Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is Wednesday. Hard to believe that I have been out here in California for almost two weeks already.  This is, by far, the longest that I have ever been on the west coast.  I am pretty close already to having been here longer in this one single trip than I have been in all of my previous trips combined.  I was in California in 2001, 2012, 2013 and 2014, each time for two or three days and then three days in Seattle in 2014.  That is my total west coast time coming out to twelve days total!  So this twelve day trip will equal all of those.  This exactly doubles my time out there and more than doubles my time in California.  It is really weird to me, considering how little I had been to California over the course of my life, that I have been in California every year for the last four years.

I got up this morning around three and turned on the air conditioning.  It was warm enough that I was not able to keep sleeping!  That is something that I was not expecting.

Had another good day in the office.  It was cooler again this morning and the walk in was quite nice.

For lunch today I just took myself to What’s Up Dog again.  I love being able to get food from a hot dog stand that is vegetarian!  That’s just awesome.

After work we had a happy hour again up the street at Thee Parkside.  Had a good time there but did not stay too late, only till around seven.

I learned this evening from my cousin that I am related to, but not directly descended from, two notable Americans on my mother’s father’s line.  One is a “many” great uncle Abraham Oberholtzer (aka. Abraham Oberholt) famous for his rye whiskey being part of the Jim Beam family and sold, still today, as one of the most widely available rye whiskies in American under the name Old Overholt Straight Rye Whiskey.

The other, and much more famous, relative is my second cousin, five times removed Henry Clay Frick.  Frick, famously the most hated man in America, ran Carnegie Steel and was the founder of the Pennsylvania Railroad!

I put in a few hours working on Ruby stuff tonight.  Then at nine thirty I went across the street for the last time to get food from Custom Burger.  A salmon burger and mozzarella sticks.  Then I got into bed a few minutes after ten.  Being well rested is one of the primary benefits of being on the Pacific coast.  I played some Trivia Crack and then did my daily DuoLingo lessons before drifting off to sleep.  I put on the air conditioning again tonight, it is still a little warm for sleeping.

Tomorrow I have all of my meals scheduled all day.  Only one more full day in California now.

I read more of Bill Bryson’s “One Summer” throughout the day today.  I am really enjoying learning about all that happened in the summer of 1927.  Quite an interesting year.

I got up around seven today and put in some time working through my Trivia Crack backlog to make sure that I was not missing any of my games.  I am doing pretty well in Spanish now.  The amount that this is helping my reading comprehension is surprising.  I can read so much more and so much faster than a month ago.  And I have won well over one hundred games in Spanish now (and some in Catalan, French and Portuguese.)

Then I did my daily DuoLingo training to make sure that I am staying on track there.  I do 20XP which requires a minimum of two lessons per day.  I did that and ran down the battery on my phone and got it plugged in.  Then I took my shower to get ready for work.

My favorite set of tweezers, which I have had for probably more than a decade now, went missing last night.  I know exactly where they were and I am pretty sure that the housekeeping staff just threw them out without thinking.  I am very sad.  Both because I have no other tweezers with me but also because it takes me forever to find a pair that I really like and that pair was by far the best in recent years.  They will be missed for sure.

After my shower I was on the computer for a little bit and did not leave the hotel until after nine so I had to walk a little more briskly this morning.  I am not sure if I am adjusting to the temperatures or if it is getting dryer or something but I was not so hot when I got to the office today, which was great.  Maybe I am starting to get into shape!  But probably it is just better weather.

For lunch today I went to What’s Up Dog again and got the veggie sausages.  Very tasty.

I am scheduled to have dinner on Thursday evening with Loggly which is very cool.  Their offices are very close to my hotel.  One of the things that I love about being in San Francisco and Silicon Valley is that all of the companies that I work with or know of are based out here.  There is a huge value to having all of the talent in a single place.  You can easily run around meeting with and talking to just about everyone.  It is no wonder that companies are willing to pay to be located here, even though it is the most expensive city in the country.  You can really get a lot done.  I have been using Loggly for about a year so I am looking forward to getting to meet up with them and see where they are going now.

Left work a little before six and walked home.  I stopped at Custom Burger as usual.  I only have probably one more chance to eat there after today so no real reason to worry about looking for something else at this point.  Tonight is Tuesday.  There are only three days left here in San Francisco and tomorrow is the only night that I am free for dinner, although even then there is a happy hour after work so not very likely that I will want to get food separately from that.  And then Thursday night I am having dinner with the Loggly folks.  And on Friday, after work, it is straight to Jeff and Sarah’s house in San Bruno for me and I am sure that we will get dinner there at the diner by their house.  Then it is off to the plane to fly back to New York.  So my chances to go out to eat on my own are mostly over, at this point.

