Voter Outreach as Therapy

These past few days have driven me crazy with anticipation. The organization I work for introduced our first California bill this year and managed to pass it through the Assembly and Senate, but now we’re waiting to hear if Governor Schwarzenegger will sign or veto it. He only has until midnight tonight so I keep [...]

Monday Morning Distractions – Chickens!

It’s Monday morning, which means it’s time for another dose of distractions.
This weekend, I got to meet the four chickens that my girlfriend’s parents purchased last weekend up in Petaluma. We’ve been gardening at their house in Berkeley for many months, but now it really feels like we have an urban farm. I can’t wait [...]

Horseshoe, my new favorite breakfast spot

In August, I started to notice a new restaurant in Temescal on my bus rides to and from work. I saw that it was called Horseshoe, but I couldn’t figure out much more about it. There was outdoor seating, huge windows in the front, and lots of flowers outside. I searched online to see what [...]

Friday Links and Thoughts

There’s been some excellent writing in the blogoaksphere this week, so I thought I’d share some of it with you:

If you’re only going to read one thing today, check out dto510’s post explaining why Oakland developers are split over Rebecca Kaplan and Kerry Hamill. Though I’ve been following this race closely, I didn’t fully grasp [...]

Why do people hate buses?!

I’ve discussed this a bit before, but it’s starting to get me really frustrated. Please, someone tell me, why do people hate buses?
Over the past few days, it seems like all I hear are complaints about AC Transit and excuses why people don’t ride buses. Some of this is pretty absurd:

One of my co-workers bought [...]

There’s too much to do in Oakland

Seriously, just tonight there are several events I want to go to and I’m still trying to decide between them. To make it easier to keep track of what’s going on in Oakland, I’ve create an Events page at Living in the O. The listing I’ve created is in no way meant to be comprehensive [...]

Things that make me smile

I’ve been having an extremely stressful week, but luckily there have been some nice moments too. Just wanted to share some of the Oakland things that have made me smile:

The sunshine in downtown Oakland. When I walked from the bus on Monday morning, I couldn’t take my eyes off the beautiful architecture surrounding me and [...]

Yummy food that you must try!

I’ve been lucky enough in the past week to eat a lot of good food. Partly it’s because I’ve been too damn busy to cook, which I usually love to do, but it’s also because there is so much good food to be eaten in Oakland. Here are my top dish picks from the last [...]

Monday Morning Distractions – Temescal Street Fair

Last Monday, I shared some photos of my balcony garden as a way to lighten up the load of your Monday. It seemed to go over well so I thought I’d make this a semi-regular feature. What can you expect from Monday morning distractions? Not much writing, but lots of photos, videos, music, and it [...]

Support Rebecca Kaplan and Watch the V.P. Debate!

On Thursday, October 2nd, some of my colleagues and I will be hosting a fundraiser for Rebecca Kaplan. But this isn’t just any old fundraiser. October 2nd is the night of the VP debates, and we’ll be showing it on a big screen. Instead of watching the debates at home, you can join hundreds of [...]