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Moving and the rest of the week
I suppose I could update this while I'm sitting around avoiding lifting boxes and unpacking. I've been living in the new place now for like 4 days.
The move was... well, it was a long drive. We left Sammamish around 11am or noon on Saturday? Mike was going to fly back on Tuesday and didn't know how he'd get back home from the airport so he wanted his car to be there, so we tag-team drove down there first, with him in the UHaul and me in his car. The only thing that sucked during that part of the drive was that there was construction or something on 405, so we got backed up for a LONG time with one lane. But once that was over I don't think there were any other traffic problems.
We got lunch at a Subway near the airport with very cheerful staff and then hit the southward roads.
We stopped a few miles from the border to get gas because Mike doesn't like the idea of Oregon requiring all gas stations to be full service. It was already 4:30pm by then, and it was sunset as we went through Portland OR, and then dark after that. So, yeah, LOTS OF DARK EMPTY ROAD FOR A WHILE. I found a funny FB checkin near Eugene OR where it was literally a "I-5 South" checkin.
Most of the time up through the end of Oregon was spent listening to Weird Al on my iPhone through a speaker thingy that Mike had bought the night before, to make up for the fact that the UHaul had no sound system.
We decided to stop for dinner in Medford OR -- I knew that Ashland and Medford would be the last real big civilization we'd see before hitting Redding CA, which was the town Mike had reserved a hotel room in. Because of timing -- hitting Medford at 9:30ish with around 2.5 hours of driving left to Redding -- we just went to a Wendy's and grabbed food there. And Mike DID end up filling the tank up in Medford as well.
(For the record, the tank held 33 gallons of gas and we got around 12-13 miles per gallon. Whee.)
By the time we hit the CA border there were very few people on the road except for trucks. We got stopped at the border and asked if we had any fruit/vegetables or animals with us, which we didn't, and so we proceeded on our way.
It was dark out but the moon lit it well enough that I could see the mountains of Northern California (and southern Oregon for that matter). We spent a while just driving up and down, basically, and settled in at Redding a little after midnight. The place had internet and free breakfast and stuff, but mostly we just kind of conked out because OMG NOT IN A TRUCK.
We left Redding at 11am or so the next day after the breakfast at the hotel and filling up a little more gas by the Texaco across from there. From Redding to Sacramento was pretty much entirely farmland, which made me a little sad because it made me think about the lack of young farmers in Japan, and probably over here too. But there were a lot of cows and horses and some sheep and a ton of trees and other stuff growing.
We skirted Sacramento on 505, then joined I-80, and ended up making it to the house in SF by 2pm. I had told people 3pm. Oops. So when we arrived, Jenny and Phil were here, and Jenny's friend Mike (not to be confused with my Mike or her Mike either). Between the 5 of us we ended up entirely unloading the truck before either of the friends of mine I'd invited to come help (Ben, and Drew) showed up. Oops :)
I sent off Mike and Drew in the UHaul to IKEA to get me the bed that I hadn't been able to get in Seattle because it sold out. They were supposed to go to Palo Alto which had several, but in the end it seems Ben and Drew talked Mike out of it and they went to Emeryville, which had 1 in stock, and OF COURSE IT SOLD OUT BEFORE THEY GOT THERE. Sigh.
Mike and I ended up going to Drew and Jason's house for dinner, since Jason had been at home cooking all day and Jason's mom wanted to meet Mike, so that's what happened. There was good dinner and Jeopardy and no boxes for a while.
Came back to the city and... there was a ticket on the UHaul. Go figure. Apparently you can park in the median of Dolores St on Sunday afternoon by convention thanks to the big church, but you'll get ticketed after sundown. And, there's no parking at all on my street, and the outside area had a "no parking 7am-4pm" sign outside.
In the end, we went to sleep on mattresses on the floor, and Mike got up at 6:30am and drove to Palo Alto in the truck, and I went to work as normal. He did get a bed, and he also got to wander around Palo Alto a little, and then he returned the UHaul so we wouldn't have to worry about parking it! Hooray! And then he apparently came home and built all the furniture in my room. Seriously. He built the bed and the Expedit mini-bookcase and set it up, and put the doors on my bookcases and nailed the bookcases to the wall and all that.
I had a "normal" day at work, and skipped work dinner in favor of coming back to the Mission to meet up with Mike. Jason and Joris had asked if I wanted to get dinner and I told them they had to come back with me, so, Jason drove up here and the 4 of us went to Frjtz, the Belgian fries/etc place 2 blocks away or so. Joris is from Belgium, and he didn't say it sucked, but did explain why it was Belgian (like, the napkins around the fries and stuff). I had fries and a crepe, but everyone else had burgers and fries. It was good if weird.
