Widow to the Cause

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For… a long time, now, Rohan and his brother, Leigh, have been working on an iOs game, presently codenamed Township. I can no longer remember how long it’s been, because for me, this has been going on for years. In most ways, it’s a good thing. It’s awesome, for me, to get Rohan home of an evening excited about some new feature he’s added; it’s much more awesome than getting him home tired and grumpy about something far more mundane.

We’re moving towards crunch time, though, and his time has become more and more valuable. It used to be that we spent several evenings a week watching TV together. Now– well, I’m pretty sure we watched something on Friday night (it’s now Tuesday), but I can’t remember what it was, and it was definitely the first evening we’d had together in a couple of days. Rohan’s busy. I’m also busy, filling my evenings with other things if he’s not going to be around to share them with me, but it’s not quite the same. It’s hard.

It’s Tuesday night, and the last time I saw Rohan (conscious – that is, not asleep) was Sunday night. I don’t expect to see him again until he gets home tomorrow, and that will probably be 7pm or so. Or later. That’s an unusually long time for us, but no longer completely unexpected: other things take precedence, sometimes. That doesn’t make it feel any less strange to simply not see the person you live with for so many days.

It’s a hard balance. I love him – I wouldn’t live with him, be with him, share my life with him, If I didn’t – but I’m also super excited about what he’s working on. I can’t wait for Township to be released, so that I can share with everyone how awesome this project is. I am so proud of Rohan and Leigh for this game. But I do miss him. I do miss having evenings together, without them being a rarity. I miss homecooked meals, meals that aren’t for one. I miss talking about things that aren’t game-related.

It’s al worth it, but it’s still hard, sometimes. I’m not used to having so much time on my own, and though I’m good at entertaining myself, it does wear on me at times. I get lonely. I have bad nights. I fall asleep alone, and wake up in the middle of the night still alone; but sometimes I wake up and I can hear Rohan in the next room, or he’s crawled into bed alongside me and I simply haven’t noticed. Sometimes it works.

At the moment, the thing I’m really looking forward to is this game being released. My intention is to steal Rohan away for a week or so – take him away from his computer, and away from our normal lives, and just… be. He can have Internet access, and he can fix bugs and do what he needs to, but I think we’ll both benefit from taking a step back from our computers, and spending time with each other.

It’s a little sad that our big plans for this week involve an evening without laptops, iPads, or iPhones. Just us, and something on the television.

Sad, maybe, but damn: I can’t wait.

Money Planning

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I’ve been seeing a financial advisor, of late, mostly because my parents wanted us all to get our estate planning sorted out while they did theirs, but it’s also good timing: they’re going to help me work out whether I can afford to buy a house. Among other things.

It’s interesting. And a little confronting. I’ve had to fill out all these forms determining how much money I spend on different things, and how much I want to be able to spend. From there, there’s also questions of what happens if I’m permanently disabled, or if I die, or if I’m temporarily disabled and there are major medical bills, or, or, or… It goes on and on and on. I don’t think anyone really wants to think about these things, but it’s worthwhile. And interesting, if in a slightly morbid way.

Talking about what happens if I die is especially strange. My first instinct is ‘well, I’ll be dead, why should I care?’, but it’s more complicated than that: people I care about are involved, and it would impact them a lot. For me, the biggest issue is, I think, that my death doesn’t cause financial hardship to anyone I care about. Beyond that… well.

Numbers scare me a little. I try and keep track of what I spend, but things always add up in ways I haven’t quite anticipated. I spent more than I ought to… but I like to think I’m getting better about it. I definitely don’t live beyond my means, though, and that’s comforting: I can do better, but I’m not in a hole. I’m not good with strict budgets that say I can spend x amount on y thing; I feel limited by them. Instead, I’m trying to focus on bigger picture: save x amount, put less than y amount on the credit card each month. Pay off the balance. If I end up buying a house, I know it’ll be a lot more important to absolutely stuck to this kind of thing, though, so I’m trying to get into the habit of sticking with it now.

