Molecules

Anne equated attraction to atoms. Some atoms can sit side by side but they never react. They understand each other, they have the same protons, same electrons, same neutrons. But we just don't have Chlorine Argon. But snuzzle up some Hydrogen next to some Oxygen and look out! WATER! Reaction! Attraction...

It is like that. Just like that. The problem is that I don't know exactly what kind of molecule I am, I don't know what kind of molecules the ladies out there are. And even if I knew both I still wouldn't know which ones I'd react with.

But that's actually a lie. I know a lot about me, more than I'd say most people know about themselves. I also know a decent amount about the kind of ladies that I'm attracted to. I even know a little bit about the ones that have been attracted to me. This all means I'm pretty well off for being an atom looking to form a molecule.

Nitrogen atom seeks single Oxygen to form a strong bond. Willing to share electrons, can offer fulfillment of outter shell.

Unwound

Recent events led me to consult the almighty Google for information about "chemistry", what makes two people love each other. I found stuff that talked about chemicals in the brain, blah, blah, blah. Endorphins this, and dopamine that. But wait, what if that's all there is to it? Then I read about people becoming addicted to the checmicals, and that's why they stay in relationships - that monogamy is programmed into us. The people who hop from relationship to relationship are addicted to the set of chemicals found in the beginning of the relationship.

[NOTE: there was more to this post originally, but it got eaten by the internets, so I wrote the paragraph below the next morning]

The whole think smacks of "no choice" and "no control" in the sense that my brain doesn't get to pick. I can't adapt to a situation. It's always going to be square peg - round hole or round peg - round hole. No in between is what I get from my reading. It's like a form of fate, which makes me uneasy because I want to control my own life. I don't want to think that I'm just an observer in a fleshy man chair.

Josh Went to Breakfast

Josh went to breakfast with a girl named Mollie this morning. It's rewarding to see him step out of his comfort zone. This was his end of the bargain. My end was asking Amy to join me for dinner. Where we both go from here is up to us.

"It's Working Like Gangbusters"

The saying is from Eteranl Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and has no bearing on this post, I just wanted to say it because it's been a long day.

I cried at work today, in front of my boss, Adam. Part of it is that TiVo is one of our customers, and suddenly I had to make a bunch of changes I promised for Monday next week. The change in priority came from jesper who comitted the work without asking the person doing the work (me). It's total bull shit that happened because they're buddies.

Back in developer land, we've been trying to get a release out the door. The main feature holding up the show is the one with my name on it. Which blows because the real reason is that I had enough time to do it if I had the informaiton at the beginning of the release. Instead I got the info at the end, some still pending today as I type this. But who is doing the work? The engineers. Will people think "Oh well certainly the people doing the work aren't the reason the work didn't get done."? Hell no.

So everything I'm working on is in fire drill mode and looks like a big steamy failure. Tonight I didn't even have the option to skip out on Nikki's birthday, and tomorrow I have to cancel my kiteboarding group meetup. So it's cutting into my personal life, and it's no wonder I broke down today.

Amy Meyer

12:32am text message from Amy Meyer: "i concur"

It was in response to my previous blog about our escapades of late. But no one says "i concur" but the RCF fencers, Josh and I mostly. Everything about her feels like that - it clicks. We can talk about anything and everything. She's full of life and happy. She's new to the city, so we share that. We met at Euchre night. She grew up in East Lansing and went to college at Arizona State. Now San Francisco is "cold" to her and she doesn't see herself staying more than a year. But in the meantime she's living with her sister in the Haight, but will soon be moving in with her other sister (and her partner and their son) in outer Mission.

She's gorgeous. And she shakes her head when she says something that makes it just a little more sexy than it needed to be. Se came from a fairly religious background, and admits that being a democrat is the only thing that separates her from being her mother. Amy taught in Costa Rico for a year (where she dated a student) teaching English as a second language - big points for being an English teacher in a way. She's also a psych major, like my mom was.