Came home, unpacked, etc.
Tuesday was largely the same. Timing kinda sucked for me meeting up with Mike and Muni was uncooperative and so I met him at 16th and Church at like 6:15? He had to be on BART at 7pm, so we pretty much ran to the house, grabbed his stuff, and got dinner at some random taqueria on the way to the BART station (fortunately, one thing the Mission neighborhood has a ton of is convenient and quick Mexican food) and then I saw him off and came home and did more unpacking.
Yeah.
Wednesday morning I had a sneaker emergency -- my New Balance 993's were pretty much dead dead dead, as I'd been stepping on the heels and part of the left heel was coming through the shoe and ripping my socks and hurting my feet. I decided to go get new shoes, and looked for a NB store, only to find that The Walking Company is listed as a NB store but only has their stuff online. WTF?? So I went downstairs (this was at the Westfield shopping mall off the BART station at Powell) to Lady Foot Locker and bought Nikes. Sigh.
By then I was already late-ish to work so also went to Zipcar to pick up my card, as long as I was all walking and stuff.
The evening on Wednesday was our Holiday Party, though we had sushi dinner at work beforehand. Sheesh! The party was at the Foreign Cinema at 21st and Mission. I walked there and wore my suit jacket and my Christmas tie that I got for Kiltie Band years ago. The amusing part of the party was how everyone had Deckadence cards as their party badge, and so everyone was trading (but I wouldn't trade mine). And there were face painters who had Deckadence artwork to go from, so I also got my face painted with a water logo.
(I'm too lazy to post the photo here so feel free to go look at it on Twitter if you didn't already see it on Facebook.)
Despite it only being 7 blocks away, it took like 15 mins to walk there. Damn big city blocks!
I had two drinks, both of which were "sweet and not very strong". That's what I requested from the bartender, basically, and I have no idea what she made me but they were both fruity and not bad. A lot of people from my company got much much drunker. It was wacky, there were maybe 250 people there? Some people were saying how last year's Christmas party was gigantic at like 50 people. The company has 168 employees now apparently, anyway. I think there were 60 when I interviewed.
Jason and Drew came over to the house afterwards and I got to show off how cool it is! Whee.
I guess that's up to today.
The move was... well, it was a long drive. We left Sammamish around 11am or noon on Saturday? Mike was going to fly back on Tuesday and didn't know how he'd get back home from the airport so he wanted his car to be there, so we tag-team drove down there first, with him in the UHaul and me in his car. The only thing that sucked during that part of the drive was that there was construction or something on 405, so we got backed up for a LONG time with one lane. But once that was over I don't think there were any other traffic problems.
We got lunch at a Subway near the airport with very cheerful staff and then hit the southward roads.
We stopped a few miles from the border to get gas because Mike doesn't like the idea of Oregon requiring all gas stations to be full service. It was already 4:30pm by then, and it was sunset as we went through Portland OR, and then dark after that. So, yeah, LOTS OF DARK EMPTY ROAD FOR A WHILE. I found a funny FB checkin near Eugene OR where it was literally a "I-5 South" checkin.
Most of the time up through the end of Oregon was spent listening to Weird Al on my iPhone through a speaker thingy that Mike had bought the night before, to make up for the fact that the UHaul had no sound system.
We decided to stop for dinner in Medford OR -- I knew that Ashland and Medford would be the last real big civilization we'd see before hitting Redding CA, which was the town Mike had reserved a hotel room in. Because of timing -- hitting Medford at 9:30ish with around 2.5 hours of driving left to Redding -- we just went to a Wendy's and grabbed food there. And Mike DID end up filling the tank up in Medford as well.
(For the record, the tank held 33 gallons of gas and we got around 12-13 miles per gallon. Whee.)
By the time we hit the CA border there were very few people on the road except for trucks. We got stopped at the border and asked if we had any fruit/vegetables or animals with us, which we didn't, and so we proceeded on our way.
It was dark out but the moon lit it well enough that I could see the mountains of Northern California (and southern Oregon for that matter). We spent a while just driving up and down, basically, and settled in at Redding a little after midnight. The place had internet and free breakfast and stuff, but mostly we just kind of conked out because OMG NOT IN A TRUCK.
We left Redding at 11am or so the next day after the breakfast at the hotel and filling up a little more gas by the Texaco across from there. From Redding to Sacramento was pretty much entirely farmland, which made me a little sad because it made me think about the lack of young farmers in Japan, and probably over here too. But there were a lot of cows and horses and some sheep and a ton of trees and other stuff growing.
