Rain? and politics

Where is it? I haven't seen rain since Brooks' rehearsal dinner night. That was over a month ago. California is dry, dry, dry. At least this time of year. It's cloudy and sometimes looks like the dreary skies over London or Utrecht...but in those places it rained daily. Here, it's cloudy a few days here and there. One or two a week...but no rain. It's eerie really.

In other news, John Yoo, former assistant AG, goes before Congress tomorrow. There's a group in Berkeley that is campaigning to get him fired. He's a law professor here now, but he's better known as the author of the torture memos. A bright, legal mind, for sure, but a champion of the unitary executive theory. This is a scary man to have as your ConLaw professor. How will you ever learn about separation of powers, new UC Berkeley 1Ls? Needlesstosay, I look forward to reading the transcript of tomorrow's Congressional hearings and I look forward to the indictment, even if it takes a while.

gASS

There's something wrong with the world when the "cheap" gas website has the cheapest gas in the area at $4.49. source: http://www.oaklandgasprices.com/Berkeley/index.aspx

Jesus oil-loving Christ. Nevermind that I don't have my car, but my dad's which doesn't tolerate regular unleaded (the car, not my dad), but plus, so tack on another 10 cents. I spoke to my mom last night and she said that gas in NC hadn't hit $4 yet. Lucky bastards.

Now I get why all these Berkeley-ites(??) have damn Priusii.

Congressional Stupidity

Who knew Congress spends some of their time being so lame. For example: everytime anyone wins a national championship, Congress must congratulate them. This might be okay if it was a card or something, but they actually sit there in Washington and vote on a bill on whether to congratulate a team or not. Here's House Resolution 475 passed in 3/9/04: "Congratulating the San Jose Earthquakes for Winning the 2003 Major League Soccer Cup."Whoop-de-dooo! They also have to pass official legislation in order to change the name of a post office: House Resolution 3769: "Ben Atchley Post Office." And to celebrate birthdays: House Resolution 84: "Recognizing the 93rd Birthday of Ronald Reagan." H.R. 492: "Honoring the Contributions of Catholic Schools." Yeah, less birth control, more fantasies of catholic school girls. Go Congress. I could sit here all day and list stupid bills, but I won't. Probably because I've been sitting here all day going through the titles of every bill voted on (not just passed) by the House of Representatives up to 2008. I'm working my way backwards and have finally made it to 2003. Only 2 more years of the Bush Administration to go. Seriously, ridiculous. I am swimming in legislation right now. Bottom line: at least there's stupid shit like, HR 923: "Recognizing the State of Minnesota's 150th Anniversary" to make me chuckle.

The Prius Game

So the other day, Jon and I were driving around in Berkeley. Probably in the car for a total of an hour, maybe 90 minutes…well, we decided to count Priusii. There seems to be a high concentration of them in this city which is not surprising because most of the inhabitants of Berkeley are Bourgeois Bohemians. A bobo, for short, is basically a group of elite Americans who have a lot of money, yet shun conformity, and the traditional ethos of past generations. They shop at organic farmers markets and recycle and generally try to be hippies, but with all the comforts of an upper class society that tries to shun consumerism, but actually embrace it in their own way. I didn’t make this up. Its from a book I borrowed from dear friend called Bobos in Paradise. It’s by David Brooks in case anyone wants to look it up. In any case, Carrboro is FULL of them. So is Berkeley. So in keeping with their environmentally sound preferences, yet ability to spend thousands on nice cars, Priusii are IN.

I have a point, I promise. As we are driving around and counting we eventually got up to a number in the neighborhood of 38. Pretty high frequency. I consider playing this game daily, but am usually distracted by the strange man with dreads (but only two huge nappy ones) pushing his bike along, or the man who seems to wander every street of north Berkeley who has an unforgettable reverse Mohawk. I guess that’s a nice way to say that he’s bald straight down the middle, but has abundant hair on the sides. Four times I’ve spotted him in the past 2 ½ weeks.

Back to my point…I left my house today to go fill my car up with gas so I didn’t have to do it in the morning on my way to work. (If I wait for tomorrow, I’ll be paying $4.70 instead of $4.60) On the way home, I decided to play my little game. In about a mile and a half of driving back home (note: NOT round trip), I counted 18 Priusii. Eighteen. In a mile a half. Granted, the streets are lined with parallel parking spots, but wow. Just wow. North Berkeley may be home to the greatest concentration of Priusii on the planet. If anyone cares to challenge me, do it. I’ll put money on it.

