June 2

[tulokyn]

There's been a a fair bit happening the last couple days, and I barely know where to start. I suppose I'll work backwards to give me more time to remember.

 

Shamus left to walk to the Caltrain station this morning with his fingers crossed. Regretably, when we were preparing to move in to our new apartment, the internet connection setup got a little overlooked, so we couldn't check the schedule. He didn't bike today, since he has his D&D group tonight, so hopefully he'll be getting a drive home. Maybe he can find a schedule to note for tomorrow. I've asked him to call the cable company on his lunch break, so hopefully we will have internet soon.

Yesterday, we imposed on a friend's generosity, and had him help us move all our junk down to Sunnyvale from Palo Alto. He was even so kind as to leave work again in the afternoon to get our kitties with us. We took much longer than we had anticipated, unfortunately, so he got a little frustrated by the end of the trips, but we plan to buy him lunch or something in return. Hopefully he can forgive us for underestimating everything ever.

 

We spent the afternoon at IKEA, browsing around furniture, and figure out what was the bare minimum of stuff we could get by with. We ended up with a (king sized) mattress, two sets of sheets, two chairs, a dining/work table, aaaaand that's it. We are planning to buy a fabulous red couch with a chaise lounge section (omg I can't wait) on Shamus' next paycheque in two weeks. We could have gotten a cheaper couch yesterday, but it was "passable" instead of "fabulous." This also allowed us to get nicer dining chairs to be our only seating arrangements for the interim.

 

 The worst part about this whole IKEA business, is that their delivery service is full until Friday morning. This means that from the terrible beds at our temporary location, we've moved onto sleeping on the floor for two nights. Blessedly, the carpeting here is plush and clean, instead of super thin and grungy. Still, we only own a single set of queen sized sheets, and our pillows, so I need to go out and buy a blanket today. I couldn't sleep for longer than an hour at a stretch last night, and I think a blanket might help. Besides, everything we have shipping to us is coming in queen sized anyway, except for the lovely hand made quilt from my aunt, which she sized quite generously for the queen bed I had when she made it. We're not sure when we're going to receive our shipped items, so I'm going to get a blanket today.

 

After IKEA, we took a wonderful bike trail down the shore of the San Francisco Bay, that, while lengthy, was relaxing and quiet, as opposed to attempting to bike down the freeway. Our kitties were waiting for us when we got home, and then proceeded to not ever leave us alone until about the time I started typing this. When I started, I was standing at the kitchen counter (being sick of sitting on the floor), and Smudge laid down on the floor behind me to keep me company. Sprite ended up curling up in a large empty box we have (from our fabulous pot set), but most of last night she was lying above our pillows purring loudly. Both of them actually got sick at the Kitty Hotel two days ago, so you can hear them sneezing and sniffling all over the apartment. It's very sad. Hopefully they'll feel better soon, but for right now they just seem to be snoozing a little more, and they are eating well. We will take them to the vet soon, but there's no emergency.

 

Monday was Memorial Day, which was really strange for us. Apparantly, the US doesn't observe Rememberance Day like the Commonwealth does, their observation for fallen soldiers is in May. I expect to find this even more strange come November, as this Monday just seemed like any other bank holiday to me. Shamus and I went for a bike ride, and did 25km, and we only got a little lost. We went down the wrong (steep) hill, and ended up biking through the Google campus on our way back to the path. 

 

Google has a bike rack full of specially painted googleBikes for their employees to get around the campus with. They have a green and a blue tire, and the metal parts of the bike are done in yellow. orange, and red, like the Google logo. Very cute. I should have gotten a picture of the one we saw near the golf course we went through, but I didn't. While we were going through said golf course, Shamus noticed some large shadows flying over him, and when we looked up, we got to see three pelicans flying towards the bay. Sometimes I swear this place is imaginary. It's rather surreal, if nothing else.
 

Now there are people here to change my kitchen flooring, so I'm going to save and get going.