Not that I want to end up having to change my entire lifestyle in order to buy a house – I want to buy, but I don’t want to do it if it means giving up my lifestyle. That’s a big part of why I’ve been having to try and work out all the expenses, so that the financial advisor and I can model it.

It would all become much, much easier if I’d just win the lottery or something, though.

Which… would take entering the lottery.

Which isn’t going to happen.

Alas.

End of an Era

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I can’t be absolutely certain when I first got my own desk at home, but I’m pretty sure it was soon after we moved to the US, when I was six. Mum wasn’t allowed to work in the US, of course, so she started picking up projects to keep herself busy, and one of these projects was finishing furniture. I got to pick out the stain colour, and she’d sand the raw wood and do all the staining – and thus, I ended up with a lot of matching furniture. My desk was one of these pieces, and then there were two bookcases and a dresser. The bookcases I had up until a few years ago; I’d probably still have them now except that they were both short, and thus kind of wasted space.

The desk, though – I remember that I had it positioned under a window in that first room in that first house, and that sometimes when I couldn’t sleep I’d sit there and look out into the neighbour’s driveway. I watched them have an arugment there one night; I think they saw me, though, and I freaked out and ran away.

For a while, I had my dad’s old yellow typewriter sitting on there. I really liked the solidity of typing on a typewriter (though we had an actual computer by then, and I was learning to type on it, too). Unfortunately, that typewriter really was old, and had a tendancy to jam up. My brother and I tried to take it apart and ‘fix’ it, and funnily enough, it never worked again.

Over the years, I spent hours at that desk, both for homework purposes and for all the projects I worked on: writing, sometimes drawing, sometimes other things. As a teenager, I inherited an old 486 computer, and it went on my desk; later, after I bought my own laptop, that replaced it. The desk went with me when I moved out the first time, and then came back when I did.

And then I started staying at Rohan’s all the time. There was an in-built vanity type space in his room that I set my laptop up at, but it wasn’t really a desk, and that was always one of my frustrations: I had no space of my own, not really. I moved in officially after some of the housemates moved out, though, and we moved rooms – and I inherited Rohan’s old desk. When I finally cleared out my old room at Mum and Dad’s, that desk of mine was put aside.

I’ve since replaced Rohan’s old desk with a new one (a lovely wooden one, with a leather insert on the top), and it’s seen me through several years. But lately… Well. I’ve stopped using it, except to store things on. The iMac that sits on top of it rarely gets touched, and I simply don’t sit in the desk chair, or use it as anything except something to drape jackets over.

These days, I tend to curl up on the couch with my laptop, or sit at the dining table. My iMac has a much bigger screen, but I find I’m not missing it. I can’t really play games on my laptop, but… I find I haven’t been.

Thus, I spent part of yesterday cleaning out my desk. It’s not finished, yet – all those drawers were full of things and while a lot of it can be thrown out, some of it needs new homes. I hate trying to find homes for things: I hate all the clutter. I hope that if I no longer have the desk, I’ll be able to avoid the clutter; we’ll see how that goes. I will probably end up selling my iMac to Rohan’s company, or otherwise getting rid of it.

Once it’s all done, Rohan may end up using the desk, or perhaps we’ll end up getting rid of it. Either way, it seems likely that the office will no longer be ‘our’ office, but Rohan’s (which is fair, since he spends the most time in it, and actually needs office space at home). When we move, we’ll probably use the larger bedroom as an actual bedroom, and the smaller as the office, the opposite of what we have now.

And for the first time since I was six or seven, I won’t really have a desk at all (except, of course, at work). It’s a really strange thought: the end of an era. But these days, when I’m no longer studying (and not intending to start again), and when I’m using a laptop that can so easily be moved room to room… it doesn’t really seem necessary. If we lived in a house where space was bountiful, I’d probably keep it, even relatively unused. But we live in an apartment, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. That doesn’t mean I don’t still wish, desperately, for a beautiful, antique roll-top desk. One day.

It’s all completely logical, but I admit, it still feels very strange.

Quietly Obsessed

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I am quietly obsessed with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

I guess this post means I’m about to become less quiet about the obsession.

