Was geben ab in diesem Beast?

August. Sweet.

Aside from the annual celebration of my birth taking place this month, August is one of my favorite months of the year. The weather is consistently nice in the city from about the middle of this month and on until around Thanksgiving; there's a lot of festivals/concerts that are a lot of fun; and finally there's the nostalgic feeling of going back to college for fall semester.

The beginning of this month has been getting off to a pretty crazy start. Rachel finally has a place in the city, and I will be helping her move into her apartment on Saturday/Sunday. It's right next to Golden Gate Park which will be sweet since I really haven't spent any time up in that piece. Also, instead of the usual drunken buffoonery tied to birthday celebrations, I think we'll be keeping it low key this year since my official descent to the grave begins in a few weeks. Although, I will openly admit that I am looking forward to torturing my sister by constantly reminding her that she'll be 30 this year, as any good younger brother should.

Big changes around the office over the past/next few weeks. A friend of mine who started here at the same time, Brett, is spending 10 months getting a Master's degree in Sweden. I've decided I hate him for this, but only because I'm green with envy. A few of our friends here are planning to make a trip over there early in the year, so assuming I can afford it I'm planning to go. Also, another friend, Bruce, who was already working here when I started will be leaving at the end of next week. This reduces the size of my company's west coast presence to 5 people. Swamped would be a good way to describe the new work load that has been dumped on me, which only adds to the malice I have for this place. I'm still working on applying for new stuff, but I'm sitting tight for a few more weeks since the beginning of September will mark 2 years here.

Goals update:

I'm still going to the gym regularly, but my timeline is definitely not realistic at all. I'll be in a lot better shape than I was when I was going regularly in Pittsburgh, but I think it will be sometime around Halloween before I get to where I want to be.

I've really been slacking on the new restaurants and museums bit, so I'm going to be checking a few of them out around my birthday. Plus, there's a sweet King Tut exhibit here right now and I'd love to see that, so that's a double-whammy right there.

As for the books, I'm Guilty as Charged of buying books with the best intention of reading them and then shelving it for the customary 3 year aging process. Thomas Pynchon came out with a new book recently that looks really good, and I'm also happy to hear that its being shopped to the Cohen brothers since it's a Big Lebowski/Detective-esque story. I have a ton of Star Wars books (F* off if you think I'm a dork) that I want to read and I can blow through them quickly, so I think I may put down 3 or 4 of those to make some headway on that goal.

Anyway, I hope everyone has good plans for the weekend.

Enjoy.