I'm catching up, promise! To prove it, I just filled in a bunch of half-assed details. If you want to know more about anything that occurred, and/or were present and can help reconstruct this account of history, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll do my best to fill it all in (including posting lots of awesome photos).

Monday, February 28, 2005

• Still not Columbiadone. Worked on it until 2:30 while Adam slept in his sensory deprivation room and Abby worked on the kitchen. Decided to punt for now and see Big Sur already. Abby drove. Good God, gorgeous. I don't think I'd ever get desensitized to it. Except if a top-five orchestra played Rachmaninov's third concerto down there, my head would explode.
• Took a solid three hours in the area, making our way as far south as the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, where we apparently spent an hour gawking.

Sunday, February 27, 2005

• I seem to still not have finished my Columbia application. Oy! Last-minute Schlair to the rescue.
• 10AM: breakfast at Jack-in-the-Box in cute little “downtown” Marina. They have a breakfast egg sandwich with both ham and bacon, and another one with two sausage patties. Good Lord, how can I choose! So I didn't.
• 2PM: Picked up 17-foot U-Haul in Tulare. Adam rode with Thomas in the U-Haul, I with Abby in her car.
• 3PM: Started loading up goodies from Abby's ancestral home in Porterville.
• 4:30PM: Likewise for Thomas. But we ate homemade chicken molé first. Yuuuuuum. Thomas's family has an awesome boxer that's really big for a female. It's one big quivering, sprinting dog-shaped muscle, and tons of fun to play with. It really liked licking my ears and, eventually, my entire head. I mainly played with the dog and moved almost none of Thomas's stuff.
• 6PM: In Abby's car still. Drove all back to Marina.
• Very late: returned home. Unloaded truck. Slept.

Saturday, February 26, 2005

• Move-in day!
• Breakfast of homemade scones with clotted cream, various jams, curds, and marmalades.
• 1PM: departed for Monterey! Crossed Bay Bridge and all.
• 2PM: stopped at Danny's in Burlingame to pick up his spare apartment key. He lives on El Camino Real. Some great big funny-looking trees. Eucalyptus?
• 3:30PM: Saw signs for Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino. Saw buildings for WebEx and McAfee, among others. Feels like the center of the computing world.
• 4PM: My first In-N-Out experience (in Gilroy — “you can't miss it”). Double double with fries and strawberry shake. The full carbexperience. Delicious, of course.
• 5PM: Enter Monterey County. General gorgeousness increases.
• 5:30PM: Arrive at Adam's and Abby's (and Thomas's) new apartment. Move lots of things out of cars and into apartments.
• 8:30PM: Meet lots of Phi Kaps at a bar in Monterey.
• 12:30AM: Dip toes in the Pacific at Carmel-by-the-Sea.
• 1:30AM: Shop for apartment essentials.
• 3:00AM: Sleep.

Friday, February 25, 2005

• Awoke 11AM-ish? Chulo is a funny, funny dog. More like a cartoon character than a dog, Adam remarked later.
• Drove out around 2PM toward San Francisco. Hills north of L.A. are not only pretty but also uncommonably green. It's been raining and raining and raining, apparently. Driving through farm country of many kinds. Cows, cherries, grapes, etc. At times it smells amazingly amazing. At times it smells like poop. Mostly amazingly amazing.
• 4PM: My first Jack in the Box experience. Big-ass bacon ultimate cheeseburger. A very very yummy one.
• 10PM: Arrived at Liz's in Berkeley. What a cool-looking town. Also, it smells even more amazingly amazing than the I-5 cherry-blossom smell. The whole town smells this way.
• 2AM: climbed Indian Rock.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

• 5:00 PM: Phenomenal traffic on westbound I-10. Slow going getting gassed up and out of town. I'm riding with Abby for this leg of trip.
• Lots of windmills around Palm Springs.
• 11:00 PM?: after lots and lots of pavement and then lots of driving up the side of a mountain, got to Jenni's house in the vicinity of L.A. Pretty. Foggy, but views would be good if we could see much.