Fit (but I know it)

That is what I'll have to become, if I'm going to keep up this commute every day. It's only 4 miles each way, but Seattle hills can be brutal! Moreso than Pittsburgh. (but not as bad as SF)

But it is SO PRETTY! Wow!

Also Chrome! I am no longer worried that I joined Google right after it jumped the shark. Haven't used it yet (no Windows box) but it sure does sound cool.

I can hear the Stone Temple Pilots from my balcony

belting out "Lady Picture Show." What.

Showing up somewhere with only the bags on your back is a challenge! I've been on a real spending spree this weekend, some good, some not so good. Like my bike: good! I got a Marin Larkspur, and I will not link you to info because I'm typing this on my iPhone. It is so smooth! I like it! (My bike, not my iPhone.) Mattress: okay. Mattress shopping sucks. They're all a bunch of snake oil salesmen, and whenever you balk at an upgrade ("oh, you have to get a Swedish Pillow-topped Mattress Protector") they give you the hard sell. ("well, if you enJOY dust mites crawling in your eyeballs...")

This was all written two nights ago, but not finished, because I have no internets yet and I was typing on my iPhone. The iPhone has been not a real life-saver but at least a partial life-maker-easier. Still, now I'm at work (compiling!) and it's nice to have a real screen and keyboard.

Bumbershoot yesterday rocked. I only saw two shows: Strange Fruit and Dan Deacon. Both were fantastic! I meant to see Battles/Del the Funky Homosapien/Human Giant, but they were all at the same time, and I went out to dinner with Jay and CMU friends instead, so I missed them all. Also, I meant to see Death Cab for Cutie, but by the time I got back, all the gates were "exit-only". What! Does this big purple stamp on my wrist mean nothing?! So I stood in the parking lot with my bike to listen in, wistfully tearing up as dreamy dreamy Ben Gibbard crooned "Transatlanticism". (no, seriously. It was pretty sad. Shut up!)

Also, I bought some sweet posters. I am so excited about them. Not as excited as I am about my bike, though.

Topic shift! I was thinking about blind taste tests. Say, for example, Coke vs. Pepsi. Say I think I like Coke better, but in a blind taste test, I pick Pepsi. Well! What do I know? I know that, with no context, in a blind taste test, I like Pepsi better. But real life is not a blind taste test! If I then go to the fridge, should I reach instead for a can of Pepsi? No. The whole experience, of tasting the Coke, looking at the Coke can, thinking "I am drinking a Coke," is better than the corresponding Pepsi experience. Clearly, here I should drink a Coke.

So why do blind taste tests at all? I don't know. In one sense, it's nice to dissociate your mind from the advertising monster that runs our world. Maybe you only like the Coke better because Coke has better ads, and you'd like to instead reward Pepsi for making a superior product. I guess in the Coke vs. Pepsi case, there's no difference. Okay, what if you're comparing El Cheapo orange juice with Super Organic orange juice? Say you thought you liked El Cheapo better, but after a taste test you found Super Organic tasted better... then you'd change your buying habits to reward the healthier/environmentally-friendlier company. Well, that's good. Still, you'd get more enjoyment out of drinking El Cheapo, and you knew this beforehand. You're sacrificing your enjoyment to save your health and the environment, no taste test required.

Okay, test case #3: to develop your palate. Say we're talking Crummy Wine vs. Le Super Wine. Are you trying to find out which you like better? Great, go for it. Maybe you like Crummy Wine better. Is there a reason you should drink more wine to eventually prefer Le Super Wine? (assuming they're equally healthy)... I don't know. Oenophiles would say that, if you have an awesome palate, you really totally enjoy awesome wines an awesome amount. I guess that's true too. Hmm. I feel like I'm tackling many different issues here. I'll leave this idea kinda half-baked. Let's just say that I'm now thinking that blind taste tests are a lot less great than I once thought they were.

My week at the Googleplex

It's over! I'm tired! That's why I'm sitting in my apartment this Friday night. And I have a flight tomorrow morning.

Okay. Post-mortem: Google is pretty cool. We had some talks in which we heard a lot of cool things. Stuff about how huge their datacenters are, stuff about how search works, stuff about how ads works, the exact PageRank algorithm, how to use their source control and build things, etc. That was neat.

