Saturday Morning

While I was waiting at the airport gate there was a girl across the corridor who seemed to be staring at me. She kept turning her head and looking towards me for long periods at a time. She was kind of cute and by herself so I started thinking about going over there and keeping her company. Luckily I was still debating this in my head when her boyfriend came back. She was probably just waiting for him anxiously. He had a buzz cut and looked like he might have been in the marines or something even though he was in civvie dress. Then I started psychologizing and thinking about her having an insecure attachment to him because of his time in the military and that's why she kept staring at the area where he would be coming from. I'm nuts, it's all in my imagination, but that's how I think when I watch people. When time came for her to go away and leave him by himself, he sat with head in hands, and didn't really look towards the corridor like she did.

I'm writing this on my Delta Song flight to NYC. The plane is freakin' awesome. So much leg room and each seat has its own entertainment system with screens build in. These newfangled systems are nice, you can order one of a bunch of movies, or watch 24 channels of free tv, or play games, or (as I'm doing) listen to one of over 1600 mp3's. They have tons of full albums, and I guess it's not *so* great because I have with me the laptop and my mp3 player, but it's still nice to plug into new music while I'm here. Muchos nice and comfortable, I think the plane is brand new.

I spoke to my older brother a few days ago and asked him how the kids are doing. He told me he watched the Narnia with my older niece the other day and she sat through the whole thing and didn't take her eyes off the screen. She can really get into stuff when she's interested. Afterwards she was totally drained. He told me she understood the story and seemed upset when Aslan died. He had to reassure her that he's coming back. I suggested he constantly explain to her that movies are not real and that the people in them are just pretending. When they showed the trailer for Narnia on the in-flight entertainment system I got a little misty eyed. It's stupid stuff like that which makes me miss my family. It's only been like 2 weeks.

I'm looking forward to seeing David when I get to New York. I was going to bring him some sesame snaps. I took a bunch of them when I left home and I know he likes 'em. But he'll have to make due with the gallons of booze I feed him later tonight. We've been pals for like 10 years or longer, so I know this fellow likes his sesame snaps. I love New York. I haven't even arrived and I'm already looking forward to the next time I return.

(I am posting this now 'cause I didn't have 'net access, look forward to more on the rest of my trip soon...)

Pesto Fro'pi

So today at work I got my part of the GUI working at a reasonable state. The guy who is in charge of the interface was totally wowed by it. Words like "wonderful" and "amazing" were thrown around. I think I'm being too productive, though. What if I get everything done and there's no more work for me? They'll pat me on the back and send me packing early!

Now for the mandatory talk of food that nobody really cares about: For lunch I had a chicken Caesar wrap. It was nothing special, but at least it's midway between salad and food.

For dinner I made a quickie salad and a frozen pizza that has to be the tastiest one I've ever eaten. It's a cheese pesto pizza with my own extra toppings and a very tasty whole wheat crust. I think I picked this up from Whole Foods because it said organic all over the box. The dough tastes kind of like a herby soft focaccia.

I finally got my VOIP equipment from Vonage. It's really sweet, good line quality, cheap as hell. I have a number in L.A. and a virtual number in Toronto that allows people there to call me without long distance charges. To all my friends in Saskatchewan: Sorry but you're shit outta luck. Never try to contact me. I mean it!

I'm flying out to NYC early tomorrow morning. No blog updates until I'm nursing a hangover in my hotel room on Sunday night. Wooohoo?

Hari "Can You Hear Me Now?" Krishna

Today for lunch I had salad. I make sure to eat a salad at least every other day at work. It's so tasty, but I think my body is not accustomed to the input because by 3pm my stomach was hurting.

So I'm planning a caper.

Here's the story, my boss's wife has a client/friend who is the widow of a famous director (Stanley Kramer), this lady has a particular task that she has requested of my boss while he's in New York next week with the rest of us. She needs him to take a painting of her's to Sothenby's to be appraised/authenticated. If it's real, it could be worth anywhere between $5 million and $10 million. The world expert on the particular painter will be in NYC this weekend so it presents a perfect opportunity. However, the boss is understandably nervous about walking around with a piece of paper worth 5 mil. So if anyone wants "in", let me know. I need the following: a wheel man, someone who can get things, a master of disguise, a hot sassy dame (not for the caper, for me), and a contortionist (optionally for me).

