When it rains, you tend not to hurry too much. We took our time getting up in the morning, and had a very relaxed breakfast. Finally, around 11:30AM, we decided to go down to the city, and look around.

To go down, we choose to go along the Hudson. At the town of Hastings, we saw a sign for a farmer’s market. In spite of the wind and rain, the farmers were there, and we picked up some excellent apple juice (from fuji apples, no less) in the process.

We also made a brief stop in Yonkers to look around. The rainswept Hudson was an interesting sight.

Crossing over to Manhattan, we stopped not far from General Grant’s tomb. Our original plan, to go inside the nearby church, was thwarted by an in-progress wedding. Instead, we made our way past Union Theological Seminary, Barnard College, and onto Columbia. I found Columbia’s campus rather appealing. It was distinguished, and not all that small, and yet compact and lacking in all the sprawl so characteristic of Stanford. Doubtless I would have found it small if I’d spent longer on it.

As the rain had died down, we could take some pictures, and visit the bookstore. From there, we returned to the car, pausing to read a bit about the history of U.S. Grant on the way.

Driving down further, we miraculously found a parking spot on 5th Ave, near 75th St. This was right by Central Park, which would have been great, had it not been for the once-again substantial rain. With umbrellas and coats, we made our way along. The park was nearly empty, and so in search of lunch, we left it after about an hour, grabbing sandwiches at a nearby deli that was also purportedly a bakery (although it had almost no bread).

On the way back to the car we passed the Guggenheim and the Met. The rain was so heavy, that we paused under an overhang by the Met to eat our sandwiches and wait for the storm to pass. Not that it did really, of course.

The drive back was spent anticipating getting dry once we stopped. The rest of the evening at the house was pretty quiet. At least one member of our party is now convinced that in New York, it rains much of the time.

Having gone down to New York two days in a row, I wasn’t really to keen to go down again. Since there wasn’t really anything I needed to there today anyways, I just stayed in the house, trying to finish odds and ends. This meant sending e-mails, backing up files, figuring out class possibilities, and even organizing some of my newer photos.

Meanwhile my father and cousing explored the big Apple and the photographer’s paradise known as B&H. My grandmother appears to have bought most of a small room worth of food in anticipation of Monday’s get-together, and I’m just hoping I’m not personally obligated to finish most of it.

The most important news of the day was in fact a short e-mail that got to me just past noon. I have on-campus housing! Hallelujah! Well, more importantly, I have on-campus housing 2 blocks from the library. So that has all worked out. No more apartment searching. Excellent.

Since I had a 10AM meeting with a professor this morning, we had to leave pretty early to get downtown on time. This was with the director of our center as opposed to the director of our program, which is apparently a major distinction. In fact the first chunk of our conversation had him explaining his role. Then I was asked a bit about my plans, background, and ideas. A pleasant discussion, augmented by the fact that the professor’s office has a good view of the nearby park. So there are perks to being in the administration. As it happens, he too is an anthropologiest, just like the program director whom I met with yesterday.

After the meeting, I went to do some odds and ends at the library. And, what do you know, I received an e-mail from housing: “You’ve been accepted off the waitlist, though we don’t know where exactly yet, and you need to fill out this paperwork and make a $1000 deposit.” So after a bit of thought, I did precisely that. True I don’t know exactly where I’ll end up, but after yesterday’s conversation, both with the housing office and the broker, it looks a sight better than any alternatives.

I popped by the bookstore next, to see if I could find my texts. Very crowded (think same size as the Stanford bookstore, but with twice as many books and students). A metaphor for the whole New York experience I suppose.

My father and cousin were off taking pictures down by the civic center, so I walked down to join them. A brisk 20+ block stretch of Broadway later, we met in a little park, near the heavily secured civic center. Inviting sort of area.