Basically, it’s a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, in a modern way. That, of course, has been done before, but… well, what makes this one new and different, and, to me, absolutely fascinating, is that it’s being done with new media.

Lizzie Bennet is a post-grad student making a video blog, and the story is played out not only using her video blogs, but also using twitter and tumblr (and so on). There have also been spin-offs, showing more of the story from the perspectives of Maria Lucas and Lydia Bennet via their own video blogs. The cast (and occasionally, the characters themselves) will interact with fans in the various mediums.

End result? It’s all exceedingly meta, and absolutely fascinating. I love the blurred line between what is real and what is not – apparently, there are enough stupid people out there that there are a few viewers who didn’t realise that it was fiction. How, exactly, that is possible I don’t know, but it’s an interesting thing.

I know the story of Pride and Prejudice really well, so I keep finding myself thinking ahead and trying to work out how the writers are going to adjust the original story to suit these new mediums. Modern retellings have to shift things around a lot – you can’t have people proposing marriage out of nowhere, for example. Clearly, things need to change. So far, they’ve been very clever in doing this to keep the integrity of the story; I can’t wait to see how the rest plays out.

The really wonderful (and awful) thing is that with two video diaries a week, the whole thing is more or less playing out in real time – and is likely to take another five months to finish. That is an awful lot of waiting. But it’s also an awful lot of new canon to squeal over, and I suspect by the time it does finish, I will be bereft. What will I do, when I no longer have new videos to wake up to twice a week?

(#firstworldproblems)

Mathematical Wizardry

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My name is Louise, and I have a problem.

I really, really, really love elections.

I love watching polls, in the lead up. I love reading about what’s going on in key places. I love stressing over whether my preferred candidate(s) are going to win.

And I really love the numbers.

It’s weird, because back in high school I had no time for maths. I dropped even the most basic maths option after year eleven because I hated it so much – I just couldn’t see the point in continuing with it. I came very close to first in the subject before doing so, and was strenuously advised against it, but I was adamant: I wanted nothing to do with it.

The older I get, though, the more value I see in practical applications. It’s the same with science: I didn’t even consider taking any of the science subjects after year ten, and would have said quite honestly that I found science boring. And now… not so much. Not at all.

Rohan showed me Moneyball a few months ago, and despite having no interest in baseball whatsoever, I found it fascinating: the idea that you could predict winners and losers based on the numbers. Algorithms and probability and statistics and… all of these things made sense for me.

And the same is true for elections. It’s all down to polling data: with the right statistical analysis, you can predict actual results. Accurately. Really accurately. Of course, a lot of people don’t like the idea – but today’s election results seem to be a pretty conclusive win for some people say.

Me? I’m delighted. I love polling data. And I love it even more when someone smarter than me can explain what those numbers really mean.

(And yes, I’m also delighted by today’s election results. So many women! Obama! Gay marriage! Marijuana decriminalisation! There are a lot of wins, right there. I may no longer live in the USA, but I find that (overly complicated, utterly inefficient) system fascinating; this certainly won’t be the last of their elections I obsess over.)

I may even be ready to cope with Australia’s next federal election, although I’m not quite sure about that.

Recipe: Caramel Apple Panna Cotta

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I keep intending to make posts– I even keep writing half-finished posts– but I’m not doing too well at this point. Today, however, I have a recipe to make note of, and that gives me a more, uh, focused purpose.

This all started with a desire to use up some of the apples I have sitting around at the moment. You’ll notice that the finished product… does not have any apples in it. I blame the caramel. It’s distracting. Caramel usually is.

I used a lot of other people’s recipes for this, and just… pulled them together into my own thing. Maybe one day I’ll be making my own recipes, but… not yet.

Anyway. Onwards!

