Trip to Angel Island

Last Saturday, I went with some friends on a hiking trip to Angel Island, in the bay just out past Alcatraz. It was a very fun trip. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

http://min.us/mIAtYd

I had a great time, but ended up with some mild sunburn. Oh well.

Why I am no longer hungry: a happy story

I wanted to tell you about something that happened today, because of how amazing it was. I had been assembling furniture all morning -- so far, I've got a nice couch and a really recalcitrant bed frame -- and I discovered that it was 2:00 PM, and I really needed to have lunch about two hours ago. I decided that preparing a lunch of sufficient magnitude to refill me with energy was not something I was quite ready to try on my own, so I would go out to a restaurant and get a hot meal.

As I descended the stairs to the street, I was gently surprised to find that I was feeling a bit dizzy. I was actually faint from lack of food! This clearly would not stand. I meandered southward until the lettering on the shops was mostly in Chinese, and looked around for restaurants, figuring that this was my best bet at finding a restaurant that wasn't going to charge me $11 for a salad and call it a "bargain." (I'm not exaggerating; along the way, I actually did see a restaurant advertising that exact thing. I think it was an Italian place.)

The weather was sunny with a cool breeze, ideal walking conditions, so I didn't mind wandering farther and farther south in search of a good place. And wander I did, past shops selling dried mushrooms and discount scarves and the like, until I looked across the street and saw a beautiful sign. I use the word "beautiful" in a peculiar way here, because the sign itself was as plain as could be, simple black letters on a white background, but the beauty was all in what it said. "Dim sum buffet," it said. "All you can eat, $5.99." My eyes widened, and I strode over there immediately. "Yeessss!!" I murmured happily.

The restaurant was as plain as the sign: a buffet counter on one side of the room, and cheap white tables on the other side. At the head of the room was a counter where you paid. I forked over the six dollars, and received a paper plate, and a styrofoam cup and bowl. I certainly wasn't going to complain about the ambience; if anything, it felt refreshingly honest. Like a place the Great Pumpkin might visit, if it were a pumpkin patch rather than a dim sum restaurant.

The food bears mention, here. It reminded me a lot of the non-regional food in Taiwan, which makes sense as they have the same origin. There were dumplings and buns with really tasty meat-based fillings. There was a mild chicken curry dish. There were tempura pork chunks with sweet and sour sauce. There were egg rolls with enough sauce inside them that you didn't need dipping sauce. There were several different soups. There were green vegetables, because it just isn't a proper Chinese meal without some steamed greens. There were some sesame balls, which were good but hard to describe in writing. And, as the sign advertised, there was a lot of everything.

As I walked back home, to let the food settle while I digested and wrote about it, I was pleased to notice that the feeling of faintness earlier had completely subsided. Maybe I'll have the energy later today to set up a desk lamp, or something.

I went on a pilgrimage to IKEA.

Just say no to pilgrimages. They're a lot of work and inconvenience, and probably best avoided if you have any say in the matter. Sadly, I did not.

It was with a nervous jitter in my hands that I boarded the bus to Emeryville, home of the closest IKEA store. Or maybe that was the coffee; I'd had two cups that morning, as opposed to my normal total of zero, and I was definitely feeling the caffeine. That had been an asset in the morning, as it let me polish off an entire day's worth of to-do items with alarming speed, but it left me with the uneasy feeling that I was going to run out of steam later on. Undeterred, I sat back in the bus, put some bouncy, cheerful music on the ear buds plugged into my telephone, and watched as the bus went over the Bay Bridge. This truly is an impressive sight.

Once I got there, I quickly fortified myself with a hamburger from a fast food joint -- it was right there, and I had a feeling I'd be needing some excess food later on -- and followed the directions from Google Maps to get to the IKEA. It was hard to miss: the store is a huge box. When you walk in, and go to the exhibition area, there's a weird feeling that everything is for sale. Almost every object has a Swedish name and a price tag. That spatula over there isn't just a spatula; it's part of "Kitchenware 12-piece KRÖNK $8.99".

Even the floor had a name and price tag. Don't ask me how they intended to sell it.

I went through there in two passes: the first time, to identify what I wanted and how best to furnish my shiny new little apartment; and the second time, to write down the name and model number of each thing that I would need to get. It took an awfully long time, but I just kept at it, methodically figuring out what I needed. Then it was on to the miscellaneous household items section, which was just as large and labyrinthine as the exposition area, by some twisted miracle of architecture. The less said about that, the better; I got plates and silverware for preposterously reasonable prices, and the spatula options were all so terrible that I've now come to believe that Swedish spatula-makers are a bunch of lunatic tapirs or something, and oh my goodness it took a long time. By the time I was done with all that and ready to check out, it was about 6:30 PM, and I was unsteady on my feet from all the furniture with names like "Bed frame NYVOLL" and I wanted to go home immediately.

Ha! As if IKEA would let you finish up that easily! I had to get my list of goods transcribed into electronic format by the least qualified clerk there, a profoundly slow man who had very little idea of how to use the computer at any speed. This was not helped by the fact that, at one point, the darn thing froze up for some inscrutable reason, and all the other clerks came to stand around offering helpful suggestions at this guy. And then there was the process of taking everything that wouldn't be delivered to the checkout lanes, and filling out delivery paperwork, and then calling a taxi to get my stuff back to San Francisco. That took another hour. When I finally left the store at 7:30, I was glad I had thought to get a hamburger earlier.

At least the taxi was fast.

Once I had everything tossed into my new apartment, I had the unenviable task of getting back to the old apartment, where I was sleeping that night. By bus, because I was out of taxi cash. The adventure took two buses; the first one actually took me close to where I wanted to go, then suddenly veered onto the freeway and left San Francisco. The second bus took me back to where I actually wanted to be. By this time, obviously, it was well after dark.

Then I read a book, ate some food, and went to bed. After all that, what else could I possibly do? It was easily the most exhausting thing that had happened in quite a while.

Just say no to pilgrimages.