"She's the salt of the earth and she's dangerous"

Titles all this week are going to be whatever random Green Day lyrics strike my fancy...because I'm going to their concert on Saturday, and I'm very excited about it.

This post will continue the tradition of random things...some of which I'm getting caught up on like these pictures of my office:


This one is taken from the door looking into the room.


This one is taken from the opposite corner.

I love my office...my chair could be a bit more comfortable, but it was a cheap chair and when there is money, we will upgrade to something a wee bit nicer.

Yesterday was a Berkeley day. For those of you who don't know Berkeley, it has a reputation of being pretty eclectic. There's a mix of university students, old hippies, academics (sometimes they're old hippies, too), street kids and street adults, tourists, and people who were born and raised here. There's a pretty large East Indian community in Berkeley, too. Public oppinion tends towards the very liberal/radical in this little city by the Bay.

Anyway, I spent a good deal of time in downtown Berkeley yesterday. HippyChick and BeeDragon and I were waiting for BeeDragon's motion sickness to subside so that we could get a cab up to the football game. We got to watch a guy dancing in front of the BART station, then we watched a drum corp and honor guard from a middle school perform (they rocked!). There was also excellent, as always, people watching.

We did finally get to the stadium where there was 1) no indoor bathrooms and 2) no beer. Actually, I'm thankful that there was no beer, in retrospect, because when we got to our seats there was a very vocal and annoying fan behind us, and I can only imagine what she would have been like drunk. She knew exactly how the game should be played and had to comment on everything the players and coaches were doing wrong. She also seemed to feel that our section was not cheering loud enough and that we were also contributing to the crap performance of the team. And it really was crap...at first. When we got there, we were down 7 to 17, but in the 2nd half they just really played well, and beat Illinois 35 to 20. Of course, as soon as they started playing well, people started to cheer.

I won't say that I will go out of my way to buy tickets to a football game in the future, but I have to say that I enjoyed myself. It really is much more fun to watch in person, especially when the game is going your way. I'd go to another game. However, HippyChick pointed out, after I said that I thought they might get another "goal," that I really am a hockey fan deep down (goals in football are rightly called "touchdowns").

I finally got my monitor hooked up, and was able to access the internet for a bit last night. But then again today, I was having the same problems I've had with not being able to connect to my server. After calling India (the Earthlink support center is in Bombay, according to a very nice rep who was very patient with me) and talking for about an hour, they figured out that it was that I had 2 different firewalls installed and it wasn't just keeping things out, it was keeping me in. So out went the old, and all is now peachy.

I'm off for a bit more Berkeley this afternoon...look out world, Spinster could get a little odd!