| Flavor tripping! |
[Aug. 5th, 2008|08:24 am] |
Flavor tripping!
After waiting in a line with a palpable buzz, we were handed little purple packets with a telling bulge in the middle. The six of us who'd managed to find each other found a table in the slightly-too-hip club and popped the Miracle Berry. It was about the size of an olive, with a pit in the middle (do berries have pits? maybe this was a misnomer, then), a smooth texture on the outside which gave way to a slightly mushy, blueberry-like goop that tasted weird, sour-ish, but not repulsive. We diligently chewed and swished for about two minutes, spit it out once it turned nasty, and made our way to the food table. Lemons? Shockingly delicious. Limes? Pretty good. Grapefruit? Like the best you ever tasted. Buttermilk, balsamic? No longer sour, but still not that great. Olives, pickles? Not very different. Oysters? Hard to tell. But they were really good oysters. For the record, the food table was about the least sanitary thing I've seen in a public venue. They didn't give out plates, so everyone was just chomping down right at the table, grabbing at what-all with their lemon-slobber-covered hands. Oh well. As for drinks, Guinness tasted emasculated but refreshing, while Corona tasted like a scrumptious, beer-flavored bitch beer. Gin and tonic was disgusting (more like gin with sugar water -- remember, the berry kills your bitter sense), margarita scrumptious, wine not very good. The best part was Tabasco and worcestershire sauces. They're both very complex flavors that are overpowered by their vinegar nature. With your sour senses dulled, the cavalcade of flavors comes through. It was when I was holding a bottle of Lea & Perrins that the Eyewitness News guy found me and asked a bunch of questions (although my two seconds of fame have me talking about goat cheese being like ice cream). It all sounds fun, and for sure it was, but I have to admit that the flavor warp wasn't as intense as I'd hoped; several times we kept doubting whether it was working, although another taste of lemon restored our faith. I wish they'd had some prepared foods — tacos, sushi, what have you — in addition to the individual flavors. And, as you could imagine, we all got pretty sour stomachs after chomping down on all that acidic food. The net net: a fun experience, worth trying, but not a complete life-changer. |
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| Cookies for building a Facebook app! |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|02:29 pm] |
I've got a simple idea for a Facebook app, and I'll bake a batch of cookies for whoever builds it.
This app will analyze all my friends' phone numbers and tell me which ones spell interesting things (à la Phonespell.org). Of course, it's relatively easy to see what will match dictionary words; the harder part is telling me what's interesting :)
That's it! Any takers? |
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| $1000 reward for referring my replacement |
[Jun. 30th, 2008|06:23 pm] |
Let's align your incentives with mine: if you refer a qualified admin candidate to me, and he/she gets hired and takes my role, I will pay you a $1000 bounty.
Parsing the language above:
Refer. You or the candidate should send their resume to jessef(at)google(dot)com. If the candidate emails me directly, they should mention your name.
Qualified. For my role, we are looking for someone with at least two years' experience, preferably as an admin, but we'll also consider a background in sales, advertising, or some other fast-paced, frequently shifting environment. The role is based at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California. Further general details on the job description (but ignore the 4 years requirement).
Takes my role. To qualify for the bounty, the candidate must take the position I'm leaving behind, so that after a short transition period I can move on to my next role as an Associate Product Marketing Manager. If the candidate takes another position, whether as an admin (perhaps a role where experience is less of an issue) or otherwise, I'll still be grateful and take you out to a pretty nice dinner or the long-distance equivalent.
$1000 bounty. Cash, check, or in-kind goods or services, whatever you prefer. Why $1000? That's roughly what my referral bonus becomes after taxes and whatnot.
Further questions? Leave a comment or contact me directly as appropriate.
