land of no sidewalks

I find myself in Sunnyvale, the land of no sidewalks. After being in many lands with myriad sidewalks, this is somewhat of a challenge. This morning, when I tried to walk from my hotel to the office building where my software training is held, the hotel shuttle driver, horrified, picked me up and drove me the half-mile. She didn’t want blood on her hands, and I don’t want to die yet, so no complaints there. Tonight I got a bit sucked into the hotel television, but I made it outside to the VTA light rail and ventured into Mountain View. It was raining and a lot of restaurants were closed, so my options were limited. I chose Monsoon, and I’m a bit surprised at the negative reviews I’ve now read online. The food was good, standard Indian...

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Posted on 26 Feb 2007 | 2 comments

brevity is the new interesting

To sum up: I took the MSG to see “Wait Wait — Don’t Tell Me” at Cal. We laughed and laughed and hung out with new friends afterwards and laughed some more. The next morning, I jumped on a plane to Austin, TX for the World Series of Pop Culture audition. My team did not make it. We were bummed, but we will live. Storms of craptastic luck deluged upon several of my friends during my craziest work week yet. I fear I was not a proper umbrella. I finally posted the rest of my London photos. That only took three weeks! I’ve also posted some from my new camera, especially food shots. My birthday is this...

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Posted on 19 Feb 2007 | 1 comment

so the difference here

So the difference here is: demur and lemur. So the difference here is: what I thought of January and what I think of February. So the difference here is: thirty-plus-something to thirty-plus-something. (No difference here.) London infects me; I listen for the noise of difference. This or that. Dark or light. Those were my cue cards not so long ago. Open a book, turn to a random page, and read there: This is not the book you meant to open. Find the other one. And you go back, and you open the other one, and it is the same words on the same page, perhaps in a different font, a different point, a dog-eared crease, a faded pencil-mark. The word “unlike” runs through my head. I picture it sliding down neurons like melting butter. Unlike the year...

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Posted on 6 Feb 2007 | 3 comments

imagine nation

When I don’t get enough sleep, my right lower eyelid starts to twitch. It is a pretty clear cause-and-effect, and yet whenever it happens, I’m taken by surprise. Silly. I got a new desktop at work today, although I’m not sure what was wrong with the old one. The tech people knew, and replaced it. The new one seems faster and has a brand-new video card in it, which makes my two monitors very happy and shiny, or it’s just my imagination. I am tired because I wrote the last word of that paragraph out “imagine nation”. Kind of like Rhythm Nation, only less funky. There are draft emails I want to finish, but I am so unfocused after a very focused week. I have three new responsibilities at work for 2007, and each one is bigger...

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Posted on 3 Feb 2007 | Comments Off

london then

I am so frustrated with my computer right now. iPhoto makes it grind to a halt, and Flickr Uploader times out before I can get a whole batch posted. The photos will have to wait, and I apologize. But now for the textual recap of my last day in London! We left the hotel at 09:30 on Saturday and took the Tube to the London Eye, the world’s largest observation wheel. At the recommendation of my guidebook, we had purchased our tickets online the day before, and were rewarded with almost no wait in line before boarding at 10:00. The sky was clear, giving us an excellent view of the Thames, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and various other parts of the city. <insert relevant photos trapped on my computer here> Despite being hungry before we...

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Posted on 2 Feb 2007 | Comments Off