Ack, I start teaching next week!

Well, my summer is basically over. That's a bit depressing of a thought. I am going to start attending a Greek class next Monday and the Plato course I am teaching starts next Tuesday. I just wish I had more time to prepare and get my own research done before the semester begins. But anyway, I am sure it'll be fun.

We have basically stopped unpacking and are just doing a chore or two each day. We did get the speaker cable so now the fireplace doesn't have a stereo stand right in front of it.

But the exciting thing is that Alison got a job! In fact, she got two job offers, but unfortunately for the exact same times. But anyway, now she has two classes right here at Berkeley City College -- a much better commute than her old jobs!

We got a new digital camera. It is really nice. It is smaller than our old one, and takes nice pictures but most importantly the battery doesn't die almost immediately no matter which battery you use.

Anyway, that's about it. My brother shows up tomorrow to visit for the weekend.

Home Improvement

We dropped Alison's parents off at the airport this morning. It was a really nice visit. We were able to take them out to a number of nice restaurants and visit some neat neighborhoods. But the real focus was on getting the apartment into better shape.

Our meals were: Wed: pastries at La Farine pastries for Breakfast, local produce lunch, Cheeseboard pizza for dinner; Thursday: lunch at local healthy burger place (Smart Alec's), dinner at Dopo's, a nice Italian restaurant; Friday: lunch, things at Berkeley Bowl; dinner at Taste of Africa, where Fred and Marilyn recognized a number of things from their Peace Corp days in Sierra Leone. An incredible amount of great food. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a Camera with me. I am buying a new camera and will be carrying it around me as I wander Berkeley.

The main home improvement projects were getting the dresser and CD shelf done, making blinds for the bedroom and repainting the bathroom. We weren't planning on repainting it, but it did have a number of holes in the wall from us removing ugly hardware and now it is a beautiful grain color we picked out.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures.

Eating, People

So on Monday we walked down to Berkeley Bowl. Wow, the food is so awesome! It is cheap and great. Some more amazing raspberries, these for 99 cents a basket. We also got some great Brussels sprouts -- a huge stalk for $1.69. Four of us couldn't eat half of the sprouts today. Not only do they have our animal-friendly milk at dollar-cheaper-than-whole-foods prices, they also have animal friendly butter, butter milk, chocolate milk, and probably everything else. 8 types of bananas.

I sanded the furniture and Alison primed it and started painting it. See picture.

Last week Alison's parents realized they could come see us this week and then they would be working, so they arrived last night, using their inside connections with United Airlines to come over on first class. This morning we went out to La Farine to get croissants and a loaf of
wheat-walnut bread. Wow, that place is so good. The only other French pastries I've had as good were at Boule in LA and Tartine in SF (or the city, as they say here).

Today they helped us get the house in order. The old lacquer on the dresser was showing through a coat of primer and two coats of paint. We were getting rather discouraged -- especially Alison, who did the painting. Fred found a more serious primer and painted that for us. Tomorrow we'll have the dresser and CD storage done and we can put away the rest of our stuff still in boxes.

We made a great lunch with braised Brussels sprouts, wheat-walnut bread, cheese and sliced apples. For dinner we went to the Berkeley classic, Cheeseboard pizza co-op.

Yeah, so things are coming together and we'll now have some time to really just hang out and enjoy ourselves with Fred and Marilyn.

Almost normal

So the major change happened needed for us to return to our fundamental way of life: we got our internet set up. It was a major hassle involving having our landlord come out and rewire the phones and us learning that we threw away the AC adapter to our DSL modem and... But it is done now. And I instantly realize how important it is for Alison and I to sit together in the living room playing on the internet on our laptops. Perhaps a little too important...

The new wireless router is quite cool, though. In addition to being extremely easy to set up (on the old one I could never get the security to work), we can now wirelessly print from the comfort of our own couch. Soon enough we'll also have a wireless hard drive with all my music backed up on it.
We have been trying to keep our expenses down until our finances are more in order. Most immediately, it has meant that we are trying to get cheap furniture. We have picked up a huge, ugly thing to hold my CDs and a nice old Victorian dresser that is seriously messed up. So we've entered stage two: home improvement projects (not quite having finished stage one: unpack the boxes). These have some urgency because without storage we can't finish unpacking.
We had a really nice night last night. First we to the local "A Taste of Africa" which is on the same block as us. Turns out it is a Cameroonian place. It has a great local eatery feel. After about ten minutes, there was only one employee/owner working there. It had a similar feel to this super cool Vietnamese place in East LA. Except the owner, Malong, was more talkative. It was a lot of fun and we struck up a conversation with the other people eating there with us. The food was... really good. Talking to Malong, it is clear that he is someone who really cares about food. He said that he changes the recipes a bit every day depending on how he is feeling. We had a veggie combo with black eyed peas, spinach, a sort of corn tamale thing, an okra dish, rice with a creamy spinach topping, and something else that is slipping my mind. All the dishes were great. Unfortunately, we didn't bring our camera. There will be pictures later.

Late at night we walked down town, about a fifteen minute walk. We stopped by Milano gelato before it closed at midnight. As with the last time we had it, it was great. Highlights included Fior de Latte (basically: cream flavor) and a burnt caramel.

