San Francisco of the South?

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

The Lonestar State

Everybody is proud of where they are from. I'm proud to be a San Franciscan. One of my friends claims Philly. (Even though he is from Wilmington, DE.) And then there are those folks from Bawston. (JFH, this one's for you.) Don't even think about getting them started about the Patriots and the Red Sox. Every conversation ends with, "Well, what would Tom Brady do?" Or, better yet, "Teddy Bruschi, he's my hero."

One of my friends who is from Boston, she actually won't date someone unless they:
1. Can ski as well as she can
2. Have an "appreciation" for all that has to do with the greatness of the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox
3. Have watched "Faith Rewarded" at least once

But nobody really has the same amount of hometown pride as those from Texas. (I guess it would really be homestate pride.) Ah, the Lonestar State. I came to this realization while looking at homes a couple weeks back. At first I just found it odd that every home had at least one Star of Texas. Sometimes it was over the mantel. Othertimes, it was done with tile work in the foyer. You really couldn't escape it. I knew that they had gone overboard when we were walking up to a nice home, and I could already see that the glass in the front door was in the shape of a star. But nay, I was wrong. I looked down, only to find that the stone steps leading up to the house...were in the shape of the state of Texas.

Yee-Haw!

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

AXL

Looks like even Axl Rose isn't immune to the effects of "Paradise City" and "Welcome to the Jungle."

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Final Countdown

Aside from being GOB's* theme song, it's an appropriate title for our driving adventure to Austin. We are in the final stages of preparation, planning out our schedule and stops. We pushed up our move date by a couple days to give us some time on the road, so we are officially leaving San Francisco on July 30. So far, our trip looks like this:

July 30--Drive from San Francisco to Las Vegas. We'll get in town just in time for a late dinner and a couple hands of blackjack.

July 31--Drive from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon. We're planning on leaving Las Vegas pretty late, since we probably will get minimal sleep that night. Hopefully, we'll get to the Grand Canyon in time for dinner, then off to the rim to watch the sunset. We're staying in the park at a lodge.

August 1--Drive from the Grand Canyon to Sedona. We're researching resorts in Sedona, so if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know! We'll probably spend the day at the Grand Canyon, then make the quick drive to Sedona in time for dinner.

Edited to Add: We are now staying at the Sedona Rouge Hotel & Spa. One of our friends is the Rooms Manager there and set us up. Thanks! I'll be sure to write a hotel review once we are settled in Austin!

August 2--We'll wake up, relax, and hang out for a while. Maybe we'll take a jeep tour or maybe just get some spa treatments. Who knows, I'm pretty flexible. Then we'll make the drive to Albuquerque. We're going to use this as a home base for 2 nights, going to see a couple of the National Monuments around Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

August 4--Drive from Albuquerque to Abilene. My girlfriend lived in Abilene for a while, so we'll go to a couple places around town. Apparently, there is an amazing BBQ place called Joe Allen's. We're also planning on hitting up the Town Crier, where her family used to go every Sunday.

August 5--Drive from Abilene to Austin, our new home. At this point, our destination is still unknown. Maybe we'll be moving into our new home. Maybe we'll be an extended guest at our friends' house. We'll know after we get back from Austin on July 4.

The drive should be long, but fun. We've got alot of ground to cover, but I think we have a reasonable amount of time to accomplish everything we want to do.

*(From Arrested Development, quite possibly the most intelligent comedy that was ever on television. The show's run was short lived, largely because the average American cannot understand comedy outside of "Roseanne" and "Home Improvement." But I digress)

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Hangovers

I mean, really. Is there anything worse than a grade A, Prime Cut hangover? I went to the ball game last night and somehow made it to Carmen's around 11:00pm to karaoke with my favorite Filipino restaraunteurs.

For some reason, I thought I sounded great singing "Welcome to the Jungle." Some things should just be left to Axl Rose.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Planning the route...

