Rissy in Action

A co-worker of mine received the following email from BART Director Bob Franklin:

Hello:

I recently completed a music video that I want to share with you on the history of BART, set to a song with lyrics written by former BART spokesman Mike Healy.

The video can be found at the top of my website, www.BobforBART.com

or on youtube at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXK_UPiZMI

This video is frickin' awesome. Bob Franklin may be my new transportation planning superhero.

It is verboten. The sore throat I woke up with this morning that isn't really going away, and the slight achiness, will be exorcised via soup, tea w/honey, vitamins, and airborne.

My officemates and I have a deep and abiding fixation for all things marshmallow peeps*. So when these puppies appeared on the common shelf of free foods by the printer this afternoon, we went to town.

* Last year, one of our interns made some crack about us making him a chicken pot pie. We made him a chicken peep pie instead, featuring a graham cracker crust, microwaved peeps and freebie jellybeans that turned out (unbeknownst to us) to have some bacon-flavored jelly beans in the mix. Sadly, those photos were lost with the disposable camera we grabbed to take them.

So after some worrying that my late start to planning ahead (seriously, UC Berkeley called, and they'd like my master's back) for Thanksgiving would mean a slightly sad lonely weekend, things are turning out superfly.

Wednesday evening featured a lovely not too aerobically hard (though harder to wrap one's brain around) aikido class taught by new dad nickykaa, followed by dinner with Bobsquatch, Falling Water and Pooh Just Is (for want of a better nickname, I'm giving him this one for the duration), and pie crust making.

I made a pumpkin pie Thursday morning, and then we went hiking with buddy R and a couple of her friends, including an unexpected fellow mother ship grad (class of '85). We saw native american cooking site remnants, saw some coyotes and lots of cows, and after deciding to add on another mile or so loop, were rewarded with a lovely view of the Sierras in the distance. The asthma bits were a little problematic only in a couple of spots. I think I'm a convert to the hiking on T-day morning idea. And maybe need to find a way to get around our largely car-free lifestyle to go hiking more often. It is good that I've come to this realization just as the rainy season is about to start. ;)

( food porn here )

We had a lovely, relaxing evening hanging out, drinking champagne, eating tasty food and goofing around. Something about going from dinner for three to dinner for five improved my mood from just content to really happy. And I really like hosting or being hosted at a laid-back holiday dinner.

Yesterday was spent embracing the sloth (leftovers, email, and puzzle pirates), and about the most activity we got to was Bobsquatch making chicken soup stock. Today is bills, a bit of laundry, and then ca_snowflake's and caramida's joint b-day party at our local gamemonger. And tomorrow aikido.

Hooray!

Please git outta my head. Thank you.

So, after a 1-8-1 record last season, my softball team (the Roots) finished in second place this season (5-2-1). Not without a little bit of controversy--the first-place team, whom we beat 2 out of 3 games, had one more win than us, but also played one more game overall.

Tonight was the playoffs--single elimination. We won the first game something like 17-10, then lost the final game by about the same margin to said 1st place team. Our game was a bit off early, but we staged a major comeback in the latter innings. The comeback was a bit thwarted by what pretty much everyone agreed were some bad calls by the refs (seriously, every close call, and some not even close, went against us). Bobsquatch has been an awesome cheerleader the past several games.

Still though, especially after coming in dead last last season, we done good. I also really like playing first base, a position I haven't really played since grammar school.

And then there was beer and chilling with the team afterwards, and now there is snoozy.

I picked up Fancy Boy (my laptop) from the computer guys today! They managed to convince IBM to send them a replacement motherboard (the seltzer having apparently scored a direct hit thereupon), and though I'll get the keyboard replaced in a week or so, total cost of repair will be ~$200 (rather than the $900 IBM quoted). After nearly two months, home computing will be mine once again!

Woohooooooo! Now back to work!

Advice to the coffee shop employees everywhere: If someone (say, me) is unable to verbalize their order while standing before you at 8:58am holding a thermos and looking at you beseechingly, offering caffeinated coffee is always a good bet.

In other news, my trip back east was mostly good (I'll probably post over the weekend on that when I have more rumination time), though frantic as all get out, and now work promises much of the same over the next two-three weeks.

* Fancy Boy: Still dead. Later this week I should have more time to determine whether he's salvageable.

* Weekend parties: The baby shower and subsequent bbq birthday/building-permit-receiving celebrations (two different parties) went well. We made a ton of cookies for the shower--one was even vegan and wheat-free and pretty darn tasty.

* Book reading: A lovely and talented friend of ours gave a reading from her second book this evening in Alameda, which was nifty. As was getting to hang with her afterwards, which we get to do tomorrow evening as well. Her first book reminds me a bit of George R.R. Martin in terms of the engaging charaters, interactions of class, gender and power, and the "oh, this is not going to end well" factor. For those of you affiliated with a certain MA literary non-profit, take note--she's currently Vineyard-based. Not on the same end of the state as youse, but I'm just saying if you want an intro, let me know.

* Observation:
Alameda : Oakland :: Staten Island : Brooklyn


* Although the suburban similarity to SI sometimes wigs me out, Alameda does however have a bowling alley and the annual Peanut Butter Jam Festival working in its favor. Posters from the latter prompted me to sing "It's peanut butter jelly time" all night long. As our fellow dojo mate was driving us home from the reading and explaining the flash animation phenomenon to Nikki, the 16 year olds in the next car over started grooving along with us. It was a very sweet bonding moment.

I was tagged by steluch, and I obey:

Instructions:
1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people.


"He was working as a security guard at Potomac Mills Mall when she met him. He told her it was only a temporary job until his business took off.

"What business was that?"

"He was a bounty hunter."

-from Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

If I had done this at work before I left, it would have been a selection from the California Redevelopment Assoc's Redevelopment in CA guide, 1995 edition. But I wanted out.

Note of amusement: Two of the most problematic (and linked) forms from last week's training are Schedules T & A. Or, as I hastily amended, Schedules A & T.


i tag:

cybersattva, dooneling, nadyezhda (if you look @ steluch's entry, you'll see why), osirusbrisbane, and thomascantor.