unwiredben

I'm got a brief moment of Internet connectivity here from the ICTR, so I wanted to post a quick note about the trip to Africa. So far, it's been really wonderful. Safari was great, with us seeing all of the "big 5" animals: lions, leopard, buffalo, rhinos, and elephants. We also saw a huge zebra and wildebeest migration where you were surrounded by these creatures as far as the eye can see. The pictures will be amazing.

However, there is other news. On the third night of the safari, while looking down on the Ngorongoro Crater from our room at the lodge, I asked my girlfriend, Annelies, to marry me. She immediately said yes! We're both very excited. At this time, we know NOTHING about the actual wedding; there will be time to plan all of that out after we move to New York.*

I hope you all are doing well back in the US. Today, we're in downtown Arusha, and tomorrow we fly to Zanzibar. I miss you all, but I'm also having a great and relaxing and romantic time out here.

*Annelies says: sorry to tell you all about this via internet instead of in person- but we're super excited and couldn't wait a week until we're back in telephone-land to let you know!!! (and also the ring is beautiful!!!!!)

Yesterday morning, I dropped off Annelies early in the morning at Austin's airport. According to the flight tracking, her last of three flights just landed at Kilimanjaro airport in Tanzania, so she's probably getting off the plane and going through immigration now.

We spent the last couple of weeks doing all the fun Austin stuff we could. We went to the Alamo Drafthouse three times, including a really fun "Real Genius" quote-along that I mentioned on Twitter. We had dinner out with several couples, getting to go to some places we'd not been in a while. We sat on my couch and watched "Out of Africa" and "Before Sunrise" and travel programs about climbing Kilimanjaro and going on safari in the Serengeti.

Friday night was a big Russian food dinner party that she hosted with her friend Heather. There was lots of toasting with vodka and lots of different salads and appetizers to try, most featuring mayonnaise! Saturday night, we had date night and went out to Zoot, one of Austin's fancy restaurants that I'd never visited. It was very nice; they have a farmer's tasting menu that's all vegetarian, although not vegan, so we both got that. The risotto with truffles was amazing, and I also really liked their basil ice cream that was part of Annelies' dessert.

I know that she'll be doing well out there. She's spent a lot of time preparing for the trip, and she's got great travel skills. I'm definitely already missing her, but we've got some ways to stay in touch, including cell phone and Skype. She's also writing a travel blog about the trip so all of her friends and family can see what's she's doing. (Here's the syndication feed for it as well!)

In a previous entry, I mentioned New York City as playing a major role in the upcoming year. Here's an elaboration.

My wonderful girlfriend of almost two years, Annelies, is about to head to Africa for her last semester of law school. She's going over to Tanzania to work with the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, leaving in late January and returning in May. She'll be stationed in Arusha, the large city near Mt. Kilimanjaro. I'm planning on traveling out to Africa at the end of her internship and spend a little time there with her before she returned to the US.

While she's gone, I'll have lots of work to finish for Palm, plus in March, I'll have the 2008 SXSW festival. I'm doing the Palm OS schedule again, although I hope that we got enough infrastructure changes into the program last year so that we don't have to add more hacks to deal with the ever increasing number of events.

The next two months will be spent with Annelies preparing for the New York State bar, which is at the end of July. She'll be able to study for it here in Austin, but she'll have to fly up to Rochester to actually take the two-day exam. She won't know the results for a while after that.

I've also got my sister's wedding to attend at the end of July. I get to be a groomsman, and I really like her fiance.

After that, we'll start our rental search in NYC. We want to find a nice place in Brooklyn near the main subway line that goes to her law firm in Manhattan where she has a job waiting for her in their litigation department. Since I already work remotely for Palm, I expect that I'll continue to work for them once I move; the big change will be that my flights to California will take a few more hours each way and I'll have to deal with lousy JFK instead of the more hospitable AUS. At least I can do a red-eye back to New York.

We're planning on not having a car up there. Going car-less worked well for us this summer during our trial run; we rented a car once to go to an out-of-town wedding, and almost every place delivers there, although we might have to rent out a truck for a day to do some IKEA and Costco runs.

The move will happen sometime in August or early September. I'm excited about my new adventures up in the big city, but I'm also sad that I'll be leaving Austin as my home. However, Austin won't leave my heart; I'm already planning on coming back every March for SXSW as long as I'm able. I've still got a while here, including some time where I'll be on my own, so I'm going to take advantage of as much of the city as I can before I leave.

We went bowling with friends on Sunday night, and Annelies rolled her best game ever, a 180.  She also got four strikes in a row, and six frames in a row with no pins left standing.  She says that in during that time she spent in Kazakstan, bowling was one of her few recreational activities.  What an amazing girlfriend!

I've had a very busy couple of weeks since getting back from Boston, so I'm just now finding time to talk about the last two days of my trip.

Saturday was a trip up to Salem, "Witch City".  It was an easy drive out of the city, passing through lots of smaller towns until we reached the coast.  For a while, Salem was the largest port in the US, with the largest business being fishing.  We got lost a few times and had to turn around after crossing the bridge to exit the city, but eventually we got a parking space near the Salem Commons.

