arts & crafts

I never get to do arts and crafts anymore. It's a combination of being glued to a computer many hours a day, and not having the initiative to come up with good projects.

Last week, I went to a birthday party where we made little stuffed animals. It's been awhile, and the ultrasuede fabric that I chose was awfully hard (and I had no thimble) so the results were less than spectacular, but I'll share anyway.

The green bunny on the left is mine. I stuffed it a little too full, so it doesn't sit up properly, which is why it's leaning on the yellow cat. Obviously, the animals on the right were made by more experienced craftspeople.

mistrusting distrust

A law school friend messaged me today to ask the difference between "mistrust" and "distrust". We'll ignore the irony of a lawyer asking an engineer for vocabulary advice, for today.

My first answer was that they were much the same, except for a slight difference in connotation (which I couldn't describe), but that "distrust" was worse. We both agreed that we used "distrust" more often.

My second answer, obtained using Google, was much more informative. Here it is, courtesy of the Columbia Guide to Standard American English:

Mistrust means “to doubt, to lack confidence in,” as in I mistrust his ability to persuade her. Distrust means much the same but adds suspicion to the mix: He distrusts her because he thinks she’ll cheat him.

It appears that both of us are thoroughly cynical modern women.

paper, please

The network went down today around lunchtime, so I couldn't use IM to coordinate my lunch plans. My first thought was to call around, but it turns out that I use the phone so little that I don't remember the phone numbers of any of my coworkers. I would have looked in our online directory, but the network being down, that wasn't an option. Finally I decided to just walk over to people's desks.

Unfortunately, I work at a company that is very fond of moving people around. I tried two different desks before realizing that both people had moved in the past month, and I had no idea where they sat anymore. And, again, this was information that would normally have been found in our online directory.

I did manage to find some coworkers to eat lunch with, but after I got back and found everything up and running, I copied down about ten phone numbers on a sticky note, and posted it on my monitor for future use.

estate planning

If someone does no estate planning at all, when he/she dies, a probate court supervises the distribution of his/her property according to state and federal law. The whole process usually takes several months and some non-zero amount of money is paid to the lawyers involved, so it's a good idea to try to arrange one's affairs to bypass probate if possible.

People who have kids and large estates usually establish living trusts, but that involves money and lawyers. A coworker recently sent out an informational email entitled "estate planning for the cheap/lazy/single", which I found very useful, being young, healthy, unmarried, and childless. His suggestions:

- Fill out Payable On Death, Transfer On Death, or Directed Beneficiary forms (they're all more or less the same) for all bank or brokerage accounts which allow them.
- Fill out the beneficiary information for all retirement plans (IRA, 401k, etc.)
- Fill out a DMV Transfer Without Probate form to transfer car ownership.
- Use Willmaker (or some other easy-to-use software) to create a will that handles any remaining accounts.

I've done all but the last; apparently I'm cheaper than he is.

popeyes

They just opened a new Popeyes in Sunnyvale, at the corner of El Camino and Hollenbeck. Yay! We used to drive all the way down to the Santa Clara store off of San Tomas sometimes, just for lunch.

Angels x 2

I do find it amusing the Anaheim Angels are now calling themselves "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim". Or, as Ray Ratto puts it, "The The Angels Angels of Anaheim", if you translate from the original Spanish.

Michael Mina

Last weekend we went to try out the Restaurant Michael Mina, inside of the Westin St. Francis. The three-course prix fixe was a pricey $88, but included a lobster-themed amuse bouche in addition to three elaborate dishes and a couple of chocolate bonbons.

Each course had a central ingredient, but included three different preparations of that ingredient. I chose the crab ravioli, a veal dish, and a trio of citrus desserts:

crab	veal	citrus

All of the food was good, if occasionally a little intense in flavor, and of course the dining room was gorgeous and the service impeccable. I especially enjoyed the citrus trio, which paired tiny lime, lemon, and orange desserts with soft sorbets of matching flavors.

sailing away

Today we had a group offsite with OCSC Sailing, a sailing school that operates out of the Berkeley Marina. It was tons of fun; we sailed pretty close to Richmond, the Golden Gate Bridge, and San Mateo, we learned to "tack" and "gybe", and we raced against our co-workers. Our boat came in second out of six boats, and we were only about 15 seconds behind the leader.

At first I was a little thrown by all the terminology, and freaked out by the boat leaning way over when we were getting a good wind, but by the end I was having a blast. I think it helped that the instructor chose me to helm the boat during the race. She told us some great stories too; about sailing from San Francisco to Europe (through the Panama Canal!) with her father over a period of four years, sailing to Hawaii, and sailing in various crazy weather situations. She also said that with global warming and all, even yachts were starting to be able to sail through the once-fictional Northwest Passage. So much for global warming being a myth.

Anyway, I much enjoyed the outing, and I think I'd definitely go sailing again, especially on a nice clear day like today.

prioritization

I've been working like a crazy person for the past month or so, trying to launch my project. I've managed to stay mostly on track as far as working out goes, but I've been falling behind on stuff like email correspondence (the real kind, like you write to long-distance friends), doing my laundry, balancing my checkbook, and non-computer time, which also means much needed wrist-rest time.

We haven't launched yet, but two days ago I was sitting at my desk with a stress headache and I suddenly realized that we might be trying to launch this thing for another week, and I was in pain (head and wrist), wearing clothes I dug up from the bottom of my closet, and making stupid mistakes. So, I went home, I took a nice long shower, and I took the rest of the night off. We didn't launch, but nothing horrible happened, and I arrived at work the next morning a much happier person.

My conclusion is that crisis is a state of mind.