Thanks in advance for your help. I hope you don't find this little contest to be crass; it's just that it's so hard to find the right candidate, and I have substantial financial and personal interest in transitioning to my new role sooner rather than later, so I'm willing to try something new! |
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| Now comes the hard part |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|06:43 pm] |
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The offer letter in my hand makes it official: I'm going to be an Associate Product Marketing Manager at Google, just as soon as I find my replacement. Let me know if you or someone you know wants to be a admin for a diverse, international team in a thrilling department at the headquarters of best large workplace in the world! |
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| Burn it! |
[May. 30th, 2008|04:46 pm] |
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What's more wasteful than Chrysler's "$2.99 gas" campaign? A billboard-truck rolling down Mission advertising it! COME ON. |
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| Ice cream |
[May. 29th, 2008|08:11 pm] |
When I bought a Kitchenaid ice cream attachment from Fry's with the gift card Deep gave me months ago, I was had more than half resigned it to a fate of living in a dark corner of a cupboard along with the metaphorical electric knives of the kitchen world. A failed first attempt at making ice cream, wherein I dumped cut strawberries into a French vanilla batter way too early and ended up with frozen strawberries and soupy custard, made a sad fate even more likely.
But hark! We have pushed on, and oh, the rewards. I gathered the gumption to make a triple chocolate ice cream straight out of the pamphlet that came with the unit: I figured that in the worst case, super-rich chocolate soup wouldn't be so bad. But man, it worked! Unsweetened and semisweet baker's chocolate, cocoa powder, and Scharffenberger bittersweet chunks, in concert with Straus cream and half-and-half, created something way on the right side of awesome.
John's new gal Monica lent us an ice cream cookbook, and our horizons are further expanded. We first tried chartreuese ice cream, with whole milk and crema mexicana; it's got a nice, light texture, not too sweet, and tastes subtlely of that crazy herbal liqueur. (A bit too subtle, perhaps.) Right now John's waiting on the cherries he stewed with brandy, sugar, and lemon juice to cool as he sets up some cheesecloth to strain some yogurt. If you're in the neighborhood the next few days, you just might want to to stop by and try the best froyo this side of FloMo. |
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| Even fiercer urgency |
[Feb. 7th, 2008|01:11 pm] |
While it was a bit of a bummer hanging out in the grand ballroom of the Fairmont and seeing the projection of Hillary's victory in California splayed across a huge screen, I'm coming out of Tuesday with a ton of inspiration, a huge pile of laundry, and $50 less in my bank account.
Even before David Plouffe asked us to give a little more money to counter Hill and Bill's $5M loan to their campaign, I knew we were on our way, and by mid-morning we hit $7.5M after polls closed on Tuesday. Money's sure helpful in running a campaign and getting out the message, but even more valuable to me is the injection of energy and enthusiasm that tens of thousands of people giving even a little bit to a cause they believe it. The most inspirational thing I've read today is a comment on a politico.com article: "I'm a college student with virtually no money to spare. I didn't go out last weekend but instead donated $15 to Obama. These are the ones that matter the most."
Much as I'd like to go on to other states and share my energy and experience, my work misses me and there's a lot I've been neglecting here. However, anyone, anywhere can help in the next battleground states -- you can log in to our network from home and make calls to targeted voters in upcoming states. If anyone would like a login, please leave a comment or send me a note privately. Every state, every delegate matters. |
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| The Fierce Urgency of Now |
[Jan. 27th, 2008|10:44 am] |
Work has held its share of challenges and opportunities. Most importantly, I'm nervously thrilled about my "apprenticeship" to the mobile user experience design team. Over the next few months I'll be beefing up my graphics and interaction design skills while working on a design project from conception through research, prototyping, testing, iteration, and delivery. It's pretty crazy how I've ended up down this path: my good buddy Charles at work likes the way I think and has been grooming me as an ideas-man; add the ability to draw some shapes and flows, and if everything goes well, I'll be having a hand in some Google products you'll be using in the future. Wow!
Even more exciting, at the moment, has been my involvement with the Obama campaign. As the Mission district's team leader, I'm shepherding a group of precinct captains, Latino community leaders, and volunteers of widely differing levels of commitment and talent to identifying voters, persuading the undecideds, and making sure that our neighborhood votes in nine days.
