I love crafts fairs and handmade things in general, but it’s hard to help buying something, which is really the only problem. I got this frog phone charm from a lady (Eri’s Studio) who makes metal and stone bracelets and rings (really cool stuff, I wish I brought my camera, only I didn’t know about the crafts fair ’til we got to the farmer’s market) and also knit hats of all types. Cute, and I’ve been meaning to get a new charm for my phone since the old one broke. It’s also completely one of a kind cos she said that there were way too many little pieces and she made one and decided not to make anymore. So wohahahaha! :p

We finally went to see The Dark Knight on IMAX. It was quite good, possibly the best super hero movie to date, and you know how much I liked X-Men (hello, Captain. I mean Professor X!) — although it’s been a while since I saw that so probably not a fair comparison. The only thing is that the palette for Batman is so dark that it can be hard to catch all the action (on IMAX particularly?) — I told Yut after the movie that I thought Beauty and the Beast IMAX was a better IMAX experience, but I’m not sure I convinced him. Anyways, by now, there’s been plenty said about Batman, so suffice it to say, I wasn’t disappointed. But I don’t get this PG-13, cos there were definitely parts I had a hard time watching. Or I could just be wimpy.

Oh yeah, and we ate a lot too. :)

We spent all weekend barbecuing and watching Battlestar Galactica. Ah, the good life. BSG is our new obsession — I know, everyone else already knows how awesome it was, but we just figured it out recently. How was your holiday weekend? :)

It was actually a little teeny bit hard to get ourselves out to the play today cos it was at 2pm and Stanford and Marquette were going at it. When we left, Marquette was winning, when we came back, we found out Stanford won in overtime. It’s games like that that make this tournament exciting. Also the fact that there are 2 games tomorrow featuring 12 and 13 seeds! Whoda thunk they’d still be in! Well, obviously some of you did, but I certainly didn’t. Which helps explain my standing in the pool, really.

Ant: 35
Lew, Yut: 34
CT, Seth: 33
Al, Special K: 32
Jimyo, me: 31
misa: 30
Steve: 30 (20)
YB: 29

I dunno what happened! Ant came outta nowhere! I can’t understand how some people manage to call almost every game right. Yut did it on the first day, and now Ant today missed only W. Virginia over Duke. On the other side of the coin, Yan, who was tied for 2nd place, ahead of Steve, ahead of almost everyone, is now at the bottom (well I mean if you look at Steve’s unpenalized score). OMG, what’s going on?! Speaking of which, I am tied with Jimyo! Who made his picks while doing his homework Wednesday night with no real thought whatsoever. Dude, I deliberated!!! I thought about it for 3 days (on and off). If I end up losing to Jimyo by like 1 point or something, I’ll be sorry I talked him into picking Memphis over UT-Arlington. I think I might rather lose to K, who at least this year thought enough about it not to pick 13th seeded Air Force to win it all. (Wait, this is actually a toughie. Hrmm…) Anyways, most of the rest of y’all are steady, except Al, who’s making a surreptitious move up without attracting much attention. Except now I pointed it out. :)

This is the part where I was laughing uncontrollably, which made Julie crack up. You can’t tell from this picture, so why I’m telling you, I don’t know. :p Also, I don’t know if you can tell, but my feet are pretty red from the hot soaking in the water with the jets.

Anyways, it’s been 2 weeks now and my toes still look perfect. It’s like my toenails don’t grow or something. My fingernails have grown like a millimeter or something (based on how the polish looks) and I dunno, I guess I’m harder on them. So yeah, happy. Now if the weather would just go back to that nice sunniness from just a week ago so I can wear flips everyday again, that’d be awesome. Sadly this past week has been all rainy coldness instead. But it’s winter, so I really can’t complain too much about rain after a two week reprieve.

We got our membership packet earlier this month, and we used Flexcar for the first time today. Unfortunately the experience didn’t start as smoothly as I’d hoped. We made a reservation from 1:30pm to 4:30pm and arrived at the car maybe 5-10 minutes late (not that it matters much, but the point is, our reservation had definitely started so there weren’t any issues there), but we couldn’t get into the car. We held up our Flexcard to the transceiver thingie on the windshield for a long time, but the car never unlocked. After trying a couple of times, we finally had to call Flexcar. The conversation went approximately:

Flexcar Dude (I forgot his name): What’s your member number, name, phone number, etcetc.
Me: Yadayadayada
Flexcar: What’s the situation?
Me: Made reservation, can’t get in the car
Flexcar: Is the light green?
Me: Yeah, it’s green, but the door won’t unlock.
Flexcar: Hmm, let me check on that, please hold.
…
Flexcar: Try again please.
Me: Okay, but it’s still green and nothing’s happening.
Flexcar: Let me check on something else, please hold.
…
Flexcar: Try again please.
Me: It’s still not doing anything. Can you just cancel this reservation and let us make a new one with a different car?
Flexcar: Are there any other cars at that location?
Me: No, but we can walk a few blocks to the next closest location, that would be fine.
Flexcar: Let me put you on hold and look into that location for you.
… We started to walk to the next location, going about 3 blocks.
Flexcar: Actually can you try that car again?
Me: Uh, well we started to walk towards the other location, so we have to walk back now.
Flexcar: Okay.
…
Me: No, it’s still not working.