A walk through the park in the rain, and we found lunch at a Mexican eatery, then we toured the Salem Wax Museum.  Lots of life-sized displays of early trading life and the horrors of the trials.  It was OK, but there was a pretty horrid statue that they were raising money to bronze.  We just said no to that.  We then toured one of the cemeteries, looking at graves from the 18th century, including that of Judge Hathorne.  That was followed by the Witch Village tour which started in this odd gift/magick shop which mixed kitch with Wicca stuff.   Our guide was a friendly young man who linked all sorts of early religious traditions to witchcraft and spun conspiracy theories about the Church's vilification of local healers in order to corner the market on medicine.  It ended with a stuffed dragon display and a speech about how dragons are like guardian angels.  It was cute but I had to stifle many laughs.

On Sunday, Annelies and I brought the car back to Harvard Square, then went to downtown Boston to visit the science museum.  It was fun; we got to see early computer artifacts and a demonstration of the world's largest Van De Graff generator.  We also got to see the Planetarium program on supernovas in chairs that leaned way back.  That was followed by a walk to the North End, a district filled with Italian restaurants.  We found a nice family-owned place for dinner where I had very spicy farfalle pasta with piles of mushrooms.

It was a really great trip, made even better by the ability to visit with my girlfriend and see lots of the city and surrounding area together.  She comes back to Austin in a month, and I'm really excited to be able to go do more with her soon!

The last work day of my trip was really a fun day.  The Palm group in Andover has an annual celebration where they do a company meeting in the morning and a big luncheon in the afternoon.  This year, they did the meeting at the Wentworth by the Sea resort along the north end of the New Hampshire coast.  It was a rainy morning and a bit of a drive along I-495 and I-95 to get to the location, but once I saw the ocean view, it was just fine.  That meeting went well, and we then drove seven miles down the coastline to Saunder's, a restaurant on Rye Harbor with a great view of the ocean and lots of the docked ships.

After lunch, I said goodbye to the team and headed down to Boston, hitting my first patch of bad traffic after crossing the Tobin bridge on US 1 ($3 toll, but only in one direction).  I managed to find the right route on the first try, making my way to Allston to see Annelies.  She had been planning something big; about 6PM, we took a bus trip to Harvard Square and found the American Repertory Theater where we saw their production of Jean-Paul Sartre's "No Exit", the play that provided us with the phrase "Hell is other people."  It was a very nice take on the material performed on a tilting stage that provided a physical analog to the mental tension between the three main actors.  Then, we walked a few blocks to UpStairs on the Square, where Ani had made reservations in their Soirée Dining Room where we have the five-course vegetarian tasting menu, including

• Salad of Roasted Beets, Horseradish Panna Cotta, Arugula & Passionfruit
• Green Garlic Soup with Fingerling Hash
• Ravioli of Sweet English Peas, Sweet Butter and Pecorino Romano

The chef also made us an appetizer asparagus soup served in a shot glass, with thick cream on the bottom and vegetable foam on top.  It was one of the best meals I'd had in terms of presentation and complex flavors, and it was a lovely birthday gift from a lovely woman.

More on our visit to Salem ("Witch City") and a Sunday in Downtown Boston in followup posts.

Last night, I went to my first football game here in Texas. It was the Austin Outlaws versus the Oklahoma City Lighting, two teams in the National Women's Football Association, played down on the AISD field that's at Lamar and 15th. I've never been a football fan; I only went to a couple of Georgia Tech games when I was a student. I understand the structure of the game and lots of the rules, but I've never really been into competitive sports. However, I was going to meet a new friend for dinner, and she had plans to go with her friends afterward, so I was invited to tag along.

There wasn't much of a crowd, but at least Austin had supporters numbering around 100, while OKC had six. It didn't seem to matter much for the game itself; by halftime, Oklahoma led 14-0, and it didn't look like there was much of a chance for Austin to come back. The size difference between the players was impressive; the joke with our group was that the Oklahoma girls were all beef-fed, while Austin's hippy-liberal team leaned towards vegetarianism. This led me to compose an on-the-spot cheer:

We like tofu!
We like rice!
Why can't we all
Just play nice!

My group appreciated it, although one warned me that I probably ought not to say it too loud near the Austin players. Even though Oklahoma had won their last game with a 69-to-7 score, I was assured that the Austin women could still beat me up quite easily.

Besides my impromptu verse, there was an actual cheerleading squad there, the Austin Outlaws Cheetah Girls. They were a group of about fifteen preteen girls in very shiny silver and gold costumes. They made a good effort in doing cheers, but some of them seemed a bit inappropriate for the game, and they were a bit distracting from the game being played on the field. We left at half-time when they were doing their show out on the field. My date said that she thought it would have been appropriate if the cheer squad was all little boys, but I guess we've not yet crossed that gender hurdle.

I did have to make a couple more jokes about the whole event. Early in the game: my only problem with women's football is that the players can't dunk (a WNBA reference) Later when a penalty was called: I I don't know why the flag went down, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't for having too many men on the field.

The parts of the game I watched were pretty standard football. Lots of missed passes and lots of tackles. One of the Austin players broke her collarbone on the second play, but otherwise no one was hurt badly. From checking the NWFA website, it looks like Oklahoma won, 34 to 3. I'd glad Austin got on the board, but I don't think I'll be catching them again. I love the idea of the sport in theory, but I just can't get excited about it in practice.