Step One: Cake (optional)

Source: Allrecipes

This is completely optional; it’s really about whether or not you want to keep your caramel smooth on top, or sprinkle it with cake. Or you could just sprinkle it with salt. Really, it’s totally up to you, but I used cake.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup flour
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder (heaped)
  • 1/4 cup milk

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 175c (350f). Butter a baking pan. It doesn’t really matter what size: this is a small cake, and you’re going to crumble it all anyway.
  2. In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder and then add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally, stir in the milk until the batter is smooth. Poor into the prepared pan.
  3. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and springs back at the touch. It won’t take long, so do keep an eye on it.
  4. Set aside to cool. If you really can’t resist, tear off a piece of it and eat it hot – it’s ok!
  5. Turn cake into crumbs. You’ll probably only need half of it, so put the rest aside. You’ll eat it later, I promise

Step Two: Spiced Apple Panna Cotta

Source: Better Recipes

This needs to be made the day before you want to serve it (or the morning of, I suppose – you need probably 6-8 hours in the fridge, ideally).

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup apple juice
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 5 whole cloves
  • 1 tsp gelatin
  • 1 tsbp cold water
  • 1/3 cup greek yoghurt
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 3/4 cup heavy cream
  • 3 tbsp sugar
  • 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out

Directions:

  1. Combine apple juice, cinnamon stick and cloves in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce apple juice to 1/4 cup. Remove cinnamon stick and cloves.
  2. In a small bowl, sprinkle gelatin over cold water. Let sit undisturbed.
  3. Whisk the yogurt, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large bowl.
  4. Add cream, sugar, vanilla bean and seeds to the reduced apple juice in the saucepan and bring to a simmer. Off the heat, remove the vanilla pod and whisk gelatin into cream to dissolve, then whisk cream mixture into yogurt.
  5. Pour into martini glasses and refrigerate at least 6-8 hours, until firm.

Step Three: Salted Caramel Sauce

Source:Taste

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2/3 cups firmly packed brown sugar
  • 300ml thickened cream
  • Sea salt to taste. (Optional)

Directions:

  1. Combine the caster sugar and water in a small saucepan. Stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Use a wet pastry brush to brush down the side of the pan to dissolve any remaining sugar crystals. Increase heat to medium-high and bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium and boil, uncovered, without stirring, for 10 minutes or until the mixture turns a light golden colour.
  2. Remove from the heat and use a wooden spoon to stir in the brown sugar. Stir in the cream (it may splutter a little) until well combined. Stir in salt – just keep tasting it until it taste right to you. Return to medium heat and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until smooth.
  3. Pour the sauce into a jug of some kind and cool on the bench for at least an hour (covered with cling wrap). Then put it in the fridge.
  4. Scrape remaining caramel sauce out of the saucepan with leftover bits of cake. Or anything else you have. Trust me, it’s delicious.

Step Four: Put it all together

After your panna cotta has had several hours to set (at least – I recommend 4-5), get the caramel sauce out of the fridge and microwave until it is pourable but not hot.

Pour the sauce over the set panna cotta – fill the glasses most of the way to the top with it.

Sprinkle cake crumbs over the top. If you want the cake to sink in to the caramel, do this right after pouring it on. If you want it to sit on top, put the panna cotta back in the fridge for at least an hour before sprinkling it on. Either way works.

Put it all back in the fridge for another hour or two, and then serve.

Turbulence on Reentry

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We’ve been home now for two weeks, and it’s been… hard.

Getting back into the swing of the real world after spending so long in pretendy-world land is always difficult, but I think I’ve had some added complications which have only made things more difficult. Part of that is because of work, which has been stressful in an abstract, emotional way rather than an overwork kind of way. I don’t deal well with uncertainty, and since getting back I’ve had a lot of that to deal with. Politics, man; they’re only fun when there’s a disconnect between you and them.

Another part of it is my increasing frustration with where we live. We’ve been in the same apartment for four years, now; in another six weeks we’ll sign the lease for a fifth. Half of our relationship (holy shit, I guess we really are coming up towards eight years) has been spent in this place, and that’s not inconsiderable.

It’s a nice apartment. It’s big, and it has a spectacular view out over the city. But the kitchen is tiny and the oven is awful, and I am increasingly tired of having to ask permission to hang pictures on the walls, deal with six monthly inspections where we get told off for not dusting the cistern of the toilet, and – well, the list goes on.