Yesterday, the state campaign set the goal of making a record-setting 100,000 phone calls; in San Francisco we set the goal of making 10,000 calls with 40 people each in four three-hour shifts. We ended up with about double that number of volunteers, with a couple hundred people contributing toward over 15,000 calls to independent voters (many of whom don't know that they can vote in the Democratic primary in California), and also making the long and poorly ventilated office very warm and stuffy. So many moments from the day were inspiring: every ring of the bell when another supporter was identified, the guy who walked in off the street declaring that he'd switched from Edwards yesterday and wanted to become an Obama precinct captain today, the precinct captains who said, "I'm done calling my own list, who else can I help?," the private citizen who spent $500 of his own money to print signs for distribution (the campaign's done a poor job of distributing materials, to say the least). Of course, the best moment was watching Barack's victory speech from South Carolina with two of the highest-ups in the SF for Obama organization flanking me, and then listening to Congressman George Miller, DA Kamala Harris, and the former president of Chicago NOW (who until three weeks ago was a Hillary supporter) all give poignant speeches about the importance of the work that we as volunteers are doing.
It's been thrilling to work with such a dedicated, friendly, generous group of people -- in the nearly two months now that I've been working with the campaign, I've felt time and again that our grassroots organization is creating exactly the sort of civicmindedness that Obama is hoping to inspire in America as President. This is my first political activity, and possibly my only, but right now I'm so glad to be working to elect the best strongly viable candidate I've ever seen in one of the most thrilling elections in our country's history. |
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| Horn Please |
[Dec. 28th, 2007|07:34 pm] |
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Of course there's a ton to observe about India, but what immediately rushes to mind when thinking of this five-thousand year old civilization is the traffic. It's madness out there: traffic lights provide little more than a suggestion of who should stop and go, it's not uncommon to see a goat hauling a refrigerator the wrong way on a divided multi-lane highway, and it seems to be the only instruction of driving school that all unoccupied space on the road must be filled up immediately. The auto-rickshaws (similar to the tuk-tuks of Thailand, in other words, a passenger lawnmower) and many commercial vehicles have hand-painted recommendations to fellow drivers: "Horn Please" and "Keep Distance" seem to be the favorite -- I can affirm from three days of first-hand experience in Delhi that of those two requests, the first is very dutifully followed and the second blissfully ignored.
Modern Delhi is pretty damn ugly. Ramshackle goat stables in the median of a busy road, piles of gravel spilling two lanes into the street in front of abandoned construction projects, and skyscrapers so ugly they make Soviet apartment blocks look like objets d'art. The latter we took in from a revolving restaurant on the 25th floor in the heart of New Delhi, atop one of the worst sinners in this category -- unfortunately, the beautiful temples, forts, and tombs were all a bit too far to be distinctly visible through the smog. To that end, the old monuments here make quite the contrast. The Red Fort, the old mosque, Humayam's Tomb: so much beautiful, well-proportioned, stately architecture that's somehow survived the ravages of time but had little to no influence on the architecture of today.
I'm pleased to report that our stomachs are holding up like champs. We've eased into non-cooked cuisine slowly, starting yesterday with some irresistable deep-fried spinach leaves that were coated in the most delicious yogurt I've ever imagined. Today we munched on a raw cucumber. Tomorrow, who knows what culinary adventure awaits! In any event, the food here has been wonderful so far: the richness of the flavor, the subtlety of spices are just at a different level.
Gotta run to dinner, but I will make a last note about having a big dollar sign on my forehead. It's sure nice to be able to afford anything you can want, and in some ways, like having a dedicated driver for the whole day, it's a shocking luxury. On the other hand, at a bathroom in a hotel today, a man squirted soap into my hands and then had a cloth towel at the ready. Worse, in Connaught Circle yesterday, in the heart of New Delhi, a few dozen people came up to us within the space of about an hour asking where we were from and if we knew where we were going, obviously trying to lead us to some shop or taxi or hotel. I'm just not sure if I'm comfortable with obsequious service -- I'm more than mindful of India's colonial history -- but I guess I'd rather toss a bit of change at a guy who stands in a broom closet in the gents' restroom than swat away touts. Ah, travel.
Tomorrow: Taj Mahal, then onto Jaipur, where we've got to figure out what to do for New Years. |
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| Backing up LJ |
[Dec. 21st, 2007|05:47 pm] |
This month marks my 48th as an LJer, and god bless it for sticking around virtually unchanged for all these years. Now I'd like to go about figuring out how to preserve this chronicling of my life, should something happen to LJ unexpectedly. I was starting to go through and save each page, but then I realized that wouldn't capture the comments.