So, our timetable to make the drive to Austin has changed a little bit. Originally, we had wanted to take our time and take a week to a week and a half, navigating our way slowly to Austin. Unfortunately, my girlfriend needs to fly out on June 6 to go to a national training session for work. Now our timetable has been shortened from a leisurely 7-10 day journey to a much less relaxed 5 day journey. Now, driving from San Francisco to Austin in 5 days is not exactly "Ludicrous Speed," but it does force us to pick and choose what we want to see and do in those 5 days.

So far, we've mapped ourselves as far as Las Vegas. Yes, I know it is only about 9 hours away, but that really is how my mind works. I figure we can leave early on the morning of August 1 and get into Las Vegas at a decent time. What we could do is go out to dinner and call it a night relatively early. What will most likely end up happening is that we'll go get dinner, then hit the tables for a couple hours. Ok, in all reality, we will probably be at the tables until the sun comes up. (I knew I found my soulmate when I discovered that she likes to play blackjack as much as I do!) Thank God for late check out.

I'll probably want to grab a burger at In-n-Out prior to departing Las Vegas, as that may be the last Double Double Animal Style with well done fries and a neopolitan shake I have for quite a while.

Any suggestions past Vegas are greatly appreciated.

(BTW, If I don't show up at Orientation, we may have never made it past Las Vegas. UNLV has a business school, right?)

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

The "Muffin Syndrome"

This evening, I got an urgent call from my mother. She frantically wanted to know if I had ever heard of the "Muffin Syndrome." She asked me if I had been tested because her friend's daughter was just told that she should be tested because she had freakishly long fingers. Apparently, I should measure my arms tonight! Furthermore, she informed me, people with the "Muffin Syndrome" rarely live past 45 years of age. She was obviously disturbed by this, wondering what it was and saying that she had never heard of this strange "Western" disease until today. Nobody she knew back in China or Taiwan had ever had a disease such as this!

Now, rewind this conversation back in your mind, and replay it. This time, imagine a middle aged chinese woman (Who does not speak English as her primary language) talking to her daughter's doctor. Now imagine, said chinese woman, talking to my mother and telling her of the diagnosis. (Again, my mother's native language is not English.) Now imagine my mother's urgent call to me. This simple conversation had turned into the strangest game of Telephone.

Please understand that I am in no way, shape or form mocking those with disorders of the connective tissues. In fact, just a couple weeks ago, I had my arms measured by my friend in Austin. We discovered that I am freakishly symmetrical in arm length and height. My friend's wife, however, has extremely long arms, though we came to the conclusion that she is just less evolved than most humans.

Edited to Add: At the request of one of my friends, I'd like to point you to The National Marfan Foundation. Here you can find out all sorts of information about this disease.

The NEW "New Diet"

I went home the other day and discovered one of the most disturbing items on the kitchen counter. Now, I'm not one to judge what people eat as I myself have been known to eat weird things. But the concept of a "Flavor Spray" struck a nerve with me. Never in my life would I have ever considered that you could create a liquid spray that mimics the taste of bacon, carmelized onion, birthday cake and apple pie, to name a few.

God bless my mother, but she does get taken quite easily with "fad" diets. First, it was the no carb, then the all carb, then the grapefruit, then the South Beach. Never in my life would I have guessed that it would come to this. A spray diet. The concept is that you can spray whatever crappy food you are eating with this flavor spray and make it delicious.

Here's the thing. I believe that people eat for 3 main reasons: Hunger, Taste and Texture. Hunger, we can't change. The flavor spray addresses the taste. But for someone like me, who eats for a combination of taste and flavor, masking horribly textured piece of food with flavor spray (Let's just say bacon. Bacon really does make everything better.) just makes me think of doggie treats. Something just tells me that spraying edamame with Chocolate Fudge Spray isn't going to be that appetizing. Even spraying the bacon flavor directly into my mouth still isn't as satisfying as biting down on a thick, crispy piece of swine.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Chinese Chicken Salad

On Friday morning, we got off the plane and went straight to California Chicken Cafe in Los Angeles. (Well, we went to the hotel first to drop off our bags, but that was merely a delay tactic as California Chicken Cafe doesn't open until 11:00am.) To put it simply, I am certain that they lace their chinese chicken salad with heroin infused dressing. If you haven't been to California Chicken Cafe before, I HIGHLY recommend it. It simply has no equal. California Chicken Cafe could effectively decimate Pluto's in San Francisco.