Met some cool people. That was neater. Some are nerdy, but some are pretty cool. I'll never see most of these guys again, but some I will, because they're in Seattle too. Awesome.

Also bounced ideas around. That was neatest. The corporate world is not yet dashing my youthful optimism. It is instead reinforcing it! Course, I'm not even working on my main project yet, so we'll see how that goes next week.

I got to hang out with Will and Jing, Scott and Katie, and Andrew W. That was fun! I co-hosted Andrew's radio show, which was hella fun. He's quite a very good DJ. Will and I played Lost Cities (super-simple and still fun! go Rio Grande!) and the Catan card game (not as simple, but fun, maybe because I was winning the whole time), but not Agricola. Oh well.

And have I mentioned how great the food was? Highlights from the Googleplex include:
- No Name Cafe, featuring vegetarian and non-vegetarian food prepared sometimes in an ethnic style
- Pintxo 47, a "small plates" place with healthy, tasty, and appealing-looking small bits of food
- Cafe 150, where all food comes from within 150 miles of Google
- Slice Cafe, serving up smoothies and juices, like a kale, celery, and some other juices blend
- the minikitchens everywhere, each stocked with the sort of drinks that make you want to try them (Tejava and Honest teas, Henry Weinhard's root beer, Naked juices, etc.), espresso machines (made my first shot today!), granola and cereal, and other more real food if you're in a hurry
- the TGIF fun thing, featuring an assortment of pretty good beers, on the level of Stella Artois and Sierra Nevada

Anyway, I'm excited to get back to Seattle, buy a bed and a bike, and start living!

Usain Bolt, not Michael Phelps, saved the Olympics?

Okay, I'll agree with this. Partially. He was the high-profile athlete who had the most fun. And in a world of hypercompetitiveness, a (supposedly) low-tech happy guy from a country that is not a, you know, cold war powerhouse wins the biggest baddest races in record time.

It's the whole torpedo thing: if you want to be The Best at anything, you will fail. Some other jerk will go all-out, sacrifice his life, maybe take performance-enhancing drugs, and defeat you, because you chose to, I don't know, read a book sometimes, or grow a garden, or maybe have friends. So along with living a balanced life, you have to get into the mindset that not being The Best at anything is okay. The Olympics directly contradict that mindset: if you're not #1, #2, or #3 (or in China, only #1), you're a failure. I mean, Bolt would still be awesome if he got 16th in the 100m dash, just because he seems like a cool dude who's enjoying what he's doing. But nobody would have heard of him if he were 16th.

I don't want to bash Phelps, though: good for him, bringing a sport like swimming into the spotlight. Oh, and eight gold medals is cool, I guess. But yeah! Usain Bolt. What a champ!

Google, Day Two

Today, I played volleyball with my new team. And I learned deep dark Google secrets! No, I cannot tell you ANYTHING. Nope. Sorry. Then they gave us magic wands and taught us how to cast Wingardium Leviosa.

They trust us a lot! And everyone responds by being trustworthy! What a cool company culture! Plus I got a lot of free programming books.

My flatmate for the week is from Azerbaijan! How cool.

Google, Day One

It's been a day! A not so interesting day! Orientation, what do you expect. A lot of talks, some paperwork, and some great food. You know all that stuff you hear about the food at Google? All true. Tasty, healthy, tons of (vegetarian and meaty) choices, free, everywhere.

That said, I'm stoked about getting to start working (/learning) tomorrow! And about living in Seattle! Mountain View is kinda nice, but I sure did make the right decision. Mountain View is a big suburb. Everything is four miles away from everything else. And 1098209470 miles from San Francisco. Urgh!

But boy, the food is good.

I started a new binder in my Great Ticket Collection today

Yow! This is it! The single biggest change in my life ever! Rivaling college, I guess. Whoo! Splendid.

I'm in Mountain View, CA, right now, for orientation for a week at the Google HQ. I'm going to Seattle on Saturday. Today I gained three hours, due to time zones, that I never have to pay back! How often does that happen?! I'm keeping them in a box for later.

Yesterday I dropped off a carful of clothes, toys, and STUFF to Goodwill. How liberating! And what a luxury! To say, I have this stuff, but I will get rid of it, only because it's in my way. I hope it will help someone, but really, to get rid of this was not a selfless act but rather kinda selfish. No worries! No more neuroses!

