Uploaded to Flickr on 30th August, 2007.

But you do what you gotta do.

As with past years, I am participating in the San Mateo County Heart Walk this year. If you wish to donate to me, my donation page is here. Thanks!

In other heart-related news, I saw Stardust last night with Buddy, Rahul, and Eric (the heart reference makes sense if you've seen the movie, I swear). We all thought the movie was really fun and overall well-done. Thumbs up.

If by "saddle", you mean "harness". And by "harness", you further clarify to mean "rock climbing harness." After a brief climbing hiatus due to trying to get my San Francisco life in order, I am back into (hopefully) regular climbing. After peaking at 11b a couple months ago, I'm back around 10c level, but I'm still having a lot of fun. Last week I bought an issue of Rock and Ice that had a feature on young climbers that profiled climber after climber, some literally half my age, who are all better climbers than I could ever hope to be. It did, however, get me feeling pretty psyched about climbing, which is nice. I also picked up Climbing's 2007 Photo Annual, which has inspired me to more seriously try out rock climbing photography. Maybe the next time I go outdoor (whenever that is), I'll haul all my gear out with me.

In unrelated news, Happy Birthday Lilly, Marc, and Jeremy! Last night we headed out to Marina Sushi Bar for a birthday dinner for Marc, and Buddy and I polished off 3 big rolls. I was still full this morning when I woke up. Yay for gluttony!

This weekend, while on a trip to the Target in Daly City, Amanda and I discovered Daiso, which is basically a Japanese dollar store (or $1.50 store, really) that is the Most Awesome Store Ever. They have thousands and thousands of items, most of which are only $1.50. Japantastic!

In other news, I discovered that grilling with good charcoals is infinitely easier than grilling with charcoals where the lighter fluid has completely evaporated away. Sweet!

Uploaded to Flickr on 25th August, 2007.

Kezar is a really sweet, really old dog who lives on 6th ave.

Wednesday night I met Eli (she's the one on the left) and some of her friends for drinks at Laszlo in The Mission since it was her birthday. (Happy Birthday, Eli!) I had a good non-alcoholic time and enjoyed meeting her friends. I was also pleased to hear that I was the one friend from high school she is still in touch with. Go me. Eli moved to the city just this week to attend California College of the Arts and do cool, arty things. I'm excited to have her here.

Tonight I met Justin for dinner at Godavari. Justin is another friend from high school whom I hadn't seen in about 8 years, and he was in the area for an internship at Google. (No link necessary, I don't think.) He made several efforts to meet up with me while I was still living in Mountain View, and I kept flaking, so now that he'll be leaving on Sunday to go back to Texas, I finally made it out to meet him. I had a good time, and I'm glad he finally pinned me down.

I've recently been considering trying to reconnect with a couple other friends I've lost touch with. As good friends have always been one of the most important things in my life, I figure making the effort to revive old friendships is worth it.

In a only mildly related note, this morning I had a conversation about dogs with a homeless man in Golden Gate Park.

We just got back from a long weekend in Pioneer. (Where? Here.) Amanda's mom has a friend with a cabin there, and we got to stay there for frees. Actually "cabin" is a misnomer, but there's no word that means "really really nice and well-equipped house that just happens to be in the woods", so we'll just stick with "cabin." The drive up was a bit of a nightmare (seriously, people, stop skipping out on work on Fridays and clogging up the freeways), but once we got there, it was tons of fun. I got to go blackberry picking for the first time, where we filled up two tupperwares with big fat juicy blackberries, and swimming in a lake for the second time. I wised up and wore my Tevas during swimming, though, as I have a bit of a phobia of touching unknown things in water with my feet. Yes, that's a very specific phobia, but blame bad 80s movies. We also went on a really nice 9-mile hike to Showers Lake, which also happened to be part of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Besides the outdoorsy activities, there was a lot of lounging, reading, knitting (started a new project, but can't say what it is because the recipient reads this page... could it be YOU?), and watching of Planet Earth.

I have only one more day of vacation before heading back to work. Boo...

Uploaded to Flickr on 14th August, 2007.

I finally put up some pictures from Renee and Kevin's wedding (which was over a month ago.) Check them out here.

In other news, I'm taking this week off from work, because our game is done. Woo!

As I mentioned before, we have been having trouble getting our land line/DSL to work. First, AT&T had to do some outside wiring work, but once that was done, the phone line still didn't work, so I made an appointment with AT&T to have someone come out and fix the interior wiring. All this time, my landlord was on vacation, but AT&T told me that in California, by law, the landlord has to provide at least one working phone jack, so I didn't really think it was a problem. Yesterday, the landlord called me and told me that he wanted to check out the problem himself. Skeptical, I still told him he could stop by any time to take a look (Enzo McDog was in the backyard.) Well...it turns out the problem was that we had the phone plugged into the wrong jack.

Waaah wahhhh....

The good news is, now we have the Intertron in our apartment, and I can get back to uploading pictures. Woo!

I'm getting uber-frustrated with the lack of internet access in our apartment (the AT&T guy is coming Wednesday to do in the interior wiring), mostly because my photo uploading has grinded to a halt without it. Phone pics don't count.

Anyway...

Amanda spent the weekend backpacking with some friends, so not to be left out, I spent much of the weekend unpacking with...myself. I'm seriously almost close to being done with nearly being unpacked. All of my boxes are empty, at least. Some of the contents may be on the living room floor, though.

John is leaving for LA in a few weeks, so a bunch of us went to dinner and karaoke-ing in Japantown for a going away party. Dinner was at Cafe Mums, where I once again had waaaay too much meat, and every one else had waaaay too much to drink. Afterwards, we went to Do Re Mi for karaoke until past midnight. Good times.

Saturday I had some South Bay errands to run, so I had dinner with Babs, Walter, Justin, and Brendan at Boardwalk, which was fun. I was, however, saddened by the warm weather, only because San Francisco hasn't yet figured out how to be warm in the summer time. I'd also like to take a moment to give a recommendation for Green Citizen, an electronics recycling company. Before the move, I recycled a laptop and some batteries and other miscellaneous stuff, and on Saturday I dropped off some more batteries, floppy discs, CDs, and miscellanous electronic things, and they didn't even charge me for it!

Sunday I had lunch with Yar, Jan, Dana, and Yar's sister Mei at Dragonfly, which had really yummy crab and garlic noodles. Afterwards, I went with them to Sunset Supermarket, a previously-unknown (to me, at least) Chinese supermarket, and it was FUN. I got Pocky, gummies, shao bing, pork sung, tamarind candy, and shrimp chips, which Jan and I promptly microwaved once we got back to her house. (On a slightly un-related note, go to the Yelp page for Sunset Supermarket and read some of the bad reviews. Do you think these people had maybe just never gone to a Chinese supermarket before? Their experiences sound par for the course to me.) After playing some Xbox 360 and eating Mei's awesome fried tofu balls, I headed back home to finish unpacking for the rest of the night.

Totally kinda completely unpacked.

I finished yesterday. If you'd like to discuss, shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment here. Overall, I was entertained and thought it was a pretty satisfying ending.