'Tis Monday morning. Let the whining begin.

• Oh HELL yeah! (Doctor Who Monopoly tokens)
• Pacific Rim this Friday. GLORY BE!

All of the above is mainly to distract from the horror of the terrible plane crash at SFO this weekend. I don't even know what to say about this.

Passion for the drinks

Discovered a supply of lilikoi passion fruit juice. For whatever reason, getting this in the mainland is a giant pain in the arse. Thankfully, I found a local source.

With it, I took over bartender duties today and made philippine punches.

What's a philippine punch, you ask?

Fill a blender about 2 cups of crushed ice for every drink you're making. Add 2 ounces of a light rum (Baccardi is recommended), 1 ounce of Toriani Amer (I am probably spelling "Toriani" wrong), 1/4 ounce Grenadine, 2 ounces orange juice, 1 ounce lemon juice (best if fresh-squeezed from Meyers lemons), 1/2 ounce passion fruit juice.

Blend, pour into a long glass. Add a sprig of mint. Enjoy.

To add to the joy, my dad sent his children home with some tiki bar lounge music (Arthur Lyman and Martin Denny). I now have over three hours of kitchy lounge music for Tiki bars playing on my computer.

I love my life.

Gluttony and Sloth honored

Aaah, the laziness of a four-day weekend.

I only left my apartment on the Fourth ever so briefly to have lunch at my local watering hole ("lunch" was fairly liquid, but that's no surprise) as I finished reading River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay. Nice story. Kind of a choppy ending. Not quite as enjoyable as Under Heaven but still a good read. Am now re-reading an old classic I enjoy: The Man Who Used the Universe by Alan Dean Foster. Good, clean fun there.

Actually gotten some housecleaning done, which is the only non-sloth-or-gluttonous activity I've managed. Even my car hasn't been touched since Sunday. I'm aiming for a whole week of not driving so as to see what that does with my monthly gas bill.

The heat wave broke with the visit of the summer fog to the Bay Area. Much welcome, in my book. Coupled with that, the BART strike is on hiatus until early August. It's nice to have BART back just in time for pending celebrations in the City next week and the week after.

So now I must decide: do I watch more "Person of Interest" or read more brain candy sci-fi or just websurf?

Mine is a difficult life.

Independence and all that

Happy Fourth of July-slash-Independence Day, fellow Americans!

I've taken a bit of personal time to enjoy some locally-made beer and food as the start of a delightful four-day weekend. At least part of tomorrow will be dedicated to sanitizing my kitchen as I've discovered ants trying again to infest it. Little bastards.

Today, though... today's about chilling out and enjoying the holiday. Enjoying the whole being American thing and trying not to ponder the more ridiculous parts of that (Hi NSA!).

WedFriDay

Day Three of the BART strike.

Also, it's my Friday.

Relevant to anyone? Not really.

Looking forward to four days of beer and... um... whatever else there is to do.

Ho-hum deedle-dum

Day two of the BART strike. I am grateful I can bike to work.

It helps that it's a short work-week for me. Oh, the laziness I expect to enjoy over my pending four-day weekend...

It'll suck if BART is still on-strike come the weekend as that will limit my venues a tad, but there's plenty to do on my end of the Bay.

And a week from this Friday is Pacific Rim. Giant f***ing robots vs. giant f***ing monsters. This is what life is about.

Okay, maybe life is about a bit more than that, but GIANT ROBOTS VERSUS GIANT MONSTERS!

A lovely start to July

Heat wave and BART strike.

That's how the week, and the month, start.

What's BART, non-Bay-Area folks ask?

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is the train-slash-subway-slash-metro that serves the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

It's pretty much the main way to get around, other than driving. Sure, there's buses, but BART is the main way to get to different cities or across the bay.

Last time BART went on strike (and it's "BART", not "the BART") was 1996 (or was it 1997?). That was... decidedly not-fun. Since then, BART ridership and the general population of the Bay Area has increased about four times.

Glad I rode my bike today.