thank you, 'china'

well, so much for my plan to post every day. i just noticed my last post was the night before i started work. So, much more to come on that front later . . . but right now I just have to thank 'china' because if we sit in one corner of the living room, there's an unsecured wireless network.

No thanks go to comcast who is still accepting our money for our own wireless modem . . .

encouraging sign for a harmonious household. . .

My roommate came home today with about five dozen oysters!

They were delicious (even if they were west coast oysters ;) ), and I am now a fan of the oyster shooter: an oyster in a shot glass with a drizzle of hot chili sauce.

Jonathan picked them from an oyster farm a few hours outside the city and then shucked them himself in our kitchen sink. He used a screwdriver and a lot of elbow grease. I tried to open one . . . emphasis on the tried . . . sheepishly, i have to admit he loosened it. Even if it wasn't all my own labor, it was still absolutely delicious straight from the shell.


mmmmmm, oysters.

Hopefully they will be good brain food - tomorrow is my first day of work!

Star Wars

For all you OC fans out there, I've been driving down the 101 . . .







And from the road you can see these cool cranes along the Oakland waterfront. Everyone here is very excited that George Lucas has set up some film studio thing in an area of town called the Presidio.

It's not surprising that he's attached to San Francisco - these cranes are supposedly (and clearly!) the inspiration for those big tank-like things in the Star Wars movies. If anyone wants to add a comment with the name of those vehicles, please do!

a momentous two days

I've found an apartment!! It's in Noe Valley, which everyone tells me is the warmest (and sunniest) micro-climate in the city . . . and it's gorgeous. I'll have two roommates, but my own bathroom! Jonathan (my first new roommate) and I met for dinner at a sushi restaurant of his choice . . . it was out in Berkeley and although it was the same concept as conveyer belt sushi, the little plates came around a moat on boats. Seemed like we might make good roommates based on his choice of restaurant alone! And the place is amazing - I can't quite believe it's real. We have a huge kitchen, a dining room, a living room with a working fireplace, laundry, a garage for my car, and a ROOFDECK with panoramic views of the city.

My bedroom will be so huge, I think I'll have a fold-out couch along with a bed, and I've bought a 26 inch tv to keep in there. (visitors are WELCOME!) Amazingly, the cost of both a bedroom tv and another plasma for the living room (I do love tv) were CHEAPER than the tv I bought a year ago! I'm excited about my whole set-up - it will practically be studio living when I feel like it and an entire apartment with roommates for when I'm feeling social. Plus, it's actually CHEAPER than living alone. I really feel lucky. I keep pinching myself and touching the keys to make sure they are real!

The weather has also been making me feel like things are going a little too well to believe - beautiful blue skies, warm sun and just enough breeze to make a sweater comfortable. We ate in-n-out burgers for lunch (delicious) sitting outside on a picnic table in the sun.

The Sutcliffes (Dean, Stacy, Meghan and Amy, + the fiances, Jamie and Chewy) have continued to be wonderful to us - we all enjoyed delicious chinese food tonight and had a great time talking about all the tv shows and movies we like. Just like Josephine and I discovered, it's uncanny how many traits really do run in families. Dent genes (those from Gram Tink and her four sisters) are strong.

Dean told an interesting story today - I may get some of the details wrong but it's so fascinating I hope you'll like it too.

During the Kennedy administration, supposedly a room full of Generals were studying some aerial shots of Cuba trying to determine whether there was any Russian military presence on the island. Pierre Salinger, the press secretary (and Frenchman) wandered through the room, glanced at the photos and said casually, "When did the Russians get to Cuba?"

All of the generals and intelligence officers did an about take and dragged him back to explain just what he meant by that. He pointed out that Cuban soldiers trained by playing baseball, and Russian soldiers preferred soccer. Since there were now soccer fields showing up in aerial photos of Cuba . . . well, the rest is the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Neat, huh?

Tomorrow the movers come - between 9 and 11, and the tv is delivered between 9:30 and 11:30. It's frightening how easily (and quickly) it all came together. At this rate, I think I'll be pretty settled by work on Monday! Amazing. It will be sad when my mom leaves on Saturday though. If anyone is out there reading this, you can expect phone calls Saturday afternoon.

Tomorrow will be a busy day, so I ought to go off to bed . . . but, last but not least, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!!!

The bar is OVER

Four soft lead number two pencils, three grueling days, two packages of tic tacs, one borrowed computer (thank you leslie!) and a million and one sighs wondering why I have to do this again. Now I'm just left with about twenty-five things answers I would change. . . .. but at least it's over. Thursday night there was lots of pink champagne and a fabulous dinner with friends of my future co-worker who also took the bar. Friday was watching the new Bond movie from my hotel room bed (I approve of Daniel Craig) while waiting for my mom to arrive, and then plenty of wandering, margaritas, and yes, more champagne.


Even with all the champagne, relaxation hasn't quite sunk in yet. We moved out of the Oakland Convention Center Marriot and into the spare room in Castro Valley. Dean and Stacy (my mom's cousins) have been wonderful - fed us, provided moral support, and yesterday Dean chauffered me and my mom as we went apartment hunting! It made the process so much better. Plus, the weather really wants me to find a place - it has been BEAUTIFUL here. It's a dream to wander around the neighborhoods and every room looks bright and sunny. It won't always be like this, so we hit up some nice tourist vistas along the way.



Ah, apartment hunting. It's not so bad, but not the dream search I was hoping for as compared to New York. For starters, there are no brokers. It's nice not to pay and arm and a leg to an intermediary, but the downside is that there's a lot of legwork involved in finding any apartments! Craigslist has been great, but it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's a photo of the rest of the team:


Saturday was quite discouraging, but I have more places to look at today and some promising leads from yesterday - I've applied for two one-bedroom apartments and have been offered a place in a four-bedroom apartment with three other girls. The share situation is a small room, but the girls seem cool and the deck with a bbq and laundry room are enticing. . . we'll see. I'm looking forward to getting past this part and on to the fun part of buying sheets and a new bed!