Yummy musical goodness

This one's for Audra. White Label Records Goodness

Success!!

I'm very pleased to say that after months of wading through rental postings, viewing a range of apartments from jewels to dumps, I've found the perfect place. A beautiful, sunny, large, clean, all-around perfect apartment just manifested itself for me.

I expect to be moving in sometime around July 15th. I'm so excited I can't stand it.

Biking Season

It's a challenge for me to get here on a regular basis to keep this bugger up to date. I tell you, lately it's a challenge just to wrangle some free moments to sit down with a good book or simply bask in the sunshine.

Yay, Spring! The weather has been fabulous lately, and you know what that means. Biking season has officially arrived. I'm in it up to my eyeballs this year.

As mentioned in a prevous post, I recently signed up for Team in Training. It seems like a logical way to demonstrate my deep appreciation of the treatment I'm lucky enough to have. Very soon now I'll start posting more information about that and links to my fundraising page and all that.

For now however, it's enough for me that it's springtime.

Bubble Mob

There have recently been some very interesting flash mob activity. A pillow fight on the Embarcadero in San Francisco, for example. My current favorite, a Bubble Mob in Vancouver.

Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Mmm.. Yoga

I just returned yesterday from 10 days in mexico. I spent 5 of them on a yoga retreat in the hills above Sayulita I will have pictures soon, but i'm taking my time speeding up to the pace of life here for the moment.

I feel unvelievably great, as you can well imagine. 4 hours of yoga a day can do that to you. I'm working on getting a regular routine set up for me here, but it will be a few days yet.

Ironically, got a call today from Team in Training folks at the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I'd signed up for one of the rides and they were calling to verify my interest. It turns out the California ride is a *metric* century, not a real century. I might do the Honalulu ride instead. Food for thought. The info meeting is not for a couple of weeks yet, and the ride isn't until September.

On the hunt.. (Wayfaring)

I've decided resigned myself to the idea that my new Apartment will be located in east bay. This was not an easy decision to swallow, but it's the most practical solution to my situation right now. Unless I stumble across a perfect place priced just right back in The City, my search will focus on a few specific areas in the east bay. I have some simple criteria:

1. Convenient to Bart (easily walkable or bikeable)
2. Close to shops/restaurants. (prefer local grocery, a couple of restaurant options, etc.)
3. Easy parking. Street is fine, driveway, spot, etc preferred.

Part of the challenge i face is that I do not know the geography of East Bay very well at all. I'm slowly de-mystifying it, but I don't know intuitively where certain streets are in relation to one another, or even to the closest bart station (which can often be miles away). To overcome this challenge i've been using a great mapping mash-up tool.

See the results:




I've plotted the local bart stations and if i see an apartment i'm interested in, i can plot it. if it comes up close, i'll put some details in and save the map.

It's got some limitations mainly only one color option for waypoints, and it often doesn't save data that i've inputted (which is very annoying). it's very particular about how data is inputted, but you can put in descriptions, add URLs, all sorts of stuff. It's pretty slick.

On Zip Lines

All my life i've had a fantasy of zipping through the forest, over a river, lake,
whatever, on a zipline. it goes back to when i was 11 or 12 at Disneyland in florida and our day trip to river country. they had ziplines, but they were
short. it whetted my appetite for more.

so when i discovered that there is a zipline forest near where I'll be staying during my trip to Sayulita, Mexic, images of zipping through the forest filled my head.

I should be excited right? but i'm not.. it makes me nervious. it's like i've
suddenly realized how fragile my human shell is and i weigh the risk and
reward of such a thing much differently than I would have in, say..
December. It still sounds like a cool idea... but i'm nervious. I suppose that's an understandable reaction given the circumstances, but ziplines aren't, like, a contact sport, so why does it freak me out?