The Substantially Similar Weblog

I’ve moved to the Mission for the remainder of my stay in San Francisco. I’m in between Valencia and Guerrero on 20th, right near Mission Delores Park. Pretty big step up from a cultural perspective from Castro Valley. No more rushing to catch the last BART train home at 12:15am.

And check out the excellent concentration of free wireless caffeine locations within a couple of blocks.

I’ll be back in Boston late Friday night until next Wednesday (October 22). I’m returning to do several interviews for postgraduate judicial clerkship positions (both state and federal). My internship here in California at Altshuler, Berzon doesn’t end until Thanksgiving, but that would be too late for interviews.

If anyone has advice about inteviewing for a judicial clerkship, please let me know.

I’ll try to make some time to see my Boston folks while I’m home, although I’ll be pretty busy with the interviews and trying to telecommute to my job here. But let me know if you’d like to meet up.

Weather

I’ve been in the Bay Area for 33 days so far, and i don’t think it’s rained once yet. Although I did play bicycle polo in Golden Gate Park as the fog set in, which was almost like rain, except it wasn’t coming from the sky. September was about as sunny and pleasant as any place I’ve ever lived. Somehow, the climate seemed to know that the month was over, and now there’s a thick cloud blanket over the whole state. At least the part that I can see.

BART

It took me about two weeks to figure out a social norm around boarding BART (one of several non-integrated rail transit systems here). People were always lining up in certain places when there was no train. I hadn’t really paid attention and just walked up to the door and entered. I only recently realized that there are black spots painted on the platform every 15 feet or so to indicate where the doors will be when the train stops, and I was essentially cutting in line every day, probably pissing people off. People were too nice to say anything, though, and I finally figured it out. I’ve talked with some other folks who said they had similar experiences when first moving to the area.

Two Buck Chuck

Trader Joe’s Two Buck Chuck is all the rage here. Being able to buy drinkable wine for $2 is a privilege I thought was reserved for the French. Although many myths abound about how Trader Joe’s can sell the wine so cheaply (including the apocryphal story that American Airlines could no longer carry corkscrews on flights so they had to dump their whole collection), apparently it’s just a matter of oversupply. It also appears that California is the one state where the “Two Buck Chuck” really is Two Bucks. It’s practically an institution here; I had never heard of it back east.

So those are some of my naive East Coast first impressions. You are now prepared for your first trip to California.

I’m returning from dinner with an old friend at the Greens, a fantastic San Francisco vegetarian restaurant (strangely, they no longer use their old URL, greensrestaurant.com). It’s been years since I’ve seen this friend, and she’s now a medical doctor, and I’m on the verge of being able to call myself a lawyer. Dinner was her treat, with the excuse that she’s actually finished school.

There’s a certain comfortable pleasure in talking about old things that have become fuzzy and no longer painful. Having been out of college now for substantially longer than I actually spent there, the experience has shrunk down to size and now makes sense. Thinking about taking a job that might last many years seems reasonable in a way that it hasn’t before.

This evening—and really to some extent the past several weeks living here in California—have caused me to realize that, whatever this last transitional life phase was, it’s now over. I’m now “here,” and I know what “here” feels like.

The funny thing about life transitions is you often don’t recognize them until they’re over.

I have lots of photos of social justice events (Protests, Rallies, etc.) My personal photos have moved. If you know my mother’s maiden name, you can enter that as the username and password (all lower case) by clicking here; otherwise please e-mail me for access to these photos. I figure this way you’ll either be a friend of the family, or my credit card company. These photos are displayed using salonify, a free software program I’m working on.

Long ago, in a galaxy in New Jersey, the 2D Mens Club used to meet regularly to discuss issues of great importance. This is the only remaining record of that historic institution.

If you check this space regularly, you’ll notice it’s been empty. I have a file where I keep ideas for weblog entries, and it’s been building up over the past month, but I haven’t had time to turn anything into complete sentences. Things should improve at the end of February, when I go back out on coop. This spring, I’ll be working for Judge Reginald Lindsay in US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, so I’ll actually have weekends off.

I’ve travelled between Burlington, Vermont and Boston, Massachusetts dozens of times. Typically, we stop in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, for lunch. It’s about half-way and is one of the few towns with a number of restaurants.

On my most recent trip for the New Year’s Holiday, we discovered the Yama Restaurant, at 96 Main Street (phone, I believe, is (603) 298-5477). They serve excellent Korean and Japanese food at reasonable prices with extraordinarily-responsive service and a large number of vegetarian options. They even noticed that we ordered vegetarian entrees and brought only accompanying vegetarian condiments. Apparently, the restaurant came under new management about a year ago and expanded their cuisine. They don’t advertise but instead rely on word of mouth to attract customers.

So I thought I would do my part with the “word of mouth” thing by posting this recommendation here. Perhaps someone, someday will do a google search for “west lebanon vegetarian restaurant” and this page will appear. I’m pretty sure it’s the best restaurant I’ve been to in the state of New Hampshire.