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I’m in Michigan (Ann Arbor in particular) this weekend visiting Ali at UM and generally having a blast. I left midday Thursday packed only in my fabulous green duffel bag (such a perfect size!). I brought with me just one book: Quicksilver, the new Neal Stephenson book set (mostly) in 17th century Europe. My goal was to plow through as much of it as possible, at least enough to make it to what Leslie claimed was the better half. I did indeed finally make it out of courtier’s and Royal Society London to the Grand Turk’s siege on Vienna, which was laden with harem girls, ostriches, and Hedwig-style genital mishaps. Hopefully the going won’t be so slow from here on out.

Yesterday we mostly spent climbing. We didn’t actually climb until after spending a few hours locating sunglasses, nailclippers, and lunch. Then we spent about 2.5 hours on a 1.5 hour drive because of some lovely traffic jams on the way out to “Grand Ledge,” which pretty much describes the climbing place. It had quite a few routes on it, but it was pretty much just a ledge. Optimistically 30 ft tall or so, no bolts, all protected by affixing webbing to the trees at the top then hiking down and toproping. Still, it was a lot of fun. The rock was very soft sandstone, wet in places and with lots of water seeping through. This was good in that it wasn’t hard on your hands, and it was very sticky where dry, but it also meant that a lot of it was muddy/dusty/an annoying combination of both. We ended up trying 5 or 6 climbs each. The highlights were a nice little crack that needed only foot jams (5.10, I think), and a cool, very easy roof that might have been overrated at 5.10 called “Doug’s Roof.” Ali did an admirable job of making incremental progress, well past the crux to the big, overhanging jug-haul that is the second half of the climb. We bugged out at about 7pm and headed back in for dinner.

Dinner was going to be seared ahi burgers, but we were rebuffed by a 1hr wait for a table, so ended up at Arbor Brewing Company, a brew pub down the street. I had a mediocre black bean burger and some excellent beer. First, a pint heifeweisen that was cool and lemony and delicious. Then, we got the 10-beer sampler and plowed through it heroically. The most interesting thing, I thought, was a smoked beer, which was really more than anything else like drinking canadian bacon. Try it if you get the chance.

We stumbled on from there to a cafe with live jazz for coffee/chai, then on to a cute little independent video store where I picked out Glengary Glen Ross for the evening’s denouement. Ali did not seem pleased after I inflicted it on him. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

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Comments

leslie — 2004-08-07 23:44:53

Now, I have vague recollections of inflicting another movie on Ali at one point that he was not a fan of. Do you remember what that was?

bryan — 2004-08-08 07:59:57

yeah, i think that happened several times. Which was it, which was it… something a bit ultra-violent yet still funny…

bryan — 2004-08-08 15:10:06

we figured it out: best in show! he has no taste.

Ali — 2004-08-09 00:04:05

There are at least two things I like in a movie. a) Not being constantly reminded of how stupid people can be; b) Some closure, good, bad, evil, sad, I just want something other that the credits rolling. Best in Show lacked the prior, and Glengarry Glen Ross lacked the former. That said I liked Glengarry Glen Ross about 10x more than Best in Show.

leslie — 2004-08-09 14:18:47

Dude, Best in Show rocked. I’m sorry you have no taste. :) Who was it that inflicted Fierce Creatures on us? Was that you, Ali? Or was that Phil?

Ali — 2004-08-09 14:32:19

That would be me… I am forever sorry, and now consider us even… Now who subjected me to pi more times(1) than is normal in a college career?

cameron — 2004-08-10 07:15:57

i didn’t like best in show the first time i saw it. of course, i had just had my wisdom teeth out and was puking into my open wounds…but i liked the movie the next time i saw it!

Ali — 2004-08-10 20:40:35

So maybe the second time around won’t be so torturous…. I don’t think I’ll be running out to get anytime soon though.

2955 Telegraph Ave Berkeley, CA 94705 (510) 843-1992

Yesterday, George and I went up to Berkeley to investigate the local climbing gym and take a class at Berkeley’s only ashtanga yoga studio, with plans to get dinner somewhere afterward.