Sometimes you get crazy stories out here. Apparently there is a very well known guy in the "industry" named Wook. He actually legally changed his name to Wook. He has a big crazy beard and is a bit of an eccentric. He goes into meetings in sandals and overalls, swears like a sailor, and has been known to throw $12,000 computer equipment at a wall in frustration.

There's someone who owns a Z8 at the building where I work. I don't know who he is, but I hate him. There are also about a million Z4's here. Seriously. I went to Fry's Electronics and saw four of them leaving the parking lot as I was entering. I want I want I want.

Oh, as for the title, I saw three Hari Krishna's (or buddhist monks I can't tell) shopping for a cell phone at Fry's. It made me smile.

The Sociology of Urinals

So today was a typical day, you can tell by the lack of updates that my life is both too boring to write about and too busy to have the time.

Work is still fun. I am always amazed at how fast my extra-long day flies by because I am genuinely interested in what I'm doing and doing it well. Compare that to Avenza where I was usually falling asleep by 2pm. I think the difference is in focus. At Avenza I spent a lot of time surfing barely-legal goat porn (5+ years old), exchanging funny links, chatting, etc. Surprisingly, this sort of distraction is actually more boring and tiring than being engrossed in interesting work. I went to the DMV during lunch to finish my car registration and after work I went to a State Farm place to sign up for car insurance.

It was pretty amusing to deal with the insurance people, these guys stay at work until very late and are all good friends. They also have a pretty kickass conference room with a big screen TV and so on. Anyway, as soon as this agent guy found out I make software he said they need someone to do freelance making modifications to their existing software. I told him I might be up for it, but that I'm expensive. We'll see, I might follow up with him about it next week. Do I really want more work? This might be sweet to do on the side.

At Thomson I've noticed something peculiar that I feel is important to bring to everyone's attention. Our washroom has exactly two urinals and three stalls. While this fact is not earthshattering, what is strange is that one urinal is your typical man-height urinal, but the other one is at the right height for a child or midget. Now, since we know that Thomson doesn't employ children (at least not in their North American offices; the Beijing lab, however...), we are left with only one conclusion: Thomson has a midget-to-norm ratio of 1:1. This is stupendous. I haven't really *seen* any midgets around the office campus, but based on this evidence I'm sure there are many of them around. Maybe they get a different lunch hour so that they avoid getting crushed by the rest of us. What I don't get is how come there is only the one life-size chess set outside the building. How do the midgets play chess when the pieces are so big relative to them? Do they get forklifts or something? Is there a version of the Segway for these little people?

Don't be giving me guff about calling them midgets. At least I'm not calling them "talking footballs" or "another one of my fetishes".

Tomorrow I will write about the co-worker nuances that drive me crazy whenever I start a new job.

Sunday Driver

So this morning I met up with my Israeli compadre to get his car inspected. We were told it'd take about an hour and a half so we went for coffee and chatted for a long while. When we came back we were told it'd be another hour, so we went for lunch at McDonalds. I hate McDick's but there wasn't anything else around. I had their "new" spicy chicken. It's tiny but pretty decent. Yosi gave me a tip that Carl's Jr. has an amazing santa fe chicken sammich. He also confirmed shoebox's allegations that In & Out burger is the best burger in L.A.. He's a good guy, easy to get along with. Anyway when the inspection was finally done we got a list of all the shit that needs to be done and basically subtracted that from the price and I paid him in cashola. The car is being worked on and will be ready for me to pick up tomorrow. After I paid him and got home, I looked up the Carfax report for the vehicle. By this point I already had the pink slip in hand etc. Anyway, long story short, stuff came up on the report that raised alarm bells for me and I started freaking out that he ripped me off. There was a good hour of total panic until I finally spoke to him and he reassured me it's fine. No point in going into the details here but suffices to say if you get a car title and on it the word "suspend" appears, you freak out. All good now.

I would have been in total shock if this nice guy I hung out with all day was out to screw me. We even made tenative plans to get together for a drink during the week.

Let's see, other things of note...

I did laundry for the first time ever. I used some "organic" detergent I picked up at Whole Foods just because it was on the way home. My clothes came out intact so I ain't complaining.

For dinner I made my first attempt at pad thai. It came as a box of noodles and some sauce. I didn't have key pad thai components such as bean sprouts, peanuts, or scallions, but I made due with spanish onion and green pepper. I also very quickly realized that my puny frying pan is not enough for all the things I was loading into it. Lesson learned. It came out reasonably tasty and if it causes any problems on the way out, I'll be sure to let you, my faithful readers, know about it.