From there, we walked over the Brooklyn bridge on a nice elevated foot/bike-path. It appeared to be a popular place both for tourists, joggers and genuine commuters. We had some nice views as well, but nothing sufficiently unobstructed of Manhattan to satisfy my cousin. Once we had reached Brooklyn, around 4PM, we had a hard time getting back to the waterfront, as the path we took didn’t have many exits. We saw a fair bit of Brooklyn in the process, before reaching a nice promenade sitting just above the expressway. There, we had clear views of Manhattan, and the nearer unused shipyards. However we discovered a little park right next to the bridge, with a great and unobstructed view of the downtown skyline. It was, coincidentally, right next to the “Brooklyn Ice-Cream Factory” (?) and the site of “Bargemusic” where I’d heard classical chamber music played on a boat, some 9 or 10 years earlier.

Going back to our parked car required a goodly walk, including navigating Broadway in the midst of rush-hour foot-traffic. Quite a sight to behold. The drive back to Westchester was impossibly slow. When we finally made it to Manhattan, we tried taking city streets instead of the parkway, heading up the “Grand Concourse.” The result was a long slow ride through a number of partly depressed neighborhoods.

We finally reached the house around 8PM. Long day, but at least the future has more than a great big question mark. Still don’t know what my other cousin, who will be attending the same school, is doing for housing though.

As usual, the first day after a trip doesn’t start very early. I was actually up at a normal hour, and spent the time productively employed in unpacking the more immediately useful stuff.

We resolved to go downtown so that I could figure out my housing situation, and they could see a bit of New York. Fair enough. The drive down was, amazingly, traffic free. Parked at the usual lot on Broadway (it has a discount for students and staff affiliated with the university).

Our first stop was the on-campus housing office. Apparently my grandmother has become well-known down there, having visited several times to try and get information for me. I was assured by a friendly staff that my chances were pretty good for getting into housing off the waitlist.

At the off-campus housing office, the main information obtain was that housing in Manhattan is tight, and my only real chance would be through a broker. Fair enough.

We picked up lunch near campus, but I was more than a little disappointed with my panini. Definitely not up to Parisian standards (well, the lunches I remember having there anyway). Next it was off to the ID card office. A long slow line almost had me missing my next appointment, but the guy in front was quite entertaining (all the tips he offered to another guy in line had film school sounding like quite a racket – all kinds of ways to make money on the side). For the ID cards, they were using my old camera for the photos. Interesting.

My next appointment, with the director of our MA program, went well, even though rushed back 8 blocks in a big hurry. Turns out they were running a bit late too, so I needn’t have worried. We had a pleasant discussion, and I received a couple of useful tips.

Afterwards, I tried out my new ID card in the library, picked up a needed book, and purchased a book locker there for the year. Hopefully it’ll see a lot of use! I met my grandmother in front of the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the park, and we waited for the other 2 members of party while watching pigeons and strollers make their way past.

Driving back was a breeze, and despite a stop at the grocery store where an attempt was made to buy everything in sight, we were back home around 7PM. After dinner, we each went off to our various pursuits: mine was trying to figure out what useful information I still needed to get from the broker.

So I moved across country today. Well, sort of. At least for the next 2 years.

Got up around 6:30AM, and put the last touches on my packing. We wound up leaving the house around a quarter past 7. Weather was nice, but a few high clouds overhead. Traffic going to Cupertino was surprisingly decent for rush hour.

We arrived at the parking by my dad’s office just about the time that taxi cab did, although he was in slightly bad humor, as the buildings had apparently been renumbered. Whatever. Aside from a near wrong turn, we made it to the airport in San Jose in good order. Taking all 7 of our packages out took a bit of time, but we were right near curbside check-in.

The problem with curbside check-in was that it was pretty popular. It took a good while to make it through the line. When we did, we discovered one of my bags was overweight. So we had to make some emergency rearrangements, plus sign a waiver disclaiming damages if the printer (one of the pieces of baggage) were to come out the worse for the wear. Fine.

The security line was easy enough, but it was still a pain having to de-metallize, and take out the laptop. The plane began boarding around half an hour later.

As always with Southwest, there were no assigned seats. We wound up with an entire row (the plane was a 737, so this meant 3 seats) to ourselves. We were right behind the wing, and the windows was amazingly clear, so throughout the flight, I was taking through-the-window photos.