She also says she can cook really well. Basically, if I had a checklist of the perfect future Mrs. Will Read, so far the only empty boxes are brunette (which she says she has mousy brown hair, but it's blond right now) and same age (she's 24, same as Jon). I enjoy every moment I'm with her and I forget about everything bad that may be going on (job stress, paper cut, the whole nine yards). And I long for the next time I get to see her again.

She has my sweater now. I always think it's a good sign when a lady steals your clothes. And things are going slow if they're going that direction. I like it - "friends first" kinda. I hope she feels the same way about me, that I do about her.

Restauranteur in Arms

Last week we went to a place called Memphis Minnies which served pulled port sandwiches to us. We talked about how I don't like to add sauce to my food, that if the chef intended for there to be sauce, he'd have put it on there before serving it to me. We also talked about politics. I never talk about politics with anyone except maybe Josh. It was then that I learned of Amy's love for ice cream. We found a place that served dessert crepes, and would probably have been good for a meal too. We listened to "Tuesday Morning" by Melissa Etheridge.

Now, a couple of days later, we've also been to the No Hill Cafe. It's an Italian cafe/wine bar that's just a block and a half from where I live. She had tortilini, I had lasagna. Both were good in my opinion, and the conversation didn't disappoint either. We talked about all kinds of things, including a way point on faith and religion. After a brisk walk, we went to the gelato place that the Dickersons helped me find on my birthday. Matt swears by the kiwi gelato. I'm a fan of fruta de bosco. Amy had a scoop of frutta and a scoop of nutella. We listened to "Galileo" by the Indigo Girls and "Standing Outside the Fire" by Garth Brooks.

After examining the bus schedule and the not-so-late hour, we decided a movie was in our best interest. So we hiked a few blocks and popped in my favorite relationship movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. When it was over I walked her to the bus stop on Stockton so she could catch the 9X. She had asked for an old sweater to keep her warm on her trek home. She now has my favorite (shhh, don't tell her I gave her something I like) blue hoodie in her possession. I hope that it protects her from the cold, and reminds her of good times until I see her again for a Wii challenge.

MIA With Good Reason

Ok, not really a good reason, because buying kite gear doesn't take every moment of a full week, but it's been consuming my thoughts a lot. Here's a link to my Kiteboarding album that has pictures of my gear:

From Kite Surfing

So the board is a Liquid Force twin tip. It's basically a skinny wake board. 151 is the length in cm. The bigger the board, the easier it is to stay on top of the water in lighter wind, and more edge for carving upwind. Once I get going and know what I'm doing, a 140cm board is more inline with my weight. It came with "luxury" foot pads/straps. They feel pretty luxurious.

The kite - is huge. The pictures don't really do it justice because there's nowhere in my apartment I could be and get it all in the shot. But it's 10 square meters. Roughly 1.5m deep, making the breadth of the kite to be about 6m (aka 20 ish feet). The kite is a 2008 Ocean Rodeo Rise that I bought used for $750 (I won't tell you what it would have been new, but suffice to say I saved A TON OF GREENBACKS). It's kind of a cool kite because unlike most kites, it's vented, so in theory, the wind is a little less turbulent, meaning it shouldn't back fly into the wind window like the kite I took my lesson on.

Then when I picked up my board I also got a harness. But this one is built into some board shorts, so it's a seat harness, but doesn't look like a giant diaper. Plus a bar, bar pad, leash, and helmet. I also ordered an O'Neil life jacket and a travel bag from the interwebs (should be here later this week).

Damage: $400 board + $260 misc + $750 kite (steal of a deal!) + $250 vest & bag + $300 wetsuit + $500 land & water lessons + $100 trainer kite = thank goodness I'm employed.

Badly Beaten

I'm not dead. But I hurt everywhere. Three and a half hours of wiping out and sucking in sea water. And a few glorious moments of using the wind to pull myself across the water... Woooooooooooo!

