I've been obsessed with Interpol (the band, not the agency) for several weeks now. My parents got me the CD for Christmas, since I had put it on my list as a whim even though the CD medium is just about dead for me--if it wasn't for the CD player in my car, I would have virtually no need for them anymore (my CDs, not my parents). I don't think that I love Interpol; rather, I am so sick of the rest of my music that I get in the car every day, think 'I should put in something else,' realize that there is nothing else I want to listen to more (or at all), and so continue listening to Interpol. Since my commute has lengthened to 20-30 minutes each way after moving to Menlo Park, I can get through the entire CD on my way to and from work each day. I'm so lucky.
You should also check out SandHillRoadProject.net to see how much worse my commute will get when the construction on Sand Hill near my condo switches into Phase Two. Phase One is already a mess; I sat at the intersection of Sand Hill/Santa Cruz for about twenty minutes one morning a couple of weeks ago, although that has since improved, and will get even better when they finally open all lanes of Sand Hill. However, as soon as both of Sand Hill's lanes open, they switch to Phase Two--which involves shutting down the one-block stretch between Santa Cruz/Sand Hill and Santa Cruz/Alpine/Juniperro Serra. One block doesn't sound so bad, eh? Except that effectively cuts me off from the quickest route to Stanford/the boys' place in Los Altos, and eliminates my second-fastest alternative to the mess around Sand Hill and Santa Cruz. It also takes away the faster option for getting on southbound 101 (Alpine) and quick access to Page Mill.
Essentially, if you skipped that whole paragraph, it means we're pretty much fucked. The improvements to Sand Hill will help, but I'm not psyched about the closure of that one stretch of road (from April to November!!), since that means the only good way to get to campus is to go up Sand Hill to Stock Farm. Not terrible, but not ideal, especially for getting to east campus. Sadness.
Anyway, things are fine--I still haven't finished unpacking, but I made some progress tonight. I may go furniture shopping w/Terry tomorrow, depending on my ambition levels--I'd like to at least look at sofas, as well as a real dresser (significant upgrade from my current system of plastic bins, crates, and wire cubes). I had dinner w/Julie tonight, which was v. fun, and I'm sad that I haven't seen her (or any of that group) as much as I would like.
We had dim sum on Saturday, as usual, and it was Claude's turn to play. She got relatively lucky--she had to take from the cart of sadness, but she got the only non-scary thing on there (roasted pork). The only problem with the dish was that there was a lot of it, Claude doesn't really seem to like big piles of meat, and the top part of each piece looked like it had been caramelized and so it was a little too crunchy to suit our tastes. The waiters so obviously know that we're playing--the woman who served me feet last weekend walked by us with the feet cart, then backed up, looked directly at me, and asked if I wanted any. Then she laughed and walked away. And, the cart of sadness woman seemed almost disappointed that we got pork instead of feet or weird sea creatures. Dim sum was great, though, as usual.
Afterwards, we dropped Claudia off, and Tammy, Shedletsky and I saw a matinee of 'Constantine.' It was not great, but it wasn't bad either; some of the visuals were very appealing to me, and of course I have to give a shout-out to Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale, who had a lovely turn as Satan's henchman Balthazar. Keanu Reeves was somewhat terrible, but it was forgiveable. The only thing that truly bothers me is that this is the second time in only a couple of months that I have watched a movie containing the Spear of Destiny as a major plot piece. For the first, you can reread my review of 'The Librarian: Quest for the Spear', starring Noah Wyle and Bob Newhart (http://wampwamp.blogspot.com/2004/12/thumbprints-and-stressing.html). In 'Constantine,' the Spear of Destiny was found early on by the only brown person in the movie (other than Djimon Honsou, who played the owner of the ubiquitous neutral techno club for angels and demons...and the club had one shot that made me laugh, which involved a table of angels turning water into wine)...and the brown person proceeded to wreak havoc in his demon-encouraged attempt to take the Spear to LA for reasons that I cannot reveal without spoiling the movie. Or something. As soon as the Spear of Destiny showed up (less than ten minutes into the movie), I knew that I had picked a winner.
And now, after a rather long interlude of conversation with Claudia, it's time to go to bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment