I have no net access. This should give me more time to focus on coding, but instead it's just making me stir-crazy. How can I get anything done if I don't have quality flicking? I'm trying to make up for it by editing very old Amber logs, which is helping, but it's just weird not to be able to look things up on the web when some question occurs to me. How do normal people stand it?

I am coding a lot, although I still feel like I'm not getting anything done. I'm also listening to Before and After Science, which is a Brian Eno album I borrowed from Trip. When I have digested this one I have Wrong Way Up, which is Eno and John Cale. I'm not sure what I think of Before and After Science, although I think I like the first track, and I might like the fourth. At the very least they all have good names.

Trip and I had lunch in Palo Alto; I took him to Rangoon, as I've been promising to do for ages & ages. Rangoon is the often-closed Burmese place near Just Desserts (my all-time favourite dessert place due solely to their mocha buttercream cake, which has very thin layers of yellow cake and huge layers of butter-consistency sweet cream -- I drool just thinking about it.) Rangoon was briefly one of my favourite places to eat, but recently I've gotten sort of tired of it, since all the interesting dishes are about ten times spicier than I can stand.

Anyway, Trip had never been there, so we went today. I ordered the standard yummy things (samusas, coconut rice) that I knew I could eat, and then we conspired on sweet&sour chicken (I know, it's not Real Asian Food, but sometimes a girl just has to have breaded meat in a sweet sauce), and orange peel beef (usually too hot, so ordered extra-mild). This all turned out much better than I'd feared; the mild beef was zingy enough to be interesting without scouring all skin from my mouth with its heat, and the sweet&sour was pretty standard but definitely edible. The only sadness is that they've started adding cilantro to their samusas, which means they are no longer plug-and-play Cera food. Sigh.

It's got to be a boring day when I spend this much time explaining the history of my lunch restaurant.

The weekend was mostly cool, with only a minor spiky bit of frustration. I did in fact go to the library Friday, and dragged Vivek with me, although I lost him early on. The library has forgiven/resolved/lost my huge outstanding fine, so I was able to run wild through the shelves, picking books up left and right. I ended up with two books of collected 20th century critical essays, one for Romeo & Juliet, one for Hamlet, two random children's books, two random novels (another Anne Tyler, and Johnny Got His Gun, because the Metallica video with clips from the movie was so disturbing), more Dorothy Dunnett (I found Scales of Gold just as I wished, and can now pick up where I left off in the Niccolo Rising series), and a few more random literature-aimed nonfiction things (more essays, a not-really-funny humorous survey of English Lit, and a huge literary history of England). All in all, a stunningly successful library trip.

Once home I sprawled on the waterbed (which Jim and I have finally assembled), and read. Eventually Jim got home, and there was dinner, and then somehow instead of the quiet evening of reading I had planned on I ended up over at Mike&Susan's, playing Advanced Civ with Leslie (a friend of Susan's who just moved up here from LA -- she's an elementary school teacher, and seems nice but shy), Harold, Eric, Mike, and Jim. I got behind very early on, and of course we didn't finish, but when we stopped (at 2300) we saved the game on Mike's nifty board, so perhaps someday we'll go back to it & I'll be able to attempt to rectify my horrible mistakes.

Saturday we spent all day shopping with Rachel & Jeremy, which is an entry in and of itself. We went to Palo Alto so I could buy sheet music at Melody Lane, then up to the City. There was a brief stop at UCSF, so Jeremy could do obscure things with dry ice and test tubes, and then on to Ghiradelli Square. Rachel bought two new Vera Bradley purses; I bought an adorable woolley lamb and a tiny desktop-sheep with real wool who is even now guarding my CPU. I also bought chocolate. A lot of chocolte -- a box of truffles, a box of random assorted chocolates, and a box of cappucino creams -- plus Rachel & I split a box of 'huckleberry bonbons', which we've brought into work and are foisting off on people who are nice to us.

From there we went on to Pier 39, where I spent a long time drooling over a Benchmade bali-song (usually called a butterfly knife, which is a very pretty name, but an actual butterfly knife is a very different creature) at We Be Knives. I've wanted a bali-song ever since the first time I saw Full Contact, so it only took about five minutes of waffling (do I really want a knife that it's a felony to _carry_? Well, yes) before I'd decided to buy it. The fact that Benchmade no longer makes them added a nice amount of now-or-never pressure to it. Finally I gave in, and am now the proud of owner of a bali-song.

The Pier 39 part of the shopping expedition also involved a craft store, where Rachel & I both admired but didn't buy anything; looking at sea lions; buying more candy (Jeremy got fudge, I got salt water taffy); running into a co-worker of Jim's (who called him James, to my endless confusion), lemonade, and finally a lot of walking as we went back to Ghiradelli Square, where the cars were parked.

The walking was interesting. It was hot, and I was very pleasantly tired, and there were huge crowds which made me tense -- but also there was a lot to look at. Street performers, random tarot and/or palm readers, people drawing portraits or caricatures -- intriguing, really. A glimpse of a way of life I find theoretically appealing; most of my modern-day characters end up being street musicians or artists, because it just seems like so much fun if you can afford not to make money. I've never tried it, though; terrifying to actually think about it. I don't think I'd like the actuality, since it'd be hot and noisy and crowded and there's an 87% chance I'd be terribly self-conscious (and a 13% chance I wouldn't mind at all) -- so I don't think I'll try it soon, if ever.

Once back to the car we went to Tanforan, which is a huge mall in San Bruno. Jeremy lurked in Waldenbooks, while Jim and I went to a music store, and then caught up with Rachel at the craft store. I ended up buying crochet hooks & a tiny cross-stitch kit with lots of purple in it. We wandered around some more (Jim looked at purses in the leather store), and then had dinner at Max's Opera Cafe, which has intensely yummy food & singing waiters.

At this point it was about 10pm, so we went to our various homes and dropped stuff off. Then (instead of sensibly crashing) we reconvened at Rachel & Jeremy's apartment; Jeremy sat inside and read, while Jim and Rachel and I sat in/near the hot tub and talked. I ended up swimming for a little bit in the huge pool, and enjoyed myself muchly.

Sunday I slept late. I think we went out to dinner. Memory fails me, being overshadowed by Saturday.

I do in fact like track four, and not only because it has the incredibly keen name of Energy fools the Magician. So far it's the only entirely instrumental track on the album, and much more what I was expecting than the previous tracks with their odd, disconnected lyrics -- the sort of lyrics which have an internal sense to them, but only if you don't listen too closely.

All the tracks have cool names, though. Without access I do feel like I'm 'sailing at the edges of time'.