Here's a picture I took with my crappy webcam. I love taking pictures of food I make. You will likely see many more instances of Gil Dinner Pics in the future.

Gil Kan Kook

Okay so my culinary skills are generally limited to bringing frozen or dehydrated foods up to their edible states, but it still counts as cooking!

Today I went to see a couple of car possibilities. Right now I'm torn between a '97 Accord that needs some work but is cheaper and a '00 Civic that needs nothing but costs more. There are many variables.

Oxymoron of the day: City National Bank on Sunset near the strip.

For dinner I'm making some rice, frozen stir fry veggies, and these chicken tender things. My cookin' music is Feist; she's not just for makeouts anymore! Tomorrow I'll make a nice pad thai, I would have tonight but the chicken wasn't thawed. I'm writing this before I taste my cooking because, well, I don't want to know if it comes out bad :) The rice especially I had to eyeball the water, 'cause I got not measuring cup. I also have no spices other than salt and oregano. I have no cooking oil but only butter. Fun facts about the Gil bachelor life!

Next weekend I'm flying down to Jersey for a couple days of meetings, along with the rest of the team from Burbank. The great news is that they're gonna fly me into NYC early so I can hang out with Dave for a day or two before joining up with the rest of the cats in good 'ole Princeton, NJ. Business travel rules when you have someone to see!

Big in Japan

So today was a very fun day at work. I spent most of my time writing new code and learning something completely new, and I was so totally into it that when the time came to have a meeting I was suffering from sitting around and listening to someone bitch and moan and wanted to get back to coding. I usually hate coding but when it's a clean slate and you have a clear idea of what you want to do... Well, I don't know about actual fun but I was in the flow state and the day blew by.

Since I got there late on account of banking, I had to stay a bit later and finally got to experience the sort of L.A. traffic that makes a guy start shouting "I have to make a phone call" while pummeling a stranger's brains into a pulp. I've realized that during my commute home there is always one random song I hear that stands above all the other crap I hear. Yesterday it was Whitesnake - Here I Go Again. Today it was Alphaville - Big in Japan. A few days ago it was Murray Head - One Night in Bangkok. These are nuggets of pure gold, anyone who is as smart and sophisticated as me would think they're amazing! Bump, Set, ...

When I re-rented a car today, I (as always) asked the guy at the counter if he'd waive the under-25 driving charge. He said he couldn't, but if I was in the military it wouldn't apply. One of the "ethnic" fellows behind me said "ya! if you're old enough to die..." and let the rest of it trail off. I told him I was old enough to die. He said I should join up. While it's a good way to get a rental car discount, I just don't have the time. Maybe next war.

Hmph

I'm not in much of a mood to write today. The car fell through.

Gil moment of the day: I went to check my snail mail and smelled reefer in the hall. I think it's my cool across-the-hall neighbour. I think he even had people over. When I got back to my apartment I heard people in the hall so I scoped out the peephole for like a solid 5 minutes waiting to catch a glimpse of my neighbours. No dice. They are probably really really tiny and impossible to see with the naked eye.

I like that old song that is used in some new hip hop track, I keep missing its name but the lyrics are like "girrll, I'll be in trouble if you let me know \ I don't know where to look for love, I just don't know howww" Don't any of you tell me who this song is by! Don't you dare!

I'm also kinda bummed because for whatever random excuse I made up in my head, I typed out an email to someone I have no business emailing. I stared at it, realized what a dope I am, and closed it without sending. It sucks that we live in a world with emails unsent and true things unknownen.

Great News

I got screws! Now I have everything I need for my weekend of putting on overalls and going all Holmes on Homes. In other much less important news, I found a car that I'm settling for and probably buying on saturday morning. It's a '98 civic with some modifications that I really don't want but some asian kid must have thought were the coolest things in the world. I am becoming what I've always despised: a performance-oriented asian. Not that there's anything wrong with performance, or Asians for that matter.

Work was work, still getting set up etc. During my lunch break I had to go return a rental car and rent another car, so I didn't have time to eat. And I went to see the Civic after work, so I didn't get any food in me until 8ish. I made frozen pizza and decided to pre-eat so that I don't stuff myself with dough. I had some campbell's soup-at-hand (same old shitty campbell's soup, but now with a plastic sipping lid!), and some greens with newman's own honey mustard dressing. I had hoped these relatively unfattening things would fill me up and I'd eat less pizza. But I ended up eating about what I would have eaten anyway. So now I'm bloated.