The balance of the flight was actually spent on two things: admiring the scenery (when it was visible) and trying to complete a game of Sudoku. I’d never played before, so the game, which came on the box with our ‘snack’ in it, took quite a while, between the two of us. The worst part is where you make a mistake, and have to go back to square-one to start again. As for the scenery, we definitely had some memorable scenes, including bits of the San Francisco bay, Sacramento River Delta, Sierra Nevada Mountains, Great Basin, Rocky Mountains and what I presume was Kansas. Quite a bit of variety.

It took about four hours to arrive at Chicago-Midway, the local and regional airport (as opposed to O’Hare) with a distinctly suburban feel. We had an unexciting 2 hour wait, during which our connecting flight was alternately delayed, and moved back onto schedule.

Our next plane was an ATA 737 (first time flying with them), and we had seats right in front of the jet. The window wasn’t quite so clean, but I managed a few more pictures. The flight was only about 2 hours to New York, and because of heavy clouds and the sunset, we saw very little until we were basically on the runway.

My grandparents were as usual waiting when we arrived. However, my cousin had arrived at a different terminal. So we determined to go and pick him up while my dad waited for the baggage. Clever idea, but hard in practice. LaGuardia had miserable traffic, coupled with poorly-marked directions to the other terminal, and it took a good hour to get to the other terminal. Still, we did find my cousin (we were trying to locate each other via cell-phone when a helpful person heard us both at the same time, no more than 20 feet away, and pointed this out. Then getting back to the other terminal took a bit of time. The final complication was that there was noticably more baggage than trunk-space, and so accomodations had to be made. The drive back took only about an hour, so we finally arrived at my grandparent’s place in Westchester somewhere in the vicinity of 11PM. This meant that when dinner and other things were all said and done, it was past 1AM, or 10PM PST. No troubles with jet lag in this case…

Today can best be described as a getting-all-sorts-of-last-minute-stuff-done type of day. In preparation for leaving tomorrow.

First, there was the laundry. Drove over to the laundromat in Menlo Park (the machine at home is still not fully functional) and did two loads. Unfortunately one of the driers didn’t work too well, but at least that job is done.

For lunch, I drove up to Los Altos, where my dad and I met a friend. It was a clear nice day (even a little cool in the shade), and we had a nice discussion that spanned from past to present. New York has certainly changed between 1955 and today, a fact I will be reminded of tomorrow.

Then there was dropping by Stanford’s student health services, to try and get a copy of my vaccination record. It was a simple procedure, but there was a lot of waiting involved.

Next, I met some Stanford friends to drop off some now surplus computer equipment, and say goodbye. Yes it’s true, my Powerbook now has a new home. Hopefully it will be well cared-for. Saw off said friends along with a substantial number of horses who were in the general area.

After this, I made an unsuccessful stop at the computer store. Unsuccessful because they didn’t have the item I was looking for at anything approaching an acceptable price.

So I drove home, and began the somewhat arduous task of completing my packing. Yes, I’m not used to having to pack for an entire year. All sorts of odds and ends need to be remembered, and of course, size and weight constraints complicate the picture further. I’ve now got two medium rollable bags, a box, a backpack, a computer bag, and a small piece of baggage. Hopefully that is enough!

Tomorrow will be a long day. Goodbye California. Hello New York.

Spent an embarassingly large portion of the day trying to get my computer configured and backed up. Scintillating, I know. However, it has to be done sometime. I must say I’m not finding the switch to Windows all that appealing. For one thing, the quality of shareware seems to be a lot lower. Hard to find a good cheap backup utility. For another, I’m getting sick of rebooting because of this or that software installation. Annoying. Yes.

I managed to differentiate my large collection of clothes (and smaller collection of clean clothes) into two categories: to stay and to go. Problem is, to go is rather bulky. Had a hard time figuring out which bags or suitcases would fit. Eventually, settled on the largest ones we have that are genuinely rollable. Hopefully this’ll lesson the transportation difficulties.