Does anyone know how I'd go about preserving the entirety of cataplum.livejournal.com? Since it would need to include the locked portions, I think I'd have to run this thing off of my own computer. Thanks in advance for the suggetions! |
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| For the time being, I no longer want to rock all night, nor party every day. |
[Dec. 5th, 2007|06:47 pm] |
I'm on my way to my third Obama volunteer event. Since last Monday, I'm the Team Leader for the Mission District Volunteers for Obama. I've never participated in politics before, but now there's a perfect storm of a candidate I really believe in, a highly competitive race in my backyard, and an organization that found me right when we were ready for each other. I'm so glad to be working on my leadership skills while joining a campaign that's hitting its stride. Tonight's the night when the volunteers we called last week are supposed to show up -- let's see how many actually do.
Dude, I'm tired. I stayed pretty amped up the past few weeks with excitement over my future at work and with all the preparations for a Rock Ballad and Anthem Party.
The party was nothing short of a tremendous success: dancing on the couches, pumpkins hurled from the roof, and going until 4:30. We'd thought we were stocking our bar, but it turns out we're lucky we bought so much! It was without a doubt the best party I've ever had a big hand in throwing. Even Spider (any of you remember her?) showed up.
As far as work, things have to go in a different direction now. I was enjoying the intensive teamwork and top-level problem-solving I was doing on the User Experience team, and my mentor and others were all gung-ho for me to join them in a few months once my term as an admin associate ends. However, a very friendly but frank meeting with the director of that team made it clear that neither it nor I could provide each other the sort of long-term growth we're looking for -- they're set up to enabled trained designers and researchers excel at their craft, and short of years of study that I'm not eager to do, it's best to find some other eggs to put in my basket. I've been pounding the pavement around the Googleplex the past two days, making contact with managers in a wide variety of disciplines where I could see myself working crossfunctionally, with a team, solving people-related issues, and maybe doing some analysis. It's a tall order, but there's a lot of positions at Google, so let's see what sticks.
Also: 19 days until India! And Google holiday party on Saturday... |
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| Free Rice |
[Nov. 14th, 2007|08:47 am] |
You may have noticed FreeRice.com, a vocabulary game where every correct answer triggers a donation of ten grains of rice from the advertisers along the bottom. You learn (or show off) some SAT-style knowledge, hungry people get some food, advertisers get a little exposure, and the world's made better, right?
I'm sorry to say it, but FreeRice is quite counterproductive. Tossing a few morsels at a problem while sitting comfortably at your desk is a textbook example of attacking the symptoms rather than the fundamental problem, a classic example of giving a man a fish rather than teaching him to fish.
I'm not saying that we should let people starve to death while applying all of our energy toward fixing the very challenging economic, political, and structural challenges underlying famine. However, folks who play this game are likely to feel sufficiently self-satisfied in "having done something about the problem" that they'll explore no deeper into the issue than looking at the cute little basket of right grains next to the options for a definition for "palliative." I'm most disturbed by how such a site allows corporations to prove to their shareholders and critics that they're doing something productive and philanthropic, while all they're doing is diverting interest from the real problems.
What should we do about hunger? As with so many things, a lot of it is politics. It's not a coincidence that most instances of famine occur where the government is ineffective at best (Somalia) and heartless at worst (North Korea). Sanctions policies don't help this matter much, either. Beyond the incompetence or willful neglect of governments, there are often deep-seated infrastructural issues; can't remember where I read it but apparently India's roads are so bad that 25% of its produce rots before it gets to market. Rather than military aid, which either gets funneled directly into oligarchs' pockets or blown up in someone else's face, how about an emphasis on infrastructural aid, both in terms of finances and expertise? As individuals, we can take this line of reasoning by donating time and money to organizations that work to make real, systemic improvements.
There is enough food grown in this world, the trouble has been in getting it to the people who need it. I'm afraid vocabulary games just aren't going to solve world hunger -- unless you want to make the right guess for the meaning of "bandwagon." |
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| Toast-waffle-ducken |
[Oct. 21st, 2007|11:11 am] |
In a frenzy of culinary inspiration, probably at least slightly better focused than the time Cowp and I convinced ourselves that a sandwich of stale Chips Ahoy, Philadelphia cream cheese, and pastrami was the new hillbilly gourmet, we continued our love affair with the waffle here at the Gentrification Station yesterday for brunch. The most anticipated item was the starch equivalent of a turducken:
- make French toast (this time we used the recipe from The New Best Recipe, which advises lots of milk and even a little flour, but instead of vanilla we used Grand Marnier) with Vietnamese baguette,
- put broken French toast and waffle batter into the waffle iron,
- soak this waffle-French toast hybrid in the French toast batter,
- Repeat step 1.
