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I start the week after next. It should be pretty cool. I have to commute to downtown SF, but I can do that by train.
Since Danny is the only person who guessed, he will receive the frozen yogurt - and I am very glad that I will not be working at Wal-Mart.
My mom is coming to visit the day after tomorrow. We plan to do all of the usual SF tourist stuff as well as visit the Napa and Sonoma valleys. If you have any specific ideas, please let me know. I’m always up for the interesting and unusual.

By this time tomorrow, I will have a job. I have one offer and another one pending. I should know after lunch sometime tomorrow. If you can guess which company I choose, you win a free frozen yogurt. You just have to come visit me to claim your prize.
Stay tuned…

If you didn’t think that Danny and I were dorks before, now there is no doubt in your mind. Tonight, as we were sorting our recycling and placing it in the appropriate bins at our apartment complex, Danny glanced over at the cardboard stack and noticed some large black shoes sticking out. He pointed this out to me and, of course, we start excavating the pile of trash to find the owner of the feet. It turns out that it was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Captain Picard. Aside from being a little dusty, it was in pretty good shape. We hauled our pilfered booty upstairs and placed him against the wall of our office. We just couldn’t let him be recycled with those moving boxes and soda crates. I mean, we’ve known the good captain for so long he’s practically family.

So, the interview I had on Friday went well - very well. Basically, they called me with an offer before I walked in the door to my apartment as I was returning from the interview. The company seems interesting, but it seems like they need someone to start yesterday. They are a startup which is cool in the sense that I would be the seventh employee. It also means that I would be the customer service department - kinda scary. Regardless, they were really nice, but they wanted an answer right away. I told them that I couldn’t decide right away. This bought me some much needed time. There is another company that I am quite interested in and I have a followup interview with them next week. If all goes well, I’ll be taking that job. This whole situation seems very surreal. Back in Austin, you were lucky if you just knew about a company that might be hiring.
On Saturday, Danny and I went out with a couple of his coworkers. I, for one, had a blast. We were going to go bowling, but it was kind of expensive and none of us really cared about being the best bowler. We found an air-hockey table in the arcade and had a mini-air-hockey tournament. The final results: Danny and I suck at air-hockey. Our friends beat us mercilessly. We had a good time though. Afterward, we drove around University Ave looking for a cool bar and a parking space. I, the driver, gave up quickly and decided that the best solution was to park at our apartment and walk two blocks to the british pub near our house so I could drink. We ended up chatting out on the patio until our guests were frozen and hungry. Who says we’re not any fun to be around? Today, we forced ourselves out of bed by 10:15 so that we can go to bed at a decent hour tonight - and so we could make it to McDonald’s before they stopped serving our cheap breakfast of choice: sausage biscuits, hashbrowns, and egg McMuffins. We spent our money going to see Napolean Dynamite. It is just funny- laugh out loud, ridiculous, stupid funny. My favorite quotes:

Napoleon Dynamite: Do the chickens have large talons?
Farmer: Do they have what?
Napoleon Dynamite: Large talons.
Farmer: I don’t understand a word you just said.

Deb: What are you drawing?
Napoleon Dynamite: A liger.
Deb: What’s a liger?
Napoleon Dynamite: It’s pretty much my favorite animal. It’s like a lion and a tiger mixed… bred for its skills in magic.

I guess the economy is picking up. I had one interview last Friday, one on Tuesday, Wednesday, today and I have another one scheduled for tomorrow. Oh yeah, and I have a second interview on Tuesday the 10th. I think it’s really cool that so many companies want to talk to me, but it seems strange that this is happening all at once. Don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT complaining. I just didn’t think that my first job here would be as a full-time interviewee.
Out of all of the companies, there are a couple of clear-cut favorites. I just hope that they also want to pay me the most. That isn’t the most important thing, but it is still important. The money, the people, the product, the workload, and the commute will be the deciding factors.
As always, Danny is extremely supportive and he always asks for the rundown of how I think the interview went. The hardest one so far has been where I interviewed with four different people in a row, and they all asked me essentially the same questions. I was a pro by the time I got to the last person. Still, after a while I felt like a broken record.
I didn’t have any interviews on Monday, so it was kind of the lull before the storm. It was cloudy which was strange. I enjoyed the cooler temperatures and rode my bike down to the Borders Bookstore on University Avenue. University Ave appears to be a much prettier version of the drag, but with all of the traditional student amenities: the bead shop, the coffee shops, the pizza joint, and plenty of bookstores. After I got my fill of books and coffee, I rode my bike over to the Stanford campus and checked out one of the libraries. Although the campus is cool, my favorite part of the trip is riding my bike on the paths along Palm Drive. I get to pretend I’m a student again, but without all of the homework.

This weekend was pretty relaxing, just like most of our other weekends. I had an interview in Fremont on Friday morning. I think it went pretty well. If nothing else, at least it’s practice for the two interviews I have next week.
On Saturday afternoon, I called my Dad who was visiting my grandparents in Dallas. He took my old washing machine to my brother in Arlington. He would have taken the dryer, but it sounds horrible. Even though it still dried the clothes just fine, it sounded as if it was drying a pile of gravel. He and my brother went shopping to get a new, quiet dryer. At least my old washer has a new home.
As for Danny and I, we slept in on Saturday and then had french toast at Le Bistro Vida near our home. I don’t even really like french toast, but this stuff is amazing. After that, we drove down to Milpitas to check out the Great Mall. This place is less of a traditional mall and more of an outlet mall. I found some new shoes and Danny found the watch that he had been lusting over for some time at Saks Off 5th. Despite the fact that the place was a madhouse on Saturday afternoon, we still had a good time. That night, we drove down to Mountain View to check out Castro Street. We had visited it briefly while we were on our apartment-finding mission in early June, but there was still a lot left to explore. We got there around 9pm and just wandered around and checked out the many restaurants and bars.
Today, we slept in late, went to brunch, and ran some errands. This afternoon, we drove into San Francisco to meet at a friend of a friend’s house for a birthday barbecue. The house was very cool. It had a prime view of the city as well as views of the bay and alcatraz. The weather was kind of cold and foggy, but it was still nice to sit up on the roof deck and sip drinks while staying warm in wooly sweaters. After dinner, Danny and I walked down a block or so to check out the twisty part of Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the US. We kept walking and got to Ghirardelli square. Everything was terribly touristy, but there’s nothing wrong with that. We’re still tourists ourselves. It wasn’t too crowded since the weather was gray and the light was waning.
I hate to admit it, but I miss cold, crappy weather. The weather in Menlo Park is always sunny and cool. It has not rained once since we’ve been here. I don’t necessarily want it to pour, but a few clouds would be nice. That’s the great thing about living so close to San Francisco: all of the cold, damp, depressing weather is only a 3o minute drive away! Sure, there are sunny days, but I think that the misty afternoons are much more conducive to random exploration. Also, it gives me the excuse to stop into a cafe and warm up with a hot cup of coffee.