Vernal Wonders

For the first time this year, I noticed it was starting to feel warm in my apartment. Warmer than I find comfortable. The temperature on my thermostat had actually risen without the aid of my furnace. So I slid door to my balcony open a bit and was greeted by the wisps of the cool, moist, rain-drenched rain from outside. I sat in fron t of the door and continued playing my Playstation 2, allowing the air to wash over me and breathed in deep of its splendor. I dreamt of the wonderful time of year that is to come.

Spring is upon us. The season of renewal. The long Minnesota winter is over. It is a time of rejoicing.

My New Toy

Having some money from my tax refund and a promise for a belated Christmas gift from my parents, I went out shopping tonight with my guitar instructor and found myself a new toy. What do you think?

A Truly Wonderous Punch

I went to with some friends last night to celebrate J.C.'s 25th birthday at a place in Uptown called the Red Dragon. The food was excellent and the drinks were even better. It was a good time, in fact one of the best times I've had in a while. I had a lot of steam built up that needed to be blown off, and it felt good to finally let loose a bit. I didn't realize before how much I needed that. Thank you.

Happy birthday, Christian!

Deferred

Well, I got the call today. The one that I have been digging a hole in the bottom of my stomach waiting for for the past week. I understand many of you are curious as well. (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.)

I didn't get it.

I don't think I need to tell you this is a rather large disappointment. I won't go into the particulars or the reasons why. Such things are not suited for a public forum such as this. I will say that the reasons aren't all bad, but that doesn't really make me feel any better about it in the here and now.

The upshot is at least I finally know where I will be 2 months from now.

13:55

I hit the treadmill tonight and managed to do the mile in 13 minutes and 55 seconds. That may not sound impressive to you, but it is my fastest time since I was about 12 years old, and this is after laying dormant for about the past 4 months. Now to bring that time down even further!

Of Lodi

I actually got back from Lodi on Saturday night, but I haven't really gotten a chance to write about it until now.

Now, I know you're going to ask, so I'm just going to get it out of the way. The interview went about as well as it probably could have. I honestly don't know my chances of actually getting the job, and I'm not going to offer speculations in this medium. I'll just say that they should be letting me know in the next week or two.

Back to Lodi. Lodi is located about an hour south from the Sacramento Airport (which is on the north end of the city) in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley.
On my way down I passed through Elk Grove, a burgeonung suburb of Sacramento which reminded me a lot of Maple Grove back here in the Twin Cities. Lot's of new construction and shopping centers typical of American suburbia.

Lodi is a relatively small town of about 60,000 people. They have a cute little downtown area (pictured above) filled with all kinds of restaurants. The outskirts of the town are lined with the same suburban-like shopping centers, which includes just about everything one would need. This includes an In-N-Out Burger which was a new experience for me. Fairly decent burger and extremely fast.

Once you get out of town it's vineyards as far as the eye can see (the picture was taken from my car while heading down the highway, so I apologize for the crappy quality). Lodi is home to about 85 wineries, most of which offer tastings either for free or for a nominal charge. I visited one that was recommended to me called Michael & David. I went in to taste a couple of their white wines and ended up tasting just about everything they had in stock. The girl just kept giving me samples. She was really helpful though and I ended up buying their three-pack which includes the 7 Heavenly Shards (Chardonnay), 7 Deadly Zins (red zinfandel), and 6th Sense Syrah, all of which I approve of. And I don't normally even like wine. I also bought a bottle of a late harvest symphony from the Lodi Wine & Vistors Center, which was promised to be very sweet and very good.


So Lodi is a nice little town. Pretty quiet, though I am told it has the second highest incidence rate of car thefts in the state of California (the highest being Modesto not far to the south). It is fairly close to San Francisco and really close to Sacramento where the Govenator lives, though. It also isn't too long a drive to the mountains or the ocean. And despite the pictures depicting clouds and rain, I was told that it is actually very sunny most of the time. Sounds nice.

Bags are Packed

I haven't written about this before, but I think most of my readers (all 3 of you) know that a little while back I applied for a certain job transfer. I don't normally write about work here, I like to keep my professional life and my private life seperate. But in this case, one has no choice but to have a drastic impact on the other. The job transfer is for a position in Lodi, California.

Lodi is a relatively small town just a bit to the south of Sacramento and east of San Francisco, right in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley. Wine country. Tomorrow (or rather today - I just looked at the clock) I fly out there for an interview and a look around. Should be a lot of fun. We'll see what happens.