Saturday

Saturday

We had amazing weather today (low 80s).  We went out and made the best of it.

Elli and I ate breakfast at home, cleaned up the apartment, and headed out to Throughbread for lunch and coffee.  We read books in the warm shaded patio behind the store for about 2 hours.

Afterward we stopped at the pet store to pick up cat food, and Elli told me she wants a dog.  Sadly, we can’t have dogs in our apartment building.  When we move, I’ve promised Elli a new dog, much like Obama promised a new pup to his kids, Sasha and Malia, during his acceptance speech in Chicago last week.

Then we went to art store for portfolio pages and scrapbook stuff.  We picked out a photo album for Jennie’s memorial book.

That night we went to the mall to watch the new James Bond movie.  Got a refund cause the theater was way crowded for the 6:25 showing and the only seats were in the very, very front. Neither of us wanted to sit that close to a screen and watch a distorted Bond and get a sore neck.  Not even Star Wars is worth that agony.  We ate the ice cream we bought for our movie snack in the mall lounge area on a couch.  I love the mall.  Elli not so much.  She has no mall-sense, and gets lost and confused inside.

Walked to a Chinese restaurant and ate spring rolls, kung pao chicken, mango chicken, hot and sour soup and hot tea while we watched a TV show of Chinese acrobats.  They were the bendy-est people either of us have ever seen.

Came home to watch 30 Rock and Gary, Unmarried, read our books and eventually sleep.

 

California Quake!

Friday

Elli and I survived our first California quake:

A magnitude 4.2 earthquake happened at 9:00 p.m. and was felt in parts of the Bay Area. The epicenter was located 2 miles ENE of Alamo. There are currently no reports of damage or injuries. (Reported from cbs5.com, San Francisco TV 5)

Elli was very concerned, and I was mostly oblivious.  Our building did one big shake.  The dishes rattled, and the lights dimmed.  I was waiting for second big shake, and trying to figure out what we were supposed to do in the event of an earthquake.  Fortunately, the second shake didn’t happen, and Elli’s panicked concern was dissipated.

Finished up my first week of class at the Academy of Art yesterday.  Looking forward to going back to school.  I’m trying to change my schedule around to give myself more challenging classes.

Our plans for the weekend include visiting Costco, the grocery store, eating at a Thai restaurant down the street, and going to Berkeley for breakfast.  After breakfast I’m going to play Star Wars minis at a game store in Berkeley, and Elli is going to hang out at a coffee shop and shop for yarn (she likes to crochet).

I’m currently reading a book called Twilight by Brendan Dubois.  It’s not the vampire drama that has swept the nation (Interview with a Vampire for a new generation), but rather a book about a follow up attack to America’s 9/11, the civil war that followed in it’s wake and the UN peacekeepers deployed to the Eastern seaboard to investigate alleged war crimes.  It’s simply a great read, very tense, and hard to put down.  I found the book on the New Books shelf at the library.  I’ll be reading more by this author soon.

No Tetris battles tonight.  Elli is on a winning streak and I need to rest my hands for the weekend rematch.

The cats have taken to throwing up about twice a month.  Usually on the bedspread, a pile of important papers left careless in the middle of the bedspead, or on Elli’s clothes.  So far I haven’t been a target.

 

Heroclix revisited

Sunday

Woke up early (for me) and ate Kierfer for breakfast.

Traveled with Elli to the Farmer’s Market for celery.  We are now recognized by the vendors we frequent.  That is a refreshing notion.  Someone has noticed us in the city!

Walked from the Farmer’s Market to Gamescape to play Heroclix.  Elli was heading to a coffee house on the corner near the game store to read and hang out.  We stopped at Five Star Truffles and Coffee (much cheaper than Chris Elbow and every bit as delicious) before going to our respective destinations.
I played Heroclix at Gamescape for about three hours.  SF players are proving to be very generous and nice. They gave me 16 game pieces that were extras in their collection. I’m used to trading with my friends Kevin, Chris, & Chris in Kansas City that way, but this is cool because it means I know have more pieces and choices to use each weekend, and I don’t have to pay the internet re-seller prices (which vary from 70 cents to over $200 depending on the figure).

We walked home and found Bluebottle coffee stand tucked away in an alley. But we bought lemon-aid from two kids at a stand across from Bluebottle.  They had the right idea in trying to pull customers out of the long and slow Bluebottle line over to their side.  Worked for Elli and I.

Finished walking home made dinner and watched a new episode of Monk on usanetwork.com.

Searched the internet for affordable beach vacations for the upcoming holiday weekend.  My idea of affordable is obviously not the generally expected definition of affordable; room rates were often $350+ for an ocean view and $269+ for a view of the back service gate.

Internet excitment followed by the usual of Tetris, reading and bed.

Work tomorrow (no students or teachers, just me hooking up computers on the network).

 

Hero Clix winner

Sunday

Elli and I were tired after our big hike on Angel Island so we lazed around until 11am, not really being in any hurry.