That took about half an hour! Then we got transferred to a manager in our region, who asked for all of our information again! I can never understand that; if I call and give my member number or serial number or whatever, isn’t it on the computer already?! Okay, I’m getting off topic, it turned out she was in a car or something, but still. Then she said she needed to look into it some more and said she’d call us back. After 10 minutes, Yut called Flexcar again, went through the same rigmarole with the member number and name and everything, explained the situation again, reconfirmed that there were no other cars at the precise location, and got transferred back to the regional manager person, who finally took care of everything. She canceled our original reservation, made a new reservation for 4 hours on a car at a different location, said she’d give us a 2 hour credit, and stayed on the phone with us until we actually got into the car to make sure everything was fine. She was really nice about it, and apologetic. It turned out that they were having some kind of database problem which I guess made it hard to pull up information and made it hard to figure out what was going on with the original car. But still, it was frustrating to stand around the car being put on hold and then trying the card again over and over. I think it would’ve been a lot better if after they tried to send the unlock signal (or whatever they were doing when we got stuck on hold) once, if it still wasn’t working, then let us make a new reservation. It’s not like we were insisting on a taxi ride or anything. Instead we stood around doing nothing for around 45 minutes. Well, anyway, after we gave up on the first car, everything was fine. We went to lunch (the lack of which was a contributor to our grumpiness), and shopped and got everything back well before 6pm.

This was only our first try, hopefully next time goes better.

A few last random notes: For some reason, the Scion xB is labeled as a sub-compact, whereas the Corolla is a standard sedan. I dunno, that Scion xB looked big to me. Also, the Flexcar website is just ok.

This is the reservation screen, note how you can only look at 4 cars at a time, yuck! Why can’t you change the date that you want to reserve for without going back to the previous screen? And why don’t they have a little calendar link next to the date like airline reservation pages? And you can’t tell, but they are using tables! As in <table><td> etcetc! It’s not like they’ve been around since forever (cos at least that’s an explanation for the use of the tables). Anyways, all this, coupled with their “database problems” makes me think they need better IT people! :p

At first we were gonna rent a U-Haul, but dude, even though they advertise prices like $24.95 per day or whatever, the small print says + 79¢/mile, which is crazy when misa and neb live 40 miles away. Also, there’s no U-Haul within walking distance of our place, which makes even picking up the moving truck thing annoying. Sadly, Avis (preferred cos it’s 3 blocks away) had no trucks or vans or large SUVs available, so we checked Enterprise, our regular second choice (it being further but still walkable), and they had a cargo van available! Yay!

On Saturday, we woke up early (that means before noon) and walked over to Enterprise. It was Earth Day weekend, and Berkeley had closed some streets down and there were a ton of stands and stuff in addition to the regular farmer’s market. We wandered around for a little while and barely just got to the Enterprise (I keep thinking Federation Star Ship everything I type that) in time cos we lost track. Then we went home and carried the old couch down from our 2nd floor apartment and loaded up the couch into the van which was tough! But do-able. Also, we didn’t care too much about whatever damage it took, which helped. I did push Yut’s hand into a wall though. He was slowing down in front of me but I didn’t notice and couldn’t see so I kept walking. Oops. Yut also loaded up our old coffee table that I’d broken years ago when I put some hot stew on the glass top. Also oops.

Even though misa mentioned that she needed to take a few things to throw away too, but we didn’t think to combine the trips and just throw away our things in Santa Clara until after we drove everything down to the Berkeley Waste Transfer Station and threw away our couch. There’s a salvage van at the transfer station for the things that are in good shape, and we gave our coffee table to them, so I guess it turned out for the best.

Then we went down to Santa Clara and hung out and ate at Yuki Sushi and walked around their house and garden. Yut and neb loaded the new couch onto the van, which didn’t seem so bad! Heheheheheh!!! (That’s retrospective laughter on my part.)

By the time we got home, it was late and raining. We tried to move the couch, but omg, it was huger than I thought. We couldn’t even get it in through the front door/gate thing (basically a metal screen door) to the building. So we decided to try it tomorrow. We brainstormed a ton of dumb ideas about moving the couch. Then the next morning we tried some of the dumb ideas — like trying to get the couch over the gate. Way impossible!!! Finally Yut unscrewed the wooden legs and brought down one of our computer chairs (no arms, with wheels, but they turn) and we put my end on the chair and Yut held up his end and we got it in through the gate to the stairs. Then I pulled and Yut pushed the couch sections up the stairs and into our apartment, and omg we were so tired!

If you look at a photo of the black couch in misa and neb’s house, it looks big, but not that big. In our apartment though it is huge! Way bigger than our old couch. Afterwards, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Well especially me cos I didn’t think I could do it. Yut asked Cliff to help him actually, and he was gonna stop by after Jacob’s 2nd birthday party, but somehow we managed it. Hopefully though, I never have to move large pieces of furniture again cos I don’t think I’m cut out for that sort of thing.