I have three bags I'm taking on the plane, plus three bags I took on the plane last time, plus two big boxes being shipped to me. I can move with fewer possessions than you can! But that's not really fair either; I left some stuff at home for archiving.

I went to my high school to see some friends and teachers. For those of you dear readers who went to my high school, I ran into The Fr. Ober, Mr. Skerl, Mr. Corrigan, Mr. Barker, and a couple others, although most had left for the day by the time we got there. Dave and Erik are living in Chicago! I've got to go visit.

Did I mention that my family threw me a going-away party? I got to see family, family friends, and friends. My friends from CMU came up. How lucky am I to have not only lots of family and adults around who would like to see me, but also friends from Pittsburgh who would drive up just to hang out with me and my family! At one point everyone started saying "speech! speech!" so I said the most succinct and absolutely true thing that came to mind, which was: "Thank you all for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever."

My mind is a million miles an hour. I'll keep on with the bullet points.

iPhone! It's great! A couple things I wish:
- notes synched
- camera had like some options, and maybe one more megapixel
- it did my laundry for me

And I'm watching all my photos zip past, as they import into iPhoto, in a hyper slideshow of my last four years. It's a wonderful life! (later edit: I'm not so fond of iPhoto. Why don't photo programs just mirror the file structure? Why do they have to keep trying to be fancy by creating "events" or some nonsense?)

I've got the Mirrormask soundtrack on my ipod. I mean, iphone. It seems vaguely appropriate in a stranger-in-a-strange-land sort of way. Okay, Mountain View is not a very strange land. In a lot of ways, this is the easiest life-changing transition possible.

Aaaaaand one more: a new charity option. Instead of giving money to a kid and feeding into a machine of aggressive street canvassers, what if I started lending micro-loans through Kiva? Have you heard of this? Anyone know anyone who's done it?

Signing off, exhausted but excited.

I don't own my name on Google anymore?

It's true! "Mr. Daniel Tasse", the new President and CEO of Ikaria, Inc., now gets the top spot when you search for Dan Tasse. Furthermore, the humble Snail Shell itself is not even listed! You can still find it if you try, but it's not in the top N. Huh. Did I lose out in popularity that quickly? Is Mr. Daniel Tasse instantly a lot cooler? ...or do weird things happen to your internet presence when you start to work at Google?

(nothing sinister; I can understand if they block employees' personal websites because of inadvertent release of trade secrets OR a conflict of interest from an employee trying to boost their own standings)

Super I-am-living-in-Seattle

Found an apartment! It was quite easy! It took one day. Jared and I looked at 9 places. It turns out that he cared more about space (in the apt.) than location, and I cared more about location than space. We might find ourselves at odds about this! Or even at loggerheads. However, luckily, we instead found ourselves in Capitol Hill, in a place that was quite big and in a great location. The drawback? It's a bit pricier. To quote Gramp, "Money doesn't solve everything. But it does make life a lot easier."

Anyway, this does mean I have a sweet sweet flat. It's so sweet. I'm so that rich young guy. My place just screams "I am so cool" in that way that I hate sleek places to scream at me. It screams "the life that you see in movies is actually possible, and you have it." It's the iPhone of apartments: no particular character, and it's expensive, but it is pretty, and it's got everything you need.

But you never spend less money, and you never take up less space. Trying not to get spoiled, trying not to get spoiled, etc. I think I can do it. And after all, why worry about getting spoiled? Why not wait until you are spoiled, and it's a problem, before you worry? Says Zen Dan. (Western Dan is super excited about everything.)

Fantasy X, Finally!

I'm done with this game! Whoo! I beat Sin, Seymour, and Jecht! (spoiler alert: those are the final bosses. another spoiler alert: yes, those are their names, even though "Jecht" is the only one that sounds even a little bit like a video game boss name.) I got a bunch of sweet treasures! Three of my characters can double-cast Ultima! Two more can hit for 9999 damage every turn! My stats are, like, really high!

Okay, I'm actually pretty happy about this. As I was almost done, I was really hoping for the game to end soon, but now that it has, I remember why I like video games. Sadly, I like them the same way I like cereal: addictively.

