flights

It’s one of those mornings. As I was getting dressed, I checked the Internetz to see when the next 9 or 19 buses were coming, and it went something like this: 3 min, 11 min, 54 min. Making the first one would be impossible, and the last one would get me to work way too late. So I had to try to make the middle one. Which meant skipping breakfast and running to the stop. Which meant I was hungry when I got to the office, so I stopped into the SoMa Coffee for a muffin. But I had no cash on me, so the dude behind the counter sent me down the street to the ATM at Ted’s Market… which turned out to be out of order.

Now, this part of town sucks for food options, much less banks and ATMs. So I wandered about 6 blocks north until I found a Bank of America branch.

Got my cash. Got my breakfast. Got to work.

Jeez.

I spent several hours on Friday unsuccessfully trying to install Parallels and then Windows XP on my Macbook Pro. I was able to get it up and running over the weekend through some inelegant workarounds, and today I found myself fully in the Office Space world that is Windows.

10 minutes before the departure of the last #5 bus from the downtown depot, I shut down my computer. Well, I asked it to shut down. Windows chose this inopportune moment to notify me that it needed to install 81(!) updates. It warned me not to shut down, or face dire consequences.

15 minutes later, updates installed, I was allowed to leave.

But I had to find an alternate route home.

Today on my way home from work, walking a couple of blocks in a bad part of town, I craned to see whether my bus was approaching. A SFPD cruiser pulled over to creep along beside me, and the officer rolled down the window.

“What are you looking for?” he asked me.

“What?”

“What are you looking for?”

Reflexively defensive, “Er… I was looking to see whether my bus… uh… I’m just transferring busses, and I was checking to see whether my bus was coming, to see if I need to hurry to the stop…”

“The 19 bus?”

“Yes.”

“Your stop is…”

And that’s where I turned away and just made for my bus stop. I think he was just trying to help, but I’m naturally on my guard in that part of town, and I assumed the officer was targeting me somehow.

In retrospect, I think he was just trying to help a guy who probably looked a bit out of place, and I feel a little bad for turning away from him while he was still talking.

My job has me traveling again already. This time it’s just to LA for a short project, so I can come home on the weekends. Seems like all of our new business is in SoCal all of a sudden.

Bizarrely, the client is a block away from my company’s LA office. A walking commute in LA?

Tonight, I was supposed to see my friend CC and possibly her crew of Singapore Airlines flight attendants, who are coincidentally in LA for the rest of the week. But she had other plans tonight, and I have to fly back to SF tomorrow. Anyway it’s ok, because next Tuesday I get to see John Vanderslice bowl!

/s

I had brunch at The Ramp this morning with my friend Bee. The Ramp has been my default Sunday post-laundromat stop for the past couple of weeks (and for the month of May, when I was last in SF). The weather has been perfect, and The Ramp offers some of the best outdoor seating in the city, right beside the water in China Basin.

But that’s part of what bothers me about the place.

If I owned a restaurant in such a perfect location, I’d want to make the dining experience as special as the surroundings. The prime plot of land deserves it.

Instead, The Ramp is furnished with beat up old wooden tables and worn umbrellas. This would be charming if it felt intentionally old, like a $150 pair of distressed jeans, but it just feels sort of half-assed. Worse, the place serves mediocre food and drinks - using plastic cups and cheap cutlery.

Their bloody mary is decent, but the plastic cup subtracts a couple of points.

It irks me that the place has no commercial incentive to improve. It does a booming business. It’s packed every weekend, and I’m one of the suckers - which in turn irks me even more.