The climbing gym was very nice. 45-foot lead walls, many, many routes, a complete attached fitness center, showers, everything. Along with the niceness came a nice pricetag: $60/mo. I suppose if I’m able to get down to it several times a week that will make sense for me, but a lower student rate would have been nice. We didn’t actually climb, since there was no time before the yoga class started at 5.

7th Heaven was great. It had all the things yoga studios that I’ve seen in the bay so far lacked. Multiple rooms, nice, hard-wood floors, heaters, a broad selection of classes. The classes run $12 a pop, or $10 if you’re a student. A reasonable discount, I guess… I paid $8/class at Yoga Yoga in Austin. Unfortunately, the ashtanga class we came in for had been cancelled, so we went to a “Vinyasa flow” class instead, which was good, but not quite as punishing as I’d like.

After yoga, wiped out and ravenous, we started trolling around Berkeley for a restaurant. What we found was Ethiopia Restaurant. The place was nearly empty when we walked in, and it never got much fuller. I always feel a little out of place eating Ethiopian, because I seem to inevitably be part of the only white table in the place. Still, the waitress was very nice and conversational, helped us pick something from the menu where our experience flagged, and came back several times to check on us. We ended up with a family-style combination of two combinations: vegetarian and meat. I don’t know exactly what it was called, but it was basically a huge plate with about eight different things on it ranging from mild lentils to spicy red lentils, spicy chicken, cabbage, spinach, and lamb all spread over a giant piece of injera bread. There were no utensils–just an accompanying basket of little rolled-up slices of injera you use (we guessed) to just scoop the different things up, curry-style. The food was delicious. It went across the whole range of spicy to mild, and it all had a slow-cooked taste and heartiness that really hit the spot after yoga. I also tried an Ethiopian Bedele beer, which I’ll just say was yummy because I’m really not qualified to describe beer in more complex terms.

It ocurred to me during dinner that I would probably be eating at many, many different and great restaurants while at Berkeley. So I decided to set a goal: before I graduate, try to eat at 100 different restaurants. And I’m going to try to write a little about each of them up here when I do. So consider “Ethiopia Restaurant” #1 / 100.

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Comments

cameron — 2004-08-02 18:46:08

ooo, a new “topic”

i’m excited about you and leslie coming to texas in around a week! :)

bryan — 2004-08-03 12:01:32

me, too. i wonder if there’ll be anyway to get down to austin while i’m there…

nicole — 2004-08-18 22:30:42

a few MUST-EATS in berkeley: intermezzo cafe (HUGE-ass sandwiches and salads for $5) christopher’s nothing-fancy cafe (shrimp chimichanga. SO good) zachary’s pizza there is a place on college & ashby that is burmese food. i can’t remember the name, but it is yummy, yummy, yummy of course, chez panisse oliveto, for a high-priced dinner truly mediterranian on college also, for amazing ethiopian, the red sea le cheval, for vietnamese (original in oakland) good luck with your epicurian searches.

bryan — 2004-08-18 23:22:40

wow, thanks! I’ll be sure to get by them each. so exciting… are you an alumna?

nicole — 2004-08-19 16:15:56

no, but i worked in berkeley & emeryville for 7 years. so i know the area!

We’ve put up some pics from the move to Fremont.

It’s now tuesday. It’s been a busy week.

Friday was my last day at Apple. It was only a little surreal. Much different than a last day of school, where everyone is getting ready to wrap things up. You walk around the halls, everyone sort of going about their business as normal, but you suddenly feel like a visitor, an outsider. My team (four people) had lunch together at a decent sushi place; I didn’t have to pay. I expected an exit interview or something, but the HR people were a little slow and never got one scheduled. So I grabbed the last few things of mine from the office, handed my badge over to my boss, and drove away. It was a little sad, but mostly just exciting.

We started packing up things in the apartment on Wednesday. By Friday we were mostly done. Leslie had some teacher certification test on Saturday morning, the day our lease started, so our plan was to head to Fremont after her test, sign all the papers, then bring a u-haul back down to Santa Clara to move everything. The plan went great until we got to the “bring a truck back” part. We called about ten different u-haul and budget rental places, and none of them had an appropriately-sized truck for us to use. Granted, it was a saturday in the middle of the summer, but there are just so many truck rental places, you’d think there’d be a glut of trucks.