I don't think we'll quite have the house in a normal place by the end of the night, but I think we'll be close. It is definitely feeling like home.

Settling In

Things are starting to get more normal, although there are still a number of boxes sitting in practically every room. We are able to cook now. Using the great produce for Berkeley Bowl, we made an asparagus frittate one night and burritos the next (with fresh goat cheese, because we needed to use it up -- extremely good). There are still a seemingly unlimited number of chores to do. I just stopped writing this blog because I realized I had to call to get a DSL modem because we threw away the AC adapter for our old modem... just tons of boring chores like that. But every day it seems like we get five of those done.

Anyway, I managed to pull myself away for the unpacking (leaving my lovely wife to that task) and head in to school yesterday. It was quite nice. I have my first office. It is appropriately minuscule for my first office. But still, it is extremely nice to have. I sat down and started reviewing my Greek, using an old text book from the 50's that my advisor Calvin Normore used -- Philosophical Greek. It assumes you know Latin, so it wouldn't have been good for me as a first text book, but that actually makes it quite good for review now.

I think I am going to be quite happy with the walk to and from campus. It is about 20 minutes each way. That, to my mind, is a great walk.

We haven't had our TV set up and I have been putting on a record every night before bed. It is extremely nice. We don't have an overhead lamp in the living room so the soft glow of the amp's tubes are more noticeable. We do have a few TV shows that we quite like so I think we'll get cable or something set up eventually. But we are going to wait a little while.

Eating our way through Berkeley

So one advantage to not being able to use our kitchen has been going out to eat more...

Saturday night we we walked over to my favorite Ethiopian restaurant... ever, I suppose. There is a big Ethiopian community along Telegraph in south Berkeley / north Oakland. Cafe Colluci is the best restaurant of the ones I've been to, although I hope to eat my way through more of them. It is about a ten minute walk from us, if that! Normally I've just ordered the Veggie combo. This time, though, we tried a couple of dishes not on the combo: Shuro (a thick soup made with chick pea flower) and Eggplant tibs. I thought they were were incredibly good. Alison didn't care for the shuro.

On Sunday we went to Berkeley Bowl, the legendary grocery store two blocks from us. When we tell people where we live, the most common reaction is "wow, that's near Berkeley Bowl!" It was nicer than I remember. The had some high class stuff we are used to for cheaper prices (like our cow-spa-milk). The produce, though, is always the most amazing part. We got some really, really great raspberries for 1.40 a container. The potato varieties were sold by grade (care for a grade three yukon gold?). Anyway, it is going to be an incredible place to be near. The one problem with it is limited parking, but we can easily walk.

On Monday Alison went to her interview in San Jose at Evergreen Community College. The campus seemed quite nice and I think the interview went quite well. Unfortunately, it turns out it is for a Spring semester job. But anyway, it is an iron in the fire. When we got home we were starving and it turns out that almost no restaurant is open on Monday in Berkeley. First we tried Vik's, the incredible Indian Eatery. Then the Cheeseboard pizza. Then Cha-Ya, vegetarian Buddhist cuisine. We ended up going to the student eatery area along Telegraph and eating at Smart Alex's, a healthy burger and fry sort of place. As I remembered, it was extremely good. Homemade veggie patties and by far the best non-fried french fries I've ever had.

That night we went to an Indian restaurant that was recommended to me: Udupi Palace South Indian Vegetarian Cuisine. It wasn't anything special by our very high standards. The Pongal (rice and lentil porridge) was good but the rest of the food was just okay.

The apartment is definitely coming together but still needs work. Alison pointed out that I am not just collapsing from the move, but from my dissertation as a whole. That makes me feel a bit better...

PS: It is cold here! It's been 59 every morning and cloudy. And there is sprinklings of rain! We aren't in southern California anymore...

The first few days

Hey, so Thi and Sarah suggested I do a blog to describe moving to and living in Berkeley.

For those of you who haven't heard, moving up was a bit hellish. We moved on Friday -- Alison was teaching until Wednesday and I turned in my dissertation on Monday. But the real problem was that we had no idea how much stuff we had left to pack. We ended up not being able to fit it all into the truck.

I begin with two pictures of my shirt from the day of the move. I don't know if I have seen a sweatier shirt. There are strata of salt.

Saturday was nice, though, because I went to pick up my amp and preamp from Matt at Pitch Perfect audio (www.pitchperfecaudio.com) and then later in the day he came over and helped me set up my equipment. The sound system is amazing now. I've been really enjoying sitting and listening to music for hours on end. I've had some chances to just sit and do nothing but listen. Unfortunately, my current speaker cable isn't long enough so we have the equipment rack parked right in the middle of the fireplace. That'll change once I spring for some expensive speaker wire to go with the expensive equipment...

When we moved up the first 70% part of our stuff, the apartment looked great -- much better than with the old tenants' stuff in it. Now... it is a bit overwhelming with all of the boxes. But we are slowly making headway. The living room is in pretty good shape because it needed to be to set up the stereo. We have been tackling the kitchen next. It is looking better than when these photos were taken but it is still a bit overwhelming.

Alright, well I am heading in to the office for the first time, but I'll post more later...