However, I like to review everything all the time, so here are my thoughts on Final Fantasy X:

- The gameplay is mostly pretty great. They keep improving from previous Final Fantasies. You don't have to spend much time leveling up, which is key; however, you do level up a lot, and whenever you do, you really feel like you're getting something cool, which is also key. All the characters are useful, in their own way, and you can switch them each in and out quickly and painlessly. You can see which characters will attack next, which lets you strategize a bit.

- The setting is kinda neat. You, Tidus (the main character), live in Zanarkand, but you are mysteriously thrown into Spira 1000 years in the future. You traverse a land of devastated beaches, forests, a cool magicky river called the "Moonflow", a heaven-like place called the "Farplane", imperial palaces, underground rivers, caves, mountains, and eventually the inside of Sin (a big monster).

- The storyline is melodramatic and heavy-handed. You're on this mission to defeat Sin, but (spoiler alert) Yuna, the girl, is going to die! Oh noes! And it turns out that the religious leaders are really corrupt and don't actually want to save the world like they say they do! But if we all stick together and fight, we'll figure out a way to save the world AND Yuna! (On the way, we will also overcome racism.)

- Some of the characters are pretty okay. There's Auron, the mysterious wise old guy who (spoiler alert) is actually a ghost; Wakka, the big dumb religious carefree-but-not-really blitzball player; Seymour, the aforementioned evilman; Cid, the brash airship pilot, etc.

- Some of the characters are not okay. All the girls are hard to take, except maybe Lulu, who is the old, wise one, but still wears dark emo makeup. Oh yeah, and often underdressed, surprise it's a video game. Seymour is like this good-guy-turned-bad, except they reveal that he's super bad in like the first scene. Jecht just makes fun of Tidus a lot, and oh yeah, he's his dad, and Tidus hates him a lot, and this is like a major important plot point because he really hates him totally a lot yeah.

- Tidus deserves an extra bullet point because he totally ruins the game. He is the worst. His voice actor must have been an understudy because the main guy got laryngitis. Or rather, the understudy's son; I'm not sure he's hit puberty yet. His facial expressions don't help. He looks like an action figure. His mouth doesn't close right. His eyes are like vapid but trying so hard to be full of meaning. Whenever he was talking, I wanted him to stop talking. Gaargh!

Sidebar for Final Fantasy VII and X players. The characters are exactly the same:
Cloud <-> Tidus, the adolescent hero with a giant sword (no innuendoes, good god)
Aeris <-> Yuna, the healer who is in love with the hero and also (spoiler alert) is going to die
Barret <-> Wakka, the dumb likeable big dude who fights a lot
Tifa <-> Rikku, the young girl who steals things and wears short shorts
Red XIII <-> Kimahri, the dog/cat/whatever animal who fights with you and doesn't talk much
Cid <-> Auron, the grizzled, wise one
Sephiroth <-> Seymour, the really super bad guy with the hair that's all crazy

Right? Hurgh. Nothing new under the sun.

But hell. Nice game anyway. Good combat, well-scheduled rewards, a lot of friendly interfaces, they let you skip a lot of the stuff that you wanted to skip. Lots of sidequests you could do if you wanted, and apparently a ton of extra monsters if you have all the time in the world. They're learning from all of their mistakes. All in all, I enjoyed FFX, and if I had another life's worth of free time, I'd probably play FFXII. And a lot of other video games.

"No more monkeys jumping on my head"

to quote Ultimate Donny. Epic battle with the monkey mind last night, which I lost. I can't even quiet all my competitive, rank-based, worrisome thoughts when I sit on a cushion and look at the wall, much less in my daily life. (and much less when I'm playing Settlers!) I just want to be happier, and there are particularly great people in my life who just want me to be happier too. I almost feel like I've gotten worse at this over the summer, which is not so good, and I can only hope that my meditation kick is actually helping and not actually leading me down a worrying spiral by making me think about my worrying too much. But things seem a little nicer in the morning, and I am still super-stoked about finding an apartment in Seattle.

Sponsorin' a kid?

Thinkin' bout sponsoring a kid via Children International. They seem good by the Better Business Bureau, Charity Navigator gives them 3 stars, 82% of the money goes to actually helping kids (11% fundraising, 7% other administration, which all seems pretty good if not exceptional), it's non-religious, and the cool part is that your money goes to one kid.

