Chopstork

The bottle of water in my car was frozen solid this morning. So was my windshield spray. It’s cold in Virginia.

So because Courtney was gracious enough to let me crash at her place last night and we carpooled to work this morning, I find myself in B/149 strangely early for the Tuesday 9am meeting. Since my office is up north and they don’t have a computer down here for me yet, there is little I can do until 9, except play around on Luke’s computer. When I sat down in his cube, the first thing I noticed (other than the smell) was the Space Power Systems training course award with A.J.’s name on it. That momento of everybody’s favorite non-jewish half-asian brought forth all sorts of feelings… a tear to my eye, an ache in my heart, maybe even a little warm in the pants… (just kidding). Looking around the rest of Luke’s cube, I see a 2003 calendar (only 2 days off!!), several post-it messages, and a really cool F-16 poster that I want. I also see that Luke has erased all the nice things I wrote about myself on his dry erase board. And I’m willing to bet that the last time he cleaned out his NSS-6 mug the calendar was accurate.

Hm… does anybody know why there is a complete spice rack in Luke’s cube? Me neither.

Anyway, now I’m off to prepare for today’s meeting, and then for a glorious day at Photonics West. So Luke, thank you for unknowingly permitting me to use your computer. AJ and Laura, thank you for being awesome. Court, thanks for putting me up last night. Wolfson, thanks for being everybody’s favorite jewish asian, even though your presence on Chopstork has been all sorts of lacking. Peterman, thanks for being my favorite jew. Have you hooked up with any of my Chicago girlfriends yet? Me neither.

Things I’ll miss about San Francisco in no order at all…

• Goat Hill Pizza’s neighborhood night. All you can eat pizza and salad every Monday. They come around with all kinds of pizza, “tomato, garlic, and artichoke?” “Suuure, I’ll take one.” The trick is, don’t eat the crusts—you can fit more pizza in your belly.
• The Live105 Surf and Ski report. How many places can you go skiing in Tahoe and surfing in Santa Cruz on the same weekend? I’ve never surfed in my life, but the point is, it’s nice out.
• No weather. It rains some during the winter rainy season. But besides that, it’s so nice here all the time that you don’t even take rain into consideration if you’re planning something outdoors. You can alwasy go outside. Of course, being in California I’ve missed weather too. I like clouds. I like driving in a storm. I like the smell of humidity.
• The drive up 280 to the city in the afternoons. When the fog pours over the hills around the Crystal Springs Reservoir.
• Stern Grove. Even though we only went two times in the two years we lived in San Francisco proper.
• Stupid fun events. Like b2b, urban iditarod, byobw, santacon, and all the other craziness I didn’t do but should have. Anything goes in San Francisco, and I love it.
• Live 105. At least I can listen online.
• Screw it, I’ll just make a big list… Peak’s, Fresca, Savor, Eric’s, Goat Hill, Cha Cha Cha, Baobob, Dragon Bar, Elbo Room, Romolo, Gravity, Warfield, Fillmore, Greek Theater, Citrus Club, corner store at 23rd and Kansas cuz they have 15 flavors of Boone’s Farm, Naan ‘n Curry, Thirsty Bear, Blondies, Bohemia Lounge, the Cellar, Bayside, Mauna Loa, Kookez, Klein’s, Baraka, Aperto, Eliza’s, Kell’s, Bubble Lounge, House of Nan King, Bamboo Hut, Clown Alley, Grub Steak, Medjool, Skylark, The Ramp, Cassanova Lounge, RBar, Bar None, City Tavern, Blue Triangle, Bruno’s, Bus Stop, Hobson’s Choice, Specs, Boom Boom Room, Tosca, Grant and Green, Savvoy, Fiddler’s Green, Fly Bar, Eos, Beatlenut, Rambla, Burger Joint, In-N-Out, Polyester’s, Mel’s Diner, Golden Boy Pizza, Cable Car Pizza, Pizza Orgasmica, Dak Win, La Taqueria, Taqueria San Jose, Taqueria Panchovia, Casa Mexicana, those other burrito places, Beach Chalet, Speedway Meadow, Lindley Meadow, Polo Field, Washington Square, Sweetwater, Sam’s, Guaymas, Spinnaker, Great American Music Hall, Stern Grove, Rikshaw Stop, Frjtz, Moshi Moshi, Hanamaru, Hardy’s, Blue Chalk, Blue Bonnet, Molly’s, Ugly’s, Shooters, Paul and Harvey, Miyake, Pearl’s Burgers…
• The hills and the views.
• Smoke-free bars.
• Liquor in the grocery store. Gotta go to the ABC store in Virginia, and you can’t buy beer after midnight at the grocery stores either.
• Taxis. There aren’t any cabs in Charlottesville. But it’s ok, cuz we’ll live close to downtown hopefully.
• And of course, all our friends. We really like our friends. We will miss our freinds. But we’ll visit for more good times, and hopefully you will visit us on the east coast. I don’t want to get sappy, so I’ll leave it at that.

