The Center for ecosystem survival is having their annual bowl-a-thon and silent auction Saturday, March 15th down in Daily City. Like any something-a-thon you try and get donations from friends, coworkers, or yourself. Either on a flat rate or per event (like per pin based on your best score.) $35 dollars worth of donations gets you in the door for 3 hours of bowling and pizza and softdrinks. You need 4 people to reserve your own lane and lanes can have up to 7 people. Higher donation levels get you progressively better swag, like the event shirt. Which Rachel did again this year, and the image she drew for it looks great. The silent auction is fun, last year we got a couple of discounted gift certificates to a couple nice restaurant. Go to savenature.org and check it out.

I recently got 24 inch widescreen monitors at both work and at home. There is no going back.

I recently read "Butcher Bird" by Richard Kadrey, which is available as a free download from his publisher here. It is kind of a cross between American Gods by Neil Gaiman and the Nightside series by Simon R. Green. At this point in my life I've read enough sf/fantasy I wasn't particularly surprised or amazed by "Butcher Bird" but I enjoyed the plot and characters and thought it was well done. A fast fairly short read. [via]

While working, post move, on organizing the kitchen Sunday, I saw a cute little gray squirrel hop hop hoping along the deck, with a nut in his mouth. Very adorable. I thought our poor city cats should get a chance to see this example of things they think they want to hunt and sprang into action trying to find said cats. I go for the living room looking for the cats and take a backward glance at the cute gray squirrel only to discover the little blighter has hopped into my container of carrot seedlings and is busy digging a hole to bury his nut! I immediately had to go chase him away and explain to him that he was a lazy little squirrel and there was perfectly good dirt at the bottom of his tree and he is not welcome to use my container gardern as his winter food storage system.

I'm used to the customer service from the government sanctioned monopolies being terrible. I expect to wait on hold for ages when I have to call up PGE for whatever reason. I couldn't imagine what they could do that would actually be worse than their current customer service. However they have managed to do what I could not imagine. I got called by them about an appointment, it went to my voicemail, and the message I got was hilarious. The gist is:
a computerized voice told me they were going to connect me to a live person to talk about my appointment, at which point I hear music and a different computerized voice kicks in and tells me that all the operators are busy and there is quite a wait. But if I don't want to wait I can punch in my number and, you guessed it, they'll call me back.

What a world.

We're moving out of San Francisco and moving right into the yuppie land of Sausalito. Gone are the days of random crazy people yelling at you and watching violence and throwup on the bus. At least when at home. We both continue to work in San Francisco so I'm sure will have to deal with a certain amount of 'edgy' that I've grown to really not enjoy.

Our new place is great: Largish 1 bedroom, walk in closet, large deck, gas stove, storage, shared with 1 other unit washer dryer, and parking. It is two and a half very steep blocks to a little downtown area with food and a movie theater, and from there just a hop skip and a jump to the waterfront. Oh and the unit is up on steel beams and concrete and is thus over a smallish creak that trickles and makes lovely tranquil sounds.

We will soon be aproximately here. We start paying rent March 1rst and should have the keys a week or so before then. Exciting times!

The 2008 Lundberg Men Ski Trip was a grand success. 7 nights in Brekenrdige Colorado in a nice condo with a hot tub and an easy walk to downtown, what could be better? We hit Brekenrdige, Keystone, and Vail to ski and snowboard at, though as usual I had a very leasurely pace - one day on, on day off. My Beard Cap was a big win in sylishly keeping my face warm. We had a number of lovely dinners out, topped off with dinner at Hearthstone which was in the great converted victorian where Norm managed to reserve us a table in the upstairs bay window. As usual we read a lot of books, watched a little bit of crap tv and Matt and I did our best to use the hot tub. There was some crazy snowstorms while we were up there, but that didn't stop us from hitting the slopes or heading off to town to get yet more good food. A great time!

The "Beard Cap" that I purchased from Scandinavian Grace was a complete and total win on this years Lundberg Men ski trip. My head and face were nice and toasty despite the 2 degree F weather with 15+ mile per hour winds. A variety of people made comments to the effect that they loved the beard cap. It is a bit unusual, but never the less, a great purchase.