8.25.2003

Free food is the best food. Yesterday we got free Bare Burritos from Baja Fresh with this coupon. And that free drink you have to purchase also gets you a big free mug with straw. I dont even like mexican food much but the guacamole and chips they give (also free) was YUMMY!

8.22.2003

So I'm apartment hunting AGAIN. This time it's a little more fun because I'm looking for a private landlord, not another mgt company that will jack up rents after the lease is up regardless of market conditions. And rent has gone down a LOT. The last I looked a 1 bedroom with in suite w/d was no less than $1500, now you can get a 2 bedroom or small house for that amount or even less ~$1300. And sometimes get free partial utilities or cable. How sweet is that? The funny thing is when you still see websites like fastrental.com that are charging "premium" members to view apartment listings. Now that half of the workers in the SV have lost their jobs and moved out of state, who do they think are going to pay for that service?

8.15.2003

American ignorance regarding people and places outside of their borders is a real beef for me. Here's the latest example. Channel 7 News put up a map highlighted to show the areas in the US and Canada that suffered from the huge power outage. So they had areas of Michigan, Ohio, and NY highlighted, then they had the province of Ontario highlighted and labelled in big capital letters "CANADA". Now I'm sure all the Americans who could've bet their beans that there were some parts of Canada hovering between Alaska and their western states are all confused.

8.13.2003

Nothing puts me in a better mood than going shopping at Trader Joe's. Could the people who work there be any freakin' nicer? And it's not fake like Nordstrom.

8.11.2003

I just got back in touch with some fellow coaches at the gymnastics club I went to and later coached at all through university. I dunno what it is about coaching gymnastics but it seems to have 4 effects on people. 1. they want to become teachers 2. they want to become lawyers 3. they have some sort of emotional breakdown which may or may not be accompanied by 4. a desire to become a stripper. My old teammate did that for a short time and now I find out another coach also followed route 3 and 4 above. Funny part is some of the parents of the kids she coached saw her... I dunno who ends up more embarrassed the parent or the former coach.
I discovered one of the best gelato flavours today: Horlicks. It tastes just like Horlicks in your milk but with about 5 tablespoons of sugar. YUMMY.

8.08.2003

My Seattle send off back to SF was marked by drunkeness and the disappearance of my California driver's license. Ah, no big deal right? Get on the DMV website, fill out a form, get a new one in the mail. If you think that is the process, you are so very wrong. I went on the website and it told me that replacing a license requires going to a DMV office. OK, well at least you can make an appointment on the website. So I tried to do that, and it tells me the earliest appointment is August 26th...I don't think it's a great idea to be driving around without it for that long. So I figure I'll go early and endure the 2 hour wait. So off I go, armed with a Cosmo magazine and 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I ended up waiting 3 hours and 23 minutes. People all around me were bitching and complaining. e.g. "why are those two guys going out for a break when they've only been working 2 hours?" My ass was numb by the time I got my turn to visit the friendly DMV worker. Then I realize why they are so damn slow there. He spoke reeeeeally painfully slowly. He wasted valuable time making jokes and telling me my name was pretty. The TV screen had advised all of us in the waiting room to enquire about identity theft, so I did. The dude says "identity theft?, hmm well I guess you could be more careful and not lose your ID next time. That's about it." I hope I never have to wait at the DMV for anything again.

The funny thing is spending so much time in that waiting room you get to see a lot of things and talk to a lot of people. One guy told me he just came from the Daly City DMV where security had to deal with an 80 year old man who was having a tantrum about the wait. On another occasion two ladies got into a scuffle about who was next in line. After a couple hours I tuned out the complaining for fear of losing my mind. When you do that, you begin to pay attention to other things. Most notably the 2 preschool age kids behind me. All they had was a couple matchbook cars and some plastic chairs to roll them around on. They were having such a fun time playing with those cars for hours it makes you wish that you could be a kid again. I think it's only when you're free of pressures, expectations, mental checklists and the like, that you can keep yourself amused for so long with so little. Otherwise you spend the time reviewing those mental checklists, wondering if recent decisions made were the right ones, making plan Bs in case current plans fall through and on and on it goes. Or maybe it's just me.

8.05.2003

Wow, it's good to be back. Nice queen size bed where there's no risk of rolling onto the floor or kicking stuff, like the wall. It was nice to watch local Vancouver news for a change. The biggest topics were the Paul Tracy's Indy win, forest fires and people drowning in lakes or hurting themselves cliff jumping. I come back here and there's some standoff in S. SF with some guy who killed a professional kickboxer the previous week holding a gun to his head. Now there's another standoff in Oakland. I think the Bowling for Columbine guy certainly made his point.