Things that might be decidedly odd…

San Francisco

On Thursday afternoon, a group of us began our trip by car from Seattle to San Francisco. We stopped for the night at my parents’ house in Oregon, before continuing on Friday. I went out Friday night in the Castro, which was quite busy being pride weekend and all. We went from Moby Dick’s to Midnight Sun to Lookout trying to find a less packed bar, but of course each was more packed than its predecessor. Still, it was a pretty fun evening.

On Saturday morning, Robert and I went to Costco and Safeway to pick up various food and drink items for the next day. The SF Costco was a madhouse, but we got in and out of there pretty quickly. We grabbed a relaxing brunch at some French place on Potrero Hill which was great as well. Everybody traveling in our group met at Lookout in the afternoon for drinks before heading over to Alioto’s for dinner.

Unfortunately, Alioto’s became probably the worst dining service experience I’ve ever had. We had three separate tables of 6-7 people, each with its own separate check. We all ordered at the same time, except for two people who arrived at my table late. Through some confusion, the waiter held all the food at my table because of the two late arrivals, even though we did not ask the staff to do that. Consequently, our food didn’t even arrive until about 30 minutes after another table in our group had finished eating. Some people’s food was cold because it had been waiting. We were mad about all of this happening, but I found it relatively understandable. Stuff like this happens at restaurants all the time, so I wasn’t going to get too bent out of shape about it. Still, I felt like we needed to lodge a complaint about what happened.

Despite asking to speak to a manager several times, the restaurant refused to send one over. Instead they sent over a hostess who tried to explain what had happened. After her explanation, the waiter came back over and accused us of accusing him of intentionally ruining Robert’s food (it was cold because the food had been held and he had sent it back to be reheated). Worse still, the waiter wouldn’t even listen to our complaint. In fact, he kept talking over Robert and wouldn’t even hear him out. I was shocked by how rude and unprofessional the waiter was. When dealing with a difficult customer, usually wait staff will try to be polite and apologetic (customer is always right and all that) even if the customer is dead wrong (not that we were). The checks for our entire party added up to somewhere around $900 before tip. The check for our table alone was close to $300, but after what went down we left the waiter a whopping 41 cents in tip. I can’t remember the last time I stiffed a waiter because it’s not something I really ever do. The way the waiter reacted to our complaint was just totally and completely unacceptable. I’ll would never eat at that restaurant ever again and would never recommend it to anybody. Extremely disappointing.

After all of that drama, we cabbed it back to the Castro for Pink Saturday, which is a big street party held on the Saturday of pride weekend. Our cab driver was hands down the angriest, most road ragey person I have ever met in my life. He was yelling loudly about how he wanted to cut this other driver’s head off, how it would be a luxury if somebody shot him, how people driving in this city are animals, how his hair had receded and greyed because of the stress of driving a taxi in this city, and so on. It was highly entertaining and provided a nice contrast to the sour ending at the restaurant. The street party was a lot of fun and there were A TON of people. In particular, I had never seen so many drunk lesbians in one place in my life. After wandering around to take in the atmosphere of the street party, we all ended up at the Midnight Sun for the rest of the evening. It was packed, but fun. There were just two bartenders but they were working non-stop the entire night. There were literally piles of tip money behind the bar because they didn’t even have time to put it away. Those guys must have made quite a haul that night but they worked hard for it!

Sunday morning, I got up and went over to the Parc 55 hotel where most of my friends were staying. We had a small party in a hotel room where we could refill our drinks and get something to eat in between watching the parade. The parade was fun and of course there were a lot of people there watching it. Afterwards, we wandered down to the festival at the Civic Center. Again, lots and lots of people but it was fun. After another trip back to the hotel to regroup, we went back to the Castro. It was crowded, but not nearly as crowded as it had been the other nights. After a couple bars, I was getting grouchy because I hadn’t eaten in a while. Mark, Ken and I walked over to some taqueria on 18th and Valencia in the Mission to get some tasty Mexican food. After that, we met up with some other friends at 440 Castro (aka the bar formerly known as Daddy’s), but I suddenly felt super tired. I haven’t been sleeping very well since I’ve been here and even then I haven’t been getting my necessary 8 hours. I went home early so that I could crash around 9:30. Now, I’m sitting awake and can’t sleep, which is why I decided to at least do something productive like write a blog entry instead of laying in bed starring at the ceiling.

