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My cutting board came with instructions in 18 languages. I’m almost surprised that English was at the top. It cost me $10, 75% less than similar ones I found at Bed Bath and Beyond. And by appearances, it is one of the better and more attractive cutting boards I have owned. The instructions it came with are clear, concise and useful. All hail the Swedes!

My new kitchen table is just about exactly the size I needed, 47″x30″. It’s stylish in it’s simple lines and real wood construction. It’s rather small but it’s a small eat-in kitchen. I’ve been shopping around and I nearly bought a set at Macy’s that wasn’t quite the right size for $750. I found some that were close to right at “Furniture 2000” near my office. But no.

I’d like to find something that totally grabs me but I’m getting tired of shopping, and tired of eating dinner on the edge of my bed. I’m not sure the table I got is exactly what I want, but the Swedes took 85% off the price and sold me a quality eat-in-kitchen table and chair set for $100.

Purchases like this are blowing my budget for shopping for my apartment. I had set aside $6000 (great thanks to my folks) to furnish the place and so far my expenses, top down have been:
$900 bed (that I might get rid of, it’s giving me a back ache)
$400 tableware for 4 (they make me happy :-)
$120 office desk off craigslist (It’s the right size, I can’t think of what more expensive things would replace it)
$100 table and chair set (see above)
$90 overpriced but fabulous santoku kitchen knife (satisfying my kitchen nesting instinct)
.. umm..
$18 cookie sheet
$15 shower hanging thing
You can see where I’m going with this…

My budget is being blown in the other direction. I can’t think of what to spend this money on. Though I still have 2 rugs, a desk chair, some kind of comfy chair and wall art to buy. Four grand for all that stuff? I’m going to have to get like… real art or something. Now I’m seriously thinking about that Sharper Image massage chair too.

Oh and I need a bike (motorized?) but that comes out of the transportation budget and not the housing budget. Maybe Housing will float a bond ;-)

I’m getting a lot of my stuff out of storage tomorrow. We’ll see what that spurns.

Update… Hmm, I’m rereading Sandman and I may have misremembered. I have to follow up on this. Or maybe the character names shift  Here’s a start.

Here’s my original answer…

I often use the name “Gadlen” online. A lot of people have asked where the name comes from so….

It was originally a character in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. (a very sophisticated, grown-up comic). There were these two characters, Gadlen and Hobbes who took care of Dream’s castle while he was away. They are quirky little characters, very much sideline characters… getting just a tiny bit more stage time than the more famous pair, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

I liked that. I liked the allusion to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the buzz about “the two least known characters in Shakespeare”. I loved Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” and how absurd the movie, Shakespeare’s characters, and Gaiman’s characters are.

I liked their jobs, immortal caretakers… janitors in an impossibly beautiful castle. I liked their boss (Sandman #50 still sends a shiver down my back).

I liked even more that when I did a search on the internet in 1992 or so and I didn’t find the word in use by anyone else. It’s good to have a unique name on the internet. Even today, if you google for “Gadlen“, many of the 150 or so links are to me. Having to get an email address like baseballfann5798@aol.com is no fun.

I have used the name in a live action role playing game. I played D. Gadlen J. Chimeran, Dark Hobling of the Fourth House of Inverness. It was quite a bit of fun. I’ve used the name Gadlen all over the ‘net, it’s a bit of a pen name. I’m Gadlen on Gmail, Yahoo, AIM and a mess of other places.

“Lee, you sure use a lot of plugins on your site. Could you give me a list of all of them?”
“Sure thing. I’ll give you the whole rundown..
Continue reading ‘How Does the Site Work? Plugin and Mods Rundown’ »

Friday night: After work, had a very fun time with Laura from Sacramento at LL in Northbeach

Saturday: I had a wonderful breakfast at Boogaloos, a 3 block walk from my house, and some wanderings through my neighborhood. Laura showed me where Osento is. She says that’s where all the contented ladies in the neighborhood eminate from.

Saturday night: Saw The Extra Action Marching Band. A fantastic experience. Imagine a marching band, only grown up and their outfits don’t fit anymore (in a good way) and they play in a club, on the dance floor, with everyone else dancing among them. Imagine swaying in a frenzy of bodies so thick that it’s hard to fall down, and then you get shoved aside by a tuba player that’s so close, you just miss getting beaned by it as he passes you. The band does all those football field maneuvers you’re used to, only in a slightly smaller space. “Ill advised performance art”. Hot, sweaty, loud, overwhelming. It’s a good thing!

Sunday: (after recovering from Extra Action) shopping. I now have beautiful flatware from a great little shop in SF called Dandelion. Of course, I have no table to put them on and no utensils to eat with, but all things in due time. I went back to Union Square to do a high-end run. I’ve got most of what I need to make pies now :-)

I was very impressed with the sales staff at Williams-Sonoma. They were way more nice and helpful and knowledgeable and everything than I’ve ever seen in other stores. I was shown a zester that worked like a bastard file; I liked it but was concerned that it was hard to clean so she said, “Well, let’s go get a lemon and find out!” I now own a bastard file zester. :-)

And the location, wow, they have a mezzanine and balconies and curving stairs and grand expanses and everything. I’ve been in other Williams-Sonoma stores and never got that treatment. And they had excellent selection and even the spatula I wanted :-)

I bought a fancy Sterns and Foster mattress and box spring from Macy’s. I got it home Thursday Dec 1st. It was an as-is showroom model. Priced at $2,400. I got it for $900. It’s all kinds of fancy.

