My weekend trip to San Francisco

I had a relatively bad week last week, as did my girlfriend, so we decided on a whim to get away for the weekend and go visit my parents who live in San Francisco. She had never been to San Francisco before, and I hadn't been in several years, not since my parents bought a house out there.

Going to the airport was pretty uneventful, and we surprisingly didn't run into any traffic on the 25-minute commute to the airport in south Atlanta. The check-in was easy too, and we didn't have any trouble checking in our luggage. We each had a small suitcase, and we shared a hanging bag for her dress and my suit.

The nonstop flight from Atlanta to San Francisco was great, and we only ran into a little turbulence as we were flying over a storm in Nevada, but nothing to complain about. The weather when we landed was beautiful, and my parents met us at the airport to greet us. My parents had met my girlfriend once before, so there really weren't any awkward moments at the airport. We got our luggage and had a beautiful scenic, touristy stroll through the city as we headed to their house.

I had originally thought that when they said they lived in San Francisco, that they really did live in the city, but it turns out that they live in what they call the North Bay, in a small community called Sausalito about 1.5 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn't know it, but it costs a ridiculous $5 to drive over the bridge every time!

We got to their house, and carried our stuff in. It was slightly awkward when I found out that my parents had only fixed a single bedroom for us which has only one bed. I shouldn't feel strange, because I'm sure my parents know we sleep together anyways, but it happening at their house seemed a bit out of place. What was even more awkward is that there was a box of condoms inside the nightstand drawer.

We didn't have much time to hang around at the house, for we had an 9:00 reservation at a restaurant back in the city. And, instead of driving back into San Francisco, they had planned for us to take a ferry across the bay to enjoy the sunset. So, we began to unpack to get dressed for dinner, and we notice that we had some clothes missing from our luggage. I was missing a pair of Chaco sandals, my girlfriend was missing a pair of dress shoes, and I was missing my tie from the hanging bag. I still had the rest of my suit and dress shoes, so I borrowed a tie from my dad and we were OK for dinner; my girlfriend had brought another pair of dress shoes so she was OK too for dinner. Dinner also was uneventful, and had a great evening in downtown San Francisco.

The following morning, I woke up before everyone else, checked out TWW for a few minutes, and then went back to bed until everyone else woke up. Around 10am, my parents decided to take us to this nice little restaurant overlooking the Bay, and have a nice Saturday morning brunch. All was well, until my mom got super quiet, and eventually said, "Elena, you remind me so much of my daughter in both your looks and your personality." Well, the shit hit the fan, my dad almost started to choke on his food, while mom's eyes started to fill with tears. Elena handled things well, and just said that she was sorry she never had an opportunity to meet her. (My sister died in 1998 when she was hit by a drunk driver)

Very few words were spoken for the rest of breakfast, and even on the ride home, although my mom had the sniffles the rest of the morning. We decided to go out for a run, and when we got back to the house, we played a little tennis, and then jumped into the pool to cool off and relax. My mom pulled herself together and brought out some homemade sweet tea and some snacks. We got out of the pool and dried ourselves off, and enjoyed some tea with only a towel around my waist. My mom looked at me, then looked down at my chest, and her eyes opened as her jaw dropped and gasped. I knew exactly what she was going to do, make a big deal about my nipple rings. I completely forgot about it until she saw them, but realized there wasn't anything I could do about it since they were still healing and I couldn't take them out yet. She didn't overreact like I thought she would, she just asked why I would do something like that to myself. I blew it off, and said it wasn't permanent, and it was just something I wanted to do. She did tell my dad when he walked outside, but he didn't care. He just walked over to me, and stared at them real close and just said "nice" in a carefree but almost sarcastic tone.

That afternoon, we took the ferry back into the city and played around downtown and the Golden Gate area. We were going to get tickets to go to Alcatraz, but decided that it would take too much time, for we had to meet my parents back across the Bay for dinner. We got dressed up in our nice clothes, and then my dad tried to impress my girlfriend by taking us to another really nice Italian restaurant in Kentfield, CA, a 10 minute drive north of where my parents live. Before he went into the restaurant, he proceeded to bend over, farted, and then sniffed. I think he annoyed her a little by having her speak Italian to the waiters, although she did so with an ever-pleasant smile. It was during this dinner that I told my parents what I had found out at the doctor's office early last week (see my previous blog post). Again, my mom totally broke down and started cursing the asshole that slammed in to me, and then said she was going to fly out and take care of me when I get out of the hospital, which is exactly what I was hoping she would do! She cheered up a little when she thought about some renovations she could do to the condo in Atlanta. Apparently she never was happy with the furniture in the living room or the appliances in the kitchen, so she said she wants to replace them while she's with me. Cool, I'm getting new shit! While my dad looked a little distraught himself, he tried to brighten the mood that he'll be back East and can hit up some golf courses with some of his buddies here.

Sunday morning was a lazy morning, and since my girlfriend and I were still on the Eastern time zone, we took advantage of the fact that we woke up long before my parents did, and made use of the condoms that were in the drawer. Just what I needed! After my parents woke up, we again went out for Sunday lunch, then went home and packed up.

At the airport, we checked in our luggage, and went to the US Airways customer service and told them that we had some items stolen from our baggage. My sandals and tie weren't worth much, but my girlfriend's shoes were very expensive (and if she says something is expensive, it's fucking expensive). The airline apologized and gave us a free upgrade to first class and gave us each a $200 voucher for use towards another US Airways flight. Being a frequent flyer of US Airways apparently paid off. The flight back seemed like it took forever, but was nice because we got to watch TV. The movie choices sucked, so we ended up watching the Emmys. I got sad when Dick Clark came out :(

When I got home, there was a voicemail from the Atlanta Police Department, looking for my girlfriend. They were calling to notify her that they found the lady who rearended her Mercedes and drove off. PWNT.

