The Move
Uneventful really, which I'm quite happy for. It took a total of 3 days for stuff to be in Des Moines, to the apartment complex had their keys back. The guys helping me get the stuff out of the apartment deserve way more than the dinner I got them, I have some evil thoughts now on how to make it up to them, braving 90 - 100 degree weather, and a 3rd floor walk up apartment (I vow, never again). My parents also deserve a huge thanks. The apartment was spotless when we left, and I couldn't have done it in such short time without them. They also kindly let me store all my stuff in the garage while I apartment shopped out in Cali.
The new pad is South of downtown San Jose, not very far from a couple major highways and expressways. I've got a stunning view out all my windows of the mountains in the distance, and I'm on the 3rd floor again. This time however, there is an elevator ;-) Dad drove out with me in the Budget rental truck (HIGHLY recommended, Budget has newer trucks, they are cleaner and just nicer to deal with than U-Haul. Nothing Against U-Haul, but Budget is cheaper and cleaner.) We pulled the whole trip off in driving time 28hrs or so (roughly the same as what it took me in my car) We started late on Monday, and we had apartment keys before 5pm on Wednesday. HPA & DrSuzi helped me and dad get the stuff into the apartment. Didn't take too long and it was relatively painless all told.
There have been requests for pictures of the pad, I'm going to try and borrow a digital camera and get them for you all. I'll post them up when I have them. The apartment is a total disaster area. I don't even have my beloved Smaug up and running yet, the computer rack is only half put together (as I'm using the top of it proped on some plastic draweras a desk right now since my desk won't be here for 7-10 more days). So yeah thats where that's at.
Birthday
I apparently got more ancient at some point recently. This also means that a shout out to Sean and Kat are in order as they also got more ancient. Even though we were unable to throw the giant Birthday bash I thought of you guys! We gotta work on another giant bash and get everyone together sometime.
All told it was pretty low key, after work HPA, DrSuzi, my boss, co-worker and a buddy of mine from Iowa City went toe Dave and Busters. Dave and Busters is like Chuckey Cheese, only for adults, and with switches for nice people to come scurrying over and take my drink order while I play the game. It was kinda nice, just kinda wandering around and arcading with people. I'm kinda in the mood for a lan party, need to poke people into doing this.
Not much else to tell on that.
Gencon
Was awesome, as usual. I had a lot of fun and it was a really good trip. My younger brother joined the crew for the first time, and I think he's already pestered me into agreeing to pay his part of the room bill next year so he can come again (bum, but he's in college trying to pay his way). Also my girlfriend jumped onboard last minute and came out and hung with a bunch of crazy gamers, she even got into it and bought a corset while we were out there and painfully forced me to lace her up while we were there. OHHHHH the pain ;-) (for the record she claims I'm pretty good at it)
In general though, this was obviously an off year when compared with the last two. Nothing really big happened, White Wolf didn't have anything spectacular to wow us with, it wasn't the 30th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. The shwag was way down, and I didn't see a lot of new games floating about. Highlights though: Serenity the rpg was there, I tried to snag a copy but they were sold out (they could only get 500 copies from the publishers before Gencon this year. I put in a pre-order and they promised me a bunch of extra fancy signatures in it when it arrives at my apartment. That reminds me I haven't seen it yet, I wonder where it is :-/
They were showing neat previews out of City of Villians, I'm looking forward to that. Reminds me I need to pre-order that....... (BTW P.A.N.T.S.)
Andrea (the g/f) got me to take my pants off in the middle of everyone at Gencon. Ok it's not that bad, I tried on a UtiliKilt. Honestly, I was surprised I liked it quite a bit. If it wasn't like $250 for the kilt I want I would have bought it than and there! It even fits my laptop in one of the pockets (pictures of me in a kilt and pictures of the laptop in the kilt coming soon)
Zonk, of Slashdot fame, got married a week or so before Gencon. And with the people I usually hang out with, decided that it was his quasi honeymoon and should tease and poke and prod at hime the whole way. They went so far as for a klingon and a blind Federation chaplin to come and serenade the newly weds. Zonk, we love you man and congratz on getting hitched!
I helped with LRPC this year, that was cool. Saw Pat, Sam and Mark, thought not as much as I would have liked (the trip was running on overload to begin with and trying to keep up with everyone was hard) Played SFB canisters again, and for the first year Pat and I didn't kill each other. In fact we didn't even fire shots at each other. (someone make sure neither of us was physically dead!) It was a good game. The creator even stopped by and told us about a very simplified version of SFB he's got cooking. The rule book is apparently MUCH thinner, like 30 pages or so versus the serveral hundred for the rules I currently have for SFB. Andrea even thought it was cool, and was interested in the simplified version. About it really. Looking forward to next year, just not going to stay at the Hilton near the convention center (they screwed up our billing, and just generally weren't that good. I'm still not sure where the billing thing sits. I should check on that) About it really.
Plates and why they hate me
So, in the middle of packing up the plates I had in Des Moines I decided that the scary plates that were serving as my everyday plates weren't going to be coming to California with me. For instance, they do weird things in the microwave like melt, but they aren't plastic (this scared me). So those went to goodwill, and the scary ones from the microwave went into the trash. So when I moved to California I was plateless and pots and panless (those went the same way as the plates)
Replacing the pots & pans was easy. I now have a mix of Farberware Classic, Farberware Millenium, and All-Clad pots & pans. I'm quite happy with this arrangement, but will probably slowly aquire more All-Clad, Le Cruset, and Lodge pieces over time. However the plates proved much less easy to deal with.
