Warm fall days

Woo-hoo, according to the weather info on MSN.com it's actually warmer in Boston today than it is in Palo Alto; 69 degrees vs. 64. Gotta enjoy it while I can before the winter hits here and I start freezing my butt off!

We're going back to S.F. this weekend to attend a friend's wedding. Can't wait for the mini-vacation and to see all our friends again, even though I'm only going to be there for about two days. W. is staying a couple of days longer than me since his office is out there anyway. At the very least we know we'll be seeing a few of these friends again in February for our Vail, CO snowboarding trip. Fun!

Happy Birthday to Me! :)

Man, I'm getting old. I still love birthdays though; I just think they're so much fun :) W. is taking me out for dinner in a little bit. My co-workers got a cake for me and even sang happy birthday (they sang pretty well too--that's a surprisingly tough song to sing). All in all, a good day so far, albeit MUCH tamer than the last few birthdays in S.F. Happy Birthday from afar to my October Babies crew!

Our first furniture delivery and our second Cali visitor

We finally got our first piece of new furniture delivered. Boo for delays; hooray for the couch finally being here, and in one piece. It looks pretty good in the room, and we're really happy with the decision to go with the brown leather. Now I need some accent pillows and a throw blanket to dress it up a bit. A rug, couple of arm chairs, coffee table, end tables, lamps, TV, and entertainment unit would help too :P We're working on it....

The kitchen table and chairs are due to arrive either this week or next. I won't be too sad to see the green folding table go (though we're really grateful for the loaner, mom!). Then it's the super cool dining room table that arrives next in mid-November or so. It's much cooler looking in real life than in this pic. It's 55" square with a butterfly leaf that folds into the table so no storing an extra leaf under the bed (my parents have a traditional table like that and it's a pain to store and protect that extra leaf for the one or two times a year you actually use it). And we didn't get those chairs. They had cool ones at the store but they were something like $450 a piece so we went somewhere else and got chairs for about $110 each instead.

We also had our second visitor from California here for a visit this past weekend. Well, P. actually came up from Philly where he's currently at business school, but he's part of the Cali crew. W. filled in on Wharton's B team and P. wasn't kidding when he said it was b-school B...not the highest quality v-ball we've ever played, but W. enjoyed just being on the court again. I played one game, got a few good digs in, was happy. The Wharton team kicked Harvard's butt, which made P. happy. Why are people always out to get Harvard??? :) Then, in a dramatic and yet anti-climatic ending to the tournament, as Wharton met up with Kellogg in a heated game 2 in a best-of-three match with Wharton trailing by one game but up nine points in game 2, all the lights in the gym went out and a couple dozen of us were left in complete pitch blackness. Turns out we were way behind schedule and the gym was ready to close, so that was that. They couldn't get more than one measly light back on so they decided to call it a tie. What kind of project management skills do these HBS students have anyway? They also had forgotten to schedule refs for the playoffs and were begging some of us to stay.

There's a lot more of you S.F. folks (and even some of you more local people) that haven't come out yet...we're waiting with open arms, a porch light on, spare beds, and good times!

Office casual

There hasn't been much that's post-worthy going on lately, hence no updates to the blog. Yesterday, though, I learned something cool about my office that got me so excited W. was laughing at me all night. The big news is......I can wear jeans to work! You have no idea how happy this makes me. At least I haven't really had to wear a monkey suit much in the last few years but I have never, ever had a job where I can wear jeans to the office! Not even when I worked at a startup in S.F. This is a big plus; the new job is looking better and better :)

We were also supposed to get our first furniture delivery yesterday, a couch from Macy's. At 8:30am though they call me to tell me it's not coming because the couch is damaged and now it won't be here 'til next week. Kind of a bummer, would have been nice to have our first real piece of new furniture in the house. Luckily though since W. works from home no one had taken time off yesterday to wait for the delivery. Having someone at home for stuff like this is pretty cool. W's been able to meet with contractors, repairmen, etc. during the day when otherwise we'd have to wait forever to get a weekend appointment.