We skirted Sacramento on 505, then joined I-80, and ended up making it to the house in SF by 2pm. I had told people 3pm. Oops. So when we arrived, Jenny and Phil were here, and Jenny's friend Mike (not to be confused with my Mike or her Mike either). Between the 5 of us we ended up entirely unloading the truck before either of the friends of mine I'd invited to come help (Ben, and Drew) showed up. Oops :)
I sent off Mike and Drew in the UHaul to IKEA to get me the bed that I hadn't been able to get in Seattle because it sold out. They were supposed to go to Palo Alto which had several, but in the end it seems Ben and Drew talked Mike out of it and they went to Emeryville, which had 1 in stock, and OF COURSE IT SOLD OUT BEFORE THEY GOT THERE. Sigh.
Mike and I ended up going to Drew and Jason's house for dinner, since Jason had been at home cooking all day and Jason's mom wanted to meet Mike, so that's what happened. There was good dinner and Jeopardy and no boxes for a while.
Came back to the city and... there was a ticket on the UHaul. Go figure. Apparently you can park in the median of Dolores St on Sunday afternoon by convention thanks to the big church, but you'll get ticketed after sundown. And, there's no parking at all on my street, and the outside area had a "no parking 7am-4pm" sign outside.
In the end, we went to sleep on mattresses on the floor, and Mike got up at 6:30am and drove to Palo Alto in the truck, and I went to work as normal. He did get a bed, and he also got to wander around Palo Alto a little, and then he returned the UHaul so we wouldn't have to worry about parking it! Hooray! And then he apparently came home and built all the furniture in my room. Seriously. He built the bed and the Expedit mini-bookcase and set it up, and put the doors on my bookcases and nailed the bookcases to the wall and all that.
I had a "normal" day at work, and skipped work dinner in favor of coming back to the Mission to meet up with Mike. Jason and Joris had asked if I wanted to get dinner and I told them they had to come back with me, so, Jason drove up here and the 4 of us went to Frjtz, the Belgian fries/etc place 2 blocks away or so. Joris is from Belgium, and he didn't say it sucked, but did explain why it was Belgian (like, the napkins around the fries and stuff). I had fries and a crepe, but everyone else had burgers and fries. It was good if weird.
Came home, unpacked, etc.
Tuesday was largely the same. Timing kinda sucked for me meeting up with Mike and Muni was uncooperative and so I met him at 16th and Church at like 6:15? He had to be on BART at 7pm, so we pretty much ran to the house, grabbed his stuff, and got dinner at some random taqueria on the way to the BART station (fortunately, one thing the Mission neighborhood has a ton of is convenient and quick Mexican food) and then I saw him off and came home and did more unpacking.
Yeah.
Wednesday morning I had a sneaker emergency -- my New Balance 993's were pretty much dead dead dead, as I'd been stepping on the heels and part of the left heel was coming through the shoe and ripping my socks and hurting my feet. I decided to go get new shoes, and looked for a NB store, only to find that The Walking Company is listed as a NB store but only has their stuff online. WTF?? So I went downstairs (this was at the Westfield shopping mall off the BART station at Powell) to Lady Foot Locker and bought Nikes. Sigh.
By then I was already late-ish to work so also went to Zipcar to pick up my card, as long as I was all walking and stuff.
The evening on Wednesday was our Holiday Party, though we had sushi dinner at work beforehand. Sheesh! The party was at the Foreign Cinema at 21st and Mission. I walked there and wore my suit jacket and my Christmas tie that I got for Kiltie Band years ago. The amusing part of the party was how everyone had Deckadence cards as their party badge, and so everyone was trading (but I wouldn't trade mine). And there were face painters who had Deckadence artwork to go from, so I also got my face painted with a water logo.
(I'm too lazy to post the photo here so feel free to go look at it on Twitter if you didn't already see it on Facebook.)
Despite it only being 7 blocks away, it took like 15 mins to walk there. Damn big city blocks!
I had two drinks, both of which were "sweet and not very strong". That's what I requested from the bartender, basically, and I have no idea what she made me but they were both fruity and not bad. A lot of people from my company got much much drunker. It was wacky, there were maybe 250 people there? Some people were saying how last year's Christmas party was gigantic at like 50 people. The company has 168 employees now apparently, anyway. I think there were 60 when I interviewed.
Jason and Drew came over to the house afterwards and I got to show off how cool it is! Whee.
I guess that's up to today.