowing right now. Tis the season.
I'm having a hard time imagining getting done the amount of work that needs to happen in this next week. It's downright scary. It'll be really good to have this vacation after this coming week and a couple days. Our project demos on the 30th. Yikes!

Nesting, Feng Shui, Coziness and Vacation

This past long weekend has been a much needed holiday. I did a whole lot of nothing and more of things that I wanted to do to make my life more enjoyable. The most notable to me was moving our stereo out of this low to the ground piece of furniture that couldn't quite hold all of our music. The result of this former placement was that it was difficult to find cds to play and also just hard to interact with the stereo because I had to crouch down. It was preventing me from playing music; like what I'm listening to right now. I suppose a good way to sum it up is this: Our stereo setup had bad feng shui, and now it doesn't anymore! I think it's pretty likely that I'll be dancing again to my 'oldies' once again. (Oldies to those kids born in the 90's. Do you realize that the first class that was born in the 90's will be entering cal in the fall?)

Another thing I did was cover our couches with this nice material I bought at my absolute favorite fabric store. This includes the other states I've lived in. That has helped make our living room a great place .. to live.

In other news, our roommate is moving out and we've decided to not replace him (for now). It's a pretty big chunk of money to be losing, but I think I'm ready to just have our own house and not have that third party anymore. He was a good enough roommate, but I didn't really enjoy living with him. I think our astrological charts just didn't match so well. I'm looking forward to and glad to have our house to ourselves. He'll be out by the 1st.

Our garden is going crazy right now. There's tons of flowers and colors. It's pretty nice. I had planned on taking a bunch of pictures and doing a picture blog type of thing, but I never got around to those pictures.

The last thing to mention is that I wrote a journal entry tonight. I used to journal all the time, but haven't really been doing that as much in the past several years. Well, I sat down and did it again. There's something about having to slow down my thoughts enough to write complete sentences and then maintain that thought for more content in the next sentence. It made me realize how rarely I write now. Everything I do is typing, like right now. I do have to say that writing is almost therapeutic.

Good night, Ya'll!

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.

Sunday Night and Lost Beckons Me

My weekend has been good.
I'm really enjoying my alone time lately. It's such a switch from before when I was working at home, alone, and almost desperate for interaction when my punkinpie got home. Now I'm constantly with people.
I'm squished with them on the bart; I'm interacting with co-workers at work; I'm socializing with friends after work. It just might be a little too little people-less time right now. This weekend I put effort into being by myself, and it's been great. I'm one of those types of people that "recharge" by being alone. As opposed to the opposite type that "recharge" by being social.
I'd like to point out that I'm not a "people disliker" or anything like that. I love people, knowing them, understanding them, and sometimes just trying to figure them out. Everybody has a story and a different view in some way than you. Everybody has something to offer you and the world.
In other news, I found out somebody from my past died a little while ago. I hope he's in a better place now. I and the world will miss you! May you rest in peace.
Oh, and thanks to stucco holmes for keeping it alive (and congratulations too!)!

Rough Weekend

My weekend was actually pretty fun. We got up late on Saturday and went to breakfast. Then later on we went to the city and had a yummie dinner. After dinner we met up with some folks for our friend's birthday and began drinking. We went to a show at this place, and moved on to this bar, and then went here.

I drank too much. I was painfully hung over today. My body still hurts. I haven't been able to eat much either. Today was pretty much shot. I'll be glad when I wake up tomorrow and feel normal again.

I had book club today. Yes, I know it's the super bowl, and we didn't even care. At one point I laid on ground because my head was pulsating.

Being hung over sucks.

The Day Before the Four Year Plan Begins

Today we woke up pretty late. I thought that since our blinds were angled to allow the sunshine in, we would wake up early. It didn't work out like that. I suppose it had something to do with going to bed at 2 or so in the morning.
I was working this late because there's a bunch of contracting work I wanted to get wrapped up all nice and tidy before I started the Four Year Plan, which officially begins tomorrow. Part one of the Four Year Plan is starting this new full-time, permanent job.
It's actually almost the perfect job for me. (I say almost because nothing is truly perfect, is it?) It's the first job description that I've ever seen where I had exactly all the skill sets listed. It's working for a company doing something that I've already spent large amounts of my hobby time doing - namely writing software related to the real estate industry. Or more specifically helping buyers like me, get all the information they want. I interviewed them really carefully and they interviewed me just as carefully. And it ended up being a good match. I'm going to really miss contracting and the flexibility it provides. But I'm really looking forward to working in a team, in the city, on a project that I think is super cool. I have high hopes for it all.
After we got up late we headed by bike to this new breakfast place we rode by yesterday. It hadn't opened for business yet, and so we settled with breakfast at Cafe Colucci, which was a big mistake.
Well, I'm pretty sure that I suffer from hypoglycemia because I have a lot of weird things that happen when I don't eat soon after waking up. Like a really bad headache, for one. The restaurant we ended up at is usually really great for Ethiopian food, but apparently not breakfast. But you have to go there knowing you won't get quick service. It's just not how it works.
Also, I'm a breakfast person. I like breakfast and encourage our family to go out to get breakfast often. So, I really do care what my breakfast was like, and my breakfast wasn't so good. Actually, it was awful.
When I got home, I worked a bunch. That was pretty much the rest of my day.
Punkinpie did some gardening. Which is really cool, because I really feel like we're starting to make some progress with our home. There was a point, several months ago, when I really started to invest in this place as our long term home. And part of that was gardening. It's looking good.
Also, there's this weird plant phenomenon that's happening in my houseplants. Well, there's two, actually. The newest one are these mushrooms that are growing in one of our houseplants. Could somebody please identify these? There getting bigger, and I'm really enjoying them being here. It reminds me of the Pacific Northwest.