It’s been a fun but intense weekend. San Francisco is a great town and pride is of course a big event here. I’m reminded of how much I miss the Bay Area. I frequently think about moving back whenever I come visit, but when I return to Seattle those feelings sort of go on the back burner. Maybe some day I’ll move back, although I always have this strange feeling of not actually being cool enough to live here.

All right, time to try to go to sleep again…

59f and cloudy in sf

59f and cloudy in sf

Originally uploaded by decidedlyodd

Riding to Maple Valley

Whew, I just got back from my longest bike ride of the season yet. I rode from my apartment to University Village (where I met the rest of the group) down Lake Washington through Renton, then onto the Cedar River Trail out to Maple Valley. On the way back, we stopped in downtown Renton for lunch before heading straight back home (no detour to University Village). Unfortunately, my bike computer froze up just after leaving Maple Valley resulting in the loss of about 9 miles and 45 minutes of riding. Adding in those estimates to what was actually recorded yields 63 miles over 4.5 hours. As you might imagine, I’m pretty exhausted!

I went to the doctor on Friday since my wrist is still hurting after 3 weeks. They took x-rays and said it was probably just tendinitis. It’s definitely good news that it’s not broken or anything. The doctor put me on a high dose of naproxyn to counteract the inflammation, so I’m sure that’s numbing the pain of the long ride today somewhat already. I’ll have to see how I feel later tonight once the dose starts to wear off.

Solstice Saturday

Jason and I went to the Solstice parade in Fremont yesterday, preceded by Jeff Roberts’ brunch and followed by Mike Schafer’s BBQ. As usual, the parade was fun to watch. Even though my legs got tired from standing there so long, it’s worth it to see all the creative floats, costumes and general decoration participants prepare. It’s one of the coolest parades around. Since no text or logos are allowed, people really do have to get more creative about representing their concept or group visually.

After the whole Solstice parade plus 2 related parties, I dropped quickly by a friend of mine’s going away party before grabbing dinner and conking out for 2 hours from 7-9. Afterwards, I went with Ben and Jeff over to the Eagle for underwear/jock strap night. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–I like the Eagle because it’s different than any other bar in Seattle. I doubt I would ever go there frequently, but it’s fun to drop by for underwear night periodically. The city has been cracking down on bars a lot lately and you could see the effects of that in a more toned down Eagle. The staff was certainly more careful about what they showed on the giant projector screen (Hedwig and the Angry Inch instead of porn) and the attire of patrons (no exposed butts even if they were in a jock strap–complementary hankies provided to cover things up).

New Job

Since right after Memorial Day, I’ve been in the process of interviewing for another position at Microsoft. After all the interviews, I got an offer (yeah!). After talking to various people on the new team and doing some soul searching, I decided to accept the job late last week. I’ll be working on something that hasn’t been publicly (or probably even internally) announced yet, so I can’t give any specifics. The work seems exciting and the people on the team seem interesting, smart and passionate. I’ll be working in Seattle now instead of Redmond which will definitely be nice. I’ve got several weeks to tie up loose ends in my current position, but I’m definitely looking forward to the new position.

Cold

I have a cold. Mainly, it’s a runny nose with post nasal drip giving me some laryngitis. Yeck, I don’t feel too bad but it’s still annoying.

Weekend of Bike Rides

I rode my bike both on Saturday and Sunday this weekend.

On Saturday, I was going to ride the Green River Trail with Ben, Jeff and the guys from Gay City. I went about 10 miles before my saddle would no longer stay in place. I had to ride back 10 miles with my saddle pushed way far forward (at least it would stay in place that way). It was a short ride but I did get in about 18 miles total still which was better than nothing. The problem was that the threads on the top of my seatpost were stripped. Upon getting back home, I went over to Velo to buy a new seatpost. $20 for the seatpost plus a few bucks for a tube of grease and I was back in business.