A final note: I’m not sure if Priusii is a term used in the general parlance of discussing cars, but if it’s not, I’m hereby coining the term. Pass it along.

Point Reyes & Northface

What an amazing weekend. Saturday, Jon and I went to Point Reyes National Seashore. A short hour drive from Berkeley. It's a little north of San Francisco and is absolutely gorgeous. There are miles upon miles of forest and seashore. We drove to the Bear Valley Visitor Center and got out for our hike. We decided on an 8 mile round trip route to Arch Point. The hike was pretty level with a few hills, but nothing too bad. I do have to say that both of us were pretty tired by the end and sore when we woke up this morning, but it was a decent hike. Just long enough to get tired, but not too long to be absolutely sick of it. We walked through forests, past creeks and a few scattered redwoods. It was a really beautiful walk. Slowly we started to smell salt water and all of a sudden could hear the waves. Arch point is this point that juts out into the Pacific Ocean and you can hike out to it. The ocean is probably about 100 feet or more down and the waves just crash into the rocks. There was a little beach, but I don't think we could have gotten down there if we tried. Unless of course we took a huge dive into the water, but that wasn't happening. There was an adjacent ridge that we hiked up to and put out a blanket and had a little picnic and just laid in the sun.

The only negative of the whole hike was this creepy blackbird that decided to swoop around near us. For some unexplained reason, i hate big black birds. It may be due to Malefacence (if that's the right spelling) from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Remember: she turned into a blackbird and was really evil and mean. Anyway, I was catching some rays and heard the flapping of wings above me and it was up there and then landed a few feet away. He was after the tomato that I had carelessly tossed about 10 feet away. Thankfully, I scared him off but he kept close and flew overhead the entire time we were there. Then a seagull landed and tasted the tomato. He even had a little red juice on his beak and in the end the valiant seagull won out and the blackbird went hungry. Just the way I wanted it. Haha, bird!

After just chilling out for a while eating, basking, and listening to the waves crash against the rocks, we headed back. When we got back to the car, we decided to drive out to the lighthouse on another point. It was a really pretty drive through cow fields and rolling hills. At one point we even had to stop so the cows could cross the street. I almost felt like I was in India. When we got out at the parking lot near the lighthouse we took some pictures and then walked the half mile or so to the lighthouse. The wind was crazy, I think about 30-40mph, according to the Park Ranger and it was pretty cold, but the walk out there was totally worth it. We couldn't actually walk down to the lighthouse b/c it was closed, but we could still see it and just being there felt like we were on the edge of the universe. All in all, a really wonderful day.

When we got back to Berkeley, I took Jon to the Pyramid Brewery here in town and we ate dinner. I had eaten there for lunch earlier this week and it's a pretty cool spot overall. Having hiked all day, we didn't do much else for the rest of the night.

Today, we got up and ate lunch at this little pizza restaurant on Shattuck Ave and then headed to the NorthFace outlet because I heard that there was one here in town and that, in fact, it is the only one in the entire country. Well, we never really made it to the actual store outlet part because we were diverted into this back room of the outlet and given a large plastic trash bag by one of the employees. A bit confused, we beheld the sight before us. It was their sample sale that only takes place once or twice a year. I'm not entirely sure what this means, but I think it means that none of these things actually made it into their stores, or were prior variations of what did make it to the stores. In any case, it's all northface gear, but incredibly reduced. It's all the same sizes: men's medium, women's medium, kids medium, but that was just fine. A few things were too big, but most of it fit great. There were about 10 rows of 15 cardboard boxes FULL of coats, shirts, jackets, fleeces, snow pants, etc. There was also a wall with two rods running the length of the room with heavy winter coats. There were also about 6 boxes of bags and backpacks. So, basically, paradise. After about 10 minutes we realized what the plastic bags were for: shopping! My best deals were a $200 coat for $80 (it feels like a sleeping bag!) and a $60 jacket for $15. Amazing. I spent a little over $250, but came out with 5 items that were originally priced at $560. Maybe next weekend I'll actually make it to the outlet store nextdoor to that warehouse of awesome and pick up a sleeping bag or something. Who knew that such a jackpot was only 3 miles away and how lucky were we to happen to stop by on the one day a year that they let their coats go for pittance.