I came back to the hotel and ate my food while watching a telenovela in an attempt to improve my Spanish.  I was able to follow along a little bit and learned a few works in the process.

I did a little work on RubyMine tonight.  Worked on some Git.  Worked on my Spanish a little.  Talked to some people.  Did a little posting. But I was more or less tired and wanted to get off to bed on the early side, so that is what I did.  I was in bed by a quarter after ten.

Today begins my second week in the office at the new position at Change.  I slept in until around seven then got up, worked a little, showered and did my walk into the office.  It was not as hot today, at least I did not feel as hot.  Perhaps I am simply getting used to the walking more at this point.  It has been a full week of walking now with my lightest day being just nearly four miles.

Work was good today.  More progress.  Not much time left now.  Only four work days left before I am heading back home to see the family.  Sixty percent of the work days are done now and two thirds of my total time away from home has passed.  I am really looking forward to being home.

On the walk home I finished reading “The Lost Continent” and began reading “One Summer: America, 1927” also by Bill Bryson.

For lunch today we had sushi again at Live Sushi.  I got the full vegetarian rolls.  I’ve learned that I really like those and can eat them all of the time.

After work I walked back to the hotel.  On the way back, which was much cooler and I did not get all sweaty for what I think is the first time since coming out to the coast, I picked up fish and chips to eat in the hotel room.

I did a little posting and worked on my Rosetta Stone and DuoLingo before driving down to San Bruno to drop off Jeff’s Kia Optima.  Sarah drove me down to the San Bruno BART station and I rode that back to Mission and Sixteenth and from there I walked back to the hotel getting in around eleven.

The extra walk and train ride gave me some time to continue listening to the book that I started reading. So far it is very interesting.  American in 1927 is not a piece of history that I know all that well.  Many things, like the biggest news events of the time, are things that are not familiar to me.  It was a very odd time period.

With the extra walking today I managed to do a total of 15,500 steps which comes out to 7.3 miles.  Nothing staggering but it is a good walk for the day.

I got up this morning, probably around seven, and spent a bit of time paying the bills.  Not something that I really wanted to be doing from a hotel room but that is how things are going to be for quite a long time now.  That took a while as I am not on my own computer for the first time in a very long time.  While I was going through the bills I had to go over the charges to our bank account with Dominica because there are so many.  Everything was fine, it is crazy seeing all of the money coming out of the account for all of our expenses over the next several months.  Because of the time in Europe we are paying for our flights in both March and June as well as our hotels in Dublin and Oslo and our apartment in Spain all now.  Even our rental car is paid for up front.  So the amount of money that has left our bank account is just crazy, and terrifying.  In theory, though, we will have no real expenses again until around the end of July.  So while this looks really scary, it is really not too bad.  We hope.

I spent the morning puttering around the hotel.  Then spent about an hour on the phone with Dominica after her parents left.  They came up to visit yesterday with Truman, their new (ish) Boston Terrier puppy.  Liesl and Luciana had a blast having Truman at their house.  Dominica’s parents gave the girls their old Apple iPad 2 which Dominica was getting set up this morning.  This is really helpful for the girls as they have been working from a mix of an original iPad and an iPad 2.  The older, original iPad cannot run the current version of iOS.  In fact it is several releases behind.  That means that lots of the games that the girls want to play will not work on there and it has made things rather difficult.  Now both girls can use matching iPad 2 tablets (the “new” one has 32GB of storage while the “old” one has 16GB, but otherwise identical) with the same games and features.  And the same interface.  Perfect to have this fixed before going to Spain for several months where the iPads will be their most used devices even more than usual.

Dominica and I discussed travel plans and what to do about different visa scenarios.  There is a lot that we are still trying to figure out.  Once we were done on the phone I walked across Seventh and got a salmon burger.  I don’t want to go to the party this afternoon having eaten nothing all day.  I will be too hungry and will devour everything.