Oh, and P. is coming to visit from Philly this weekend. I just saw him last week when I was in Philly for a conference, but it'll be great to have another visitor here in Boston. He also asked us to play in the volleyball tournament he's in town for. The Wharton "B" team is short a couple of folks so we're filling in. Should be fun, since we haven't played since we moved to Boston. But then again, P. said, "Well, it's b-school 'B' level" and W. said, "So more like rec?" P: "Uh, yeah." OK...we'll see how it goes.

More friendly neighbors

I think I need to go buy some thank you notes. Another one of our neighbors stopped by just before I got home tonight and they brought the most amazing looking homemade apple pie. Good thing I didn't pick enough apples to bake my own pie a couple of weeks ago! Haven't had a chance to actually try the pie yet since Willy cooked a very yummy dinner and I'm full.

Had my first day in the office today. It wasn't bad, went by pretty fast actually. I had a bad case of food coma after lunch, right as my boss was giving me some database training (maybe that's what was putting me to sleep...hmmm). It's a small office, but cool people so far so I'm happy.

Hey, S & R, by the way, CONGRATS again! We are so so so so so so very happy for you two!

Back to work

I started the new job yesterday and jumped right into a two-day conference in Philadelphia. Got to see P. while I was there, so that was a lot of fun. Tomorrow is my first day in the office, I should really get some sleep. No more mid-day furniture shopping and errands for me :( But, on the up side, now we'll have more money to spend on said furniture and errands :)

The furniture is on its way!

Yay, we finally ordered more furniture today! A couch and dining table are both going to be on their way soon. The Macy's couch is coming quickly; it'll be here next Tuesday (ignore the ugly blue pillows in the picture). The dining table will be here just a little bit before Thanksgiving. We're not hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year anyway, but it's still nice that we'll have a table before the holidays.

We didn't however, buy any chairs for the dining room table because the ones at the store were like $450/chair and we've seen ones we like for closer to $110/chair or so--big difference! Thank goodness for all those gift cards from the wedding because they really helped out with some of the big purchases today.

After spending several thousand dollars in the morning, we spent the rest of the day at a BBQ at my aunt and uncle's house. Saw my two little cousins (my cousin's kids, actually) and they've gotten SO BIG. Time flies when you're living in California I guess.

Stupid, crappy service people

Wanna know what we did all day today? Sat around waiting for the Whirlpool technician to come and fix our washing machine. AND HE NEVER SHOWED UP!!! In case you can't tell, I'm still a litte pissed off. I hate it when people waste my time and this guy wasted about 9 hours of it--not cool.

Not to mention that the machine is brand new and supposedly top of the line. Grrr...argh.... Now we have to wait another week for the parts we need to show up before the technician will even come to the house. Stupid service people.

On the positive side, I found a furniture store that I liked today and we both saw a couch that we kinda like. So hopefully this weekend we can start to make a dent in the furniture list. We're packed with family and friend activities this weekend too though so we'll see how far we get.

Our first visitor from Cali!

We've been in the house for two weeks now (wow, is that it? seems like longer) and we had our first visitor from California. We were so excited to have a guest! The visit was too short, but otherwise we all had a great time. Note: if you come to Boston, keep in mind that a day and a half does not allow you enough meals to try all the food you really need to try out here.


Since D wasn't here very long we did just a few things on Saturday. We did a short Harvard tour in the afternoon, but in the morning we went apple picking. Well, to be more accurate, we really went Asian pear picking because 95% of our bags were filled with Asian pears with just a few peaches and apples thrown in. What a cool farm to have so many different fruits in one place. They also have nectarines, strawberries, grapes, and pumpkins at varying times of year.


It was a gorgeous day on Saturday, which was lucky because it rained all day today. Fresh-picked fruit tastes even better on a day like that. Which is good, because it softened the blow of how much it all cost--$1.50/lb. x 40 lbs = $60 (that bag in the picture is only the first of two that we had). I'm a piggy. It was totally my fault because I couldn't stop picking all those Asian pears! In my defense, I was planning on giving a bunch away to my grandparents and my aunt and uncle. Really, that's why I did it. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! When we were kids they used to charge you by the bag and you could just fill it up regardless of how much it weighed. Nowadays even though we had a "fifteen pound" bag they weigh it at checkout and you pay whatever the actual weight is. Too bad they didn't have Asian pears to pick back in the day!

We can't wait for the rest of you to visit! Hope you had a good time, D!