The second weird plant thing is the ants. They invaded yet another plant, except this time instead of re potting the plant and washing away all the soil, I just put poison nearby. They seem to be gone now. I guess that means there's a lot of dead ant bodies in that one plant now. What exactly happens to ant colonies when you poison them? I'm curious.
I woke up a little sore today. Probably from the yoga on Friday and then the bike riding the past two days. I feel really good.
I forgot about explaining the Four Year Plan. Basically it goes like this. I don't want to raise kids here. Actually, that's not entirely true. I wouldn't mind raising kids here, but we need a lot more money to do it. I want both of us to have time to spend with our kids. And I don't mean after working full-time. I think it's ridiculous that we can't both own a home and have both of us work only part time. Where I used to live, this wouldn't be a problem. How are we supposed to be attentive parents if we can't be around for our kids in their formative years? Well, as I've mentioned, I have high hopes for this startup company that I'm going to start working for tomorrow. I took a little less money for more stocks. And I vest in four years. So, in my perfect world, this company will do well, and I'll make money off of it - think Google. I will stay there for four years to get all that stock, and then Punkinpie and I will possibly move. We have an agreement to talk very seriously about moving. The fact is that we could probably live on half of one income in Olympia, WA if we lived frugally, or on two halves easily. I'd like to move somewhere cheaper and raise our kids in a more mellow, much cheaper area. In Olympia, you can still buy a house where the rent pays the mortgage. That's a ridiculous concept here in the Bay Area. I'm willing to give up the glitz and glory of this area for a chiller, mellower, and more down time filled life. We'll see what we decide in four years. But that's our plan and agreement right now: To talk seriously about moving somewhere cheaper where we could both work less than full-time. And that might not even be Olympia, but then, it might. Only time will tell.

Cool Links for Today:
Grafiti and Media linked together
Optimize Your Life
Scratch That Travel Itch
World Music Festival. If they ever play the states again, get here.
Investment Sense
The Mother Load of Mortgage Calculators

Weekend Bikes and Shoes

Punkinpie and I woke up and had a lazy morning in bed. It was pretty nice.
We also had a "date" night last night too.
It's a tradition that I really like for several reasons. First, it declares that you are both going to give your undivided attention to the other. It can be pretty frustration for either person if you're not on the same page about this. Second, it gives us the opportunity to try a new place to eat, because usually we go out to eat on a "date" night. Third, there's just something fun about still thinking about dating, when we've been living together for years now. We still date!
We walked up to Rockridge and had dinner at Pearl for our "date" night. The food actually was really good, except for what happened afterwards. I woke up in the middle of the night and was really glad that we had indoor plumbing. (I actually lived for many years with a composting toilet that was only accessible by walking outside. I was in a school bus for part of that, but here's one of the cabins on that land.) I think the problem was these greens that we couldn't identify. Though looked really cool, with their spiral stems, but I'm not so sure my body could deal with whatever they were.
I took a shower while Punkinpie went and got some milk at the corner store. He normally drinks rice milk, and so do I by default. Though I prefer soy milk. It's just easier to use what's in the fridge.
I went downstairs and made breakfast, which today was farina. When that was done and Punkinpie wasn't home yet, I occupied my time by taking the recycling out from the kitchen. And for some reason I decided to keep the bottles that have returns separate. I ended up putting them in a paper bag and putting them on the street. (I think I secretly hope that everybody starts doing that so we don't have to hear the homeless types digging through our recycling can at three in the morning on garbage night. They're really loud with their grocery carts, and all those bottles clanking at night.)
When I got back inside Punkinpie was back and he had bought me a decaf mocha from the neighborhood coffee shop! That's the sweetest thing ever. He also had a deliciously purple blueberry smoothy too.
We ate breakfast and I went back to my office and worked some on various contract projects.
Punkinpie popped in and asked if I wanted to join him on a bike ride up Telegraph Ave to look for shoes. So we were off doing that.
It's so nice to ride bikes. I really enjoy it. I probably should wear my helmet more because I basically never wear it. I used to have really strong opinions about folks who didn't wear helmets, but now I've become one of them. It's pretty stupid not to wear one, really. Maybe I'll start wearing one now.
We roamed telegraph and went through various stores and didn't really find much except for this one cool screen printed t-shirt that this one street vendor had. It was a picture of the city of oakland sign (like this), except at the bottom it had a bike locked to the sign. The best part was that the bike was stripped. Classic.
Finally we had lunch at Smart Alec, and it was good. I realized I was late for meeting a friend, and headed out on my bike to her house. We walked to this costume shop near her house and tried on some potential wedding costumes. I didn't really find much that amazed me. But she did give me a couple ideas of stores to look in next.
Then I came home and worked on the house. I sanded the spots I had spackled last night, and re-spackled them. I think they'll be ready to paint tomorrow.
Now, after finishing this blog entry, I'm going to work some more. I can't think of anything else that I really want to do right now. So I might as well bill some hours.

Cool Links for Today:
Reviews for just about anything