Speaking of bloated, I discovered a slimfast shake hidden in the fridge behind the giant gallon of milk. It's pretty obvious that it was hidden on purpose because the fridge was pretty much empty when I got it except for the milk and wonderbread. But among the canned goods she left, there is also a little container of dehydrated beef granules. Now that can't be healthy, damn it!

Speaking of beef granules, when driving to see the car, I passed by a tall brownstone building with a big sign on the top saying "Gaylord". Now, this wasn't a billboard, this is the kind of sign that buildings put on top to announce the name of the building like it's a landmark.

On the way back I was driving north on Vine and finally saw the Hollywood sign. I hadn't seen it before until now. I realize that the evil scientology building is blocking my view of The Mighty Sign. Forgive us our scientology, oh Sign!

My Favourite Grownup Activity

Well, maybe it's a tie. But I'll get to it.

Today was another work day, I'm going to start spreading out the updates because really not much happens when you're at work. Although I will say this, I am deriving a lot of amusement out of work because the design of the thing I'm working on is so bad. I don't feel like writing a whole lot about that, and most of you people who aren't Jenn are probably not interested in hearing what I have to say about user interface design, but suffices to say that this one is very very bad. So that was work. For lunch I had a salad from the 50km long salad bar they have at the office cafeteria. It's pretty freakin' good. I never got the fascination with salad bars until now. They have every topping you could ever want to put on a salad. It reminded me of my dad, who is world renowned for his nutty "everything" which really make use of every available thing that could possibly go on top of a salad including nuts and seeds. I just had one with chicken and mushrooms and some feta. It was good and a much needed shot of vitamins. I can see myself transitioning to just this kind of food because I felt so much better after eating it than the guy who ate a greasy burger and curly fries.

After work I went grocery shopping. Yes, I really enjoy the process of shopping for my own food. It's so impulsive, and yet I spent at least 5 minutes trying to pick out which butter to get. Afterwards I had to go to the drug store to buy hand moisturizer (still haven't recovered from the damage your fucking Canadian winter did to my sensitive sabra hands). One of the aisles contained condoms and feminine hygiene products on one side, and children's toys on the other. This is the kind of stuff that I chuckle at when I'm alone.

Still no car. The rentals are bleeding me dry, I'm going to start taking cabs.

The Excitement Never Ends!

I probably had a bunch of stuff to write about, but in my colossal stupidity, I stepped out for a walk and forgot my key. The drug store was closed, and I grabbed a pizza slice on the way back. At $3.24 for a cheese slice it was a big ripoff. Then came the suckiness of realizing I didn't have my key. Had to wait about an hour for the maintenance guy to come and let me in. I feel like such a clito. Did we trade places? Is this like an extended director's cut of Freaky Friday? Adam, are you getting places on time? God save us.

Let's see if I can remember anything else...

First day of work, nothing exciting. My hours will be 9-6 including a one hour lunch. It felt good to leave the office and know how much moolah I made for just sitting there with thumb in ass. Although, my work machine runs linux and access to the outside world is tightly controlled, so I don't think I'll be able to chat on msn or anything. It seems that I'll have to do actual real work for the entire 8 hours of "work". Sucky. The office building campus is kinda cool though. There is a tennis court, vollyball court, basketball court, and life-size chess in the various open areas between buildings. It's really beautifully landscaped. I look forward to playing chess with myself and having my coworkers think I'm some demented genius. When in fact I'm a dumbass who get locked out within 3 days of moving into an apartment. Good times!

I went to see a potential used Camry to buy, it was perfect but for the fact that the guy selling it only wanted to get rid of it at the end of the month. I can't keep a rental for that long so I'm kinda screwed there. He was a nice gent though. Indian fellow who works at WB doing some software. He is moving back to India to be with his family or something. I think he just misses the curry because the car had no smell to it and that means he probably isn't getting any.

My across the hall neighbour is probably a cool guy. While I was standing in the hall waiting to be rescued, he was blasting Jay-Z. He's probably at least as cool as me if he likes Jay-Z, right??

One of the co-workers is named Auke. He is dutch and it took me a long time to remember that you pronounce his name like "awww-kah".

Tune in tomorrow, I'll probably lose a jacket.

