The First Dorito

Ahh Doritos! An unhealthy tasty snack that always went well with my peanut butter & jellies during grade school years. Sometimes I would grab the whole bag, head back to my room, and play the shit out of some Super Nintendo.. I always made myself sick by eating too many. It could've also been the sprite I drank I guess but I'll always have this nauseas memory of Doritos.

My main inspiration for this post though is how the first chip tastes versus the following chips. I never like the first one! I'm not sure if it was the onion or garlic or cheese flavor (none of which I'm too keen on) that caught me off guard, but the first Dorito was gross. Obviously from eating them before I knew I would get used to the taste and quickly become a chip-eating-monster. I just find it interesting that I've tried a lot of foods in my life and decided at the first bite that I didn't like it, yet here's this Dorito phenomenon.

The short version of this post is "have you ever noticed how the first Dorito is so awful & pungent to your taste buds and then you get used to it?".

Bake Sell Betty's For My Georgia Folks

It's rare that someone I knew/grew up with in Georgia comes to visit me here in the San Francisco Bay area; usually it's for work or career related events. Regardless of why they're here, it's always fun to show them what I know about the area. There are so many things here that you will never experience in Georgia.

One of my best childhood friends is in town for the weekend with his girlfriend. They're staying in "the city" as well call it, meaning San Francisco, but today they're coming over to the "east bay" to hang out. While there are many things I want to show them, this post is about our lunch plans. Bake Sell Betty's! The hours are limited to 11:30-2pm and the menu is small. They have this amazing fried chicken sandwich, they mainstay, some cookies, strawberry shortcake, lemonade, and one or two other items to choose from. At noon there's a line 40+ long outside but it moves quick and it's quite the experience.

I've planned to take them to Bake Sell Betty's for lunch and then over to Indian Rock to get a view of the entire bay and maybe rock climbing after that. It's impossible to show them everything in a weekend obviously but I hope I can give them a good taste of what the bay has to offer!

Welcome to Costa Mesa, CA

It's different; that's the first thing that comes to mind. As much as I like change I honestly think that moving across the country and starting a new job is overwhelming me. I'm not unhappy and I'm not super excited at the moment... I'm just indifferent I guess. The next two weeks will hopefully smooth out this anxious feeling I have.

THE JOB
So here are the deets on my new job. This company called The Gear Co-Op buys outdoor products (mostly rock climbing gear right now) from companies, then ships them to Amazon's warehouse, and sells these products from www.GearCoop.com. We never actually see most of the products since Amazon does ALL of the shipping and storage for us, it's a great way to run a business.

I am in charge of the website design, most of the layout too, driving traffic to the website, and maintaining any miscellaneous "Webstore" issues here and there. On top of that I am a product manager for several major manufactures such as The North Face, Arc'teryx, Merrell, and Chaco. When the new catalogs come out I will go through and create an order of the latest and greatest products. It's also my job to make sure we're up-to-date on the newest "crave" in the outdoor industry by talking to brand reps. So it's definitely a great.. maybe even perfect fit for me and I think I'll love it once I get in the flow of things.

LIVING SITUATION
Well, that's yet to be determined. I'm taking a step-by-step approach to it though, which is unusual for me. I want to find two people that I feel I can live well with, then figure out what we can afford, and lastly start looking seriously for a place. There's anything from $600/mo 1 rooms with other strangers to $4,800/mo 3 bedroom homes on the beach. Everyone wants to be ON the beach and pay as little as possible. At the moment I'm staying with Terry, the guy who started and owns The Gear Co-Op, his wife, and son James. Next week I will be couchsurfing with different people but hopefully I'll get my own 'place on the beach' soon.

Overall I am excited about everything but I'm really ready to make friends and start learning the ins & outs of the place. I fear that people won't be as intimate here but I hope I'm very wrong. I will try to keep this blog updated but you know how that goes...