After finally deciding on a pattern I could buy locally, and buying it and getting it home (fairly happy and looking forward to being able to eat at home) I went to put them in the dishwasher......... Where I found that the plates were too tall, and prevented the upper washing arm from spinning freely.
::blink, blink::
(Insert explitives including: frelling, poo-flinging, and many other ones I won't mention)
I'll admit, I was seriously considering modding the dishwasher to accomidate the dishes. Several other people's more rational "DON'T DO THAT!!!!!" won, and I didn't. Dismayed, the plates went back and I began a new hunt: for plates I could live with, AND that fit in my dishwasher. (Whirlpool, the maker of this dishwasher, has apologized for the inconvience their stupid lack of forsight has caused me. The dishwasher has a "standard" 10in tub and in only 10in plates will work. The plates I bought were 11in. If your renting, measure your plates. If they exceed 10.5in, check the dishwasher before signing the lease)
So yeah, I'm drawing this story out. After checking two Bed Bath and Beyonds, two Linnen and Things, Target, Wallmart, and several online places I ended up at Crate and Barrel. I wandered around their store, checked prices, debated this and that and after a phone call to the master authority on kitchens (my mom) to check on a couple of things I went with the Crate and Barrel Madison collection. A nice elderly lady was helping me out and scurried off to the back room after a small bit of banter to fetch me my plates and such. While she was ringing me up the following happened
Nice Old Lady: So you must have taste.
My inner monologue: Sales pitch for something incoming, or she doesn't think me in a t-shirt and jeans would normally shop here
Nice Old Lady: Why just last week Steve Job's personal chef was in here buying exactly what you are buying, the 16pc set of the Madison Collection, for Steve Job's everyday place settings.
So apparently Steve Job's and I will be eating off of the same pattern of plates and bowls.
Also to note the Crate and Barrel was the Santana Row shopping center, the words "upscale" don't even beging to cover it: I saw three Lamburgini's and two Ferrari's in the maybe 20 minutes I spent getting to and from Crate and Barrel.
Thoughts on California, and why it's just weird here
California is interesting. It has a lot of cultural and local attitudes very unique to it. This is going to all be from the perspective of San Jose / Bay Area as this is all I've really experienced.
(1) WHY CAN'T I FIND A GOOD GROCERY STORE?!?!?! Seriously, I have within reasonable distance two Albertsons, two Safeways and a Trader Joes. They are all small, and more or less carry the same things (caveat I haven't been to one of the Albertons, I'll try them in the next day or so but I'm not holding my breath) The trader Joes is obviously targeting the organic market, but even than it was only like maybe 10 short isles of stuff.
Things I have not been able to find at all that I have looked for:
- rasberry cream cheese
- Dawn Complete - Blue kind (original I believe)
- Jimmy Dean ready to cook bacon
- Pillsbury Chedder Garlic oven baked buscuits
- Garden Of Eatin Black Bean Tortilla Chips - low or no salt variety
- Almond Flour (local friend is looking for it not me)
(list may not be complete it's what I can remember off the top of my head)
So I don't know what to do at this point, I'm willing to expand out in the hopes of finding what I'm looking for, but I don't think I'm going to find it :-/ I'm also truely confused about why a grocery store has an entire isle devoted to computer things, cables, ink cartridges, etc. Thats the job of an office supply store not the job of a grocery. Give me a better grocery!
(2) California is based on the idea of service industries. This one just kind of dawned on me today while I was watching my car get washed. Most car washes out here are a 3 stage process (from what I can tell) They vacume your car out, not amazingly but it's pretty decent enough to get the worst of the dirt out. The normal car wash machine washes your car. Lastly a small horde of people decend upon it and clean the inside, and dry the outside, clean the windows with like windex on the inside, tire grease your tires, etc. It's quite a sight to be seen, and something I'm going to have to get used to. I don't mind detailing the inside of my car, I'll spend a good amount of time doing this, but since I'm out here I know it would be more difficult to do that. Regardless it got me thinking about a few things. There are a lot of duplicated stores around here. Within a 30 mile radious of my apartment there are like 10 - 15 bed baths and beyonds. Within 5 Miles there are 2 Albertsons, 2 Safeways and a couple more smaller grocery stores. there are 5 targets within what I'd consider reasonable driving distance, and a new one to open soon. There are 4 home depots within easy reach of my apartment.
Businesses also seem to try and distinguish themselves by offering you more service to make things more convient or easier on you. Safeway for instance has the ability to shop online and have your groceries delivered. Every home Depot I've seen has a huge selection of rental tools, from normal household tools to huge pieces of equipment (this was never seen out in the midwest or in the north east that I can remember). I'm sure if I think more I can come up with other businesses that go out of their way to make things easier for the consumer. There are two large populations that make this possible: a large number of people with a good chunk of change, silicon valley houses are anything but cheap and a large population of immigrants willing to work for cheap just to start the process of carving out a good life for themselves.
ok it's late and I'm now tired. I'll expound on this more later. I might even keep a running log of things I can't find but I know exist and are still made somewhere else on the site in case people can point me to where I can find them......
Post Note: I got new plates for my car since I had to register out here, I have temporary ones right now but I will eventually be the driver of the "WARTHG9" car ;-)
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