Never Underestimate My Love For Ikea

So today I don't have much to talk about. I got up and drove out to burbank to the Ikea store to pick up some space-wise organizing solutions for my domestic vida loca. Ikea is so fucking good. I can't properly express the feeling I have when I'm there and all of the products I want to buy are even in the right order as I walk down the unidirectional arrow path through the various departments. They have freakin' frying pans for $2.99! WTF! I also bought some wall-mounted shelving for the bathroom and a thing for the kitchen where I can put dishes and hang pans. Damn those Swedes!

Anyway, once I got back I decided to have a walk through the farmer's market that they have here right outside my building every Sunday. It's real good with live music and all sorts of fresh prepared food and produce for sale. I heard good things about the tamales, but I got a chicken souvlaki lunch instead and ate it in my apartment. Once that was done I had to drive the rental car back to the airport so I could rent another car for a few more days with the intention of returning it to burbank near my work. On the way out of my parking spot I dinged the corner of a parked Audi TT. Luckily it was super slow and I'm reasonably sure I didn't do damage to either car. Just scuffs. But it left me with an uneasy stressed out feeling for the rest of the day.

That's about it, I had lined up an Acura Integra to see but the girl called me and told me she sold it. Shitty. If I don't find a car by wednesday, I'll have to start taking cabs to and from work. It actually works out to be cheaper than renting a car and I can probably get by on foot the rest of the time until I get wheels.

Random Notes:

I saw my first prostitute this afternoon. She was walking along Hollywood just east of Vine. I was considering tapping that, but it turned out she wasn't into Battlestar Galactica. So I figured I'd wait for someone better to come along.

I passed by the "famous" Laugh Factory comedy club, and noted to myself that Jon Lovitz performs there every Wednesday. I'll have to check that out sometime.

Relax, I Found Alec's Star

Not Baldwin, Guinness. Today I woke up nice and early and checked out of the hotel. I pricelined a 4 night stay and only ended up using two nights, and it turns out that priceline doesn't let you get any money back, so as it turns out I could have spent those two nights at a 4 star hotel for the same money. Boo, but oh well.

I hauled ass to the new place and moved all my crap in, which is really not much crap except for the 500 pound suitcase which I already strained my shoulder carrying earlier. At least now it's all here and I am unpacked. Afterwards I went to a Toyota dealer to waste some time haggling over shitty cars. They overcharge so much that it's a joke. I'm definitely going the private sale route.

I went to Bed Bath & Beyond to pick up some stuff for the loft. This was actually kinda fun because it's the first time I've had the ability to control every aspect of my living space. I bought some blue sheets for my bed along with a thin beige blanket. I also bought a bunch of kitchen necessities like plates, glasses, cutlery, etc. You never have a clue how much this shit adds up in terms of cost until you have to buy it all from scratch. I then made my way to my local Ralph's grocery store to stock up on some essentials like Tropicana and sliced turkey sandwich meat. I also picked up a small frozen 'za which I made and ate happily. Oh, and I also got some "real San Francisco sourdough" bread. To me it just looks like subway bread, but hey what do I know? I'll let you know how it tastes, I know you are dying to find out.

So that's it for my saturday, not much excitement to speak of, really. I guess the more settled down I get the more free time I have to kill. Today after everything was done it was only 5 o'clock and I took a nap, out like a light!

By the way, although the view from my window points out to cosmo street, which is little more than a glorified alley, I can still see a few tall buildings that are around. These include: The Capitol Records building, and the Church of Scientology building. It must be their headquarters or something because it's a big oppressive brown building. I hope their psycho-waves don't reach me, but just in case, I have my tinfoil hat on.

Alec Guinness's star on the walk of fame is right outside of Bed Bath & Beyond, on Vine. He really got the shaft on that one, nyuk nyuk.

I'm Not A Racist But...

Day 2: I woke up early and drove out to Santa Monica. I wanted to see what it's like before commiting to the loft in Hollywood. It's a very nice area that's probably lots of fun if you don't work for a living. I would have been glad to live around there but for the commute. I timed my visit there so that I could do a test run of my commute to burbank from there.

I ended up "leaving" at 8:45 and got to burbank by 9:15ish. Traffic was really light so I was a bit suspicious of my results. I think easter had something to do with it. The rain might also be a factor since it seems people here are not used to driving in any kind of weather so they freak out at the sight of rain and avoid the roads.

After I got to burbank and drove past my workplace, I got a call back from a lady I had called yesterday about seeing her place in santa monica. Once I told her where I am working she basically said I am welcome to see the place if I want, but the commute would kill me. Probably the 5th person discouraging me from doing that to myself. So I decided that it makes more sense to live close to work since I'll be going there way more than the beach (unfortunately).