The only downer is that for the past two weeks, I've been a little chilly and wishing I had brought a few more jackets, but now that the weather is in the upper 70s, I don't need them. So bummer. I can't wait til winter. And for those of you in NC right now (and maybe the whole east coast), I'm sure you are all ready for some cooler weather. I have been keeping up and it looks ridiculous over there. I don't really want to rub it in, but California may just have the best weather of anywhere on the planet. Maybe not San Francisco, but they're weird. The rest of us have great weather.

Anyway, after NorthFaceHeaven, Jon and I came back to watch the Prefontaine Classic (a track meet anticipating the Olympics) and then headed back to Mountain View. We watched the first half of the Celtics/Lakers game and then went out to dinner in downtown Mountain View at this delicious Thai restaurant. Overall, it was an absolutely amazing weekend and I wish it wasn't over! Mondays always come too soon. Thankfully, work is going better and next weekend will also be incredible. Maybe some dinner/drinks in the City on Friday, and Saturday, definitely heading to Sonoma Valley to go tour some wineries and do some tastings all afternoon. God, life sucks here. So bad.

Santa Cruz and Monterey

So I’m about to finish my second week of work, and go on my next mini-vacation for the weekend, so I figured I should probably talk about what I did last weekend. I met my friend, Erin, and her husband, Adam, in San Francisco for dinner. I picked them up and we went to the Mission District to go find somewhere to eat. We initially wanted to eat at one of the million Taquerias as the Mission is a predominantly Latino part of town (Latinos and hipsters) but they all had waits of something like an hour and a half. Ridiculous. So we found this Ethiopian restaurant instead. I had never eaten Ethiopian food, but it was quite good. I had beef and chicken and lentils. They serve your meal on big round plate along with the other people at your table and there are just little piles of food. Using your fingers, you pinch off a little “bread” called Injara which is more like a spongy pancake and pick up your food in that manner. It was quite an experience and the food was actually really good. We also each got a different Ethiopian beer which were also pretty good though the lager and the stout tasted almost identical, which is just not right. After dinner we found a cute little bar that was indoors/outdoors but as we started looking around, we noticed that there were all these huge poster-sized photos of Mexicans camping out at the border. It was some sort of art exhibit illustrating the injustices of US border policies and judging by the A/star symbol, it was anarchist sponsored. Welcome to San Francisco.

The next day, Jon and I took a drive down south. Not too far south though. Our first stop was Santa Cruz so from Mountain View, we took highway 17 to Santa Cruz. We drove through campus, which neither of us were impressed by. Pretty trees and such, but the buildings were god-awful ugly. Overall, Santa Cruz seemed very much like a beach town. Everyone seemed to wear shorts and zip-up hoodies. We went out to the boardwalk which was something like an amusement park complete with roller coasters, other various rides, an arcade, and carnival food. From the boardwalk, you could walk right onto the beach. I think we’re too far north to get any sort of decent temperature in the water, or perhaps it was because it was the end of May, but it was just cold. After taking a stroll on the beach, we walked over to the adjacent pier which included a few shops and restaurants and a few fishermen, but mainly just a lot of walkers. We ate lunch overlooking the water and watched as some surfers sat in the water waiting fruitlessly for any waves. I didn’t see a single one in the entire time we sat there and there had to have been over 20 surfers. Give up already! When the one wave comes, you can’t all surf on it anyway. Oh, there were also seals that were swimming around. They were cool. And loud.

After lunch, we headed further south along Highway 1 (the famous highway that goes down California’s coast.) where we could only see the ocean occasionally, well really it was the Monterey Bay. It was a pretty drive nonetheless. We arrived in Monterey which is right on the Bay and proceeded to find our destination: The 17 Mile Drive. It’s through this mostly wooded, yet somewhat coastal area that has 3 amazing golf courses and some of the biggest houses I’ve ever seen. There are tons of places to stop and get out and take pictures, so we did all that, just to get our $9 worth. One of the houses even had deer in its fenced in yard. I’m sure that’s not legal, especially not in California. One of the golf courses there is Pebble Beach which is one of the most famous courses in the country. It was gorgeous and we got out at the Pro Shop so Jon could buy some way overpriced golf balls with the logo on them. We also walked down to the 18^th green where some famous football players were playing golf.

