Zombie Me

We’ve been back from San Francisco since late Thursday night but I haven’t blogged because I’ve been in sort of a weird haze. I’ve napped a lot, underperformed a lot of things I would like to have done and generally been a lump. I opted to go into work for the one day Friday, which was a pretty dumb idea. I was there and did stuff but felt worn out the whole time. It would have made sense to take the day off and just roll into the weekend.

I ended up passing on my company’s Xmas party Friday night because it was in North Myrtle Beach far from my house, and that turned out to have been the right call. I was asleep on the couch on and off all evening. Saturday involved another party with a long drive, this time to Pawleys Island. Because I took the dog to the park early afternoon, that more or less chewed up the entire day. Today I had plans to get a podcast done, do a lot of work and pretty much none of that happened. We did make it to Target and Pier One to get all the Xmas shopping done that we are going to do.

It’s a weird offshoot of the new media world that to hold down a full-time job and then not blog or podcast on the weekend makes me feel like a lazy failure. I’d like to get more of that stuff done but I need to re-calibrate my attitude that to not do the sidelight is not necessarily a lacking.

San Francisco Days

I’ve been doing a lot of twittering of details of this trip but no blogging. It’s hard to tell when this ephemera rises to the level of deserving a post so I’ll just lay down some groundfire of details.

After our miserable travel day on Monday, the first order of the day was to get Darlene and her poster to the Moscone center and me registered with a guest pass for the AGU. I basically toted stuff and then left her to her devices. I went to the Apple store right at opening to meet my Genius appointment for a replacement keyboard on this iBook. Not only where the letters rubbed off but the dog had physically popped off two keys and eaten them! Welcome back, “g” and “=”! I met back up with my wife for Thai at the joint across from the Moscone. After that, we napped our tired asses. She went back to the conference and I wandered up Market, browsed at Jeffrey’s Toys and Comics, and then just headed towards Chinatown. I walked and walked and eventually came back to Union Square. We had eaten at this great Indian restaurant five years ago and we wanted to go there again. I remember it was a little west of Union Square but not exactly where it was or what it was called. I went into grid search pattern and found it! Mela on O’Farrell was the joint.

Here’s where I screwed up, I kept going past it and before I realized it I was fairly well into the Tenderloin. Sunset in the Tenderloin was a jumping time with packed streets. I was wearing slacks and a sports coat and probably had a neon “tourist” sign blinking over me, so I kept my head up and walked my ass out of there. Mistake #2, instead of turning around and going directly back I made a left thinking I’d pop out at Market any minute. Block after block I kept walking and still wasn’t there. I was beginning to get a little worried so I tried to do a little dead reckoning by the sun and took another left and voila, I was at Market within 2 blocks. That was not exactly the adventure I was shooting for. After meeting back up, we grabbed a friend and dined at Mela. The service was kind of slow and crappy but I had the best plate of chicken tikka masala I’ve ever had. I’m still daydreaming about it.

This morning, we slept kind of late from jetlag and fatigue. We walked together up Powell Street looking for the See’s Candies and seemed to never find it. From there, we split up and I went on my Mission District adventure. I took the BART to 24th and Mission, and then walked up Valencia. My original plan had been to shop at Borderlands Books and eat at the Ethiopian place next door. That plan was skunked when the Ethiopian place wasn’t open for lunch. Curses! I asked the public works lady sweeping the street for her recommendation on lunch places. I figured if anyone around would know, it would be her. She sent me to Valencia Pizza and Pasta on 19th and Valencia. Sure enough, it was fantastic. This review page covers it up to and including the distress at having to walk through the kitchen to pee. I opted to hold it.

From there I did browse at Borderlands and picked up a few things. I bought $1 books and CDs at several little shops along the way, including a Ben Hecht memoir on a cheapo table that just seemed like a thing to buy. I kept walking all the way up Valencia until it hit Market and then swung over to Al’s Comics. I picked up most of the last 2 years of Love and Rockets as well as the new Nexus comic. From there I jumped on the Muni and rode the train back to Market and 1st, finally finding a See’s Candies where I got some goodies for gifts (but most of it for us). Hello, lemon truffles! Get in my belly.

