Category Archives: Life
Protected: More Sally Kern
Protected: Letter to Sally Kern
Pittsburgh
The weekend summarized in snapshots.
(Lots of photos!)
After all that was halfprice tastiness at Fuel (they have awesome mixed drinks there!). Today was flight home. My plane arrived 50 minutes early into Las Vegas, turning a 2 hour layover into a 3 hour layover… but besides that, the trip was uneventful. Final tally of of airline abuse to the ceramics and glass I packed to bring back here: two of eight glasses broken and one of six small ceramic plates broken. Everything else survived, amazingly (including the giant Costco bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and soap as well as all the dinner plates, all the bowls, and all the silverware and knives). Huzzah.
Best weekend in a long time. Thanks again to teh Ben and Jon for picking me up at the airport.
I might eventually sort through the photos again and post some of the more portrait-like ones in portraits and/or a reselection of photos from the weekend in photos2. Would anyone be potentially intested in this? I think I’m just feeling photo deprived (besides the beach trip with brewer and dkb, this is the first serious use my camera has gotten since leaving CMU).
Tomorrow is work. Blah.
San Francisco
My parents left this morning. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this alone. Meh.
Moved into our apartment. It is very pretty and awesome. I think the best part is the location… one or two blocks down one direction is Japantown. This means that, not only is there authentic (and affordable!) Japanese food (bento boxes, real ramen, sushi galore), but that there’s also a Japanese bookstore (that sells game art books at really good prices), but also a Japanese collectables shop (games, giant robot figurines [Dan would love the store], cards) and video shops (anime, movies). Also a Japanese grocery store that sells these tasty things (fresh, not frozen! :D):
Yesterday’s lunch was a tasty bento. Yesterday’s dinner was delicious cold soba and sushi and tempura. I could live like this :D
One or two blocks down the other way is a Best Buy, Mervyns, Trader Joe’s, and a bunch of Kaiser medical facilities (which will be my insurance company). Convenient one-stop shopping, and it’s on the busline that I’ll take home from work, so I can just stay on the bus for a little bit longer and stop by and play Rock Band every day after work.
One or two blocks down another way is a bunch of restaraunts of various cuisines (Thai, Korean, Italian, etc). The other way is a ton of coffee shops.
The apartment itself is really pretty. The layout is actually ideal for two people sharing it, since the single bathroom has two doors (so I don’t have to go through the bedroom to get to it).
Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos for you, since my 28-80mm lens decided to break. I think some of the glass just shifted or something, since it is no longer able to properly focus at things further than 3 feet away at the 80mm end (even in manual focus mode… the focus ring simply won’t turn far enough). It’s probably fixable, but likely not worth the trouble. On the plus side, I now have a nice macro lens that can focus much closer than any normal 28-80mm lens… In any case, this kinda gives me an excuse to drop $300-$500 on the 18-200mm lens that I’ve been looking at.
So yeah. Orientation for work is tomorrow. I’m nervous as hell. Also lonely. People should send me emails and letters (my physical address is on my Facebook profile).