And you could write back and forth a little bit and so on. I used to think that that was no big deal, but now along with my hopes of putting humanity back in everything, a human touch to charity giving sounds better to me than, say, throwing money at the American Cancer Society. I used to think it'd be demoralizing, too, like "oh I have to write a letter to this guy Dan because he's giving me money," but the more I think about it, the more it sounds like it's not a bad idea. He's thankful for my support, I'm thankful for the opportunity to give him my support. I'm not paying him to write me a letter, or wanting him to write me so I feel good about myself, or whatever; I'd actually like to hear from a kid in Colombia or Nicaragua or India or whatever, and make a friend somewhere else. And as someone who has, I don't mind giving to someone who has not. I'm not quite articulating this right, but I have a good feeling about the idea.

Beefs: Everyone's mad at the CEO's salary. Whatever. It's 0.27% of expenses; it's not making a huge difference either way. The bigger beef is canvassers. Yeah, I'm no fan of canvassers. And yet, here I am, about to sign up for a thing after a canvasser tracked me down in Union Square in New York City and gave me the hard sell. The hard sell! I hate the hard sell! With the emotional appeal and everything! I mean, he was a very nice guy, but still, do not attempt to play on my emotions! I am a goddamn robot, I see right through it, and I get pissed.

It's $22/month, or as they like to say, "just 70 cents a day!", but that's still $264/year. I can handle that. Anything else I should be checking out before I sign up for this? Or are there any other charities that you, dear reader, particularly believe in, that I should be checking out too?

Panic! Don't panic!

So I was buying a plane ticket to San Francisco on August 24 so I can start training, and then one to Seattle on August 30 so I can start work. Even though I wasn't paying for it, I still agonized about it for a while, trying to get the best times and the fewest stops and so on. Finally, I settled on two separate one-way tickets (why I couldn't buy them together for the same price is a bit of a mystery). Bought the SFO-SEA leg from Alaskan Airlines, no problem. Tried to buy the CLE-SFO leg from US Airways, the website timed out. It said "Try again." So I did. Bought the ticket, emailed it to my family, just so they know my plans.

My mom emails me back and says "Why is it for August 30?"

I AM THE DUMBEST. I am so dumb, CMU should revoke my diploma so I don't dumb down their alumni reunions. Toast should be renamed "Dan Tasse" so the next time someone says that they're dumber than toast, they would actually be saying they're dumber than me. I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, nay, I'm made of dark matter, actually absorbing light from the real bright bulbs. They're actually making another sequel to "Dumb and Dumber"; it's called "Dumb and Dan Tasse." I'm not in it. I'm too dumb to act.

So I'm freaking out. Because I'm the dumbest. However, once I calm down, I realize that in my internet silliness, I have accidentally bought a "refundable" ticket. You know, those ones you never buy because they cost more. Apparently the flight I tried to get on was out of cheap non-refundable tickets, so I had bought a refundable ticket. So, one quick (okay, not quick, like 30 minutes of hold, but bear with me) phone call, and it was all fixed.

The one time I buy a refundable ticket is the one time I have to change my ticket! And how can those Buddhists say that the world is full of suffering? (I'm joking. Partially.)

I've been out of town

Just most recently, at Sarah's house in West Virginia last weekend. Fun time! And I discovered that my recipe archive unintentionally gave her mom her first bit of internet presence. Hooray internet!

Unrelatedly, I found out a thing about life: you may find yourself, wearing a banana suit, singing "Day O" at a karaoke bar with a half team of kickballers and half dozen nurses providing backup vocals. This is a pretty great thing.

Go Nanners!

San Francisco: the other New York

I could start talking about West Coast people are like this, East Coast people are like this, or maybe Northern Californians are like this, Southern Californians are like this, or whatever (warning: loud) but I don't really have any idea.

I do know that I went to SF with my family for 5 days last week, and then Yosemite National Park for 2, and it was pretty fun. Some highlights:

- The Ferry Building Farmers' Market. It's the second coolest market. (Pike Place being #1, Seattle pride, etc.) It's huge! And has all the food you'd ever want. Some of it is inside, some of it is outside, all of it is exciting. I got some chai and cookies ("alfajores") from a non-profit community kitchen/business incubator called La Cocina. How cool is that?