After that excitement, I’m back in the hotel resting my feet and regrouping before the next outing. Mostly what I have done for the last 36 hours is eat and shop, mostly eat. I suppose there are worse ways to recreate in San Francisco. Being the old man that I am, my itinerary is heavily influenced on my ability to take the next whiz. For now, I’m staying close to the hotel for just that reason.

Tight Connections

The tour of delayed flights continue. So instead of leaving Myrtle Beach at 7:20 AM, we left at 11 AM. We had a leisurely layover in Charlotte where we had lunch at the delicious barbecue joint in the concourse and got a Starbucks. With the free wifi, we had an hour or so that we could fart around online. However, we boarded late apparently because of some security concerns about some unexpected object on the plane. Because we had a 45 minute cushion in Phoenix, leaving Charlotte 30 minutes late was a pretty big nail-biter for us.

When we landed in Phoenix, we had 22 minutes to get from B concourse to A. This involved doing the combination racewalk/half-assed jog all the way through the airport. We got there right as they were about to shut the door and squeaked in. I’m quite certain this is the tightest connection that I’ve ever actually made. I’ve had tighter connections that I missed but this is the first time I’ve had the Indiana Jones grab-the-hat plane boarding.

Luckily for us, this is a pretty empty flight so we were able to commandeer a row for ourselves. This is the best part of the experience so far. God damn it all, it sure sucks that for so many itineraries US Airways is the only game out of Myrtle Beach. I’ll give them a pass on the cancellation of the first flight as fog too thick to land a plane is out of their control. The late departure of the 2nd flight, the complete lack of helpfulness for the tight connections (no connecting gates read off, no notice that they are informing our connections to wait on us) and the general lack of service is what I have come to expect from US Airways.

To put the topper on it, though, is the relentless pimping of things like the Bank of America credit card (sign up on the flight, get extra miles!) I paid you good cash to get me to San Francisco and back, so don’t treat me like a captive audience for these freaking sales pitches. It just infuriates me. I was already pissed about that when on the third flight I lowered my tray and saw the ads for Sony noise canceling headphones on all of them. Screw you. It’s time to Cluetrain up and realize that trying this hard to milk us doesn’t create new opportunities for you as much as it gives me one more reason on top of many reasons to not fly US Airways. I’m thinking that on trips they are the only option might be trips I don’t take. I might also be more willing to drive to Columbia for flights if that means not having to fly them. This is serious shit folks. I am willing to take extreme measures to avoid being your customer. You should pay attention to that.

MYR: My New Home

We’re trying our darndest to get out of Myrtle Beach and on to San Francisco. Thick fog last night kept planes from landing so that the flight we were supposed to take at 7:20 AM couldn’t happen – there was no plane to leave! We originally were slated to take a no connections, one stop itinerary where we stopped in Charlotte but kept going on the same plane. I like that because there is no way to miss a connection that way. Now we are going to Charlotte at 11, connecting, going to Phoenix, connecting and on to SFO. Instead of getting there around noon, it will be more like 6 PM. Sigh. It’s a good thing there is free wifi at MYR. It helps pass the time. I’m trying to catch up on email and Google Reader while we wait (and wait and wait.)

It’s a good thing we didn’t have a lot of plans. I wanted to go see the Heather Gold show tonight since I’ll be in town when it happens but that’s off the table now. I don’t think it’s physically possible to land, get our stuff, get to the hotel and back down to the Mission district in time. Oh well, que sera. Sorry Heather.

If there was any doubt about my lack of Twitter critical mass, it is proven by the fact that I asked on there if anyone was in SF and wanted to have lunch Tuesday or Wednesday. Consider probably half of all Twitter users are in the Bay Area, that’s kind of sad. Oh well. One of the two days will probably be Ethiopian food in the Mission district, the other day is open. I have an appointment at the Apple store tomorrow to get my keyboard fixed. Beyond that, my itinerary is wide open. I like that. I have a tendency to overplan and load up itineraries but that’s not really possible here so that helps fight my natural tendencies.

