Updates

I know it's been forever. But I've been consumed with moving, and
then doggie sicknesses (he's going to be OK).

First the moving-- I am now a proud resident of Russian Hollow, a
newly named neighborhood comprising Van Ness between Lombard and
Broadway. I go out my front door and go right, I'm in Cow Hollow. I
go left, I'm in Russian Hill. It's win-win really. I am almost
settled in the new apartment, and it was lovely to reunite with my
furniture and other worldly posessions after seven long months apart.

To get the apartment together, I had to do a lot of shopping. I had
almost no hangers and no drawers at all after my last move, so IKEA
was high on the list. In a spurt of productivity on Sunday, I was at
IKEA when it opened at 10, and made it to Costco back in the city by
11. I decided a hot dog was appropriate fortification for my
adventures, and stood in line with the senior citizens and people
holding screaming children. I got up to place my order with a young
female cashier, and she looked at me and blurted, "What are you doing
here so early?" in a very startled as-if-she-knew-me way, not a chatty
service professional way. I was fairly amused.

I was just getting the apartment together (I built an IKEA dresser BY
MYSELF in two hours flat. And it was a big dresser), when Satchel put
me through a challenging night. On Tuesday night, he woke me up and
then kept me up most of the rest of the night by making a hacking
cough sound, and then spitting up water. I was terrified, and spent
most of the night trolling the internet for what terrible disease he
had. Turns out it's kennel cough, for which he was vaccinated but
apparently vets are quacks. And while it's unpleasant, it generally
goes away on its own and he should be fine. I've been giving him
little spoonfuls of honey, which seems to stop the coughing for a
short bit. We only got up every three hours last night. He sounds
like a sea lion. It's pretty funny since he's still his friendly
self, so this morning in the elevator he was jumping up to greet
someone and doing his usual routine while making this deep hacking
sound. The guy was a little freaked out.

We're off to SoCal tomorrow. Happy holidays!

Proud to be a Stanford Alum

We won Big Game! And yes, the season was still pretty lame, but we won it for the first time in a while and I was there. It was a great day to be a Stanford fan, and not only because we won.

During college games, the schools get spots to put ads for themselves up on TV, and Stanford's have always been unbelievably low-budget and lame. But they apparently finally saw the light and made an ad so good, they showed it during the game on the Jumbotron. This video below truly made mt proud to be a Stanford alum. Hail, Stanford, hail.

Some birthday pics