 

 

Now, having totally lost my train of thought, and having gone about the rest of my day, I'm going to go on about that instead. The flooring fix took about 3 or 4 hours, and I had only had cookies in the house to sustain myself. I should have just asked the maintenance guy to leave the workers a key to lock up with, but I ended up waiting until around 1 before I was able to leave for lunch. There is a subway (as well as an Indian and a sushi restaurant down the road, so I went there and had a Chipotle Chicken foot-long, and a cherry Coke. Came home and DEVOURED it. Then I had to lie on the floor and play video games for 40 minutes so my stomach would digest before I set out on a trek for groceries.

 

Now, most of the time when I go somewhere, I have googlemaps to aid me, or else I go there with Shamus, who has a smartphone which is able to consult the googlemaps while we are enroute. This time, I ended up biking for a much harder ride than I expected (my legs are sore and tired from all of yesterday's events), and ended up staring at El Camino Real, wondering where the hell the damned Safeway was, and how was I going to find it. I didn't think it was up that far. A man walked by at that moment and said hello. I asked him how he was, and he admitted that he wasn't too good, and could I help a guy out? I keep two one dollar bills in my bike bags in case I need to buy a drink, or in case a tire gets a flat (I've read that paper money makes good tube patches). So I leaned back on my bike and got a bill out, and asked if he couldn't tell me where the nearest Safeway was. Turns out it was only about two blocks away (though I would never have found it without his help), so we both went on our way happy.

 

I got to the Safeway, locked my bike up, and took my bags with me. Grocery stores here are complicated, because while some of the brands of food/household goods/etc are the same, most are not, and I end up staring at a display of dishwasher detergent for 10 minutes without any clue where to start with my choices. The whole trip to the store was like that (except for the bag of cherries and the single brand of milk they had), and I was there for probably 2 hours or so, trying not to just burst into frustrated, confused tears in the middle of the aisle.

 

I did manage to get nearly everything, though things got a bit hairy when I went to get some tuna, looked at the can, and realized that I didn't even own a can opener to get into it with. I even got a Safeway club card, so I saved about $18 off my bill. Apparently there is an email thing I can sign up for too that gets me more deals and coupons? I don't even know. The groceries I got probably weighed 60+ pounds, which was a bit problematic when walking my bike. It was much more eager to fall over when carrying all my stuff. When I was riding the bike it was no problem, so that was a relief. I would never have managed to walk home with that many groceries. As it was, I had to abandon one of the pannier bags on the second floor for a minute, as going up the stairs so heavily laden was giving me vertigo.

 

One of my afternoon's purchases was some white cheddar Kraft Dinner. It's something I've had a hundred times in Canada, and it's easy to make without much gear. I ended up coming home and making some fantastic Kraft Dinner in my fancy swanky professional cookware, with my fancy swanky cooking spoon. Then I ate it out of  a disposable plastic bowl with a disposable plastic spoon. Oh yes, living the high life here, I tell you. Really though, the cookware is fantastic, the stove is amazing (compared to our last one which was terrible), and Kraft Dinner that you make yourself is way better than going out and ordering some sort of pretentious macaroni and cheese in a restaurant, if only because the food is way hotter. This was not something I really realized when I was eating out for the last month, but homecooked food is much hotter. It makes sense, but it's not obvious.

 

Anyway, getting back from the ride to the grocery store was harrowing enough for me, since my legs are so sore; I did not want to make the ride again to go to Target to get a blanket. Or rather, I desperately wanted a blanket, but I also desperately wanted to not have to walk or bike there. I am still waiting to see if Shamus can get a friend to drive us there superfast, but I'm not holding my breath. My fingers are crossed though. I actually had the heater on in the bedroom last night, since the sheet we were under wasn't keeping me warm enough despite wearing a tshirt, flannel pyjama bottoms, socks, and a hoodie.

 

I am feeling loved though, even with Shamus out of the house. SPrite has been hanging out with me for most of the evening while I type or play video games or whatever, and Smudge is sleeping over on top of a suitcase, and being adorable while he's at it. They are very happy to be with their humans again, even if we are terribly incompetent. Aaaand Sprite just sneezed all over my leg. :D