i didn't even have to use my ak

I’ve gotta say: it was a good day!

I got up around 0600 when I could no longer ignore the whining of my phone: something at work was down and nobody else was going to fix it. It didn’t take long to fix it, but I ended up pretty awake. I decided to go back to bed anyway, though, because it was early and because, well, I like being in bed with my wife. We slept for a few more hours, and then got up and relaxed for a while. Gloria made tasty bagels for breakfast. She read the paper and I poked at code. I think there are significant (but not critical) problems with the CPAN indexer.

I suggested we make our pilgrimage to Krispy Kreme. We’d talked about doing that for a little while, now, and it seemed like something fun to do. So, we did!

We spent a long time looking at slightly confusing directions online, but decided to do head to Conshohocken to see the new Ikea, then to King of Prussia to hit the mall, then to stop at KK on the way back. We executed this plan, and it was a good plan indeed.

The new Ikea is nice, and we saw a number of nice pieces of furniture. It’ll be nice to have a house to put furniture in, and to paint and decorate. Yes! We also decided to hit the Ikea restaurant. The restaurant in Conshohoken is much, much nicer than the one in Norristown was. We split a plate of Swedish meatballs and a nice slice of apple cake.

The KoP mall wasn’t super exciting, but there are a few highlights: I picked up an Airport Extreme, through which I am now typing this entry. I’m going to mount it on the living room wall, and I hope it will take care of the problems we’ve had with our wireless until now. Even if it doesn’t, it looks really nice. We stopped into the Lindt chocolate shop and the salesguy offerred us a sample. It was a really good sample. We bought a few more pieces of chocolate, and so far they’ve also been awesome. A slightly melted hazelnut truffle from Lindt is fantastic! We looked at Borders and Urban Outfitters and the Sanrio store, but nothing exciting happened there.

We drove around the mall for a while, looking for potential dinner spots, but nothing called out to us, so we headed out onto the turnpike.

Finding Krispy Kreme was slightly nerve-wracking, not because it was hard, but because not finding the place would have been a big let-down. Fortunately, though, it was right where it belonged, and there were donuts coming down the conveyer, fresh from the waterfall of sugar. We each had a hot glazed donut and an apple cobbler donut. Both were very good, but only the hot glazed was worth the trip. I dare say it would be worth driving down there again, sometime.

As we got into town, figuring out where to get dinner became an issue. We settled on Sal’s, which wasn’t the best decision. I ordered linguini with red clam sauce, but was brought the seafood combination. I figured it was merely more decadent than I’d expected, and started eating. Later it was revealed that I got someone else’s order, and he had to wait. Oops! It was still tasty, although I realized very quickly that I had much less room in my stomach than I’d thought. I think our waitress was slightly concerned when we left so much on our plates. I’m not too concerned about it, though. She got a nice tip, even after screwing up our order and letting my glass get empty.

Once we got home, I switched us to the new router. Someone on IRC noted that my downtime between saying “gonna set up Airport” and “back” was six minutes. Given that this included moving my sofa (to get at a power outlet) and finding a long cat-5 cable, that’s not bad! So far, so good. I’m letting a nice long ping run, to see if I get any more packet loss problems.

Since then, we’ve been watching the closing ceremonies, which have been OK. I had a glass of vermouth, something that I’ve missed since I last had a bottle, and I think I’ll have another. Tomorrow, I’m — hey wait! I was going to say, “back at work” but in fact I’m “working from home.” Excellent.

Written on August 30, 2004