- An improv show. Two sets, one by some people I don't remember much, one by the Un-scripted theatre company who asked the audience for a (non-musical) playwright, then improvised an hour-long musical in the style of that playwright. For our show, it was Oscar Wilde. It was really slick. And there were only three of them!

- Dim sum in Chinatown. First time I've ever had dim sum! I have a new favorite style of eating. Okay, maybe not, but I still love any system where you get a little bit of a lot of things.

- SFMOMA. This is a neat museum. They had like one painting by every modern painter I know (and a lot I don't, of course) so it was fun to walk through. Plus, I went with my mom, who knows things about art, which is always fun.

- Millennium restaurant. It's vegetarian (nay, vegan!) and so my dad wanted no part of it. My mom was intrigued, I don't think my sister cared either way, and so one day when they were too tired to eat dinner, I went there myself. It was totally worth it, and not in an all food-orgasmey sense, but just because it was cool to see a nice restaurant that was also vegetarian/sustainable/organic/etc, not another vegetarian/etc restaurant that was also nice. It's an example of eating less meat (even in high society) without being a patchouli-stinking Grass Person.

- walking around the Mission was cool. I stumbled into 826 Valencia, a nonprofit/pirate supply shop. Also ate a fantastic burrito at a place called, appropriately enough, "La Taqueria."

- giant redwoods in Yosemite. These were neat. This whole bit of the trip was a little more difficult, because as a family we tend to not like camping and stuff, which means we do national parks like most people, which means that wherever we are, so are most people. Did a little bit of hiking, but a lot of driving.

Whoo! I am now back in Pittsburgh for like three weeks (minus a weekend). And I am super-happy to be back.

Mindfulness a day keeps dukkha away

Meant to blog this but never did and I have like 15 minutes so gonna do it now.

Part two of my trip (actually part 1) found me in West Virginia at the Bhavana Society. It's a Buddhist monastery. 7 monastics (5 monks and 2 nuns) plus a couple of lay people lived there, as well as a handful of visitors like Catie and me. Every day went like this:
5:00-6:00: meditation
6:00-6:30: chanting
7:00-8:00: breakfast
8:00-11:00: chores/personal time
11:00-12:00: lunch
12:00-17:30: chores/personal time
17:30-18:30: meditation
18:30-19:00: chanting
19:00-20:00: talk/q&a

When I say "chores/personal time" I mean the chores usually took like a half hour then we had a lot of free time. I spent a lot of this time reading. I learned a lot about Buddhism. Particularly Theravada (not actually equivalent but sorta similar to Hinayana, which is the south-Asia half of Buddhism, where Mahayana is the north-Asia half) Buddhism and mindfulness (Vipassana) meditation.

In short, and only applied to me: meditation is the only thing missing from my life.
In medium length, and more generally, and poorly translated: Life is suffering. Desire causes this suffering. To escape suffering, you have to stop desiring. There's an eightfold path that helps you avoid desiring, but mostly it translates into "be a good person" and also "be mindful."

But really what it means to me is that I really need to meditate. Life is good! I am happy! But I worry. And I fret, and the more free time I have, the more I fret about whether I'm doing enough good with my free time, and that's no way to be happy. Meditation will help me there.

I want to be clear, though, that when I talk about meditation, I don't mean just concentration, like going into a trance. Sometimes meditation means that. But Vipassana meditation (like Zen, I think) is more than that: it's concentration plus mindfulness. If I were really good at meditation, when I were meditating, I'd be totally concentrated on my breathing, but I'd also be totally aware of everything around me. It's one of those concepts that you can't really explain, even if you're awesome at it, and I'm sure not, so I won't try.

If you want to read more, though, and learn about what I'm all into right now, read this.

The end result is that I am now meditating daily. Eventually I will become better at meditating and at living life (because meditation is only "practice" for the "game" that is life). My "monkey mind" will calm down. That is nice.

(I'm throwing that out there because when I publicly proclaim things, I tend to do them. Like 90% vegetarianism (still good through 3 weeks) and not eating cereal (still good there too). Speaking of 90% vegetarianism, though, I might make a special reservation for travel. When I'm in a place, I want to try the food of that place, and I think that might be more important to me than vegetarianism, because it's always for such short periods of time.)