So my weekend in San Francisco went very well, and although it was a very short trip, it was nice to get away from Atlanta for a few days.

My Rough Day

At 9am, I had a follow-up doctor's appointment with an opthamologist to figure out what's going on with my left eye and what the recommended treatment is. I had already had lots of tests and different imaging scans done on the eye, so I was just going in to hear the results of what the doctor and his team found (as a 2nd opinion). Aside from me waiting over 2 hours for him to show up (he was called in for emergency surgery), I received the news I didn't want to hear. Apparently all the infections I was having was caused by a type of MRSA bacteria in the eye, which is for the most part immune to antibiotics, which is why the injections I was getting in my eye were only providing temporary relief.

In addition to my eye being a breeding ground for the bacteria, the scar tissue from the surgeries I had (and from the multiple infections) over the years has restricted the blood flow into the eye, and has caused a dramatic drop in the eye's intraocular pressure, which can lead to an array of other types of diseases, including causing problems with my good right eye.

What I didn't want to hear is that this doctor agreed with my first doctor's recommendation about treatment, which is the total removal of the eye (aka enucleation). He recommended that I do it as soon as possible (preferably next week), but I told him I wanted to get things in order first (with work, school, etc), and scheduled the surgery for October 2. Although the surgery can be done outpatient in about six hours, I told him that I wanted to stay in the hospital overnight, and leave after an examination the following morning.

After my doctor's appointment, I went back downtown to meet with my new advisors at Georgia Tech, who were going to help me get all my paperwork processed, get on the payroll, and get everything else done so I will be an official "research student." I was also going to be told if I was going to be teaching a class or not, in addition to continuing my research off campus. I was first sent to the administrative office to get all the forms filled out and signed, and then went to go talk to the lady who runs the "graduate student assistantship assignment office" to get my research assignment and to give her a blank check to automatically deposit my "salary" into my checking account. A perk of being a research student is that they get paid about 30% more than regular graduate students with teaching assistantships. Well, it turns out that because of budget reasons, they decided to classify me as a teaching assistant as opposed to a researcher, which would mean that I would not only have to put my research (that I've been doing for over a year now) on hold for God knows how long, I would also receive less money and would have to suck up to a professor and grade all of their student's papers, tests, lab reports, whatever else TAs are supposed to do. I wasn't really concerned about the salary, because I have other means of adequate income which far exceeds anything they would pay me. But hey, money is money!

I told her that this was completely unacceptable, that I would not have agreed to come to Georgia Tech if they wanted me to be a professor's slave, and the reason Georgia Tech asked me to come there was because they wanted to have a larger presence of American students who do research. She apparently was offended by the usage of the word slave (as if I meant anything racial by it), and she sternly said there wasn't anything she could do. So I stood up and told her I was sorry to have wasted her time and that I was not going to attend the school, and walked out the door. She caught up with me in the hallway and told me to hold on, and sent me to the head of the EE department. He apologized for her misunderstandings and unwillingness to help me, and said he would pull some strings to get me reclassified as a research student, and wouldn't have to be a TA.

The rest of the processing went quite well, got my new student ID, computer login, parking pass and gate card, and even got my medical records to the health center. As I was leaving and got to my car, I noticed that I had a parking ticket waiting for me under my windshield wiper for $50 (parking without a parking permit). I parked exactly where I was told to by the EE administration staff, so I took the ticket in to them and told them to take care of it. Surprisingly, they said no problem. It's nice to see that the parking people down here are Nazis just like they are at NCSU.

While I was driving the 7 blocks back to my condo around 4pm, I got a call from my very upset, embarrassed, and crying girlfriend, who was out shopping today. When she gets real upset, she sometimes speaks Italian or a hybrid between that and English, but from what I got from her short phone call, apparently she was being held by the store/mall security and was being accused of shoplifting. She told them that she wasn't going to talk to them unless I was present. So, I rushed up to Buckhead to go to the Phipps Plaza mall, and went to the security station to see where she was. I went to the store (it was called Sigrid Olsen). By the time I got there, though, they had worked everything out and had apologized to my girlfriend. Apparently the sales associate (a stupid cunt) became suspicious of the indecisiveness of my girlfriend, who was trying on a lot of different clothes, and was making several trips to and from the dressing room. Additionally, she had lots of shopping bags (from previous stores) and upon walking out of the store, the alarm went off, and was accused of putting merchandise in the other bags. They searched the bags and found out that the associate simply forgot to take the alarm tag off of a single item, even though she had paid for EVERYTHING. Her sales receipt was over $350, but yet the associate decided to accuse her of stealing a $50 shirt. It's all just stupid bullshit like this meant to give people like me headaches.

So, as we're leaving the mall, I walk her to her car, and see that someone had run into the back end of her car and drove off. We called the police to file a report, and then we go back in the mall to see if they could look at the surveillance tapes. Obviously the guard on duty is a complete idiot and doesn't know what we're talking about, so we leave a voicemail with the guy in charge of security to call us back after he checks the tapes. She drives a real nice Mercedes SLK Roadster that she got for her birthday earlier this year. Insurance is going to take care of everything, but it sucks that such a nice car was damaged by someone who didn't even have the common courtesy to fess up to it.

So yea, it's been a pretty rough day.