After finishing the 17 mile drive, we went to go to see the Indiana Jones movie. I’ve heard a lot of bad reviews, but my take on the movie is this: I wasn’t bored, so that’s good. I thought it was a little cheesy at times and some of the one liners were pretty dumb, but then again, the old IJ films had some dumb one liners too. That’s what happens when you let Harrison Ford ad lib. Anyway, it got kind of weird at the end, but overall I thought it was decent.

On our way back to the Bay Area, we stopped in a little (and I do mean little) town called Moss Landing. There’s only one little turnoff and if you follow the road to behind where the boats are, there’s a restaurant called Phil’s Fish Market. It has fabulous seafood and is very, very cute. I highly recommend it if you’re ever on Highway 1 between Monterey and Santa Cruz.

So that was the weekend. It was really nice to see part of California and I look forward to going to see Point Reyes National Seashore this weekend and doing some hiking. Professor Motomura recommended it to me and I’ve seen some amazing pictures, so I’m stoked.

Deer in Berkeley

I know I still need to update last week, but instead, I have a weird little anecdote:
So, tonight, it's almost 12:30pm I suppose...I go onto my mini-balcony to smoke the last cigarette of the night. Its quiet on my street. The occasional car passes during the day, but at night, it's really dead. I think I've mentioned that I live up in the hilly part of Berkeley; probably less than half a mile away are no houses, because I suppose it's too steep or just not livable at the top of the hill. (note: if you could find a grader at a decent rate to make some of that land inhabitable, it'd be the most choice real estate in the county of Alameda.) In any case, I'm outside in a very quiet neighborhood and I hear something. Walking. My neighbor to the south has a tree with a lot of leaves that obstruct my view of the road somewhat, so I see something walking down the middle of the street. It looks like a dog...a big dog. From the coloring through the leaves, I'm thinking huge German Shepherd. Who let's that kind of dog roam about? Does it have rabies? I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird lately and remember vividly the dog with rabies that walked straight down the street.

Of course, the tree doesn't span forever, so eventually this creature comes into my view and lo and behold, it's a deer. A smallish one, obviously female. She doesn't know I'm there. Then I hear the clip clop of her hoofs on the pavement. She's walking straight and with a purpose. Then I hear more clip clops. There is a fawn behind her about 15 yards. And then another one scurries up to the first fawn. What are three deer doing walking down the street like they own it? I did readjust my sitting position at one point, and the second fawn heard me and paused for a moment. I was sure not to make any more sounds so that mama deer could continue assessing the situation. I don't know deer very well, but I assume she's doing what any good mother would do and that is: find a way home. or at least to the woods. LeRoy Ave. is not a good place for a mother deer and two babies. However she got off track, I hope she finds her way home without incident.

I watched her disappear around what must have been to her 'yet another corner' and wondered if she appreciated the beauty of this part of the world as much as I do.

The first week

So, when I arrived in Berkeley on Monday afternoon, I met the girl I was subletting from and there was another roommate (who was moving out in a few days) and his girlfriend here. The four of us along with my sublessor's boyfriend grilled out on our back porch. It was a nice introduction to Berkeley. I unpacked my car and made myself comfortable and readied myself for my first day of work.

I'm going to skip the subject of work for now because I feel like I can be more positive about it when I've been there for a few weeks. Suffice to say, it's been an adjustment and I think once I'm more used to it, I'll like it more. So in the spirit of being positive about living in Cali for the first time, I'm going to move on and address this topic when there's funnier/better things to say about it.