And speaking of things in general, I'm going to San Francisco for 5 days, then Yosemite for 3, with my family. See you later!

New York Fucking City

I kind of wanted to get my dad one of those shirts, because we both think it's great. But you could never wear it! Which is too bad.

I spent 48 hours in a West Virginia monastery, then 36 hours in Manhattan. I'll talk about the second one first, because there's less to say.

I made the right call to work with Google Seattle instead of NYC. I thought living in the city would be super neat. After my second visit (I was there for a week a couple years ago), I am a little disenchanted. Eww! I drove in to the city. Gah! 1 1/2 hours traffic, an $8 toll to drive through the Lincoln Tunnels, and $50 for parking 24 hrs. (actually, $42 for 24 hours; $50 for 24 hours and 3 minutes) Although that's not as bad as it sounds, I don't think. Apparently if you commute in on one of these commuter trains from Jersey or CT, it can be $20-30 (taking into account parking at the train station and the train cost) and it takes forever too. (Quote MattJ: it's more expensive to commute into NYC than it is to live in Pittsburgh!)

Okay, parking worries aside, a lot of it is dirty, it's a little cutthroat sorta kill-or-be-killed style, cockroaches are sometimes a fact of life, and most of the streets really are not that exciting. Come on, do you really want to see another boulevard of office buildings, food marts, apartments, and ripoff electronics stores?

And it's expensive.

THAT SAID, it's an awesome place to visit! I spent about half the time hanging out with a lot of friends, stayed with Mike Yin, went to bars with him and Catie and her friends, saw Todd and [title of show], and aforementionedly hung out with Matt J.

Speaking of [title of show], this show is great. Skip that Disney-movie-turned-musical (or Shrek the musical, which does exist, fuck you world I hate the entire goddamn planet shit ass fuck shit fucking hate you all) you were going to see and go see this instead. It's a show about how they made the show, and while you groan "meta-play shuuuuuuttt uuuuuuuuppppppp", it's really well done. Except for a few stale jokes about ATM machines and PIN numbers, the whole show was really pretty fresh, there was a joke in there that I was the only one who laughed at, and it's funny and then even at the end you're like "I'm watching a funny play" and then it's BAM you just got inspired. Not inspired, just a little like "awww!" because you're watching these lovable losers become winners as their show gets to Broadway and then you're like, hold up, this is really them. I hate Broadway! But I like this show. Did I mention Matt's working on it? Support your friend/fellow SnSer/guy you don't know, depending on who you are, and go see this!

Chelsea Market: I saw this again! It is still my favorite spot in New York! I had the best espresso of my life there! They have a milk bar, and a couple bakeries, and a Moroccan shop. I later learned that the Google NYC offices are right across the street! Shit, maybe I should have worked there!

The rest of the time: I pretty much retraced my steps, entirely unconsciously, from last time. I found myself in the same stores, and I totally didn't mean to. It was pretty surreal. Except I ate at a place called "OMS/B" which sells (appropriately) omusubi, which is rice balls, and that was neat. Drank a lot of coffee.

I like this city. I do not love it anymore. I will gladly not live in it, but I will gladly visit it. Thanks to Mike for hosting me, thanks to all my friends for making it super fun, and more about WV (arguably the more interesting/life-changing part of this trip) whenever I get around to it.

A weekend of happy losing

Sorry I haven't been around. I went home for the weekend, which you'd think would mean more free time, but it really means a lot less! A lot of my friends from school were home, so I was hanging out with them a lot, and of course family.

It was nice seeing my grandparents and especially my aunt and uncle on my own. My parents were out of town. You don't really get to talk to relatives much at family things because the grown-ups are always talking. But they're really cool people, and hey, I'm an adult now too, and we can actually talk.

Seeing my friends was great fun too. Dan, Erik, and Brad were in from Cleveland (okay, he lives there), DC, and Dayton, respectively, and I got to see Ananth, Seth, Tony, and Kev too. (new slang for pot: "steaks." As in, "Hey man, you want some steaks? I got some nice juicy New York strip steaks!" Ironically, Kev doesn't smoke. He just looks like a stoner.)