Eventually I made my way around the big hill and ended up in Hollywood. I went to the famous Mel's Diner for breakfast. It was pretty tasty and what you'd expect from diner food. The only expensive bit was a shot glass full of freshly squeezed OJ. $2.50 for that sucker but I need the vit-C in the morning. After that I went to the bank to open an account. The girl who was helping me was pretty cool in spite of her braces with elastics on. We got to talking quite a bit about what there is to do in the city and how crazy I am for paying through the nose for a loft in Hollywood when she is paying peanuts for a nice place in Glendale, which, from everything I've heard is where people go to die. Her only complaint was that everyone in Glendale is Armenian and nosy. After that we got to talking about the immigration conflict that's going on here. Although it's a national issue I guess since we're so near the mexican border people here are very affected by it. She said "I'm not a racist but..." which if you don't know is what people say just before they say something racist. She said the workers have no right to be here because they just came illegally when they could have done it the right way. She also mentioned something about building a big anti-mexican wall. Anyway, I tried to explain the immigrant's point of view, especially since they're so close to the border, it's like working on one side of the street for shit-all and if you cross it you get paid well, of course you'd cross the damned street. And who cares, anyway? Aren't they doing the work that no American wants to do? I like the variety of taco restaurants here, damn it.

After that I came back to the hotel for a bit and got a call from the loft to come over to finalize things, so I jetted back there and spent a couple of hours doing the various boring things that in the end resulted in the not-so-boring getting of the keys to my place! I'm very happy with the choice and even though it's expensive, I don't care, it'll be worth it if my commute is short and my drunken stumble home from bars is too. I will, however, be living in what has been described to me by Shoebox as the hooker capital of Los Angeles (and maybe the world). I will do my best to resist the temptation. Actually it'll be easy.

Tomorrow I will move my stuff into the place and go shopping for necessities like cookware and groceries. Also need to start hitting the car dealerships in search of el camino.

Random notes:

I passed by a restaurant called Ghenghis Cohen. I thought it was funny.

After picking up my dinner sub, I turned into a turn lane and had to cut into the next lane in order to go straight. I happened to be cautiously cutting off a black man. I was looking in the side mirror to make sure he was letting me in and I saw him stick his whole head out the window and yell "MOVE MOTHERFUCKER!!". It was amazing. Part of me was hoping he'd pull a gun at the next light so that this would be a Real L.A. Story, but alas he didn't even look at me.

I Didn't Bring The Gray Hoodie

On Purpose. So I've arrived! It was a pretty exhausting journey. After I boarded the plane from philly to L.A., the pilot decided he wanted to grab a (very) early lunch, parked the plane for an hour, and ran down to that place where the cook has a gun. Anyway, after landing I ran around lugging my 5,000 lb luggage, got a rental car, and checked myself into the fanciest marriot in bev hills. I got in touch with a girl about a loft in Hollywood and went down to see it. I like this place muchly so I think I'm gonna take it.

It's located on a street called Cosmo near Hollywood Blvd. You can see the location on google maps here

I wanted a place in Santa Monica, but it's too ridiculous a drive to work every day, and frankly, since I'll be going to work 100x more than the beach it makes no sense to live by the beach. Although, I am going to do a test run. Tomorrow morning I'm heading to the 'monica for a bit of fresh air, and then I'll simulate a commute to work at burbank from there at rush hour. The loft is nice, it's a former furniture warehouse, newly converted into loft space. They were filming an episode of Monk there earlier in the day, and when I showed up to see it there were 2 fake cop cars parked on the street. I thought it meant the loft is in a sketchy 'hood until I saw they were "SF PD" cars.

I hate my new digital one-rate cell phone plan. The reception is horrible. I had chicken pot pie from one of the L.A. equivalents of Soby's. I also have a tube of cheezums flavour pringles but I can't get myself to open it because my stomach hurts from all the crap I've eaten in the last few days. Pesach officially broken. I'm sorry God, but you know how it is when you move to a new city. Of course you do. You know how it is when everything.

First Post!

The job is quit, the passport renewed, and the visa acquired. The countdown begins! T-minus 5 days until I jump head first into what will hopefully be a great experience. I am planning to use this space to keep you guys updated on my daily goings on. I won't have a digi-cam initially, but I'll try to get one as soon as possible once I settle down. This is a very surreal time for me, but I've never felt more free.

My going away song choice: Feeling Good by Nina Simone