Southbay state of the union

Howdy y'all.  I think my blog is the only place that I have a twang and a southern drawl, but I'm reachin' for country when I'm living in the city!  I promised a few weeks ago to post some pictures of the new place, and I would like to say that I've made progress toward that, but alas I have not.  My phone (which doesn't take particularly good pictures anyway) is not working quite right, so I am without device here in silicon valley.  The ironies never end, do they.

I suppose on the bright side, if I were to post pictures, you would just be looking at bare walls, sparse living room, and a generally spartan, bachelor existence anyhow.  But all that is about to change (queue the mysterious music for dramatic foreshadowing).  I am in the processing of reinventing Gavin.  This old dog is gonna learn some new tricks, and break some old habits in the process.

For example, those of you that know me pretty well, know that I was a huge proponent of mac'n'cheese in my former bachelor ways...  but not anymore.  I BOUGHT LETTUCE.  Why is lettuce so important you ask?  Because lettuce symbolizes the type of food that you buy at the store that really only works with moderately healthy to very healthy meals.  Lettuce is something that is very perishable, which means I'm not just planning to eat it, I'm planning to eat it soon (no, I haven't eaten it yet, but I would have had it with my sandwich on Sunday had it been in my posession).  So, in summary there, I've have taken the lettuce step.  I big step for Gavin-kind.

I am seriously considering buying a slick little point-and-shoot camera to capture some of the fun things goin on around here.  I wish I would have had it earlier tonight: Scott and i took a little drive down Washington st. to a basketball court there.  We shot around and played horse, it was fun.  (I won, muwahahahahah).  But it was cool of him to let me play coach a little bit and help him with his shooting form.  Once a coach, always a coach I guess.  I was actually very impressed with the court: it has really good lighting, not bad backboards and rims for a playgound-style court, and the court is nicely surfaced/leveled for playing.  It's not half-bad!  :P

In my workplace, I've been trying to finish a security/background check set of paperwork.  What a pain that is.  I think i finally finished everything today.  Those things scare me, when the have plastered reminders all over the forms how they can sue you for $10k or send you to prison for 5 years if you get something wrong.  I did my best, hopefully I don't have to go to prison...  In some ways it's kinda fun: I had to call up a lot of the people I used to work with/for.  It's kinda cool to hear how they're doing, I was glad to hear that one place in particular was happy with a database i setup for them 8 years ago or so.  Cool peeps.

On the workout front, I got myself in gear and got a membership to Gold's Gym.  It's very inexpensive here (like $15/mo) and the facilities are pretty good.  I'm trying to go early in the morning, so that helps me go to bed earlier too.  Wow, it's already 10:50pm... I gotta get there at 6am...  I'm gonna "do the math" in my head here and say that I should probably stop writing and get some sleep.

I hope that all of my loyal readership are doing well (wow -> that sounds so impersonal, eh?)  I mean the people that care about me enough to read my text-only blog about my adventures here.  I love you guys.  But all good things must come to an end (I don't really know why there), so I'll keep my date with mr sandman.  He keeps wanting to go steady, I keep telling him that I have to get up...  our relationship is a work-in-progress.  Oh yeah!  really quick!  I don't know if I've mentioned this here or not (i think not).  I was talking to Scott and he asked me if I was a night owl (since it does seem to be my tendency to go to bed late and it does not seem to be my tendency to wake up early when I don't have to)...  I told him that it's not that I'm a night owl, I like the morning and the evening, it's just that I am transition challenged!  Think about it!!  I think that may be the difference between "night owls" and "early birds", the early people have less inertia to transition to the new state while the late people always lag behind and it takes time for them to transition into the new state.  (yeah, I'm gonna publish this theory in my thesis for sure).

Well, without further ado, I bid you all good night!  Gavin is leaving this waking world, in favor of it's nocturnal reflection...

A Video is worth a million words...

Why today could've been better but wasn't terrible

No picture (definitely not video) today. Today I will tell you a story, and you will listen (if you know what's good for you).

It all began when i realized that I needed to wear a particular pair of jeans because my other two pairs were dirty (that is, they needed to be washed). So I am going through my (mostly) normal monring routine... brush teeth, put on clothes, etc. I have to work at 8am at the research lab, so I need to be in the truck by 7:40am. I am on time. This makes me happy. ;)

Then I park my truck, the normal 5 blocks away so I don't have to pay for parking over by the bus stop on 5th street. Hardly anyone is walking by since it is 5 blocks (about) from school. I continue to walk along my normal pathways, cut Orange before 4th, cut across the parking lot on 3rd, etc. Finally, I am about 2 blocks from my campus, people are quite a bit more plentiful by this time, getting to their morning classes across 2nd street. Then I feel a chilling breeze near my crotchal region... not good. I tried to quickly fix the problem, but there was no way to do that discretely - it was all the way down...

"Okay, game plan Gavin." I thought to myself. I quickly dodged between two parked cars and looked aimlessly around while my fingers tried to diagnose and solve, but to no avail. Realizing that time was the big obstacle, and I needed to get this finished quickly, I looked down and went to work. The problem was that things were stuck, so it took a fair amount of pulling (and a tad bit of jumping) to get things as they ought to be (up). When I had finally succeeded in my quest to close the barn, I looked up to find several people staring as they walked by wondering why I was jumping up and down and such. Embarrasing.

Finally, once said quest was completed, I continued my walk toward work. After a little bit of adrenaline (or whatever chemical is at work) wore off, I felt a stinging pain in my left thumb. Due to the temperature, and stiffness of the zipper, I had ripped half my fingernail off! So then I decided that the bookstore would be closesest place to obtain a bandage. Fortunately, no one asked me during the day how I hurt my thumb...

The rest of the day went really well, but I decided in the back of my mind, that the new jeans I am going to buy will be button-fly! (Yes dad, you were right.) I Hope you enjoyed my little story.

Numero Uno Posto

I like to rhyme, so with this thyme
I will use the blog for a small flog.
Take one look at my post and its ghost
will find your tale, and nail
you to the wall, all!

(nope, not my best work, but y'gotta spit what's in your mouth, eh?)