Very different, but also very good, was the waffle with thin-sliced Granny Smith apples, bittersweet chocolate, camembert, and papaya. No, seriously. The camembert that migrated to the surface made it all crispy, the chocolate was all goopy-melty-good, and the fruit added neat texture.

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| Why Does My Heart |
[Oct. 15th, 2007|06:01 pm] |
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It feels like a cliche, driving up 101 in the big ol' shuttlebus, mid-October sunset filtering through the half-cloud half-fog, with Moby's "Why Does My Heart" on the iPod. I had a good day at work, I'm looking forward to going home, and I'm mildly nervously awaiting a response to a text message I just sent. The weekend was full of friends -- we had 23 people over for trivia! -- and new experiences, and I have eaten way too much animal fat in the past few days. Pancetta waffles are, unfortunately, even more delicious than they sound, especially when topped with Papalote's dreamy orange salsa... |
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| Jesse the Homemaker |
[Sep. 24th, 2007|09:21 pm] |
While I've participated in my share of home-improvement activities -- helping Jon wire sound and light at the 5406, buying indirect lights for Justin's place, etc. -- I've never thought of myself as much of a homemaker. I certainly don't have a terribly strong reputation for cleaning up after myself in the kitchen, keeping my room tidy, that sort of thing.
But wow. Combine a really nice and virtually new apartment, roommates who are ecstatic to set the house up, and an abysmal dating life, and boom! Two and a half weeks in, and I'm just getting started. Some accomplishments to date:
- My room rocks. It's got nice furnishings like microsuede blackout curtains (which, when pulled back, reveal a power transformer in the foreground, various beauty salons across the street, and a view of Nob Hill behond), a silk bedspread, and inset halogen lighting (for which I installed a dimmer switch). What I'm even more thrilled about is that I keeps making it tidier and better arranged. My shoes are (still) organized in a milkcrate, I just hacked the top and bottom off the insert to a wine crate to create a nightstand-drawer organizer, and I have no random papers lying around. It's only two and a half weeks into the game, but I already feel like it's a very, very different Jesse's Bedroom.
- My bathroom is pretty sweet. I certainly had to work at it, especially as far as shower drainage was concerned. It was absolutely terrible (like, inches of standing water after five minutes), and two econo-size tubs of Drano didn't help much. I finally pried back the drain cover (one of the screws was so stripped that I couldn't remove it) to find a rubber stopper nearly the entire diameter of the drain pipe. How the prior occupant put up with that is beyond me. Anyway, so now my shower drains well, I've got a Speakman showerhead with the low-flow regulator disabled but with a dial to adjust the flow, and three towels with J, C, F monograms hanging from the bar of my oh-so-stylish but comically small sink.
- The kitchen is beautiful, and I'm trying very hard to release its potential for excellent workflow. I've already put pots and pans in separate cabinets, culled out duplicate utensils, added a spice collection (much of which is on order from The Spice House), reorganized the plates-and-wine-glass cabinet to hold about double the items, cleaned all the gunk off the range and oven, and wiped the counters and swept the floor every time I've cooked, which has been frequent. I think I have Aaron to thank for teaching me such good kitchen habits!
- As for the more, uh, common areas, I'm helping out, too. I've put artwork in the stairwells and installed a clothesline on the roof deck. Mom has also come through, with everything from placemats to a vacuum cleaner to a makeshift table (actually, a stool plus a loose tabletop) helping to make the place come together.
- My next, probably absurd, ambition is to figure out how to make a curtain that moves with the sun. See, we have a ~15 foot high window above the sink (I know, poor me) down which the afternoon sun makes a slow, hot progression. It's murder on anything sitting on the countertop, and the living room turns into a bit of a greenhouse. What I'd love to make is a curtain that's the width of the window and perhaps a foot tall, that very slowly descends every afternoon to follow the path of the sun. Maybe there's a way to do this with a precisely weighted pulley system and a timer? I'm no engineer, but my roommate is, so maybe he'll have an idea or two.
