We bought a guitar yesterday after much hemming and hawing. Both of us are interested in learning to play guitar (you know, for taking on camping trips and playing songs for our hypothetical babies-to-be), but we were also both worried that we'd buy a guitar and then not use it. But we decided that if both of us try to learn to play guitar, there's a better chance that at least one of us will use it and it won't be a waste of money.

We bought the guitar from Gryphon in Palo Alto. You know how we love supporting local businesses, and these guys especially seem really cool and excited about guitars, so I was happy to give them our money. The guitar we bought was one of their cheapest models (they also have some really super expensive and beautiful guitars that we admired from afar). We probably could've gotten a guitar for half the price at Guitar Center instead, but where's the fun in that? I'm glad we went with Gryphon.

We debated what to do about the fact that I'm left-handed and Patrick is right-handed, and we decided to buy a right-handed guitar. I can just learn to play right-handed, since that's more common anyway. So far, Patrick is picking it up faster than me. I think my fingers are too short--they're always pressing down on the wrong strings! I guess I just need to work on arching them properly.

Also, I don't think I've mentioned that Patrick is taking a welding class at College of San Mateo on Thursday nights. He hasn't gotten to weld anything yet (they're still learning about safety right now). I think it's a cool class; hopefully he'll pick up some good skills so he can make us awesome metal sculptures or something.

We tried to go to Austin's in Mountain View for some delicious ribs tonight, but when we got there the whole place was dark and it was locked up tight. There weren't any signs up indicating why they were closed, but they appeared to be closed for good. It turns out (according to the Internet) that they closed months ago due to rent increases and now only do catering. Dude, you guys could put a note on the restaurant doors letting people know what happened! Anyway, that's sad--they were our favorite barbeque place around. Now we have to find a new one. I'll kind of miss the overly talkative waitress we used to have there (she had lots of attitude, but in a loveable way). I think we'll investigate Uncle Frank's as an alternative BBQ place (we've already tried Armadillo Willy's and didn't like it).

Since Austin's had disappeared off the face of the earth, we walked around downtown Mountain View looking for someplace else to get dinner. My coworkers had mentioned the Tied House a few times, so we ended up calling Andrew to find out which street it was on (thanks, Andrew!) and went there for dinner. That was a bad decision. The place was really noisy (there was an especially loud and annoying drunk lady a few tables away; people kept asking to be reseated to be farther away from her because she kept laughing and talking so loudly) and service was slow, plus we had a hard time understanding our waiter (and apparently he had a hard time understanding us, as I ordered soup and it never came). We split a full rack of baby back ribs (much more economical than each getting a half rack), and they were pretty good ribs. We also liked their bread (it was half white and half brown with good whipped butter). So the food was okay, but the experience was not good. I don't think we'll go back.

Next door to the Tied House was Chez TJ, a cute little restaurant in a house. It looked very appealing, but super expensive ($75 per person prix fixe menu). We were hoping that we could go there for lunch or that dinner might be cheaper on weeknights, but that doesn't appear to be the case. I guess we'll just have to wait until we have a special occasion to go there.

Also, I really like Jack's bag on this season of 24. It's so simple and utilitarian--and so many pockets! I'll have to stop by a military surplus store and see if I can pick one up. It would be good as a carry-on or a gym bag, maybe. I could embroider some flowers on it :)

I am thoroughly enjoying 24 as well. I only started watching last season, but I'm hooked. Someday I want to rent the earlier seasons and watch those too.

I'm too busy enjoying life to write about it! Not much new to tell; like most weekends, this one was spent eating sushi at Akasaka, staring at our garden (only I do that), eating pastrami sandwiches at Cafe Borrone (only Patrick does that--he can get away with weekly pastrami because he also rides his bike a lot; I eat marginally healthier items) and buying flowers at the farmer's market (they've got daffodils and narcissus right now). It's a good life :) Today was a really pretty day; I'm glad it happened to be a weekend day so we could enjoy it!

Some pictures:

Some minestrone I made last week. It was tasty and chock full of vegetables!

Spinach sprouts in our garden (the rainbow chard is coming up too)! I love baby plants. Hopefully they don't get eaten by the snails.

Two panoramas of our living room (one at night and one during the day). Click for bigger versions. I realized I haven't posted pictures of our apartment since we moved in. I'll try to remedy that in the upcoming weeks.

I finally bought myself a new alarm clock after relying on my aggravating Oregon Scientific alarm clock for a few years now. The Oregon Scientific clock had everything I wanted--most importantly a weekday-only alarm so I don't have to remember to turn the alarm off on weekends--but after a few months, the buttons stopped working right. It takes multiple presses to snooze or change the alarm time, which is very annoying first thing in the morning. Apparently I'm not the only one who had that problem.

I'm looking forward to getting my new alarm clock. La Crosse products seem to get good ratings, and it has everything I want (and so much more!) except for the weekday alarm. I love the little weatherman--he'll tell me how warmly to dress every day. And Patrick can use the external temperature feature when he rides his bike to work in the mornings (speaking of which, he just got a Bianchi fixed gear bike, featured in the second panorama above. It is very slick). I also considered this Timex alarm clock, since it has the weekday alarm, but it got mixed reviews, and I don't like that the backlight is always on. So La Crosse it is. I hope I can remember to turn the alarm on and off each weekend. Or I could just wake up at 7am every day, but I love sleeping in too much to do that.

Today I went go-karting for the first time ever, as part of a company outing. I don't think I'm cut out for the go-kart lifestyle. I did enjoy wearing a jumpsuit, but I found the rest of it to be stressful. It was loud and smelled like exhaust and I couldn't see much because of my helmet. I kept going too slow because I was afraid of running into the wall when turning, and the course monitors kept waving the "move over so faster drivers can pass you" flag and pointing at me. Oh well, at least I tried it! Maybe next time we can go mini-golfing instead.