And I thought Bay to Breakers had a lot of naked people… Those crazy Britts. More wnbr pictures.

photo by some random person on flickr.

It’s been a while since I’ve been inspired to elect a Picture of the Week. I just couldn’t let this one go by. This was taken during the Urban Iditarod and is pure timeless classic humor. Anyway, Hurray for Jay (left), Eli (right), and Old Man (peaking from the rear)! I really hope you guys were not sober for this one.

so I was digging around tonight trying to gather all my snowboard gear for Tahoe, and I came across my camelback. judging by its contents, the last time I used it was at Bay To Breakers (the vodka redbull served me well). anyway, at the very bottom of the zippered pouch was a crumpled up, thin cotton-and-nylon navy blue GAP windbreaker. I have no idea who it belongs to, but I’m hoping somebody reading this will claim it. (It is a very unisex-looking item, so I doubt Eli is interested). Courtney? Keri? Laura? I feel pretty dumb, because I can vaguely remember somebody asking me if I had this in my possession — an inquisition I denied. But I can’t remember who it was that asked. Would this be an acceptable time to play the Stroke Card?

In other news, I very much miss AJ and Laura. I have yet to make it to Old Man and Luke’s place, because said no-talent ass-clowns decided to move to bumblefuck. Considering how often they were too lazy to walk downhill to my place, I am definitely too lazy to walk uphill, over the river, and through the woods to get to theirs. Unless they get a ping pong table. Or another hot tub.

Speaking of laziness… Live from the couch, it’s Christine and Gina!! After failed trial periods with Netflix (mailboxes are hard to come by in this neighborhood), frustration with Blockbuster (too far + “restocking” fees = F no), and one or two unimpressive trips to the neighborhood video store, we have discovered the beauty that is Comcast On Demand. It is fantastic. For just four bucks, you don’t have to retrieve or return shit. You don’t even have to get up from the couch. All we need now are some shirtless men to cook us dinner while we catch up on all the movies we wanted to see…

Guess what. We’ve made it to Cville. The long journey is over. Kind of. We still are homeless. And I’m still jobless. But that’s ok.

Guess who the first people to welcome us to Cville were? Jay and Brooke. How about that? We met up for some drinks downtown. They will be crying home tomorrow after Stanford loses to UVA in men’s basketball.

Last Thursday, after Flagstaff and before the flat tire in Sulphur, we continued on from New Mexico to Austin. The first big city we passed through was El Paso. Damn, El Paso air is nasty. Everything around us looked like the pictures in the header of this blog because of the smog.

About an hour west of Austin, we stopped in Fredericksburg for dinner. All I knew about Fredericksburg, TX was that my insurance company is based there. Turns out it’s a pretty nice town (from the little we saw). Main Street has a whole bunch of “really cute shops” as girls would say, with a square and outdoor ice rink in the middle. Naturally the square was lit up with Christmas decorations. Texans sure like Texas (there’s supposed to be a picture here of christmas lights shaped like Texas, but I haven’t uploaded those yet). It was unfortunate that we got there too late to check out the stores and see more.

To avoid confusion, if you are ever in Virginia and pass through Fredericksburg—as you may well do on your drive from the airport when you visit us—do not get your hopes up for a nice quick stop there. Fredericksburg, Virginia is the armpit of Virginia. Let’s compare.

Fredericksburg, TX: Main roads to town are quiet country roads lined with trees, opening up to a quaint but lively Main Street as you enter the town, full of small local shops and restaurants.
Fredericksburg, VA: Road to town is a congested I-95. Butted up against the interstate is the Central Park shopping mall—not even a real mall, it is a mega strip-mall complex, known affectionately by some as the “Central Parking Lot.”
Fredericksburg, TX: Dining options include a lovely German restaurant and bar serving a variety of schnitzels and other tasty meals, with a full menu until at least 10 pm.
Fredericksburg, VA: Traits of local restaurants include: Inability to serve french fries because they are out of potatoes; Serving meals with hair in food; Banana splits without bananas because they don’t have bananas in stock; Disappearing waitress due to her making out with lesbian girlfriend in the kitchen. At different restaurants. On the same night.
Fredericksburg, TX: Worth stopping by if you’re in the area.
Fredericksburg, VA: Worth avoiding if you’re in the area. Good only as a marker for Rt 15, which takes you to Rt 29, which takes you to Charlottesville.

Hilarious! Maybe SNL is making a come back?