The House/Neighborhood:
I live nearly on the corner of Cedar St. and Leroy Ave. (Which I keep calling Le Roy, like it's french, but I think it's really just Leroy...like the guy who fixes your brake pads). It's north of the UC Berkeley Campus about 5 blocks. If you don't go straight and instead head down the hill (down Cedar street) you will find yourself in an area called the Gourmet Ghetto. It's not a ghetto at all. It's really just all these locally owned restaurants/cafes/bars/shops along several blocks (I'm not sure how many). I guess it's best described as a district. At the bottom of a hugely steep hill is a flower stand that sells cheap fresh flowers every day and a grocery store and a store called the Elephant Pharmacy which is like an organic/hippie Walgreens. You can buy all the things from Stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com there, such as the metal water bottle I purchased on Thursday. Also tons of herbal remedies and supplements for whatever ails you. But you can get Tylenol and Claratin there too. They are an equal opportunity pharmacy.

Okay, the actual house. It's 5 bedrooms, most of which are pretty large. It seems like a pretty old house which I love because I've always wanted to live in an old house. But that equates to little insulation, thin walls, and creakiness. Which is totally okay if you consider that the entire place has wooden floors and lots of windows that open outwards, not upwards. There's a fabulous balcony with a great view of Oakland and the Bay. Being in the "Berkeley hills" means that it's very steep often, but there are tons of trees and flowers and gorgeousness. I can't complain at all. At night, I go out on the balcony and just sit and absorb the town. It's beautiful. From what I've heard, it's a pretty coveted area to be and I think I got really lucky with this place. This is the view from my bedroom's balcony.

The Roommates:
The first week in the house was a bit weird only because 2 people were moving out after me being there for a few days and 2 more were taking their places at that point. So the people I hung out with a little bit wont' be here and there are new people. Now it is the weekend and the two new roommates are moved in. I met them a few days ago when we had an open house for another room that's opening up at the end of June. So things should settle down and we'll get into more of a routine. What I know right now (or think I know): the other roommates are all engineers, so we will not be discussing the law, which is awesome, because after 8 hours of work, that's the last thing I want to talk about; they are all berkeley students. (note: there is one roommate--the one moving in june--that i havent' met, she's out of town indefinitely, so this is just about the 3 that are going to be here this summer). 3 of us are grad students, one is a senior, but my age b/c he took some time off. So we're all mid-late 20s. (whoa. is 23 mid-20s?) I like them all so far though, even though we've only eaten dinner once and had a few other minor conversations. I look forward to hanging out with them more.

All in all, those of us who will be here for the summer are me, Rikky, CiCi, Erik, and a fifth yet to be named. Might be a girl or a guy. We shall see. It'll be fine either way.

Berkeley:
The town itself is really cute. Tons of flowers. It just smells different out here. Like flowers. Maybe there's a reason hippies are referred to as flower children. Tons of shops and restaurants that I've never heard of because there's only one. Here's where I insert a diatribe about how much chains suck because they are impersonal and owned by Corporate America, but I'll spare you. We all know that the local coffee shop is far superior to Starbucks and Carolina Brewery beers are much tastier than Budweiser. You get the picture. The term "quaint" sounds condescending, but I don't mean it that way. The town has character. I've been spending my lunch breaks exploring. I've got my little corner of the town down, but next week, I plan to explore the areas closer to the University. Speaking of, this town is very young. There's a few older couples and some children, but mostly, there's a lot of college/grad student age people around so it's a lot like Chapel Hill/Carrboro in that respect. I can see now why they call Chapel Hill, "the Berkeley of the South." It very much is, except Chapel Hill is TINY TINY TINY compared to Berkeley. There are 40 Franklin Streets to our 1.

The first week was kind of chilly. Weather in the 60s, but still very sunny, except for Friday. The coming week looks like its full of 70s. I'm excited. I'm glad that I'm learning where things are and just getting used to things in general.

This has been a hard week just in terms of adjusting to life in a new city/job/house/roommates. I miss everyone at home terribly and homesickness is just a way of life, but that being said, I adjust to things quickly and while I can't wait to see everyone in August, I'm excited to see what the summer has to hold. I think my hardest week is behind me, so bring on week number 2!

The rest of the drive.

So the rest of the trip. This is a week later, so i'm sure I'd have had more to say on the subject a week ago, but it's been a crazy week of moving in and all that. Jon and I had a great time and seeing/doing the following things:

Brunch/people watching in downtown Denver on Saturday.

Snowy Rocky mountain drive from Denver towards the Utah border.

An unfortunate speeding ticket (Jon, not me) in the sticks of western colorado. Absolute crap. He was going 76 in a 65 on a road with no curves, just hills. The cop was clearly bored as he was driving towards us and turned around in order to give Jon a ticket.

