enjoy vegetarian

I drove down to Menlo Park today to check out a place that I saw on Craigslist, reacquaint myself with the neighborhood, and think about whether I really want to move back to the south bay. I could easily ignore the situation for another month (or three months, if I were eager to live either alone or with a subletter while Adit is off getting married), but as most of you know, I like to have a plan, and so not having a plan for where I will live or even what neighborhood I will live in is driving me a bit mad.

So while I was in Menlo Park, I was convinced that it's the right place to move. However, the downside is that Menlo Park is a bit farther away from work than Palo Alto, so I'm realistically looking at 25mins to get home, rather than 15. But, I strolled down Santa Cruz Ave and saw all sorts of places that I would like to go (cafes, gourmet grocery stores, my all-time fave Borrone, etc.) I also liked the place that I saw; it had hardwood floors and felt like more of a house/cottage than an apartment (definite plus) -- but, it also doesn't have the granite countertops and fancy bathrooms that many of the soulless apartment complexes have upgraded their units with. So, in that respect it comes down to charm vs. slickness, and I'm not sure how to weigh that decision either. But, the landlady was nice, which is always a plus, and so I told her I'd get back to her in a few days.

After seeing the apartment, I went to Palo Alto and had a sandwich at Printers Inc before coming back to the city of sin. I tried working on the novel and wrote about half a page, but then got distracted with my finances (namely, reconciling all my expenses in iBank), and somehow endured Adit mocking me for using my Hello Kitty calculator while playing around with the numbers. Then, Adit invited me to dinner with him and some friends who were getting together (Anton and Amanda, whom I know, and Beth, Eve and Dave, whom I don't). Dinner was in like the worst place in the city to get to (North Beach), and was at a restaurant called "Enjoy Vegetarian". Despite my meat-eating ways, I did enjoy it, even if the place was so vegetarian that it could have things like 'coconut chicken' on its menu and you were just expected to know that the chicken was some sort of meat replacement product. I don't usually eat meat replacement products, but this stuff was all good.

So, dinner was quite fun, but I bailed on their plans to go to a house party in the Marina and a bar in Oakland (not quite sure, logistically, how that will all work out for them). And now, I should really go to bed -- and tomorrow, I should really write rather than obsessing about where I'm going to live. Goodnight!