(no subject)

Seventy-seven degrees and sunny at Caltech. Hard to imagine that the rest of the country is still in Winter. Six degrees in Rochester. "Feels like minus six." Nonetheless I work long hours and my office is a bunker, so the value of the weather is discounted. The laser people say we can't have windows. What if an errant laser beam shot out the window and into an eye of a passer-by? Or something to that effect. My eyes burn from the fluorescent lamps and computer displays. Blink in daylight. Practice focusing on three dimensional things.

Pasadena Directory

Supermarket of choice: "Good Food," a Lebanese/Armenian market on Washington. Like half the price of Vons.

Cafes: Zona Rosa near old town Pasadena has strong coffee and a good atmosphere. There's one down Colorado in the other direction that looks good, called Zephyr I think. And if you want steak with your coffee there is an Argentine cafe/restaurant near Caltech on Colorado. The only cafe we've found with wireless internet access is Cafe Allure, also west on Colorado. That place doesn't really have a good cafe atmosphere, however. Caltech's own "red door cafe" would get the job done (good coffee, outdoor seating, caltech wireless internet) except that it is only open business hours.

Diners: California is not a Diner State, but Pasadena does have some. Best we've been to is Fox's in Altadena. But there is much finer (more exotic) dining available in Pasadena for the same price.

Bars: Old Town Pub looks promising, and Lucky Baldwin's is okay. But nothing that hits the spot.

Recommendations?

Brief notes

• We went to Food Not Bombs in Los Angeles. In Silver Lake. If you don't know, FNB is a group that takes otherwise-discarded food and makes food for the homeless. In Los Angeles they meet at a co-op house in Silverlake and the food they cook is donated. This particular Sunday it was entirely donated by Trader Joes, and consisted largely of: broccoli, mango slices, arugula, and squashes. There were five or six other folks there, twenty-somethings. When asked I said I was a student in physics. Everybody seemed hugely disappointed when I said Astrophysics. The correct answer was Nuclear Weapons.

• The night before we had found Silverlake upon our urgent need to escape from the excessively-landscaped, excessive-chain-stores environment of Pasadena. We got margaritas at one place, and beers at 4100 bar. This seemed better than the Pasadena scene but still we lack our local Lux or Spider House. We did conclude that Silverlake is infinitely cooler than Pasadena, though, still, I expect more from Los Angeles. Gems still to be found.

• This weekend we drove Mulholland Drive from Los Angeles towards the ocean. What I didn't know is that something like a third of the road is an unpaved fire-access road that's often roadblocked. We went down from the hills to Encino, had a good lunch at an Armenian deli, went to the beach at Malibu, and spent the night at jqmold's house in Camarillo.

• We went (briefly) to an (on campus) grad student party that was absolutely terrifying.

• First Fridays the Los Angeles Natural History Museum is open late, charges half-priced admission, serves alcohol, and is absent of those boisterous schoolkids who normally make the place intolerable.

• Have so far failed to meet any Caltech undergrads, allegedly key to infiltrating this place. Generally have not yet met any friends to join for adventures, aside from coworkers.