Dinosaur National Monument which is sort of a national park where you can camp and stuff, but we just got out and looked at the dinosaur bones that were partially uncovered and embedded in the rock face. Pretty cool seeing real bones in a rock.

Our "near disaster" was when we forgot to get gas in this town in Utah and I noticed we were getting low an hour later. We realize we're in the middle of nowhere and Jon, positive as he always is, tries to assure me that we can go at least 90 more miles and surely there's a gas station between now and then. Well we get about 20 more miles down the road and the E light goes on. From my experiences w/ my Civic, I know that this means I've got about 20-25 miles to go before pooping out. As Jon examined the map, it became clear that the nearest town is a good 40 miles away. Well, just as I'm starting to panic in my head, I see some dim lights of what looks like a closed gas station. So we pull in and sure enough, it's closed. Oh, it's also dark out at this point. At this point, I am just hoping that the pumps are kept on at night when Jon and I spot some people inside the dark station. Well, they come out (a man and a woman) and ask if the pump is working, I assure them that it is, and then they go to their cars and leave. Had Jon not been there, I can guarantee that I would have probably shit my pants at this point. Luckily we filled up the tank and were on our way, but I paid attention to the next 4o miles and there was NOWHERE to get gas. I do have AAA who would bring me gas if I needed it, but seeing as how neither of our cell phones had any service whatsoever, we would have just been SOL.Spent the night at a great hotel in Salt Lake City and saw the Temple in Tabernacle Square in the morning. Such wonderfully nice people in Salt Lake. I like those Mormons.

Drove past the Great Salt Lake and through the salt flats which are where they shoot all those car commercials and test cars to see just how fast they can go. It's pretty amazing. We tasted the ground to see if it really did taste like salt and sure enough, salty as hell.

Then we entered Nevada where there were a ton of border casinos. There's not much to say about the drive through Nevada as it is pretty lame, but our one interesting moment came when we stopped to get gas. It was a little town called Winnemucca. And whatthefucca...I pumped gas and Jon went in to grab some drinks and witnessed this exchange (I'll try to get it is close to his story as possible):
Gas Station Employee 1: "Did you hear about the shooting at the bar last night?"
Gas Station Employee 2: "No, what happened?"
E'ee 1: "Well, you know that guy who comes in here all the time with [some sort of description]? Well, he shot up the bar.:
E'ee 2: "Yeah, I know the guy. Why did he do that?"
E'ee 1: "I dunno. Just went crazy I guess. Started shooting at everyone, men, women, children and everything" (note: children? at a bar? what)
E'ee 2: "What happened?"
E'ee 1: "Before the cops could they get there they shot him."
E'ee 2: "They? Who's they?"
E'ee 1: "Some other guys at the bar."
So yeah...when we got to Reno, we saw the news story. Apparently this guy who "just went crazy" shot and killed three guys the night before at this dive bar which apparently had children in it. Bizarre. We vowed never to go back to Winnemucca again.

Sunday night we hung out in Reno. It was like a trashy Vegas. I accidentally took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up passing the Reno Sheriff's Department which made me extremely excited b/c of the show Reno 911. It did not look the same, at least this one didn't and I did not see any of my favorite characters, perhaps not surprisingly. Reno was fun. Jon won money. I lost about 40 bucks, but I don't think that's too bad since I played slots for a while and some craps and some video poker and got probably $25 in free drinks. Not bad for a night out.

The next morning we left Reno and headed to Lake Tahoe since it was so close and we only had 3 1/2 hours of driving to get to the Bay area. So we detoured and saw the lake. Unfortunately, it was a cold, foggy, rainy day, but we were able to get out and walk around a bit. It's a super cute area and I'd love to go back when the weather is nicer.

After that I took a nap and missed much of the drive through California. Reno had kind of taken it out of me. I dropped Jon off at his place in Mountain View (south of Palo Alto) and then drove up Hwy 101 through San Francisco and across the Bay into Berkeley. This last picture is of the Bay Bridge (not to be confused with the Golden Gate.) It doesn't look like this if you are going FROM Berkeley TO San Francisco, but since it's two layers, this way is covered by the West bound lanes.