I think it might be too soft in the center. I woke up with a back ache this morning. Actually, it’s more of a…. divot in the middle. The sides are firm, the head and foot are firm, there’s just this sweet spot that my hip falls into. Fuckin. That’s EXACTLY what I was trying to avoid in getting a nice bed. Am I out $900? Grrr.

Couple that with the horrible experience I had at the Select Comfort store in Walnut Creek… The salesman would not quit with his ultra-hard-sell sales schpeil until I said, -twice-, “I would like to evaluate the bed on my own. Could you please go away and let me.”

I was too tired to shop last night so I went home. Home. It was really really nice. My car in my garage. My beautiful entryway leading to my well maintained stairs. My door, my fridge, my bread, Holly’s jam :-), my fancy-schmancy German Williams Sonoma knife, my food, my plates. It was as quiet as I wanted and needed.

Things are going well on the Western Front.

Today:

My cousin called with Microsoft Word acting weird

My aunt called with an SD card problem and then a monitor issue

My dad called with a computer problem

And none of them will read this blog because they lack the computer literacy to do so.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 is a 20 megabyte install. Firefox is only 4 megabytes. What’s up with that?

I left for work with my carpool buddy 30 minutes earlier than normal. The traffic was so much heavier at 8:30 compared to 9 that we only saved 15 minutes. What’s up with that?

I’m back from Nashville. We had something like 14 family members in the house for Thanksgiving. :-) The highlight was donning protective clothing, heating 4 gallons of peanut oil to near-combustion and then dropping a 15 pound bird into it. Now THAT’S cookin’!

I’m loving the apartment. :-)

Sent to me by Victoria
Black Rock City 2005 from space

Some barely visible remnants of
Black Rock City on Google Maps. Date unknown

[Written 9-6-05, but I delayed publishing to protect the innocent…. and the guilty]

A letter arrived on about 9-6-05 for Jane, she is in Oregon for the summer and I am living in her room. The letter looked to be quite official… coming from a local prosecutor’s office. I set it on Scott’s chair. When Natasha came home, the conversation went, as near as I can recall, just like this:

Lee: There is an important letter for Jane. Do you know how to get in touch with her?
Natasha: Where is the letter?
Lee: I wouldn’t open it. It looks important. It’s on Scott’s chair.
Natasha: [walks over to Scott’s chair in his office quickly]
Lee: [calling into the other room] Don’t open it. It looks important.
Natasha: [walks slowly toward me, reading the opened letter]
Lee: Don’t read it. It’s not for you. It’s illegal for you to read it.
Natasha: [Looking up at me and then back to studying the letter] Who is this for?
Lee: It’s for Jane. Your housemate. [raising my voice slightly] Don’t read it. It’s not for you.
Natasha: But this is for Jane Jang.
Lee: Yes, that’s right, your housemate named Jane. Don’t read it. Do you know how to reach her?
Natasha: [still studying the letter carefully, going to page 2] But her name is spelled different. It is C-H-A-N-G
Lee: They misspelled it. But it’s still for Jane. Stop reading it. Does Scott know how to get in touch with her?
Natasha: But that is not her name. It is spelled different.
Lee: Yes. That letter is for Jane. Stop reading it.
Natasha: [walks back into Scott’s office, reading the letter intently. A minute later, she comes out.] Maybe we should find Jane.
Lee: Yes, that’s what I said. How do we get in touch with Jane? You shouldn’t be reading it. It’s illegal for you to.
Natasha: You don’t have to worry. I would never read your mail.
Lee: [staring at the open letter in her hands] Yes you would.
Natasha: [standing in my room, studying the letter closely] I’m just looking for who the letter is to.
Lee: It’s to Jane. You can see that from the outside.
Natasha: Do you have any glue?
Lee: Huh? No.
Natasha: I want to put it back.
Lee: [holds out some tape]
Natasha: [puts the letter in the envelope and seals it with the tape. She then stands up and calls Jane’s voice mail, leaving a message. I don’t know where she put the letter.]

I’m all moved in to my new place. Well, that’s not quite correct. I keep having to skip emptying various boxes because I don’t have shelving or a night stand or such. I haven’t figured out where to put my desk yet. It sure is big in this little room… But I’ll figure it out. I’m looking forward to spending some money on furniture. The last time I did that was moving to Jersey City with Shara. We split buying the giant Ikea shelving unit. When we left, she reluctantly bought out my share so I don’t have anything to show for it.

Happily, I found some wifi bandwidth I could steal from a neighbor. That’s what I’m writing this on now. There are machines called “joyce” and “beccas” on their “linksys” SSID network. It shouldn’t be too hard to find and thank them. Geeze, there are 9 wifi networks in range of me!

I can look out my window and see the well appointed market on the corner, complete with apples out front. My car is nestled comfortably in the garage 2 floors below,

The air smells nice here. There’s something like honeysuckle hanging in the air. It’s funny how as I was leaving the old place tonight, the street smelled of rotten garbage.

There is a reasonable amount of traffic at the intersection but traffic moves at a comfotably slow pace. There are a good number of pedestrians and bicycles (hey, maybe my stolen bike is going by right now). The street is well lit; hmm, I hadn’t noticed that the street at my old place didn’t have very good street lighting at all. It made the street a less nice place at night. But it’s only 0.8 miles away! It’s got the same political leaders, the same sanitation company, the same… everything. So why is this such a nicer place to live? Hurumph. I know why, but it’s still interesting to see and feel it first-hand.

I’m hungry. I think I’ll go down to my local taqueria. The burritos there are so California-style fancy that you have to eat them with a fork and knife. It warmed my heart when I saw that, despite all the differences, they still offered super burritos.