Two friends from Stanford are renting a place in Palo Alto for the summer, and I was invited over for dinner. Tried to thing of something appropriate to bring along, and so wound up with a flat of strawberries from a stand down highway 1. They’re supposedly from Watsonville, so I guess that makes them pretty local.

Palo Alto was a bit more complicated to navigate than I last remembered, but after getting the address straightened out, it worked out okay. My friends are renting the guest cottage of a rather well-appointed house. The cottage is an amazingly cozy place, both in terms of feel, and in-terms of space constraints. While dinner was cooking, the stove apparently managed to blow two separate fuses, which made things a bit more complicated. Nonetheless, dinner was impressive (oh dear, I’ll have to be cooking soon, won’t I?) and it was fun to catch up in such a relaxed setting. Ended up spending a good bit longer than I’d really expected. Heigh-ho.

Returning to Half Moon Bay, the car starting doing its usual weird noises. Ugh.

My cousin is big on bird photography, so when we decided to hike up Montara mountain, he wanted to join. What with the usual traffic, this meant that once we had met in town and arrived at the trailhead, it was almost 1PM.

The weather was cool, and alternating between thing fog and high clouds. The trail was in its usual August condition: dusty. We took our time going up, keeping an eye out for birds and other interesting sights. Despite this, we didn’t see any of the hoped for hawks or eagles on the way up. Indeed, the most interesting wildlife were a plethora of butterflies, flitting around near the top of one of the mountains.

Otherwise, aside from blister problems with my boots (again), it was a nice relaxed hike. Going down, we made frequent stops to look for birds, but to no avail. Gulls and pelicans there were aplenty, but nothing in the bird-of-prey category. Indeed, the only hawks we saw were actually along highway 1, during the drive back.

At Princeton, we stopped to eat lunch and admire the pier. It was a late lunch, but the clouds made for some interesting shadows, and we saw a great many of the little boats (and a larger, Coast Guard vessel) making their ways in and out.

After that, my cousin headed back over the hill, and the rest of the evening was spent trying to figure out which books and office supplies should be packed for the trip to NY. Correct answer: as many as will fit. But this is easier said than done. Also caught up on e-mail and so forth.

So continuing where I left of yesterday, I finished unpacking the camping gear and equipment, not to mention the rest of my own luggage. Just in time to recommence packing for my next venture: grad. school.

I also completed my Windows migration today, with pretty much all the useful data now on the Compaq laptop. That took a lot longer than it had any reason to. I did succeed in installing Dragon Naturally Speaking 8, and playing around with it a bit. It seems decent, but it looks like I’ll need to upgrade, as it doesn’t support spoken commands in Firefox and Thunderbird.

I also gave the old webpages a bit of an update, and categorized a lot of the photos from the Mineral King trip. And yes, there are a lot of photos from that trip, although still not enough to fill up my 4GB flash card!

In the evening, I met up with a couple of friends I’d not seen in ages (well, at least 4 months). Looks like everybody is doing pretty well… Fortunately nobody is in danger of become conventional or otherwise ‘normal.’ Going to be a while probably before I can see them again…

So this is my first day at home in 2 months, and in a week, I won’t be here again for at least another 3 months. Rare times. I guess I should be enjoying it.

However, what I’ve actually been doing is trying to set up the Compaq laptop, in preparation for abandoning the Powerbook. Much as I dislike Windows, the idea of real speech recognition, plus the ability to actually edit my raw photos is somewhat appealing. And Apple still doesn’t have a 64bit laptop that supports 4GB RAM, nor even one that runs cool enough to qualify as a laptop.

In between all this, there was a great deal of e-mail to answer, a few phone calls to make, several pieces of real mail to answer (yay, jury duty), a car to finish clearing out, and so on and so forth. In fact, I didn’t even make it to town today. Plus finding places to put all the camping equipment is taking a while. As is getting all my mail and other data off of the old computer. I’m still a bit sore from yesterday’s car ride, too.

Hopefully tomorrow will offer a bit more on the human-interaction and non-organizing levels.