Archive for August, 2004

If you do not watch the creme brulee very carefully, the sugar catches fire and fills the kitchen with smoke. Oddly, though, the custard underneath is largely untouched by the flaming sugar, and remains delicious.

I wrote to ultrabithorax the other day, since he seems to have fallen off the face of the earth. He replied to me in his inimitable style, telling me that he is largely fine, although still unemployed, and not to freak out to much at his disappearance. He’ll be back.

I cancelled my attendance at bowlerbehrsf’s August Game Night get-together because the Los Angeles crud has really kicked my butt. I think I’m finally over it, though – I’m coughing out phlegm and feeling much better. bigjohnsf, progbear, and I went to the airport at around 22:00 to pick up thornyc, who’s staying with us for a few days.

Thor gathered, we all whisked over to the Lumiere Theatre for their screening of Richard Elfman’s The Forbidden Zone. I’ll write more up about it later.

In case you don’t read my friends’ list, check out my friend, eyeno, and his zany retro photo collections. Here’s an example.

A check from a client bounced. This is very frustrating. I’m on top of taking care of it, but frustrating to deal with nonetheless. I’m feeling better – not congested, but still have a sore throat.

I went down to the Bay Area Reporter’s office today and made my ad buy. This is the ad that bitterlawngnome did for me.

In other news, I had my client take me to the airport where I got on stand-by for an earlier flight. Fortunately, I got on that flight – Los Angeles air makes me sick – I’m all congested and sore throated and runny nosed. Fortunately, San Francisco air is clean and cool and moist. Well, not today, where it’s in the upper 80’s today, but the prinicple is sound.

The sun in Los Angeles shines its way through a filter of smog, creating a barely amber light that enamors people the world over. The legend of California is based upon that quality of light, I think. It makes people both look better and sickly. That healthy glow shines forth from even the most gaunt and wretched street person. Everyone just looks good here.

I woke yesterday morning at 03:30, and I got to OAK by 05:15, an hour and 15 minutes before my flight was to leave. Southwest has a nifty feature on their website, allowing passengers to check in online and get a boarding pass to print out and bring with them to the airport, bypassing the long lines and ensuring themselves a good seat.

The flight itself was uneventful, and The Porno Client™ met me at the curb, whisking me off to a huge breakfast of eggs, corned beef hash, and pancakes at a charming country-style cafe up in Beachwood Canyon. Then we were off to his place, where I installed VNC on his fourteen computers. The router proved to be a problem, though, and doesn’t want to do the necessary port forwarding.

After installing the software and doing some preliminary testing, it was lunch time, so he took me to this amazing Arabic food joint in a teensy strip mall, where I had chicken kabobs, hummus, dolmas, a salad and pita. He had half a chicken and the rest.

Back at his place, I again started working on trying to connect with his laptop via dial-up to any of the VNC test machines. It turns out that his laptop is infected with the Sasser virus, and a couple of other nasty virii, so I have to spend a few hours installing(!!!) anti-virus software, and cleaning his machine. sigh.

After that seems to be done, it’s about time to go to Fry’s for a new router. I just don’t like the old Linksys NR041 that he has, so we get another one, then head over to the Saddle House, a raucous chophouse for dinner.

The atmosphere at the Saddle House is frenetic, chaotic, loud, filled with young beautiful people, spunky wait staff, and a mechanical bull. Yes, I’m not joking, they have a mechanical bull, and for three bucks they’ll let you take a 30-second ride. Several dudes and one dudette actually paid for the experience. Poor them, especially the guy who ended up clutching at his family jewels after being tossed unceremoniously onto the padded mats surrounding the bull. One or two drinks later, and he was fine.

I had a succulent pork chop that was so big that I doubted I could eat it all, yet I persevered. The baked potato was nothing to write home about, and the whole string beans and corn were truly bad. Well, the corn was nicely seasoned and sweet, but the beans were practically raw, which would normally be a selling point with me, except that they weren’t of particularly high quality, which one would expect for the outrageous prices. As well, the utensils were the flimsiest generic restaurant utensils imaginable. I swear I was afraid I was going to bend that fork, it was that cheap. Our server, Stephanie, was very attentive, though, and I made sure the my client left her a really big tip.

After that, we came home and went to bed. He had earlier wanted to go to Slammer, but after all that food, I was afraid I’d be initiating some poor unsuspecting soul in Rainbow Showers if I was to go there, and I had been up for about 19 hours at that point and my brain was fried. My client has a lovely grecian style backless davenport which has a mattress quality seat that, with the removal of all those cushions, makes a delightfully comfortable bed.

I’ve been up for about 90 minutes now, reading LJ, drinking water – it’s so bloody dry here! – and getting prepared for the rest of my day. I am so not-hungry right now, yet I know he’s going to want to take me to breakfast when he gets up. I’ll have the diet plate, please!

(you hung up without pressing #. posting privately in case it was an accident.)

Awake, showered, drying off. Soon to be dressing to leave for the BART, to the AirBART, to the Airport, to the plane, to the Airport, to the client’s house to work.