I have to admit I didn’t think this would happen when we first started dating but as time progressed, Rosa expressed more interest in riding. She took the class and passed, looked at various motorcycles, and settled on the green and white Triumph Bonneville T100.

Congratulations, Rosa! I can’t wait (but I will, patiently) till we can go on our first road trip!

Photo by Jerome Abellar

So let’s get back to it, shall we? Yes!

World Cup is starting up. Here’s all the games, here are the game times set to Eastern Standard time and finally here is a map of where you can watch in the Bay Area. USA plays England first… Let’s make them suffer!

Meanwhile, while I haven’t been writing a whole lot, I have managed to watch the entire three “seasons” (Brits having a different idea of how many episodes constitutes a season than us) of an amazing BBC series called Black Books. See it. It’s comedy gold that will probably not be remade here in America (like The Office) because there’s too much smoking, drinking and swearing without any (well, only once) sex, murder or blowing things up. Brilliant. I need to find out who wrote the opening theme song…

Speaking of explosions, can anyone explain to me why they can’t simply blow up the hole in the Caribbean leaking all that oil? Or pour several thousand metric tons of concrete over the top? Seriously, it seems ridiculous they build these things without some sort of failsafe or cutoff valve.

Anyways, off we go!

But I had to say I just met Steven Erikson last night and it was pretty cool to talk to an author I respect. Even if I felt a bit like a fanboy. It happened thus…

The mind and crew of Borderlands Books is opening up a cafe soon and I’ve been excited about it since first hearing about it; even more so now that I live in the neighborhood. I’ve been needing a good cafe to spend time in since my days in Prague and this just seems perfect. They won’t be opening yet (alas!) but yesterday night, in conjunction with this year’s World Fantasy Convention, they opened in order to host a bevy of authors, including Steven Erikson.

For those that do not know, and I admit I didn’t know until about six weeks ago myself, Steven Erikson is the author of a series of fantasy books set around an empire called Malazan. The world was built over a very long period of time with his friend Cameron Esslemont, who also writes books that take place there. (As an aside, I will read his books eventually and will then become a fanboy of his, but not until then). The books are pretty vast in scope, covering a myriad of characters, plot lines, situations and emotions. Honestly, in the five minutes I’m writing this I’m not going to be able to come up with a quick and easy review and that’s not my point. Let’s just say it’s the best fantasy I’ve read in many, many years. For that matter it’s one of the best books I’ve read in a while.

Blah blah blah. I went to the table with Mr. Erikson and Mr. Esslemont and talked with them a bit, asked some questions, got an autograph and moved on in order not to feel like too much of a fanboy. But I was. The only question I forgot to ask but wanted to was if there was, somewhere, a complete map of the world they created. I like maps…

RMCA took a few pictures, bless her, and here’s my two favorites.

Someday, it is my sincere hope to have written something on the scale and scope of the Malazan books and have someone appreciate them the way I appreciate Mr. Erikson and Mr. Esslemont’s work.

The video was shot from where I get my morning coffee almost every day. As a result of that geyser in the middle of the road we got this, which was shot by Courtney from the front of our building. This was after the water receded a bit! The water was coming in all of our doors and even a few places, like a wall window, we never expected it. Courtney also took this picture, which looks out on the intersection of Bay and Powell.

As a result of the water damage and the unsanitary water itself (not to mention the stench) the offices are closed tomorrow. Yay…?

What a day to spend my Mom’s birthday!

I haven’t been up to Bolinas in a long time. I didn’t have my surf stuff with me (hard to strap a nine foot surf board to a motorcycle) I really wanted to get in. Maybe this weekend. Instead I took a walk along the beach and was going to go sit on what I thought was a log and watch the surfers. It wasn’t a log, though. I have no idea what killed the poor seal as aside from the seaweed conspicuously around its neck (but loose) there was no obvious cause.

Still, what a great day. The only thing that could have made it better is if I weren’t out alone. It’s hard to have time off and not be able to spend it with RMCA.

There wasn’t much left by the time I got there. Just some broken glass and burned debris. Some of the leaves in the tree above were charred, too. I’m guessing this wasn’t the worst one.

But walking around the neighborhood I saw these flags. Dude! Take your flags down! Some people have no respect for the flag.

For one it assumes that you’ve labeled everyone using the built-in Faces feature. I hadn’t. iPhoto uses these Faces labels to create your tags in Facebook. This is supremely irritating as some of the people I do not want tagged are there. Also irritating was the fact that I couldn’t add details. Perhaps I could do this using each picture’s information section, but the beauty of the plugin from before was that you could add all the relevant information.

Finally, in my list of albums there are now Facebook albums. I’m afraid to delete these now because I don’t know if iPhoto will try to delete them from Facebook. I don’t want them there, though. I’ll have to experiment with it.

Personally I won’t be using iPhoto’s built in Facebook uploader again. It’s easy, true, but too easy and without enough overt control.

PS: I’ll be uploading more pictures to this site soon, too.

This is going to be a fast post because I’m meeting RMCA’s parents in about 15 minutes. Let’s get to the pictures!

We went and had a lovely dinner at Los Caracoles (The Snails), which was founded in 1835. Great food and really nice people working there. Very highly recommended!

I tried to have a Gaudi day but the rain was pissing down. I made it to Sagrada Familia, but the towers were closed. Despite all the rain I took a few pictures.

I loved the iron doors of Sagrada Familia and took a lot of pictures of them. Here’s a few.

Gaudi loved to work with iron decorations and I have to admit some of it was pretty amazing in its detail.

Despite the rain I wandered down to La Boqueria, which is a huge indoor market with tons of fresh food. We just don’t have permanent establishments like this in America, which is a shame.

More Gaudi iron work on the outside of Palau Güell. I want some of this for my door and house (when/if I can ever afford such!).

Details in the old part of the city. I think modern life has lost something precious with these small details.

I took a break and had some ivi negre/i (red wine) and wrote in this little cafe off the Plaça del Rei.

More details… A random stone along a wall.

Another Gaudi building up in an area called Grácia, which is an almost completely untouristed area and pretty amazing. I want to go back up there.

RMCA and I out last night. The night brings out even more beauty in Barcelona…

That’s all for now. More when I have time!