![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Getting to know the area..
Sep. 20th, 2006 11:16 pmWe finally went into the city this past Saturday, taking the train to avoid driving and parking for the first time in a strange city. We wandered around Haight-Ashbury for the afternoon, checking out some of the shops, getting more incense and a nifty gauzy-hippie sort of top for me and such. Tasty dinner at the Magnolia pub after checking out an impromptu band playing in the park. It was a little weird how obvious some of the dealers were out front, we felt like we were almost walking a gauntlet of sketchy people trying to sell us things. Overall, really cool place. I'm looking forward to checking out Japantown and the Mission districts next time.
This week has been spent so far in orientations at Stanford for all the first-year PhD candidates, and while we were on campus all day on Tuesday, today was a half-day outing to Monterey and the Hopkins Marine Research Station there.
It was the first time we got a chance to see the Pacific Ocean, and it's a really lovely spot. I was amazed by the variety of life there in the kelp beds.. seals, pelicans, cormorants standing on the rocks, ignoring the surf as it comes crashing in around them, egrets, seagulls and sandpipers, and some odd burrowing squirrels.
We had a lovely dinner there with the other students at the station, and hung out staring at the tide coming in as the sun went down behind us, tinting the sky a rainbow hue in the haze above the hills.
We got some more stuff done here, as well.. some pictures hung, and the new computer chairs which Henri put together, and are rather nice and comfy.. much better than my mostly-broken desk chair of the past several years.
Off to bed.. all this sun and no rain makes me very tired. They tell me it won't rain out here until December. I don't think I'm ok with this. I need it to rain.. it just doesn't feel right if there's no rain for weeks on end. I guess I paid attention to the weather patterns in New England more than I thought about, since now that I'm outside them, it just seems weird.
Later.
-Me.
This week has been spent so far in orientations at Stanford for all the first-year PhD candidates, and while we were on campus all day on Tuesday, today was a half-day outing to Monterey and the Hopkins Marine Research Station there.
It was the first time we got a chance to see the Pacific Ocean, and it's a really lovely spot. I was amazed by the variety of life there in the kelp beds.. seals, pelicans, cormorants standing on the rocks, ignoring the surf as it comes crashing in around them, egrets, seagulls and sandpipers, and some odd burrowing squirrels.
We had a lovely dinner there with the other students at the station, and hung out staring at the tide coming in as the sun went down behind us, tinting the sky a rainbow hue in the haze above the hills.
We got some more stuff done here, as well.. some pictures hung, and the new computer chairs which Henri put together, and are rather nice and comfy.. much better than my mostly-broken desk chair of the past several years.
Off to bed.. all this sun and no rain makes me very tired. They tell me it won't rain out here until December. I don't think I'm ok with this. I need it to rain.. it just doesn't feel right if there's no rain for weeks on end. I guess I paid attention to the weather patterns in New England more than I thought about, since now that I'm outside them, it just seems weird.
Later.
-Me.