To this end, I actually have inquired about franchising opportunities and the owner of California Chicken Cafe really didn't want to expand outside of the Los Angeles area at this point. His reasoning was that he didn't want to sacrifice quality control by expanding beyond the reach of a quick car ride. Reasonable. Though I think that the business would absolutely kill in San Francisco.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

The Excitement Stress of Moving

Excitement has changed to a little bit of stress as we'll be moving to Austin in just over a month with no place to live! I know I am overreacting, but I have nightmares about living in Zilker Park with a moving box providing me shelter from the elements. Normally, I wouldn't be so concerned, but this is Austin and Austin isn't exactly known for mild summers.

I was actually in Austin last weekend and thought that I had found the perfect place. It was a beautiful condo in Tarrytown--close to everything and was in great condition. We went to put an offer in and the seller's agent told us that they had already accepted an offer and did not want to accept competing offers. We told him that we would offer above the listing price and the seller still didn't want to entertain our offer. Now, maybe I'm a bit jaded with California real estate and the concepts of overbidding and unethical strategic purchasing tactics, but I've never known anybody who didn't want to get more money for their home. Oh well, there will be other homes. I just hope that the person who bought the condo isn't in my class.

To that end, we just booked tickets to go to Austin over the Independence Day Weekend to look for a home. Our real estate agent (Debbie Trominski at Hindsite 20/20 in Austin) has been absolutely awesome. A couple things we have discovered in this hunt for the perfect home:

1. Always be ready to make an offer at the drop of a hat.
2. Don't get too connected to any particular home. There is a good chance you won't get it.
3. Buying a home when you aren't in the town is a difficult task. It's impossible to buy a home based upon pictures.
4. Flying back and forth gets expensive and is very time consuming. But that really is the only way you can have any confidence in buying a home. You basically just need to hope that something good comes onto the market while you are able to view homes.

Welcome to My World

I'm sitting here in a hotel room in Los Angeles having just finished lunch with my parents, my sister and my girlfriend. (Damon & Pythias in Westwood Village. Their L.A. Cheesesteak is awesome) My sister, having just graduated from UCLA, was getting ready to embark on her own adventure and join the real world and start a real job. She's going to be in New York for the next 7 weeks training with the rest of the new analysts for an investment bank. (The bank is of a German variety. So much so that they were thoughtful enough to include it in their name.) She's getting pulled from the well insulated world of academia and literally being thrown into the deep end of the Hudson to see if she sinks or swims. For someone who sleeps more than Punxsutawney Phil, I have a feeling that her transition to the world of investment banking will be a major wake up call for my sister. (Pardon the pun.)

My brother, victim of the same fate, just finished his first year of business school at Haas. (Check out his blog) He was unable to make it to my sister's graduation because of commitments to his internship in the same industry that my sister is about to join. Sad really. It would have been great to have him here. Instead, we are forced to Photoshop his picture into a "missing man" picture of my sister and me. (Ask me about it. I can send you a copy. It's a little eerie.)

Here I am, about to resign from a decent paying job, to move halfway across the country to a foreign land (Yes, Texas is a foreign land) and start hemorrhaging money as I return to school for two years.

Worth it?
Absolutely!

Nervous?
Definitely!

Excited?
You betcha!

Let's rewind a couple of months, about nine months to be exact, and start from the beginning. It was at this time, that I decided to start applying to business schools. It was an interesting experience because my roommate was also in the process of applying to schools. We spent countless hours writing essays, editing essays, re-writing essays and just generally driving each other insane because we could not escape that which was the business school application process. Our apartment served as the epicenter of all that was stressful in San Francisco. Now, most of that stress that was associated with getting into school has been replaced with excitement with a bit of anxiety.