IM/TFLN

Over the past month, SRS somehow became the worst Korean EVER.

(11:04:00 PM) SRS: you're not gonna believe this
(11:04:09 PM) SRS: but i'm like not that into drinking anymore
(11:04:15 PM) Gordo: i hate you
(11:04:40 PM) SRS: but i bought a 6 pack like a week ago
(11:04:47 PM) SRS: so i'm limiting myself to one a week
(11:04:55 PM) Gordo: one a WEEK??
(11:04:58 PM) Gordo: dude
...
(11:06:23 PM) SRS: no i think it's because i have less stress overall
(11:07:01 PM) Gordo: dude
(11:07:07 PM) Gordo: how were yo ustressed at ALL when you were in school
(11:07:11 PM) Gordo: you did not go to class at the end
(11:07:16 PM) SRS: yeah man
(11:07:19 PM) SRS: hella stress
(11:07:28 PM) SRS: how was i supposed to know if i was going to pass or not?
(11:07:50 PM) SRS: but having to deal with so many people
(11:07:59 PM) SRS: and things that happened in college
(11:08:04 PM) SRS: creates a bit of stress
(11:08:18 PM) SRS: the kind of stress that goes away when you drink scotch
(11:08:30 PM) SRS: but that's all gone now

Refusing to let this pass as an opportunity for comedy gold, I turned to someone I KNEW I could rely on to shit all over this thing: the only girl I know who can drink me under the table.

(650): [SRS] says he doesnt like drinking anymore. Help me think of the best possible ways to call him a vagina.
(408): Ask him if he goes through a lot of boxers because of all the bleeding he does every month
(650): he says he wears tampons. i dunno whats worse now

I don't belong in Vegas.

OH MY GOD WE'RE OUT OF EGGO WAFFLES AND CHEERIOS AT WORK WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON

At least we still have honey. And tomorrow is restock day, thank heavens. I once again got through the workday with only my usual Diet Dr. Pepper.

Also, we got the rare (okay actually not so rare because apparently that machine is a piece of crap, a piece of crap that EATS MY QUARTERS GIVE IT BACK WAAAAHHHH) chance to play Plinko with our beverage vending machine because one of the orange juice bottles got stuck between the glass and one of the racks below. Considering that drinks are only 50 cents, I decided to make the gamble: buy another appropriately-positioned orange juice so that it would hit the stuck one and hopefully get it out, thus rewarding me with TWO orange juices for the price of one. But which one to pick? Much like that old favorite of mine The Price Is Right with my man Bob Barker (FUCK YOU DREW CAREY YOU WITLESS SON OF A BITCH), some of the interns standing around started yelling indiscernable suggestions to me: "A1! A1!" "No, get A2! You gotta hit it from the side! A2!" "B1! Hit it straight on!" Overwhelmed, I blocked out all their suggestions and examined the situation: the bottle was stuck right in front of A1, so if I got A1, the most likely result would be BOTH of them getting stuck. However, it was just slightly to the right enough such that a bottle dispensed from A2 would definitely hit the bottle and thus increase the chances of knocking it out. Any options from the row below were out of the question. So A2 it was.

I only got one orange juice. Vegas would LOVE me.

The Eternal Question

In the past 3.5 weeks since I started working, I have only had to pay for lunch on two of those days. And those two days were the times when the carnivorous interns failed to understand the limits of "The Company Is NOT A Genie In A Bottle And We Only Resupply The Foodstuffs Every Once In A While," or to put it nicely, "STOP FUCKING EATING ALL OUR SHIT YOU FUCKING INTERNS." Today during the sole ten-minute break that I had to cram in the last apple on the table and a wheat bagel with salmon shmear (mmmmm), another of the interns and I were discussing how we could actually live on everything the company provides. I agreed - food, small gym (just a couple treadmills and a rack of weights, but hey, not shabby), shower, socialization - we're in a twelve-year-and-runnign little BioSphere bubble experiment. And I love it. (Except, of course, when we run out of food and the interns have to fight each to TO THE DEATH! for sustenance, and then the senior scientists get to take the leftovers after the stronger, victorious interns finish feeding. That, or eat Eggo waffles with Cheerios and honey because we never seem to run out of those three things.)

I took that step that I told myself I would not take, however. I showered at work this morning.

But seriously, the shower at work is nicer than the shower at my apartment. Good water pressure. Water gets hot FAST. Lockers. Cubbies. Lots of hooks to hang stuff. Spacious. Stainless steel assistance handlebars. Seriously baller.

Why was I showering at work, you ask? Because yesterday I crossed yet another important milestone: yesterday was the first time that I could shout out the phrase "I'M ON A BOAT!" without everybody reminding me that I am a habitual liar. Pitts and Crabs generously invited me to go out sailing on Pitts' twenty-seven-footer sailboat in the Bay. The weather being absolutely gorgeous (first in a damn long time), I of course accepted the offer and had a grand ol' time sailing from the Berkeley Marina out to the Bay Bridge (the shitty half before you hit Treasure Island, not the beautiful half after it) and back. I was so pooped after, unfortunately, that I just went home and passed out after.

Consequently, I showed up at work smelling of the sea, fresh fish, and barges carrying giant pieces of the new Bay Bridge, hence the shower. Shut up, I'm gross, I know, GO JUDGE YOUR OWN FACE SOMEWHERE ELSE.

So yes. Milestone achieved, and I made a hasty executive decision to utilize the shower at work in the 5 minutes before 9AM.

