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Archive for October, 2007

Just another day in SF

Posted in Uncategorized on October 30th, 2007 by jforbess

Sitting in a seafood restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf I got to experience my first earthquake ever! 5.6 on the Richter scale, epicenter in Milpitas, close to San Jose, about 50 miles away. Despite being in a massive tourist-repurposed warehouse, it wobbled like the 100-year-old house in Somerville when the wind blew. Wacky. One of my party used his Treo to find out the stats immediately, and the waitstaff was calling wherever you call to find out how bad it was. I just sat there and tried to figure out if I was disappointed it wasn’t bigger or not.

Entertaining moments in SF

Posted in Uncategorized on October 30th, 2007 by jforbess

Since I was too lame to document the interesting days I had as they happened, here’s an executive summary:

A bicycle ride around Treasure Island, looking for a specific radium-contaminated building with Zoz. It was a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, and Treasure Island gives off that sort of post-apocalyptic industrial wasteland kind of feeling. Zoz’s accent made me feel as though I was in Mad Max.

A evening of dancing English Regency with a friend of Death, preceded by dinner at a raw food cafe in Berkeley. We were certainly the youngest people there. All of the intimacy was in the eye contact, as one would expect having read Jane Austen novels. After one or two dances, I started to feel autistic and unable to make eye contact. I wanted to go blues dancing with another friend of Death, but ran out of time. Blues dancing is the kind where you are in close bodily contact with your partner. I wanted to figure out if it was harder for me to make continual eye contact or continual body contact.

Rock climbing with Droid at his gym, feeling better about my ability to enjoy the sport than ever before. He’s a good coach.

I waffled over plans to motorcycle down to Santa Cruz to buy a fixed gear bicycle. It was a selling point that I would have had to bicycle it back. A nice leisurely two days on a fixed gear. Totally.

I became obsessed with creating my own sourdough starter, and documenting it on Instructables. After trying out three different methods to create a starter and baking three batches of bread in three days, I realized that they had all worked beautifully because San Francisco is the home of the several strains of bacteria that give sourdough its sourness, collectively known as Lactobacillus sanfrancisco. So I need to perform this experiment in Austin or Nebraska. I haven’t documented anything because I haven’t come to any conclusions, and I decided to figure out the ideal method before putting anything up.

For some subconscious reason I haven’t yet pinned down, I was easily persuaded to bake. Five batches of bread, tiramisu (requiring four trips to the grocery store), strawberry pie and brownies over the course of five weeks.

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Last known wedding of 2007

Posted in Uncategorized on October 12th, 2007 by jforbess

Last weekend I attended my last wedding of 2007 (that I am currently aware of, anyway). The invitation included a line requesting elven attire. So I spent far too much time worrying about elf ears — but with excellent results.

Death and I documented the process on Instructables. The photos are pretty awesome.

Okay, Death finally got around to processing the rest of the photos from the wedding, and you can see them at pix.loath.org. They are, if possible, pretty awesomer.

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Weather in SF

Posted in Uncategorized on October 12th, 2007 by jforbess

Everyone always says “We don’t have weather in California — we have climate.” Ha. Wednesday night I stood at the bus stop just outside the gate to Treasure Island staring at the SF skyline while it poured. It was pouring so hard Zoz’s office ceiling was leaking in at least six spots.

Then the bus passed me. And didn’t slow down as I ran into the street. And then ran after it screaming. At quarter to one in the morning. The next bus was due at one thirty in the morning. And it would take me to downtown SF where I would have to catch another bus. I couldn’t even start walking towards downtown SF because pedestrians aren’t allowed on the Bay Bridge.

Instead I flagged down a taxi and thanked my lucky stars that I could afford to. And that there was one passing by.

Thursday night I stared at the same skyline from the back of Death’s motorcycle. A superior way to travel.