Autumn is the best season, and it begins today. The sun has crossed the fence. Let us rejoice.
September 2007 Archives
I went and visited Marie today, and in addition to generously treating me to sushi she gave me this fabulous donut made of yarn, which is, as I said, fabulous. It will be gracing a shelf in my office when I once again have an office with shelves to be graced.
Dr. M and I signed the lease on our shiny new apartment today. This involved hanging around the management office for fifteen minutes being ignored by the receptionist while she helped someone else (we didn't expect her to drop everything and help us, but eye contact would have been nice) before going over the lease with the new manager, who is a carbon copy of Philip Seymour Hoffman's character from The Big Lebowski. The manager is very nice, has been on the job for two weeks, and is already dealing with the difficulties of a company that refuses to update its forms and a receptionist who couldn't find her ass with both hands (in addition to her inability to acknowledge the presence of anyone she's not already talking to, this woman was previously outsmarted by Mapquest when we asked her to look up directions during our initial visit).
In any case, the new apartment is generally great. It has brand new everything, which is very exciting. The only "repair"-type problems we identified were (1) a light in one of the bathrooms that doesn't light up and (2) a window in the master bedroom that doesn't close all the way. Both of these problems are hopefully being addressed as we speak. A third problem, which should be easier to address but is significantly more disturbing, was the discovery of random bloodstains at various points in the apartment, including the walls of the second bedroom, the walls of the master bathroom, the front door, the oven, and one of the thermostats. It looked like one of the contractors cut their finger and didn't do anything about it until after they had left the apartment (hence the blood on the door), and also managed to bleed all over the goddamn apartment before leaving. Very curious. When we returned to the management office with the results of our inspection I teed up the blood-related news with "Boy, are you going to love your new job."
And now, the concluding lines of the opening scene of a hypothetical episode of CSI based on our blood discovery:
Warrick: Why would somebody leave bloodstains all over a brand new apartment?
Grissom: Guess they couldn't afford a fruit basket.
[Cut to theme song.]
I've been following, with marginal interest, the plans to open a law school at UC Irvine. I think this is a good thing, both for UCI, the UC system, and California. It's good for UCI because the school has a reputation for being full of geeky engineers, and a law school will show that the university isn't all about the maths. It's good for the UC system, because with tuition for professional schools going up every year the UCI law school will be a cash cow for the Regents before we know it. And it's good for California, because California can always use more good law schools, and the University of California generally knows what it's doing when it comes to teaching people things (except Celtic Studies, God damn it).
Today, however, UCILS and the Regents have run into a bit of public obluquy by hiring Erwin Chemerinsky as the school's inaugural dean, and then immediately firing him for fear that the choice would anger conservatives (or at least one particular well-heeled conservative). The story is here, and there are some thoughts from the Volokh Conspiracy here and here. The latter is largely a scrape post by Eugene Volokh, who doesn't actually have anything to say about the issue but just wants it to be known that he knows about it and is only the second Volokh Conspirator to blog about it.
The whole ordeal is making those responsible for the decision look like monkey idiots, and reinforcing Orange County's reputation as a maniacal right-wing enclave. Erwin Chemerinsky, despite talking like Jerry Mathers from Leave it to Beaver and not fully understanding the concept of puns, is certainly one of the leading constitutional scholars of the day, and having him as the founding dean would be great for any law school. And regardless of whether it's appropriate to rescind an offer like this because of politics, Chemerinsky has been a known quantity in terms of his political views and causes for almost thirty years, so this is something the powers that be should have seen coming. The UC system once again proves itself to be a leading academic institution in spite of its leadership. Nice going, fellas.
Over the weekend Dr. M and I participated in another fantastic photo scavenger hunt. Here's our submission for "Use glue for evil," which once again demonstrates the enormity of our cats.
I swear they don't seem this big in person.
Dr. M and I spent the last two days jackassing around the Peninsula looking for a place to live, focusing first on Mountain View, Palo Alto and Menlo Park, and then looking around Redwood City yesterday. We ended up finding a couple of places in Redwood City that suit our particulars, so last night I was doing some online research about Redwood City neighborhoods.
I found a number of comments on various Internet forums stating that one should steer clear of "east" Redwood City, or at least that "west" Redwood City is the nicer area. I found less consistent comments making a similar distinction between north (good) and south (bad). The task then became determining what these geographic dividing lines might be. After some more digging, people seemed to fixate on El Camino Real (one of my least favorite streets in the universe) and Woodside Road. Figuring out the actual significance of these streets was further complicated by the fact that Redwood City is sideways (from Wikipedia):
El Camino Real (California), a northwest/southeast arterial street and Woodside Road, a north-northeast/south-southwest arterial, run through Redwood City. Locally, the former is regarded as north/south and the latter east/west, as El Camino connects Redwood City to San Francisco and San Jose and Woodside Road runs from San Francisco Bay to the Santa Cruz Mountains. The actual geography is as stated.
As you can seem from the map, ECR is at an almost diagonal orientation, but Woodside Road, the putative north-south divider, actually runs more or less north-south itself. As far as I can tell, this means that the "southeast" portion of the city is actually the northeast quadrant of the ECR-Woodside Road intersection in real life. Given my already abysmal sense of direction, living in this city is going to be a real treat.
Bonus Redwood City fun fact: "Redwood Shores" is actually part of Redwood City, but it is impossible to get there on land from Redwood City proper without passing through San Carlos. Redwood Shores is the Alaska to Redwood City's lower 48.
