The Mandelbear's Musings

The Big Pile of Luggage[tm] in the bedroom closet has been Dealt With. It's nearly as high, but doesn't stick out as far, so at least it's an improvement. More than that, it's been Organized.

• Briefcases, messenger bags, and daypacks are now in The Big Suitcase, which is back up in the garage attic. The Big Suitcase was originally purchased for a trip to Japan where I had to carry some extra gear for a demo; it was cheap, flimsy, and probably wouldn't stand up to many more trips.
• Totebags, zippered totebags, dufflebags, and small shoulder bags are now in separate containers. More random luggage, actually. They're back in the closet, but stacked up neatly.
• Shoulder straps are now hanging up with the coats, snapped to a coathanger.
• Pants that no longer fit are in a couple of plastic bags. Some of them are in decent enough shape to give to Goodwill; others are better suited for being cut up for rags. A couple of size 40's in good condition have been kept -- I currently take 42, and I'm trying to lose weight. (Of course, that's what I said about the 38's, too.)
• A few items in really bad condition have been thrown away.

In addition, I've done a little more magazine and box recycling.

First the food. Last night was the $work holiday party, at a restaurant called Lavanda in Palo Alto. The open bar (Sarticious gin -- score) and hors d'oevres (wonderful olives, assorted dry sausages) were good, though served at the bar where they blocked the entryway and didn't give people enough room to circulate and converse. Good conversations, though. The flower_cat and I were at the LJ table: roanf, mr_kurt, saffronrose, finagler, fairyshaman, and only I think three people not on LJ. Service was slow, though, and the dinner only good rather than as good as one would have expected from the restaurant's reputation. The loud and soulless lounge lizard providing the "entertainment" didn't help.

Today, though, was much better. We'd gone to the Stanford shopping center only to find that our favorite restaurant, Bravo Fono, had vanished without a trace. Grump. We bounced around between various of our other choices (closed on Sunday) and streets that once had plenty of good restaurants and now held nothing particularly appetizing, and ended up at a place Colleen had passed a couple of times (across from one of her favorite fabric stores) and found intriguing, with a mix of Persian, Italian and "American" cuisine: Arya, 19930 Stevens Creek Blvd. in Cupertino. (Be prepared for an all-flash site with background music: I never said their website was great.) The food, on the other hand...

They have a weekday lunch menu, but it was Sunday. So we had the "Mediterranean Platter" off the appetizer menu (fabulous dolmeh stuffed with lentils, hummus, borani "bademjoon"), the "Arya Salad" (greens, a couple of roasted bell peppers, pine nuts), the koobideh plate (chicken and beef, with basmati rice). Desert was a Persian ice cream with a hint of rose and pistachio. Made of delicious win.

The other parties in the restaurant (this is 2pm on Sunday, remember) appeared to be mostly families. Many of them appeared to be familiar to the staff -- repeat customers are always a good sign. We'll be joining them.

I'm packed. Interestingly, the Rick Steves backpack holds more than the Travelpro rolly -- I test-fitted both of them. The backpack is also lighter -- there are simply a lot fewer atoms there -- and it has a flap that I can stuff my shoulder bag under to make it look like I only have two carry-on bags. Plink, the travel guitar, being the other.

I've managed to cram in 80 CDs: 50 in the checked suitcase, and 30 in the backpack. Plus 6 "pre-order" sets and the Interfilk package (binder plus two CDs). Don't think I'll be able to squeeze in the little plush Cthulhu, and in any case he seems to be hiding. I may be a little light on reading material on the way back.

Some random updates. Nothing vital.

I don't appear to have mentioned what we got at Costco yesterday. The main thing was a SwissGear (Wenger) 24" rolling suitcase for the flower_cat Normally I'm the one who gets luggage, and the Cat just grumbles about it, but this was purple. Came with a nice little carry-on bag, as well.

The Dell Vostro 1000 laptop that I ordered for the Younger Daughter arrived this afternoon. I was shocked at the small amount of packaging -- the huge box was mostly empty. Apparently it uses cleverly-folded cardboard to keep the styrofoam inner box with the laptop in it from rattling around too much, but it was still altogether too loose for my taste. Well, it booted up this evening, so that's ok. Took me a while to figure out some of the stupid installation steps: after it gets through figuring out that it's connected to a wired ethernet network and bloody-well registering itself, it asks you to set up its internet connection and asks you for your ISP's phone number. At that point you have to back up three steps and tell it you don't want to set up a connection now. Idiots!

Got in a decent three-mile walk at lunchtime.

Now, let's see. Where was I? Home, mostly: there were no trips, parties, or events planned for the weekend.

Managed to get in a fair amount of walking: about 4 miles yesterday, and 5 miles today. There's a nice trail along Los Gatos Creek that intersects Leigh about a block north of Hamilton. I usually walk up a little past the little park on Campbell Avenue; today I added the loop up to the new bridge just north of San Thomas/Camden. I used to do that every weekend, but slacked off considerably the last two years. Good to get back to it. Hopefully I'll lose a little weight.

Stopped off at REI yesterday and bought a computer sleeve for the new laptop -- they have a good one that opens on two sides, so you can position it vertically or horizontally, and has rings for attaching a shoulder strap. I had a Targus sleeve that was nice and thin and had a bigger accessory pocket, but didn't have a strap attachment. Didn't work out.

After noon yesterday the flower_cat asked to go for a drive, so of course we did. There's a nice 50-mile round trip down to Morgan Hill via Blossom Hill and Santa Theresa that's become one of our usual routes when we don't have time for the coast.

And today I scouted out the route to the chaoswolf's new job. I had originally thought I could save her about 1/2 hour on her commute by dropping her off at the point downtown where she would normally change busses. Turns out it's faster to take her all the way to work by freeway. She's on her own getting back, of course.

Top ten coolest laptop cases.