If we can ever get on a damned plane, we’ll be Cali bound!

Cooling My Heels in the Cold

I’m sitting in the auto shop waiting for them to service my car. It seems like it will take less time than I thought, so I might even be in to work about the average time for me. I was hunkered down and prepared for it to take all morning but mercifully it seems like it won’t.

They have wifi here. Frankly, I’m not sure when any shop with a waiting room doesn’t have it. Nowadays, a $30/month cable modem and a $30 onetime cost for a router does it for you. It makes life a lot easier to have the option of doing your job sitting at the mechanics rather than always doing the car dropoff and pickup, particularly when the shop is kind of far from your house like this one is to mine.

One odd thing is that Twitter does not seem to be accessible from here. I suppose it could be down, but it just seems odd. Everything else I’ve tried works fine.

Sick As A Dog

When I got home from Greensboro early Sunday afternoon, I felt fine. All day, I felt OK. Through the evening, although I was tired and napped through the baseball game, nothing felt amiss. When I woke up Monday morning, I felt like crap warmed over. Had I not had some time-critical things due at work, I would not even have considered going in. I did, and it was a mistake. I steadily went downhill and by 2 PM, I had to leave.

I went home and basically laid on the couch and slept and shivered for the rest of the afternoon. By early evening, I hadn’t eaten anything all day and just trying to stand up, my whole body felt heavy and like I could barely walk to the bathroom. Around 8 PM I felt like maybe I could have a cup of bullion broth, and not long after I started feeling kind of normal. By the time I went to bed, it wasn’t bad and when I woke up today, things were mostly back to normal. I guess it was one of those one day viruses that I picked up over the weekend. It was fast onset, but luckily for me it was fast offset as well.

GTD Restart

I redid my Hipster PDA last night, which had fallen into disrepair right at the beginning of the summer when everything began getting insane. On and off all day yesterday I collected tasks into my context cards, and when I got home I checked them against the old ones in the unused Hipster just to make sure I wasn’t losing something. There were a distressing number of tasks still undone from 4 months ago. That’s a kick in the teeth. I think I need to focus on those just to get them of my plate and feel like I’m winning over the chaos.

Lost Weekend

The weekend got off to a rough start when I ended up staying at work until about 1 AM Friday night. Saturday was a relatively normal day without a lot of extra sleep. We took the dog to the dog park and did our normal kind of Saturday things. By Saturday night I was really worn down. I ended up getting banished to the living room because I was snoring so loudly. My throat was hurting when I moved and when I woke up it was even worse. After walking the dog in the morning, I lay back down on the couch and more or less slept there until about 3 PM. I felt better after all that sleep, but I basically lost an entire day. I’m still sleepy now, good thing it is bedtime. Not the most productive weekend I’ve ever had.

Anniversaries Uncelebrated

The busy summer kept me from even noting a number of anniversaries. Here are a few:

In late July, we hit the 5th anniversary of this blog. It was originally a wag done off the user account I had at Hurricane Electric at evilgeniuscorp.com (a domain I no longer have). I had the account to try to do a project with a comic book tracking and marketplace site. That project is long dead but the blog lives on.

In late August, we hit the 3rd anniversary of my podcast. I celebrated by doing ever fewer shows.

Somewhere right about now, we set the record for the longest we’ve ever lived anywhere. That is both for the city and for the house. Our 2000-20003 stint in Atlanta was the previous record holder for house and almost in a dead heat with the Portland OR area for city. In our married lives we’ve lived in 11 places (plus two temporary apartments) in 6 cities in 5 states. There is something immensely pleasurable about going to the same dentist 6 checkups in a row, in having the same doctor and bankers and barristas over time. I’ve had the same yard guy and cashiers here longer than any medical professional of my adult life. It’s a nice change from our nomadic times.

Update: I forgot a big one, the 10th anniversary of graduating from grad school at the University of Louisiana – Lafayette and changing careers into being a software developer. That’s the best career decision I ever made. I was originally an analytical chemist but I find this career much more satisfying.

