Archive for August 27th, 2008

27
Aug
08

Since thus far

I had dinner with Priya tonight. Turns out she moved over here after school and she was in the area so I coordinated a meeting.

We ate over by Dupont Circle which is about 2 miles away from my hotel. The best way to get to know a town is by walking places Because it gives you more time to peruse, allows you to quickly change directions and stop into stores and I think naturally our bodies are in tune to move at 3 mph rather than 30. I kind of like the system they have here. The lettered streets go east/west and the numbered ones go north/south. Then they have state names going diagonally terminating at circles, this Dupont Circle. I took Connecticut over to Dupont which took me about 35 minutes. It would have been much nicer if we stayed in that part of town. There’s much more going on there. Here, it’s too stately for me. It’s like the difference between a station wagon and a roadster. We’re in the station wagon part of town. Anyway, the walk was pleasant. It even sprinkled a little bit along the way but it was no problem.

We had dinner at Pizzaria Paradiso where they make wood fired pizza. Priya’s a vegetarian so we had 2 vegetarian pizzas. One had a bunch of veggies, capers, cheeses, etc. and was quite good but I liked the simpler one which had slices of potatoes and various cheeses. I’m over simplifying the toppings but either way they were tasty. Priya also liked the simpler of the two pizzas. We sat at the counter so we were seated right away and we could watch them make the pizzas right there in the oven. I forgot to take pictures. Oh well. If I’m on the DC area again, I’d like to come by this place again.

On my way home, I took massachusetts street to 9 th. It was a straight shot. I stopped by CVS to get some granola bars and a sports drink for tomorrow. We’re meeting again at 4:45 AM so I need to get some calories in before the restaurants open. Speaking of calories, I heard Michael Phelps, the unstoppable Olympic swimmer, consumes 12,000 calories of food per day. What in the world is he eating?

27
Aug
08

Thus far

Woke up this morning at 3 AM. It’s hard to sleep when you know you’ve got to get up early the next morning. Our goal this morning was to meet at 4:45 AM so I wanted to be ready by then. I had my iPhone set to go off at 4 and my computer at 4:15. When the phone enter off, I just turned it off and waited for the computer to go off. At 4:39, I woke up panicked because it hadn’t gone off. Why? Because the computer was still in pacific time. I quickly got my stuff together and took the elevator downstairs. I wasn’t the last one down which as nice. I’ve since fixed the computer clock so no more of those issues.

I had some kudos bars for breakfast along with a small coffee from starbucks. I’m glad I picked those bars up last night on the way home from dinner. It makes all the difference in the world when you’ve got some food on your stomach. I grabbed lunch from a Korean cart and got bibimbap. Peole were raving about this place buy it’s not that good. I think we are very lucky to have such good foods around in the bay area.

It was still a rough morning. There were 2 train problems so trains were re-routed and delayed. Commuters were upset. We had some problems with our samplers. Someone called the FBI regarding a box of ours, other people asked about carting cylinders around and someone asked that our tracer release be stopped until we could have an escort. Fortunately, nothing came of all the attention…at least I haven’t heard.