In other news, I spent today working from San Francisco. I went to the Indian Consulate twice and returned with three visa'd passports -- so Mom, Dad, and I can now go to Delhi, Mumbai, and points in between in December. I also talked to a cute girl on the bus. After a few coy eye-darts suggested an open channel, it took me about ten minutes to catch my breath from running two blocks for the bus (the 33-Stanyan comes rather infrequently so it's worth a little ass-haul), and then another five to work up some gumption. It's so funny: in so many things I'm rather shameless when it comes to speaking with strangers or talking to people I'm attracted to, but when it comes to sparking up conversation with a stranger on the basis of the attraction, it's so, so hard. But I told myself, "I don't want to be the sort of person who can't strike up a conversation when there's nothing to lose." So I asked her to tell me about the plants she was holding. And she did. And then the conversation kind of drifted away, and she got off the bus. Yup. |
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| Pack of turds |
[Aug. 30th, 2007|05:05 pm] |
When you're driving south on 101, I think it's San Carlos, right before the carpool lane begins, there's a development of like a Petsmart and a Best Buy going up. There's a fairly large sign announcing the fact, and probably saying who the contractors and builders and financers are and whatnot, but it's hard to tell, because it's mostly covered by a sign, spray-painted with stencil, made of pressboard, that says, "IMPEACH THE PACK OF TURDS."
Anyway. Life's been very busy:
Two weekends ago: DC: Public institutions, homemade dinner with Oliver, and lots of hookah Last weekend: Way too much alcohol: bottomless mimosas, brewery party and wine tasting in Napa This weekend: Mexico Next weekend: Moving on Friday, wedding on Saturday (and Cass's party)
Phew! |
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| I got it! |
[Aug. 21st, 2007|11:15 am] |
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Starting sometime in early September, I'll be living at just about the sweetest place imaginable, at 21st and Mission. See you all there, and more details to follow. |
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| Holy crap, I hope I get it. |
[Aug. 20th, 2007|11:26 pm] |
I just looked at what has to be the best apartment I'm ever going to find.
- On 21st Street, right off of Mission, so four blocks from the shuttle and right in the heart of a neighborhood with tons of nightlife
- 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, in-unit laundry
- Four (four!) stories, starting on the fourth floor: two bedrooms, huge common/kitchen area, lofted bedroom, and enormous private deck with views from Twin Peaks to the East Bay
- Brand new loft, with beautiful huge ceilings on the main floor and very appropriate yuppie kitchen with a huge island bar
- Really ideal guys: fun-loving, smart, and very easy-going
- Rent is $100 above what I'm paying for a 3 bedroom with one bathroom, no laundry at all, and in a foggier and more remote part of town.
- Available September 1, which is good, 'cause my roommates have someone looking to move in then.
I hope I hear back from Mike and John soon -- I've been so spoiled by this one that I couldn't imagine settling for anything less. |
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| Charity kickball tournament |
[Aug. 12th, 2007|06:15 pm] |
We may have scored only one run in two games. We may have been named after an infantile movie that hasn't even come out yet. And I may have gotten a pretty ridiculous sunburn making a band starting halfway down my forehead and ending an inch under my glasses. But I'll be damned if the Balls of Fury team wasn't having the most fun at the Blast from the Past Charity Kickball Tournament 2007 in Golden Gate Park. Shit, we even had red headbands and a beer bong.
Not surprisingly, I've been kinda out of it today, but that usually happens the day after intensive daytime drinking.
Life's been fun, but with more searching than normal. I'm looking for a new place to live -- Aaron and Chris are great guys, but I need an apartment that's more amenable to frequent socializing, and I wouldn't mind paying less, getting more sun, and having laundry facilities. I'm also looking for love; it's been way too long since I've been in a relationship, so it's OKCupid and Craigslist for me. And at work, I was looking for things to do, but at least I've found that: I'm getting involved in two projects, in marketing and user experience.
I'm going to DC on Wednesday for a fun, long weekend with jigsawjazz and Oliver. Whee! |
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