3 July 1999: Back to Berkeley

Saturday, 3 July 1999:

Back to Berkeley

Adding insult to injury, yesterday one of the turn signals on my car stopped working. Fortunately, it was just a dead bulb, so I bought a new one and replaced it today. It seemed ironic, though, given all my other mental gymnastics about my car lately.

Fourth of July weekend. I don't really have much planned for this weekend, which is new since the last three or four years I always want over to a party thrown by some SF3 people. Holidays often make me uncomfortable anyway, since I don't really observe any of them except for Christmas. Any others I pay attention to are usually because someone invites me somewhere.

Still, it is somewhat irksome to know that many other people get together on holidays like this one, and I have no plans to do so.

I'd been building up a desire over the last few weeks to go back to Berkeley and do some shopping. I sent e-mail to Rob on Thursday but never heard back from him, so I imagine he's off doing something for the long weekend. CJ, David and I had talked about getting together sometime this weekend, so I phoned them this morning and CJ said she wanted to work on projects during the day, but that I could come over in the evening. So we made those plans, and I decided to finally head to Berkeley.

The drive is somewhat longer than I'd remembered: Nearly an hour, actually. I shouldn't be surprised, since it's about as far north as San Francisco, but having only been there twice - and only once on my own - I was still a little surprised. I did get to give a few CDs I bought recently another listen on the way, though.

My main destination was Dark Carnival, an SF shop I've heard about a number of times. John and I tried to find it last year, but without luck. Turns out it's moved since the phone book he has for Berkeley was published, and it's now clear on the other side of town.

It's an eclectically-laid-out store, on two floors, in a rather funny-shaped space, and you have to walk around a little while to get a feel for where everything is. It has a truly large selection of new science fiction, including some slightly-older stuff which is now out-of-print. It also carries mysteries and a few other things. But, I was disappointed that it had only a modest selection of used books, which I lately am more in the market for than new stuff, so I ended up not buying anything. It's a good store, but kind of far for me to travel for new stuff, given the plethora of stores much closer to home.

I also went by Amoeba Records, a good CD place, and by an okay gaming shop up there. The gaming shop doesn't hold a candle to Madison's Pegasus Games, though. And, I went to a couple of comic book stores up there, both of which were mediocre in their selection of new stuff, and very poor in their back issue selection. Kind of surprising in a college town, actually, and it didn't help me further my quest to find some of the back issues I'm looking for.

So, yes, I went up there and actually did not buy a thing. But, it was a nice day out nonetheless. And, I ended up being half an hour late getting to CJ's due to my misjudgment of how long it had taken me to get there. Basically, I just made a mental lapse in computing when I should have left. Ack!

The evening was the usual Silverizink fest: Starcraft, dinner (at an Indian restaurant this time), and assorted discussion. CJ and I have been having a protected discussion (or argument) with David regarding baseball pitching, which CJ and I feel is being squeezed, resulting in higher-offense games which are less fun to watch. It's kind of amusing, from a distance, since David seems not to really be a fan.

Two other things of note: First, I've been having trouble with my refrigerator, which works fine most of the time, but occasionally warms up quite a bit. Thursday night the ice in my freezer had melted, and I was concerned about the dairy products in the fridge, so I called my landlord about it, and he got in touch with the company he has repair stuff on his properties. They can't come out until Monday, but I figure I can hold on that long. That's why they have restaurants. Besides, by today the fridge was cooling off again. Still, it should get fixed.

The other thing is that Karen called me last night. Turns out she's having some pretty painful back problems recently. Yikes! We caught up on stuff in a long phone call. She said she's not surprised that I've been dragging my feet on looking for a new apartment, since she thought it was rather ambitious of me to move to California, find an apartment in my first month, move in, and then turn around and think about moving immediately. So, that makes me feel a little better.

But, I need to stop dragging my feet sometime. I know myself, that I can get into a rut of just avoiding the issue, and then trying not to think about the issue because I'm feeling guilty about having put it off for so long. Which is not only a tendency I need to combat, but in this case it's a stupid tendency, because this is an issue which only affects me (well, for the most part).

Michael Rawdon (Contact)