I managed to be terrible at everything we did! First poker, well, what do you expect. I watched Ananth and Tony play chess. They're incredible. I guess they're some level of masters, but I don't know what. The next day, we played tennis. I was easily the worst of the four of us. We jetskied the next day too, and did some tubing, and I just didn't like tubing, and was even getting freaked out by jetskiing as the day wore on! Oh, and between going out on the lake, we played Corn Hole. I didn't win a single game. Then Brasa Grill (a Brazilian steakhouse) and a party across town where I got a stomachache from eating too much at the Brasa Grill. We finished off the weekend on Sunday by hitting up the newly-reopened art museum, and I still don't know much about art.

This was probably good for super-competitive me. Honestly, I didn't mind, as long as I wasn't slowing them down. I don't really have much to say, and I have to go take a shower. When you don't work, you can take showers whenever you want!

And also, I'm a little addicted to Final Fantasy X. But it sucks so much! (the characters, I mean. The story's all right, and the gameplay is pretty fun, which is why it has me hooked. I just say this because I'm finding myself embarrassed to be playing the game.)

The first step in solving your problem is admitting you have a problem.

I mean, I've sort of half-admitted it for a while, danced around the issue, joked about it, tossed it aside. But it's serious business, and something that should be changed. And to change it, you have to throw it out there and publicly, or at least privately, acknowledge it. So here it is:

I'm a breakfast cereal addict.

Many mornings, I get up, eat cereal until I'm full, then eat for about 15 minutes more, and roll out of my chair to start the day. I get indigestion on my morning bike rides, feel awful until about noon, and don't get hungry again until dinner. If I want a snack later, it's cereal again. I justify this to myself by saying how healthy it is. (to be fair, I'm more addicted to healthier cereals. I won't eat, say, Lucky Charms. But granola never stays in the house more than a couple days.) But even so, a lot of a healthy food is unhealthy.

This has been going on for years. I've taken action to stop it once, and succeeded for a while, but then got back into the cereal. Now, I'm back on the wagon.

How to quit? I think I can just do it cold turkey. That's how I did it before. It's easy if there's no cereal in the house. If there is, it's harder, but the fact that I'm declaring this publicly will be good inspiration for me to stay clean.

Why now? Well, I have all this time, you know? I'm sorta trying to tie up every loose end I can so I am as unburdened as possible when I start my new job and life in August. Being free of cereal will help.

Note to anyone with a more typical and harmful addiction: I don't mean to trivialize your addiction in any way. I'm entirely serious here. I have a problem (albeit a small one) and I'm trying to solve it.

Note to anyone with any addiction, serious or not (and think about it; you might have an addiction you don't even realize): if you'd like to quit your addiction along with me, drop me a line. It might be easier for both of us. I can do it. You probably can too!

Bar, part the third and last.

Long-term Snail Shell aficionados may know that I've tried a few times to make the best nutritional bar out of fruits and vegetables. Like a Clif bar, but with actual food in place of "soy protein isolate" and stuff. US FDA RDA's were no object. Neither was taste.

Boy, this is embarrassing.

Unrelatedly, though, I can save a little face by saying that I, before reading that article, already first conquered and then abandoned the Bar project.

First, the "conquered" part: This company called Just Tomatoes makes a product that is, well, just dried vegetables. (I'm sure other companies do too, this is just the one I found) Grind them up in a food processor into a flour, mix them up with an egg, bake until done. There you go: a lot of mixed vegetables, plus an egg, in bar form. No weird ingredients. (if you're vegan, just add water instead of an egg.) I guess it's about as "healthy" as you can get, although you clearly can't reduce foods to just a number of how healthy they are. This brings us to:

Second, the "abandoned" part: It's not worth it. I'm reading In Defense of Food by my food guru, Michael Pollan, who struck a nerve with a bit about how not only are we not eating actual food, we're not actually eating it. Scarfing something down is worse than sitting down to dinner with friends or family, in a lot of ways. In every culture (but not very much in ours) food is social and cultural as well as nutritious. We don't need a new bar to make the food we eat healthier, we need a revolution to make the way we eat food healthier too. As Brillat-Savarin, maybe the first gourmet dude ever, has said: animals feed, humans eat, men of wit dine.

Misbehaving prisoners eat bars.