We decided to head back home (still Santa Clara at this point) to get lunch, and planned on reserving a truck for Sunday. Leslie had a craving for In-n-Out, so we headed over to the one nearest of apartment. On the way, we spotted a Budget truck place, and resolved to at least drop by and check to see if they had any trucks for rent. It turned out they did, and so while I scarfed my double-double (ack. arteries. clogging.), Leslie stepped up to fill out the paperwork necessary. First he asked for a driver’s license; she handed hers over. Then the guy asked, “so who’s actually going to be driving the truck?” to which Leslie responded, “me.” You see, every other time I’ve moved, it’s either been alone, or with a girl who thought it was my job to drive the truck. Leslie is not inhibited in any such way, so she decided to do the driving this time around.

We took the truck home and called Phil over to help us. Jeff, my big, strong brother, and George (also big and strong) both managed to be out of town for the day. So we were only three, and it was 3:00pm, when we started the move. It went well enough. We had to be a little creative to fit it in the 15-foot truck, but it was no real struggle. Phil was great and helped for over three hours before heading out to SF for the evening. At about 6:45 we got everything in the truck and drove to Fremont. We arrived a little after seven, already pretty exhausted. Did I mention the truck had to be returned by 8am Sunday morning? So we started to unpack. And we unpacked. And unpacked. We made many, many, trips from truck to apartment. At least a hundred. So many trips. So tired. The hardest items for us to do alone were the couch and the tabletop. Luckily, friendly passersby were able to give us a hand with each of them. Nearly delirious with exhaustion, we finished at about ten.

What better state of mind than delerium to drive a giant truck? So Leslie climbed back behind the wheel and we headed back down to Santa Clara, filled it up with diesel, and dropped it off at Budget. We were getting a bit giggly at this point, but we did make it back to Fremont, stopping on the way for some questionable milk and powdered doughnuts at the “Foodmaxx.” We collapse on the living room floor of our new place, nestled between boxes and furniture that coated every horizontal surface, guzzled coke and milk, doughnuts and corn chips until our blood sugar rose enough to get us upstairs. Lacking a shower curtain, we took turns in the bathtub doing our best to get clean, then collapsed in bed. I’ll save the events since then for another post…

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Comments

Susan — 2004-07-28 09:03:11

Yes, that’s my girl! I’ll bet she can drive the tractor, too. We’ll find out next month!

bryan — 2004-07-28 12:07:03

I think she was born to operate manly machines.

This Saturday I went to my paternal grandfather’s 90th birthday. My aunt had rented a swank little party room in an ocean-view restaurant in Pacifica. The whole gang was there: the three children (Rich, my dad, Don, his twin brother (younger by 5 minutes), and Laurie (little sister)). Their spouses were each their, and all the kids except one. This is a rare collection of Klingners and it was pretty cool to see everyone. My Dad was going picture crazy, so I expect some pictures of the event to show up soon on my parents’ new gallery.

On Sunday, I mostly relaxed, burned transcoded netflix DVDs and played Sim City 4, in which Leslie and I are recreating great communist capitals of the past in idyllic green virtualness. You’ll all be happy to hear Bejing has topped 30,000 citizens.

In the evening we headed into SF for dinner at a random excellent tandoori kitchen with Jeff and George followed by Eve Ensler’s new “play” The Good Body. The tickets were our present to George for his 23rd. It was entertaining. I don’t think I’m allowed to critique it in detail given my Y chromosome, but I will go as far as saying that I liked the Vagina Monologues better.

4 more work days. Today I called Comcast (sigh) to set up our cable and internet in our new apartment. I had long entertained notions of getting satellite TV and DSL, but it’s hard to make that economical, especially when you don’t know if your balcony will even work for satellite. I’ll postpone my dreams of Speakeasy for another year. I think of it as all part of acting financially like the grad student I’ll be in a month.

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Comments

cameron — 2004-07-20 21:53:55

i really like the captions of the pictures in your parents’ new gallery! (and my, how many pictures of portugal!)