We started off body dragging. So no board, just a big ass kite and twenty mile per hour wind, and if you do it right, everything from your knees up are out of the water. This was the fun part, I kinda just want to make a sport out of body dragging.

Then the board. So now you have to get up. The mechanics are identical on this part to wake boarding only easier because the "boat" is over your head. And now you're up so you have to move, well you don't have to, but it helps you look cool.

Wind is not a good boat.

So you have to help it. You have generate power but not too much power. You have to keep the lines taught. And your have to keep your weight back.

And you have to let it pull you though the harness, not the bar. In skiing, in wakeboarding, the power comes through your arms. It's the same on the two line trainer kite. But on the four line big kite the power is partly in the bar, but it really needs to go through your pants (wink). I have a hard time just steering with my hands and letting the kite pull through the harness.

Then there's fencing. I can profile like a champ to the left. But when you want me to go the other way, like I'm fencing with my right hand, "switch" they call it, I feel like a fish out of water.

I'm not a natural, but I'm a lightweight, which is great for wind. So I'm in. Just let me recoup first.

Kiteboard Lesson in 1 hour

I have my kiteboarding lesson today. If I don't write by the end of the day it means that I either froZe to death, caught some air and ended up splattered on rocks or caught in power lines, or my baby seal suit was too appealing to the local shark population.

But I'm sure I'll be fine... Right?

Giving In

I had to admit to myself that I'm not doing enough to meet people. So I decided to follow some advice I found on the internet <insert plan for disaster here>. No, really I signed up on Meetup.com and found myself a Euchre group, a Settlers of Catan group and I saw that there were a good many people looking for a Kiteboarding group. Well I'm no expert, but I can certainly find some if needed. So I started a San Francisco Kiteboarding group. We're going to meet every Thursday at 6:30pm at the field where I usually fly my kite anyway. Easy. The 6 month group ownership set me back $72, but I figure that's a good investment in establishing new friends and will go a long way to getting some value from kiteboarding other than the skill itself. I hope that we'll get a decent turn out and we can get some equipment demos, maybe some sponsorship one day.

Click here to check out
The San Francisco Kiteboarding!

New Three Piece Suit

Yep, not your typical "night with the big wigs" kind of suit. I got a wetsuit. My water lesson for kite surfing is scheduled for this Saturday, so I figured I needed something to keep my warm. I picked up the Mutant from O'Neil. It's a 4mm/3mm suit. Meaning it's 4mm in the chest and back and 3mm in the arms and legs for mobility. The seams have what O'Neil calls a "Fluid Seam Weld" meaning they stitch it once, then slap a bead of rubber over the seam, purportedly making the suit more flexible than the standard of stitching the seams twice and leaving them exposed.

They call it the Mutant because it has two "tops", one is the hood I have on in the picture above. The other is a super sleek collar. The hood is intended for cold weather, help retain body heat even more, and keeps the wind off the ears.

I thought I wanted a 5/4 instead of a 4/3 when I walked in. There was a 4.5/3.5 that I considered, the Psycho Phreak. It's a little different in construction. The neoprene has air pockets injected into it. I'm told it's warm as hell. It's also an extra two hundred bones more. So I got the Mutant, but I was uncertain of my purchase. It needed testing.

So for 15 minutes I stood in the coldest shower I could get out of my faucet. Didn't shiver once, got kinda bored, so I let the tub fill up. I soaked in cold, cold, water for another 15 minutes with the jets in to keep it moving over and around and making sure the water didn't just stay in the same place and get warm. After the soak I was still warm and totally satisfied. I just dug up some numbers, tap water is anywhere from 45-65 degrees. The surface temp in the Bay is currently shown to be 64 degrees. I am no longer afraid of the water temp. Now if only I didn't look like a baby seal... *CHOMP*

Chop Chop Haircut Master

I went to a salon. Juju cut my hair. I asked for her to keep it the same length it was on top. The clean up the back and sites, get it off my ears. She did it well. It feels weird to have my hair flop around on the tips of my ears like this. It was weird at first. It's growing on me.