I think we’re increasingly in that point in our lives where we want to start, bit by bit, putting together rooms that are exactly the way we want them, with exactly the right furniture and decor and arrangement. We could start doing that, in some ways, but it’s hard to plan a room if you don’t know whether you’ll be using the same room in twelve months time. We can’t hang our own curtains, or put up different blinds, or replace the oven.

I’ve wanted to buy a place for a while now, and I think Rohan is finally on the same page as me. Obviously, we’re not going to be able to run out and redecorate and buy new furniture instantly, if we manage to buy, but it’d be a long-term project with achievable goals. I suspect both pairs of itchy feet would be soothed.

Of course, it’s not quite that easy. The property market in Sydney is well overpriced, and the area we want to live in is not exactly on the cheap end of that. I earn good money, and Rohan is well-paid for what he does despite averaging a lot less billable hours, but neither of us really wants to spend half our net income on a mortgage. The real trick, then, is to manage to do this without having to lose too much of our lifestyle in the process. It’s a tricky balance, but I think we can do it.

A lot of the really nice places in this area are out of our price range – but there’s a lot that I think is potentially doable. Whatever we end up with won’t be a forever-house, but it’ll be stable. It’ll most likely be a two bedroom unit, probably in the Gore Hill/Greenwich area which is just slightly cheaper than Wollstonecraft/Crows Nest. It will have an internal laundry (that’s non-negotiable in our book), and gas (it would take a lot for us to give up on that). And for the rest… we’ll see.

So that’s what the next twelve months will be focused on. In August next year, we’ll take a really close look at our finances and see if it really is feasible (unless prices go up excessively between now and then, I’m pretty sure the answer will be yes), and then… well. Take the plunge, I guess.

I feel better, resigning our lease, feeling (relatively) confident that it will be our last one. And in the meantime – every time I reach for my credit card to buy that new pair of shoes, or that cute dress, or whatever it is, I’ll hopefully be able to give it a bit more thought. Do I really need it? Is that money better off sitting in my savings account until it can be used as a deposit? Hopefully, having more concrete plans will make that easier to stick to. It’s not that I can’t spend money on more frivolous things; I just need to think seriously about it first.

Because a place that is ours, with all the attendant headaches, will definitely be worth it.

In the meantime, I will stare at real estate advertisements, and, in particular, at floorplans. What is it about floorplans that are so much fun? They make me happy.

Homeward Bound

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And now, after everything, it’s time to go home.

I am so tired I can’t seem to think about anything but sleeping in my own bed – and that’s still a long way away.

We arrived in Los Angeles earlier than scheduled, and thus managed to get to the hotel by a little before ten. Unfortunately, they’d lost our reservation, and despite their apologies and the ‘upgrade’ they were supposedly giving us for being patient, I’m pretty sure we didn’t even get the room I booked let alone a better one. Worse, I’m pretty sure I paid in advance, but they charged us when we checked out; I’ll have to check my credit card to be sure, and that’ll have to wait until we get home, so we’ll see. It’ll be a pain if I have to chase them up over it, so I hope I’m wrong.

In any case, the hotel was otherwise fine, and only a block from Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood, which was certainly relatively convenient. We rushed the shower, and then a real bed, and that was really as much as we needed right then.

Wednesday was cool and damp but not outright wet for the most part. We witnessed a car accident within five minutes of leaving our hotel, and saw several more examples of road rage and near miss accidents in the time that followed. I am never driving in Los Angeles. Never, ever, ever.

We quite liked West Hollywood, though I am still not really a fan of Los Angeles in general. We spent quite a lot of time wandering, before eventually heading to find a bus to take us to Santa Monica, where we were eventually due to meet up with a friend of Rohan’s. Unfortunately, it turns out that only some of the 704 buses go all the way to Santa Monica – the rest stop short. Guess which kind ours was? Oh yes.

So we ended up walking the 4.5 miles to Santa Monica, which just about killed me. My joints ache. No matter.