I drove down to San Bruno to go see Jeff and Sarah for their Super Bowl Party.  I got there about two thirty.  There were several other of their friends there as well, none that I had known previously.  This is the first Super Bowl that I have seen in over a decade, maybe in over two decades.  Possibly the first American football came that I have watched in as long as well.  I cannot remember actually watching one.  It still shocked me just how short and trivial the whole thing was, no sport at all, just lots of ads and no one actually doing anything. No wonder the whole world mocks this sport, it really is embarrassing.  And in the end the game was decided in the last few minutes by the one team emotionally falling apart rather than who could play better.  It’s like watching little children fight on the playground.  Not competent sportsmen at all.  At least they wear gear so no one is biting each other.

The halftime show was great, though.  Katy Perry put on an amazing concert.  I’m told that this is the first serious halftime show in a decade since Janet Jackson ruined it for everyone.

While at Jeff and Sarah’s I did my laundry for the week.  Now I have enough clothes to make it until I go back home to Peekskill on Friday night.

It was late when I got back to the hotel.  My drive back was much better this time.  I roughly knew where to go and was much more adept as the use of the GPS now.  I did not get lost and made every turn correctly.  I still do not want to drive any more than absolutely necessary, though.

It was probably ten thirty when I got to the hotel.  I went up to the room and was in bed pretty promptly. Before going to bed I got my Rosetta Stone completely installed and working and managed to do a little bit of the first lesson.  I need to commit to working on that every day.

I got up and did a little writing and posting this morning in the hotel room.  I got lots of sleep last night.  I am liking the opportunity to sleep so healthily.

This afternoon I walked from Seventh and Mission to Sixteenth and Mission, which is a longer walk than it sounds like as those numbered streets are not every street like they are in Manhattan but are just the major roads with little ones in between, to the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station there.  This is my first time taking a train anywhere in California, of any type.  The Bay Area is well served by the BART (akin to the subway system), the CalTrain which handles the south side of the Bay from San Jose up to San Francisco and Amtrak’s Capital Corridor which comes in from the capital and runs up the north side of the Bay through Oakland.  The trip to Jeff’s place in San Bruno is just four dollars and for a New Yorker the BART is especially easy as it works almost identically to the NYC Subway system but with an extra ticket scan as you leave the system.

I road the train from the Sixteenth and Mission Station to San Bruno down on the peninsula which took maybe twenty minutes.  It was extremely easy.

Sarah, Jeff’s wife, picked me up at the station and drove me back to their house with is almost exactly two miles from the station.  Very easy.

We hung out this evening.  Jeff and I did some catching up and talking about work. Then we watched the entire first season of Father Ted on Amazon Prime On Demand, which he has never seen before.  He really enjoyed it.  He was looking to start watching the second season as well but discovered that, unlike the first season, the second season is not free.  Our timing is pretty poor because until yesterday Netflix had had the whole thing.  They just had a major disruption in their BBC contract so a ton of the best shows are no longer available on Netflix.

Since there was no more Father Ted to watch I introduced him to the first episode of Coupling which also went over really well.  He will be binge watching that soon, I am sure.

I borrowed Jeff’s car and drove it back to San Francisco, a rather brave thing to do.  Driving a new car with which I am unfamiliar, in the middle of the night, into San Francisco where I have never driven before is no fun.  He has a Kia Optima Hybrid which takes a little getting used to just because I don’t know where any controls are, the GPS is very different from what I am used to and every hybrid feels very different and you need to get used to them.

I struggled to understand the GPS and made a “slightly” wrong turn.  I say slightly because the GPS wanted me to take the hard left at a five way intersection and I made the soft left, mostly because I was unsure if the hard left wasn’t an oncoming one way street and the last thing that I wanted to do was to plough head first into oncoming downtown traffic.

The soft left turn turned out to be Interstate 80 which was past the point of its last exit and, you guessed it, onto the Bay Bridge I went.  So I had the adventure of driving around Treasure Island attempting to get turned back around to get back to the peninsula.  The GPS went completely insane and directly me onto a private military barracks road that led to the top of a very high hill.  I decided that the GPS was useless and gave up on it.  I drove myself back to the highway and managed to get myself back to the city.

I parked the car at the hotel.  I had to drive down to the sub-basement area which only has what appears to be a walkway that a single car can kind of fit down if it is a very small car.  The ramp going down was so small that I wasn’t even sure that a car was supposed to go down it but there was nowhere else for a car to go so I assumed that it was the right place.  I have no idea what you do if someone else is coming or going at the same time.  That would be a disaster.

That was enough of an evening for me.  I got myself into bed and called it a night.