On Sunday, I attempted the same ride with Robert and Joe. We got all the way to the Auburn Supermall, but while we were eating lunch out on the grass in front of Quizno’s, there was a loud burst of air. Apparently, the patch on Joe’s tire just blew out while we were sitting there. He took the bus over to downtown Federal Way because there was a Bicycles West on 320th & Pacific according to Google Maps. Because we couldn’t fit 3 bikes on the bus, Robert and I rode the 4 miles from the Supermall to Federal Way. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize there was a ~400ft climb over those 4 miles. We made it, but it was quite the workout getting up the hill out of the valley. Sadly, when we arrived at the intersection Joe was there waiting. The bike store had gone out of business some time ago. Frustrated, we walked over to the Federal Way transit center and took busses back home. Robert and Joe took the 174 to Tukwila where there cars were parked while I took the 194 back to the Convention Center and then rode the remaining half mile back to my apartment. Robert and I did about 28 miles, Joe somewhat less.

Over the two days, I did 48 miles total which wasn’t too bad considering all the bike troubles we had. Also, these were the first two rides I did with my new saddle. My butt didn’t hurt at all afterwards, so hopefully I’ve found a keeper in this new saddle!

On Bike Saddles

I didn’t go riding today because last weekend I somehow hurt my wrist while riding. I’d not sure what I did (didn’t get whacked, didn’t fall on it or anything like that), but it hurt relatively bad for a few days and my wrist was making a sort of grinding/popping noise. It’s doing much better now than it was a week ago, but I didn’t feel like pushing my luck today by doing a long ride.

Instead, I drove up to Gregg’s Greenlake to look at bike saddles. The saddle that came with my bike when I bought it was very low quality (literally a $20 Bianchi seat), so I bought a nicer one at Sammamish Valley Cycle. While they had a policy there that would have allowed me to exchange the seat I bought within 30 days (or some period of time like that), when I fell on my bike last year the saddle got damaged such that it couldn’t be resold and I was stuck with the saddle I bought. That saddle (some sort of Terry Fly) is actually ok, but has too much gel padding which becomes extremely painful on longer rides. On the STP last year, I was in such sheer pain on the beginning of the second day that I considered giving up on the ride. Fortunately, I took some ibuprofen and pushed through the pain, but I wanted to avoid that this year by getting a better long distance saddle.

I don’t particularly care for Gregg’s since it’s almost always a busy zoo and can be difficult to find a salesperson, but I’d heard they had a good selection of saddles so I went anyways. After some waiting and wrangling for advice about saddles, I finally got a guy to help me. I spent a bit more than I wanted to, but got what seems like a pretty nice one (the Specialized ‘Toupe’). I’ll have to give it a spin sometime this week.

I came across this webpage today on the causes of common forms of bike pain. The section on wrists and shoulders (my right shoulder has also bothered me periodically on long rides for a while) mentions that pain in those is usually caused by incorrect posture. I’m probably pushing too much of my weight forward. Hopefully, a better saddle will help with that by allowing me to put a little more weight on my butt instead.

Brouwer’s

A bunch of us went over to Brouwer’s in Fremont for dinner and drinks on Friday. I hardly ever make it over to Fremont, but there are some cool restaurants and bars over there. I had a Chimay to drink and some beer battered halibut with fries. Tasty.

Indiana Jones

Yesterday, I went with Jason, Nikunj, Sachin, Anish (a bunch of UNC interns at Microsoft this summer) to see the new Indiana Jones movie at Lincoln Square. We also grabbed dinner with Rick (another intern) at El Taqueria Rinconsito–man I love me some cheap tacos. The movie was fun. I thought it was very true to form and well done, although perhaps not as amazing as the earlier ones. Then again, it’s hard to reproduce the excitement of youth since I had different taste in movies as a kid than I do now. Still, I thought it was worth the money I paid to see it.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me and movies. Last week, I saw:

1. Sex and the City. Some friends had tickets to the free sneak preview at Pacific Place. We waited in line forever and I had to sit by myself because there wasn’t much seating left by the time we got in. But heck, it was free and I enjoyed the movie.
2. Kiss the Bride. This was a gay film with Tori Spelling at the Egyptian that was part of SIFF. It wasn’t very good, but it had some funny lines and it was cool to see the director, producer and one of the lead actors do a Q&A afterwards.

I suppose when it rains it pours, but I do enjoy watching movies.