Happenings: June 2004 Archives

The last couple of days have been -- weird. Last Thursday and Friday, I was forced to attend "TMS" training. I found out that I'm a "creator/innovator". And I guess since everyone on my team knows where they fit on the wheel, now we will like, be able to work in harmony, or something. Judging by my level of sarcasm about this, you can probably infer that I mostly think that it was a load.

Even more interesting, however, is that on Friday morning, my car wouldn't start. It worked just fine the night before, as evidenced by the fact that I drove over to Anjali's for some Bollywood action. But the subsequent morning -- no love. So, I walked to work (about 2.5 miles, it took me about half an hour). After work, I managed to hitch a ride back home with a co-worker. I tried starting it again, but still no dice. Google indicated that it was probably a bad starter. Anecdotally, I thought that I could have a dead battery as well, but I didn't think that was the case, because I still had power, and because I didn't leave the lights on or anything.

Well, I called a tow truck, and they guy tried to give me a jump first before doing the whole tow thing. As it turns out, that was $50 well spent, because that was my problem -- dead battery. So, I managed to scoot on over to Pep Boys in order to get a new battery installed, before having dinner with Kevin, and seeing "Mean Girls" with Kevin and Anjali. Then of course, we played hearts for 2 hours.

And this is only up to Friday. On Saturday, I looked at a lot of apartments. I think I have it narrowed down now, and I should be committal guy tomorrow. Basically, due to the combination of the fact that I am picky, and the fact that I am cheap, I could look at apartments forever. But thankfully, the process cannot go on forever, so I will know where I am living soon.

Afterwards, I drove up to Berkeley in order to have dinner with Stan, and his friend Jean. Afterwards, we were joined by Mike for some Albatross action. I will hand it to Berkeley on this one -- they have one very cool bar.

Today, I hiked to the top of Mission Peak with a bunch of IBM people (my "in" was via Kevin). That being a goodly hike, I was fairly tired afterwards, and just chilled out until it was time to meet Mike and Kevin for dinner. But then, of course, I pulled my "complete bonehead" move for the year, and simultaneously locked myself out of my car and apartment. How? By locking my fucking car keys in the trunk, as I was trying to unload a whole bunch of stuff into there.

Now, I did this right at about 5:45 PM. On a normal day, this wouldn't have been so bad -- I would have just gone to the office, gotten their spare key, gone into my apartment, gotten my spare car key, and ka-blam! Problem solved.

But did it work that way today? Oh hell now. As it turns out, the office closed early -- and by early, I mean that they closed yesterday, and will open again tomorrow. So, I had to page the maintenance guy in order to get the key. I think I'll be paying my apartment $40 tomorrow when I return the spare key.

sigh

I think that I need a keeper. Or at least, a keeper robot.

-Andy.

I took two days off of work last week, and flew from SFO to Kansas City, MO. My dad was there, attending some sort of conference on like, security or something. Anyways, he picked me up from the airport, and we drove to Lawrence Kansas, where we spent some time with my Aunt Bibi, and her son Skip. That was pretty cool -- I haven't seen Skip in like 12 years, or something.

The next day, my dad and I drove to St. Louis, in order to pay a visit to grandma Vi. This was the more "difficult" part of the trip, and actually the reason why I went out of my way to fly to Kansas City. My dad hadn't been down there to see his mom since Beth died, and since Vi has never been supportive of Beth, I didn't want my dad to have to go down there alone. I'm going to gloss over the details, but the point is that Vi is getting older, and as such she is having a hard time living her life the way that she wants to, which makes her difficult to deal with. It's too bad that they don't actually make a "clue stick".

Anyways, my Dad and Vi are like oil and water these days, so we only spent about 4 hours or so in St. Louis, before we were out of there like rockets. I did a lot of driving -- I got us past Bloomington, before the old bean took over. We got to Wheaton at about 1:00 AM, so we were both pretty tired.

The rest of the weekend was good. Visited Mark and Laura on Sunday, and the whole family got together at Uncle Tom's new place on Monday, before I had to fly out of O'Hare. All in all, it was a good trip. I'm glad that I was able to visit Bibi and Skip, and that I was able to back my dad up with the St. Louis leg of the trip.

-Andy.