More Things I Won’t Be Doing

Last week Alice Cooper was playing at the House of Blues, and I would have liked to have gone, but couldn’t swing it. Tonight George Jones is playing at the Alabama Theater (across the parking lot from the House of Blues, actually.) I’d like to see that one too, but also can’t swing it.

I have no problem seeing both of those shows, and in fact if they were on the same night and Alice started late one could actually attend both and not have to make the drive to North Myrtle Beach twice. Me personally, that sounds like a fun night.

Long Pants Day

This is always a melancholy day in the Grand Strand – it’s the first day I felt I needed to wear long pants and closed shoes for weather reasons. Generally for me, around April the sandals and shorts come out and stay out until I just can’t stand to wear them any more. Today is kind of chilly and rainy so I broke out the jeans and a long sleeve shirt. Sigh.

This makes me think of the tip for finding out which clothes in your closet to discard from Peter Walsh (via Merlin Mann). I note that their default duration is to check after six months which clothes you haven’t worn and discard them. That betrays a certain Californian lean, I think. Even here in the beachy area of South Carolina, we have significant weather swings. I think for almost anyone in America, you need to do a full year. Had I started that plan in March, around now I would decide I don’t need any of my sweaters or sweatshirts.

I actually don’t mind the turn from summer to fall and then to winter. I like wearing sweaters and sweatshirts and enjoy it when the weather allows me to break them out. I also like that I get that here, but not for a brutal 5 solid months like we had growing up in Kansas but maybe for a month or two in the dead of winter. Before that is mild fall, after that is mild spring. This seems more pleasant to me.

Early Morning People

Walking the dog at 6:45 AM I saw a surprising number of my neighbors up and about. Some were puttering in their kitchens, which is hard to miss when they are standing in the window with the lights on when it is dark out. Others were out in their yards or walking around or getting in their cars. Don’t these people want to sleep in? If it weren’t for the dog, I’d have been asleep. I tried to get him to go back to bed with no success. Left to my own devices I would probably stay up until 3 or 4 AM every day and sleep until noon. Here’s to one day achieving that.

Yowza

Been quiet on the blog front. To get some insight into my recent life, today is Friday morning but for the first hour I was awake I thought it was Wednesday. It feels like I was just granted a special weekend now. It’s all about expectation management, I suppose.

In what tiny bit of spare time I’ve had in the evenings, I’ve been doing a little work on AmigoFish. I recount some of that at the AmigoFish blog. I’ve been experimenting with Project Wonderful ads on there since they finally (like after 6 months) set me up as a seller. We’ll see how that goes.

Inbox Zero

Offline at my father-in-law’s house today, I achieved the mythical “Inbox Zero!” This didn’t mean that every email got answered or every link followed, but things that still need further attention are filed in my two boxes for such. In keeping with my GTD reboot, this is a great start!

Grand Strand Time of Year

I personally think this is the absolute best time of the year here in the Myrtle Beach area. The hot weather seems to have mostly broken and now it is in the 70’s and 80’s every day. I always advise friends that want to come here for fun that if they have the flexibility to come in September or October, that’s the time. Prices get cheaper after Labor Day, everything is less crowded and the weather is actually nicer than July and August. I also like April and May but the advantage of the fall is that the ocean water is still warm and good for swimming. If you don’t have kids in school right now and want to maximize your vacation dollar, right now is the time for a week at the beach.

This summer has gone by in a flash. It seems like last week that I was lunching by the beach noting how everything was gearing up for the impending tourist season and like that, it is over. I personally really enjoy the beach in off-season, even the dead of winter. There is something about the slumbering tourist town that really appeals to me.

GTD Reboot

I’m hoping to do a GTD reboot this weekend. If you’ve got an email in to me that I have yet to reply, expect that to come this weekend as I bash back down to “Inbox Zero.” I need to refresh my hipster PDA, get my physical inbox back under control and get back on top of the disparate many side projects I have sitting around in some stage of semi-repair. All of my heroes and heroines in this life are super-organized and super-productive people who seem to get in gear in a way beyond what I ever do. Time to turn my desires for being a hypercompetent productivity machine into action! “To organization and beyond!!!”