July 31, 2006

portland beer fest

me and ronda went to portland for four day this past weekend to check out a beer festival. Our pictures from the trip are here. We had a good time. We tried about 67 different beers. Here's a list of everything we tried and our favorites. Our first day there (thur) we went and hiked through the beautiful Washington Park and saw the Japanese Gardens and the Rose Gardens. Then it was off to the beer festival and the trip got hazier after that. But we did manage to spend a good chunk of time (and buy a few books) at Powells. We also had a great dinner olea, amazing pastrami sandwhiches at Viande Cured Meats (really a grocery store), great pastries at Pix Patisserie, and a really good brunch at a place that i can't remember right now... Lastly, we managed to graze our way through a great farmers market. Another great part of the trip was that we managed to meet up and hang out with one of ronda's old friends for a couple days, John drove down from seattle with his girlfriend Lisa to hang out and drink beer with us on sat and sun.

July 23, 2006

bike repair

i spent today fixing up my bike. it's an old mountain bike that i bought from costco back in '93. the last time i fixed it up was about two years ago. then it went to burning man and after that it sat outside for a couple years. well, now a lot of rust has been scrubbed off, it's got air in the tires, a new chain, new pedals (with straps), a lot of lube, and a lot of time spent adjusting shifters. surprisingly enough it runs really nice now. the reason i fixed it up is because i want to start riding it to work. i'm planning to ride it from my house to the 22nd st caltrain station (instead of having ronda drive me) and then from the menlo park caltrain station to work (instead of taking a shuttle.) i guess i'll try it out tomorrow and see how it goes.

July 22, 2006

jonathan and frances wedding

me and ronda went to jonathan and frances wedding today. it was held in a church in menlo park. the reception was in a (thankfully air conditioned) country club near by. we had a good time chatting with friends at the reception. afterwords we went to dans house where he grilled us up some great food, we drank some beer, and continued to chat into the night.

July 17, 2006

unrestfull weekends

lately (since i moved) every monday when i go to work i'm super tired. the "restfull" weekends have been anything but. i don't really have much to show for the weekends, but somehow they leave me super tired. this weekend i made my first dovetail... starting down the road of a new hobby, woodworking. course it looks like something a two year old tried to make but whatever. i've got half a lifetime left to try and perfect it... unless of course i get bored.

July 9, 2006

jenn and andrew's wedding

today me and ronda went to jenn and andrews wedding. it was at a winery up in the mountains off of highway 35. the view was great, the services were beautiful, and the reception was a great time. (sans suzie falling down the stairs.)

July 3, 2006

installing lights

so today i decided to replace the recessed lighting in the rooms upstairs with some dome lights. (the recessed lights didn't actually provide very much light into the rooms they were in.) the problem was interesting because dome lights expect a standard circular light outlet where as the recessed lighting fixtures have their own special mounting bracket. since i'm renting this place i didn't want to make permanent changes like ripping out the existing brackets and replacing them with new ones. (also, i don't have access to the attic space above the lights and it is filled with insulation anyway, so i wouldn't want to dig through that. i ended up cutting some 22 gauge sheet metal to the same size as the recessed mounting fixtures, mounting a standard circular light outlet to the sheet metal, and installing that over the recessed lighting fixtures. then i was easily able to mount the dome lights. here are some pictures of what i did.