Tuesday morning, the beautiful Steph and I walked to Izzy’s from my place for some breakfast. Izzy’s is a fantastic bagel shop, that I think is so amazing for their delicious varieties of cream cheese. We each got a bagel and split the sun-dried tomato cream cheese. I would love to do more breakfasts like this one in the future.
Sunday night Steph and I took a bike ride to Stanford. We saw the horses there and Steph petted a few of them. After that we went to Palo Alto and stopped by Rocket Fizz. I got some of the cream filled caramels that I like. I was able to get all the bottle caps from them, and it will go well with the other ones in my collection. I’m just about ready to make the table with them, and I expect it to be a nice table. I’m most likely going to do a rainbow pattern or random pattern. I had considered making it into a compilation, somewhat like pixel art, but that didn’t appeal to me too much.
We had dinner at Umami and it was really tasty. I got the Greenbird over fries and gravy. We got the fried pickles, which were surprisingly bad. I normally like fried pickles, but these were too much pickle and too little fried. Steph got the beat salad, and we shared some truffle fries.
After Umami we biked back to my place and Steph made some japanese candy that she found at Rocket Fizz. The candy was for a tiny japanese pizza, but it wasn’t the normal kind of japanese candy that actually tastes like the item. This tasted like sugar covered toffee, and not great toffee at that. Steph still enjoyed it despite the difficulty in eating it.
I went to the 13th annual Russian River Beer Revival and BBQ Cookoff.
None of the pictures here are mine, since I wasn’t about to take a phone or camera to this event.
On the way there Nick and Fred came to pick me up. Fred is the Box intern from last summer that is now full time at Box. The drive there was longer than expected and Nick and Fred were mainly talking about Box and SF Living. I dozed off for a bit, but joined in the conversation when it went back to other things. We got to the campsite right at sunset. I set my tent up wrong at first and had to get Brian and Andy to help so that I could get it set up. We then ran by the grocery store to get food and beer. We had a nice sit around the fire. Andrew and Adam showed up later and they got the tent set up quickly. I went to bed decently early, and had a really restful sleep due to the 4 beer.
The owner of Camp Outback in all his glory. He does fire dancing at night for anyone who wants to watch.
Saturday morning we went into town for some coffee, and I just walked around the town a bit. It is a nice little place. There were a good number of real estate places in the town, and the surrounding area seems incredibly inexpensive when compared to SF or the Bay Area. Shortly after the coffee run we started walking to the main event. I had with me the holder for the small glass, and a cloth for wiping my hands on. Nick, Brian, Candice, and I were VIP, so we got in a little earlier. There was maybe a 5 minute lag between the VIP getting in and everyone else getting in, which wasn’t even close to the 1 hour that was promised. I wasn’t too bothered by it but it was strange how quickly they let in the rest of the crowd. I was a little upset at the first few places giving me so much of the beer, since I wanted to try a little bit of a lot of different beers. The only bad part about the VIP is the larger cup that doesn’t fit the holder, and is far to much when filled up. There was a really amazing ginger beer that I would like to find more of. I’ll have to try some ginger beers to find something as tasty as this was. At the ginger beer booth, one of the hosts offered me a towel and the small glass for the VIP cup. I gladly took it. Nick then went over and got a T-shirt and a small glass for his VIP cup.
I had soooo much BBQ of beef, pork, and chicken. I didn’t even taste the sides this time. All of it was tasty, and most of it was absolutely delicious.
After a little while I decided to get in the river. It was trying to get down the slope to the river while as drunk as we were, but not too bad. The water was colder than I would have liked, but incredibly refreshing for being as cool as it was. I snuck off for a bit after that to take a nap behind the stage. It was incredibly relaxing and I had such a good time.
As the festival was winding down we all started making our way to the upper deck. We set out from there for the pizza place in Guerneville. We got a good bit of pizza and I ate a ton of it. It is quite surprising how much pizza one can eat after an all you can eat and drink beer and bbq festival. It was really tasty pizza.
