Ok, so the torch and the accompanying protests are coming within 200 feet of our building tomorrow.
We’ll be sure to post whatever we can capture of the mayhem.
Here’s the Chronicle’s coverage:
http://www.sfgate.com/olympictorch/?tsp=1
Well here we are 10 months after the beginning of the great “No More Cable” experiment.
Since we aren’t mindlessly gorging ourselves on the fixed-cost TV all-the-time spigot that is cable television, we are spending less money and also able to extract information about our viewing habits. Below is a chart of the number of hours of television viewed, broken down by source.
Average Minutes of Television Watched per day: 55
(We’re probably over-counting here because TV shows without commercials are 42 minutes long. And we’ve assumed for the sake of simplicity that movies are 2 hours long.)
Now, let’s compare the costs. Netflix is a fixed per-month cost at $16.99. iTunes is flexible based on usage. See below:
Apparently, where we live, you cannot get basic cable. The cheapest plan is a digital plan for $57 per month. If you upgrade to a fancy plan with premium channels, you’re paying $109 per month. That’s off our chart so I didn’t even include it.
Quick Netflix queue update:
In May (when the last post was done) our Netflix queue stood at 70 DVDs. Now we’ve got 130 DVDs. That means that after watching 223 hours of DVDs, our backlog increased by 60 DVDs.
Update 2:
Looks like Hulu just came out of beta. This is the service that NBC and others created as a ad-based competitor to the iTunes Store TV Show section. I haven’t used it yet but have read good things about this service. It seems like a non-starter for most people though because I imagine that less than 1% of the population has a computer hooked up directly to their TV. Luckily, we do.
When we moved here, I hadn’t realized at the time the advantage of being so close to this stretch of the Embarcadero. Some disadvantages, maybe — it’s a bit touristy some times, on account of the ball park and the views (although the bulk of the tourists are much further north), it’s not an old-school SF neighborhood, this area is too new, not enough Mom & Pop stores/restaurants yet, etc. (Defensive much?)
But since I don’t have a gym membership now, I’ve been doing a bit of running (maybe jogging?) again (Hello, Nike Plus orange widget thing). And the Embarcadero, it’s ideal for it. At least 2 miles of uninterrupted wide surface, beautiful sun-drenched views, occasional water fountains, and it’s full of runners. Who are very fit. Motivationally so! Nothing like getting passed by little old men to make me feel like maybe I should step it up a notch!
I don’t run at night, but I’m not going to lug around the camera on a run either. So we snapped a few pics on the way to Happy Donuts. Pretty, no? And after a nice long run I can hydrate with some coke. Soft drink corporations are the best!
We’re trying to get the painting done in our place this week.
Here are the current color selections. Note that they won’t be quite right because I’m on the Mac, this is a JPEG, these colors were copied from the Kelly Moore site, you’re probably using Windows, etc etc.
The bedroom is complicated because we are doing what I call a negative space design, meaning that the only colors in the room will be on opposing walls — everything else including fixtures, bedspread and furniture must be totally white for it to work properly. Fury, for instance, will need to lie on his back, exposing his white belly.
So anyway, if you like one color more than another, comment on this post.
Staged and listed. I like the virtual tours…
Here’s a quote from our neighborhood Yahoo! Group:
I think that the city of Santa Clara is greedy and only concerned about generating revenue. Just look at the monstrous condos ( now aparently many apartment rentals ) being built on Moreland. This is not what our community needed - more dwellings in a densely populated area. How that can happen in a “master planned community” is beyond me. Our market is already overcrowded and just wait until there are 500+ more households when the new construction is completed.
Oh yes, the Bay Area is way too compact, and the damn apartment dwellers should just move further away!. It’s such a hassle to park at Rivermark Safeway, less than 0.7 miles from the farthest Rivermark home. O, the hardship.
Please.
We’ve been quiet lately because we’re busy and stressed out. We’re moving, baby, moving to SF! So it’s a good stressed out, the kind where even though we have so much to do that we could easily fill up every night with the endless chores, the passing of time is also wonderful because it brings us closer to our move date.
The abbreviated laundry list is:
That doesn’t include all the mortgage crap I’m dealing with now too.
How much is that bunny in the window?, originally uploaded by misa_.
In the mornings, when we wake up and go downstairs for breakfast, Frost often runs to the glass doors to gaze out the windows. Both sets of glass doors. Clearly Frost has a thing about looking outdoors.
So a couple of months ago, I bought a couple of simple wooden shelves and installed them in a stacked pattern underneath the window in our bedroom. I even put some rubber shelf liners on it so they would feel like they had sure footing. We placed Fury and Frost up there a couple times (with a treat to make it pleasant). Fury just looked very worried and spent 20 minutes calculating how he would hop down. Frost left immediately. I figured the project for a failure.
But lately I’ve been waking up to Frosty on the shelf, gazing out. This makes me happy.
This morning I noticed that one of our trees in the garden fell over. I guess now is the time that I learn how to actually care for the trees and make sure they are growing properly. I spoke to one of the experts at Yamagami’s Nursery and she was absolutely horrified that we had held the tree up with a stake for months and that it couldn’t stand on it’s own.
So I bought some rubber tree things to hold the tree back. I moved some stakes around and got the tree to stand up sort of straight. After about 15 minutes, the wind pushed it over. So I did it again but also cut out some branches with my tree saw. And the wind knocked it down again. This repeated 3 times. At one point, I was cutting a little too excitedly with the tree saw and sliced my thumb. That was very exciting, especially given the fact that we had no band-aids.
The entire time while I was hammering stakes into the ground, 3-5 hornets constantly flew around, checking things out. This was really like a mental test for me, since I am slightly frightened of swarms of bees, hornets, and wasps.
I think the tree is finally secured, but who knows what will happen next. Supposedly it’s very important that the air can flow through the tree so it can sway back and forth and hopefully develop more strength.
