I guess this is the week for long phone conversations. The girl who used to live here just called me and caught me up on her life in Seattle. She got herself out of a bad situation, and I'm glad for that. I swear if I won the lottery, the first thing I'd do is put her through college.

I finally heard from Amy tonight. We had a long phone chat, and I'm so relieved to hear that she and the baby are both fine. I forget how nice it is to talk to her, even after something as life changing as having a baby, she's still totally herself all the time. I do miss her. It looks like I need to plan a trip to Seattle for January or February.

How can I tell the economy is getting better? We had a fire drill at work today, for the first time in about a year or so. It took a long time to get down 6 flights of stairs. This means there must be more people employed and working in this building than there was a year or so ago. Very exciting.

I miss impromptu fondue parties at Robin & Taska's house. I hope they actually come back from Berlin someday, and resettle here, and bring the fondue pot with them.

Thanksgiving is getting bigger. We're up to nine with the addition of Mikef. (So many Mikes...)

Today was Dan's last day at work. It was very sad, but then we went out for margaritas and fun, Puerto Allegre followed by Indian ice cream. Of course photos are available. You can actually see the Ops department and the Eng department having fun together. Wow.

Okay, I've had jury duty 3 times since moving here about 9 years ago. I'm excited because this time I didn't have to go in at all. It's not that I don't want to do my civic duty, and be a juror, it's just that the one trial I was on was so painful, I still remember the horrid details of it. Anyway, I'm happy to be done with jury duty for another year (hopefully another 3...)

Last night I saw The Times of Harvey Milk at the Castro Theater. It's a great documentary. I had read the book The Mayor of Castro Street several years ago, and was suprised at how much San Francisco has changed just in my lifetime. The history of the city is fascinating.

Beril brought in turkish delight to the office. It's delightful, yummy, suprisingly tasty, yet not too sweet. Usually when people bring in food to the office, it's something kind of nasty, or something that I just can't eat. This was good. However, as dmercer said, I would not betray Aslan for it.

I have the final cut of the CD for the Tape Club that I'm in. I'm hoping to have them all sent out within a week. (I have till the end of the month to get them out, but I think mid-month is good timing.) I realized just how nice it is to date a Mac / graphics guy last night, when he did the cover and the track listing in like 5 minutes flat. I never would've even tried to do that on my leeeenux box.

Joshua's been slurping up people into the Clark campaign. So all of these normally fairly stable, intelligent people are moving to Little Rock to go crazy on a political campaign. I guess different people have different desires about how to make a difference in the world. I definately admire them for taking action about something they feel strongly about. Me, I'm more inclined to take action closer to home.

Amy finally had her baby. Tempe was born on November 7th. I kept looking on the Web Nursery site that Amy had sent me the URL to, and I kept not seeing any babies at all! But when I went to work today, there were 3 babies, and one was Tempe. She's pretty cute for a little human. Now I need to schedule another trip up to Seattle so I can meet little Tempe!

I finally got the photos from Tampopo Night up!

Tonight is Tampopo Night. The third annual dinner and a movie night done by Alice. This one is at my house, so I'll be having a dozen and a half people descend on my abode by 6 pm. It's a good thing that the house is clean!

In other news, Gar has been crazy affectionate lately, which is a little odd for him, but it makes me happy to see him be happy.

Mike and I went to the zoo yesterday. The power was out, not just at the zoo, but in that part of the Sunset. It made for a fairly peaceful zoo experience. The only big problem with no power was that the Insect house was closed, which Mike wanted to see. Me, I can do without insects. The last time I was at the zoo was for the Crackmonkey Lemur Day. It's changed a bunch since then; they have a whole new front entrance area and everything. What hasn't changed is the mostly crappy environments where the animals are kept. The bear enclosures still make me sad. And the otters weren't even out, and they were pretty much the reason I wanted to go to the zoo in the first place. I'll have to get my otter fix at the Monterey Bay Aquarium next month.

Things are changing rapidly these days. Several people are leaving my work, some who've been there longer than I. It's funny how in my position, the departure of a coworker can affect your life in so many ways, ways that you never thought about. That's life with a pager.

I'm trying to figure out what to put on the mix CD that I'm making for a CD circle that I'm in. I'm not sure if all the music that I listen to is boring, or if I'm just familiar with it because it's what I listen to, and that others will find it interesting.

The Old Fire down in the San Bernardino Mountains came very close to a place that's dear to me, but it looks like it didn't burn it down. It's made me think about my childhood quite a lot in the past week. I'm so down on southern California, and I tend to forget the beautiful parts of it.