The smog, once we finally got to Santa Monica, was intense. It made the whole thing seem almost post-apocalyptic. I am well and truly spoiled by Australian beaches, I think. We had restorative cocktails in the pier, and then walked down to the end and enjoyed the kitschy tourism of it all. When we walked back, long tables had been set up in the park: right next to all the decadence, there was a mobile soup kitchen handing out dinner to homeless person after homeless person. There are so many of them – it’s just awful.

Later, we were picked up by Rohan’s friend Ashley and her boyfriend, and we all had a pleasant dinner of vegetarian Indian food; they also saved us from the public transport system by driving us home. Where I promptly collapsed, swearing never to walk again.

Clearly, not a statement I intended to actually live up to, especially since we’d decided somewhere along the line that since we had to check out of the hotel by midday, and our flight was not until 11:50pm, we might as well go out with a bang and do Universal Studios.

More walking was definitely called for.

But first we had breakfast at a 50s style diner (which was surprisingly tasty), and rustled up some internet access to check messages – and then there was a cab ride through Laurel Canyon, past Mulholland Drive, and out towards Studio City.

I’d been to Universal Studies before– I want to say it was in 1998, when I was last in LA, but it’s possible it was before then. In either case, it was a long time ago, so I was pretty confident things would have changed since then. Actually, not everything had. I’m pretty convinced that the Waterworld show was on when I was there– despite still not having seen the film, I probably enjoyed it more this time. Although the script is terrible. That, and the Studio Tour, were obvious highlights, and definitely made the day worthwhile. The whole thing was kitsch and over-commercialised, but still fun.

Our cab on the way home took us through Hollywood itself, so I guess we ticked that box this trip, too, even if we didn’t walk down the hall of fame, or see anything in detail. Not really important to us, in the end.

We filled our last few hours with (more) cocktails and a shared pizza, and now we’re killing time at the airport.

I can’t say it feels as though this holiday has disappeared in a flash, because it’s honestly hard to remember when we left home. I will be glad to get home, though that definitely doesn’t mean I’m looking forward to the hundreds and hundreds of emails waiting for me at work… or being at work at all.

When do we get to go away next?

Train, Train, Train~

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I am writing this entry right after writing the previous one, so this is sort of a continuation, but it’s really separate, so too bad, who cares.

Amy dropped Rohan and I off at the train station early on Monday morning, right after Rohan finally got an espresso shot he really liked. There were loads of PAX people at the station, which, in retrospect, shouldn’t have surprised me: the train is a long, but economical way to get back down the coast, and it has the added benefit of having more room – which means it’s easier to socialise and play games. It turns out it’s actually an annual thing, organised over the internet, for a lot of these people – a chance to continue the PAX experience.

Rohan and I paid extra to get a sleeper rather than reclining chairs. The basic sleeper isn’t huge (during the day, there are two chairs facing each other with a pull-out table in between them; at night, one bed is placed across those two chairs, while another folds down from the ceiling), but it’s cosy enough for two. Including in the price of the sleeper is all meals (but no booze), which is fun: there’s no guilt about ‘do I want dessert’ or ‘do I want a side of sausage with my breakfast’, because it’s all included anyway. You do still need to tip, which is where it’s helpful to drink alcohol – otherwise, you run out of change pretty fast.

The food is tasty, but nothing special; there’s been enough choice that Rohan hasn’t had to eat the same vegetarian option for lunch and dinner. Sleeper car passengers can enjoy free wine and cheese tasting for an hour each afternoon, too. Plus, there’s champagne when you first get on.

And the scenery is spectacular. I think that’s my favourite thing about train travel: there is stuff to see out the window, and it changes constantly. We started off seeing the outskirts of Seattle, including Boeing Field, and later moved onwards, following the Sound down through Tacoma and onwards for hours and hours. Eventually, it all turns into pine forests as you climb upwards through the mountains – and then when we woke up this morning, we were in California, and it was scrubby and barren, rather more like the scenery we’re used to.