After the pizza place we went back to camp, and decided to play some open faced chinese poker. It is an interesting game with all sorts of subtlety. I think it would be fun to have poker at my place every so often and play this variant. It has a lot more strategy to the game itself, whereas other forms of poker have more strategy to the meta game. I took a bit of a nap once the light was too dim to continue poker.
Nick and I decided to leave that night, and Andrew decided to join us. We watched the fire dancing, which was pretty good that night, then we left. On the way back we ran into some crazy construction on 880 that took the highway down to 1 lane. It took us around 45 minutes to clear that section, but that was the only delay. I was dropped off first, since I’m just on the other side of the Dumbarton Bridge.
I really enjoyed the festival, but I don’t think I’ll be going again. The over-drinking and over-eating are things that I will be doing without as much of. I think Nick was feeling the same way about it. I love the atmosphere and the festival, but it has run its course for me.
Today Nick and I went to dinner at Oren’s Hummus. We got the Shakshuka and Labane combo, and it was just as good as I remember it being. We each got a Sam Adams and it was a really nice dinner all together. Nick is still looking for places and it will most likely be in SF for him. Afterwards we went to my new place and Nick thought it was decently nice. I put in a new shower head and bought the x10 system for automation. I might need to get a few more pieces to have it all work properly, but it will be entirely worth it in the end.
Today was my last day of looking at places. The only place that I considered vs. the basement studio was a little house in Palo Alto on the North side of University. It was in the back of a multiplex, but still rather nice. Nick didn’t seem up for it, since it was decently small. I ended up taking the basement studio in EPA thanks to the reviews from Nick and Bill. I am going to try to spruce the place up tomorrow and move in mostly on Monday. I need to still meet the woman that lives upstairs, and especially set up how we are going to work out the internet situation. Comcast has the house registered as a single address, and apparently it would be a pain to split it (not to mention more expensive).
While on the search we stopped by the Chocolate Garage, which was packed. Then we went to BackAYard and had a really tasty lunch. It will be nice living so close to there and downtown Palo Alto.
I’ll be moving the kitties on Monday as well, so they will be back to the real toilet for toilet training instead of the cardboard setup I’m using now. I’ll probably keep them on this sized hole for the next 2 weeks while they acclimate to the new house.
This movie was ok. The plot seemed quite forced, and the characters were incredibly flat. There weren’t many points when a character did something that you wouldn’t expect, and only the main character had a redeeming moment. Even the redeeming moment was expected, and the plot point for it seemed forced. I’d say the theory of the movie, and the action sequences make it worth seeing, but the plot makes it just ok.
Nick and I went to the AMC 20 to see this movie, and on the way we had dinner at Tandori Kitchen. We both got the Chicken Tikka Masala, which was mediocre for what it was.
Tonight I went to dinner with Royi since he is in town for training with Yahoo. We went to Bon Chon Chicken and it was fantastic. The chicken had a really crunch outside, and the spicy version was tasty as well. We talked about all sorts of stuff, and then went back to my place to see the kitties. They were really playing hard, and didn’t want to show off their tricks.
This evening I joined Steph, Nick, Tina, Amit, Candice, and Brian at Rooster T Feathers for a Comedy night. The MC was pretty good, the first act (Sandy Stec) had great jokes and ok timing, and the main act (Sheng Wang) was really funny with only a few jokes that fell short. I had a really good time and will probably be going back for more comedy shows. They had a special for tonight, with $10 for 2 people, but you had to buy 2 items from the menu each as well. I got 2 drinks, since afterwards we were going to Shah. The food at Shah was a little bland, but I did really like the aloo naan (potato stuffed bread).
I went to the chocolate garage yesterday morning with Nick, and it was really nice. I didn’t get any of the chocolate there since I have way to much to go through at my place still, but I did taste some really nice chocolates. I will have to get some of the spicy chocolates next time I go, especially patrick’s habenero.
It's an Exciting World 