I made breakfast for us (eggs and sausage) and then we cleaned up and hustled to Gamescape so I could play in a Hero Clix tournament. Hero Clix is a comic book “action” game using a map and miniature figures to represent your super-hero team. Each figure has a point value and together the team needs to add to no more than 300 points. Today was a sealed tourney, meaning that you bought two sealed boxes of random figures (5 figures to a box), and had to make a team with “what you got”, so Spider-Man might end up being on a team with Doctor Doom. I’m a big theme team player; I like my team to be something that would have been in the comics, or reflect a certain team-up from a comic book that I liked. Most players are power players, putting anyone and everyone on a team, buying “super rare” figures off the internet for insane amounts of money (sometimes $125 or more) to get them the edge. I don’t like to play that way, mainly because it’s not very much fun, and I can think of better things to do with $125 dollars than spend it on a small piece of plastic).

Anyway, I was the new guy in town, and I didn’t make many friends today with my Doctor Doom and Arachne team-up. (It was what was in my box!). But I hope I did and that everyone had fun.

Doctor Doom

Arachne

I won all my games, and in my last game Doctor Doom rendered Hercules powerless. I had a great time, and enjoyed my beginners luck. I traded my winning prize battlefield condition card for Cloak and Dagger.

Cloak and Dagger

Afterwards, I met Elli at a coffee shop down the street where I ate a breakfast bagel (egg, turkey and jack cheese on an asiago bagel!), and drank a cup of coffee. We left there and walked to Chris Elbow and indulged in some chocolate, and came home for dinner.

A great Sunday after a great Saturday. I think I could get used to hanging out in coffee shops and playing games all day. If only I could make money from that…

Watched an episode of Flashpoint on www.cbs.com. This is my new favorite TV show, and since I don’t have a TV, I have to watch it online. It is about police officers in the Strategic Response Unit, and they are responsible for tactical emergencies such as hostage situations, with the goal of saving lives and diffusing the situation. Unfortunately, the first episodes is not online, even though the CBS masthead says it is. Settled for watching episode 6, I think. I don’t think there will be much confusion for watching them out of order. Anxiously awaiting time to watch the other episodes that are still online, where I can start with episode 2.

Flashpoint on http://www.cbs.com

Spent the remainder of the evening looking on the web trying to buy Hero Clix singles (the ones I want seem to be sold out most places) and reading with Elli before sleeping.

 

House cleaning

Wednesday

Uneventful day. Spent cleaning the apartment and organizing the closet. My two cats generate an amazing amount of hair, and it ends up under the bed or in the corner. The closet needed help in that we just shoved things into it when we got here, but didn’t make good use of the space. After all the organizing, cleaning, and washing, we headed out to go bowling. But the bowling alley was closed for a private party. They paid for the whole place, but were only using half the lanes. So wasteful. I would have been happy to use the unused, and eating their massive pizza buffet would have been a plus, too. I would have been doing them a favor by saving them from a greasy death. Alas, it was not to be.

Walked to Whole Foods after that and bought some cheese and soda ($7.00 for 4 bottles! Got to love the market…) and sat in the cafe and read with some coffee.

Ate dinner while watching I Survived a Japanese Gameshow. I should have been on that show.

Watched Juno on DVD.  Great movie.  Wish I could write like that.

Late night to bed, after many Tetris battles.

 

Job Interview

Woke up early (8am-ish) to head to DSW to buy some new shoes for my job interview today. I wasn’t planning on being a school teacher anymore, but so far it’s the only interview I’ve gotten. It is surprisingly hard to get a minimum wage job in San Francisco…

So shoe shopping done and clothes ironed I braved the public transit system and rode the bus (somewhere) and spend an hour and half talking the new principal through his outdated computer systems, that amazingly still work. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a G3 Macintosh outside of a computer history museum, but I saw a school computer lab with over fifty of them, networked together. Agonizingly slow but astonishingly working. The job would be teaching computer skills to K-8 graders part time, and part time providing tech support and band-aids to the computer system. It pays decently, which is all I can ask for at this point.

Ate squash soup and cabbage and chicken legs while catching up on Wipeout, crashed out after a sugar coma of Beardpapa eclairs. Lights out, but only after finishing my current book reading obsession, and losing in online Tetris to Elli (who is gifted in Ms. Pacman and Tetris skillz).

 

Wednesday

Woke up late (I could get used to this), ate breakfast and grabbed the wife and headed to Gamescape to try to find some minis game players. Found a store full of clerks (how do I get a job there???), but no players. Asked about the new Star Wars minis set, grabbed the bored wife from the corner and headed a few stores down for some couch sitting, coffee drinking, and book reading.

One pastry, three coffees, and fifty pages later, Elli and I headed home for a dinner of tofu and peanut sauce.

Watched Wipeout, battled it out in online Tetris (I lost big time), and read a few more pages. Crashed out and went to sleep after watching another episode of Hopkins.

Woke up sometime later to the most annoying girl in the world talking (not my wife) somewhere outside.  The closeness of the buildings makes a great sound funnel, and it would appear that there was a party that we weren’t invited to, but seemed to be everywhere all around us.  Without a jet pack and a bucket of water balloons, we could only shut the windows and wait for her to fall hoarse, sometime in the wee hours of the morning.