There’s wireless in the lounge car that the sleeper cars have access to, but it’s come and go, with rather more emphasis on the ‘go’. I’ve more or less given up trying to use it – and it’s ok. I’ve been curling up and reading for hours, taking naps, and just watching the scenery pass on by. I’d much, much, much rather travel this way than fly. I’d actually argue that this trip – even in a sleeper car – is cheaper than flying and paying for a hotel and food. The same can’t be said for some of the other trips we’d like to do (like the Indian Pacific or the Ghan in Australia), but I think it’d still be worth it.

And sleeping on a train is much easier than sleeping on a plane, in my experience.

We’ve also had some interesting conversations with people we’ve met – some PAXers, some individual travellers. Rohan has found someone to talk game development with, which has been making him very happy, which is fine by me. I do kind of like the communal aspect of dining in this kind of situation, where you do end up talking to people you might not have otherwise met. Not all of the conversations are going to be good ones, necessarily, but there’s the potential for interesting things, certainly.

We’ve just passed San Luis Obispo, so we still have a few hours of travel left, but not so many. It’s all farmland at the moment (it looks like grapes, I think, but we’re travelling too fast for me to get a proper look), but we’ll hit the coast in a while, and then follow that for a while, and I’m looking forward to that.

As enjoyable as the trip is, it will be nice to sleep in a proper bed tonight. And nice to sleep next to Rohan, instead of above him (on a different bunk, obviously).

And nice to have internet access again.

I guess.

10 Days Later

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And then I stopped blogging for nearly two weeks.

Seattle was… a completely different kind of trip, I guess. Visiting people, as opposed to visiting a place – although we did that, too. I was pretty apprehensive beforehand about how it would work; before this trip, I’d only ever met two online friends before, and in neither case was I staying in their home. Or seeing them for this long. My apprehension was all for nothing, though: online friends really do translate into offline friends perfectly well. I’ve known all of them for years, and they were largely what I expected they would be, and that made it a really easy transition.

For me, anyway. I know it was a little different for Rohan, who had spoken to a couple of these people on skype before, but didn’t really know them the way I do. It’s something of a reversal from early in our relationship, when I was being introduced to all of his friends for the first time. Still, it worked out.

The Space Needle

The Space Needle

And instead of coming back to my computer in the evening after dinner, I tended to be talking to people instead. (Which does not mean that Amy and I did not hold conversations on our laptops while in different parts of the house.) It’s unusual for me, that I was so able to cope with that much social interaction without just shutting down; normally, I’m not so resilient.

And no, we did not spend all of our time talking about the online games we all play.

We also did do a fair amount of sightseeing. Seattle is probably not a city I would have visited were it not for having friends, and that would be a shame: I really like Seattle a lot. It’s a very food-focused city, which suits me perfectly. They have farmers markets where you can buy all kinds of amazing fresh produce, for example, and an amazing chocolate factory that is doing some pretty cool stuff with fair trade (and have salted caramels to die for). And then there’s Puget Sound, which is huge, and all the lakes: it’s a very water-focused city, which suits me fine. In other words, it’s the kind of city I could actually see myself living in. It probably helped, however, that we had ten sunny, warm days there – I know full well the weather is not always that nice.

Cinnamon Rolls

We made these!

We ate some amazing meals at places like Mistral Kitchen, RN74 and Purple. We went wine-tasting (and Rohan even went whisky-tasting). We took a ferry across to Bainbridge Island, and went to the Pacific Science Centre. I finally got to go to a Fluevog store and try all the shoes on in person. Rohan went to PAX Dev, and we all went to PAX itself. We did the Seattle Underground tour, which was fantastic. Some of us went kayaking, toured the chocolate factory, and– well, the list goes on. There were cinnamon rolls. And sadly, I’m already having trouble remembering what we did on all the different days.

In short, I was so busy doing stuff and talking to people that blogging did not happen. Or e-mailing. Or… much of anything online, really. Whoops.

I think Rohan and I were both sad to leave. We had amazing hosts (people we would definitely hang out with on a regular basis if we lived close enough to do so; alas), and between them and the others in our group, there was no shortage of good company. It’s a little strange, really, going back to the kind of trip where Rohan and I see huge amounts of each other, but not necessarily anyone else.

The group of girls

Together at last!

Someone needs to invent teleportation now, please, so that we can do this more often.