So forget you, Googleplex. I may not get a game room or really awesome food or free drinks or a bunch of awesome Google merchandise or the right to say I work at one of the most successful companies in the world or a massage parlor or a hair salon or a dog park or barbecues or sushi days or...um...

Damn.

Maturity Is Overrated

Two years ago, I bought a white board that we could hang on the wall near the front door of Ellsworth House (or Casa Durant, depending on whom you ask, and by whom you ask, I mean Doc is the only one who ever called it that) so that we could all keep track of things and leave messages for each other. Instead, it simply became a board of endless doodles and jokes that made us laugh so hard we refused to take them down for months (especially those involving racial stereotypes because, again, we were immature assholes for the most part).

Poignant example, if you please: in a “Would You Rather” we played once, the question was “If you were stuck on a deserted island and your only companion was a mermaid/merman (depending on your preferred gender), would you rather have a top half human, bottom half fish (like the standard mermaid/merman we all think of), or would you prefer the opposite, top half fish, bottom half human?”

I was the only dissenter to ruin the consensus. Three guesses which option I answered, first two don’t count. The folks were horrified and my justifications went ignored. I feel this might be a fair and totally, completely, absolutely unbiased forum to justify my answers: as proven in the Futurama episode “The Deep South” in which Fry et al. head down to Atlanta (now sunk under the ocean, effectively making it a really ghetto Atlantis permeated with Coca-Cola) and Fry decides to stay behind because he falls in love with one of the Atlantan mermaids, Fry can’t have sex with his new mermaid love because she has fish parts for genitalia. That is my entire justification for choosing the fish-top, human-bottom mermaid. Also, companionship is overrated.

But back to the point: I’ve put up the white board in my room in my new place and felt really good about it when, two days ago, I actually started using it for practical purposes – writing down tasks, grocery lists, designing primers and figuring out better plasmid ligation protocols, etc. Unfortunately, like all too many New Year Resolutions, that didn’t last for long. Here’s what is currently on my white board:
-Portuguese Breakfast (linked to UrbanDic for your convenience and delicious pleasure)
-Bucking Bronco (also linked to UrbanDic for your LMAo convenience)
-Learn to drive stick (pretty sure that one’s not going anywhere for a while)

And that’s it. That’s all I have. A sad de-evolution of what could have been an impressive way to make myself seem more mature and responsible.

And I Thought Palo Alto Had Too Many Sushi Places

There’s something about the series finale episode of Friends that really says a lot about the past couple of weeks in my life (minus the complete lack of racial diversity in the cast, and no, Julie and Charlie did not count). That one scene where the six of them all, one by one, leave their keys on the counter as they longingly consider that one apartment with so many years of memories and, more importantly, their incredibly intertwined lives about to go in completely starburst directions – that scene just kills me, now more than ever. Why do I bring up a bright note in an otherwise subpar (let’s face it, Friends had nowhere near the cultural impact as a lot of other shows out there) television series, you ask?

SRS moved across The Bay to San Francisco last weekend, since that’s where his new job is. I have been going to school with this guy for 11 years and lived with him for two of those years (well, really more like 2.5 years, based on the amount of time he spent in our house during our Third Year). I went to visit (so I could claim F1RST!!!11! on it) this bangin’ house in The City right next to Golden Gate Park and UCSF that SRS had been raving about for the past month. And, my God, the house is bad ASS. The rooms are enormous and the place is an absolute STEAL for an Inner Sunset location, not to mention SRS chose the room with a FIREPLACE. Non-functional, of course, but HE HAS A FIREPLACE IN HIS FRIGGIN’ ROOM. He conveniently put his couch on the opposing wall, meaning all he needs now is a flat-screen TV hung on the wall above the fireplace and everything will be hunky-dory. The parking situation is a nightmare, though. Every day will be an adventure for him as he liberally employs the George Costanza Method for City Parking: first, look for the magic spot right in front of the building, and if that fails, begin circling blocks in ever-increasing concentric squares to get as close a spot as possible to the building. Honestly, though, at that rate, SRS is going to be discovering new streets in San Francisco every day (hence the “every day will be an adventure for him” claim).

But I digress – that was just me pulling BS out of my ass about more BS (emotions are for non-Vulcans and pussies, incidentally one and the same). Onto the really important observations:

We went to dinner at this excellent Japanese restaurant on 9th and Irving in San Francisco called Hotei, which I highly, highly recommend. Handface moment numero uno: SRS and I weren't originally planning on going to Hotei; we were simply playing Russell the Wilderness Explorer and walking around, looking for a new restaurant to try in his new neighborhood.

There are three - THREE - Japanese restaurants on that block, all within 100 feet of each other. I kid you not: Ebisu is right across the street from Hotei and Kiki is 1/10 of a block north of Ebisu. Don't believe me? TRUE DAT DOUBLE TRUE: check it out here. The thought of needing THREE Japanese restaurants within pissing distance absolutely perplexed us. We looked for all the usual tells: do people like you on Yelp? Are you Zagat Survey rated? Do you actually have people eating in your restaurant? More importantly, do you have actual Japanese people eating in your restaurant? After some Indecision 2009 moments, we picked Hotei.

One of the dishes we ordered at Hotei was one of their specialty rolls, the Hanukkah Roll, which is smoked salmon, broiled salmon skin, topped with salmon roe and green onion. It actually tasted pretty damn good, but because SRS and I are terrible excuses for compassionate human beings, we had to say it:

G: "Man, it's pretty salty. Tastes exactly like 6,000 years of tears and suffering of an ever-resilient people."
S: "Yes. Yes it does."