After getting only four hours sleep on Thursday night (more on that in a bit ... it contrasts with my craptacular theme), i made it to work at 8:30am Friday morning and spent a solid 1.5 hours polishing off my 10am journal club presentation. The meeting came off quite well, sparking a very interesting discussion in our intimate little group. I spent the rest of the day preparing to revise my NIH grant for resubmission by July 1, and installing Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 from the confusing 10 cd collection that was delivered to me by Stanford purchasing. Maybe someday soon i'll be coding applications for work and fun in C++ and/or C#. Calling it an early day around 3pm, i headed home and took a long nap with the dogs, arising when V returned home late from work to grab a quick dinner at Max's before nodding off around 1am. We were both looking forward to meeting up with east coast chum Bill Saturday morning, in SF for the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, and playing tour guides.

Around 4:30am however we were awakened to the sound of breaking glass and car alarms. My Jetta? Oh crap! The dogs were now freaked, and V and i opened our front door and peered out. More sounds of windows being smashed, to which i shouted "What the hell are you doing?!?!" (real macho, yes, i know). By the time we got outside the vandal had apparently hopped in a waiting pickup truck and sped onto Woodside Ave. But before his getaway, he had smashed the rear windows on 6 cars on one side of the street, including both our Tercel and Jetta. In addition, he really went to town on the first car on the block, knocking out the driver side window and windshield in addition to the rear window. Luckily my Jetta was the second car on the block. Yes ... wonderful. We gave a report to the cops, who in return gave us a fairly good indication of the chances of actually catching anyone (or of them compensating us for our financial loss). We returned inside, me significantly shaken. Things like this just don't put you in a good frame of mind about the neighborhood in which you live. And that doesn't make you comfortable at home, and what is home if not comfortable? After calling about five auto glass shops at 5am and leaving a multitude of messages, we faded into sleep. I was awoken at 8am by my phone's new "She Blinded Me With Science" ringtone, and spoke with a guy who could come to our house and replace both cars' windows that day. One snag, he didn't accept credit cards or personal checks. So i had to get out my pathetically rusted and flat-tired bike, perform some quick maintenance, and ride a few miles up Woodside to the bank. In retrospect, it was probably the best thing for me ... got my heart pumping, got me out of the house, and got a lot of stress out of my body. The window guy and his partner arrived around 12:30pm and took about two hours to finish the job, the majority of which was spent removing shards of glass from every nook and cranny in both cars. V talked to some of our neighbors who had a theory about the identity of the culprit, but in the end we spent $627 to learn that we need to stop being lazy and start parking the cars around the back of our house.

Our plans to take Bill to brunch favorite the Lighthouse Café in Sausalito were scrapped as it closed at 3pm, so instead we picked him up at his hotel in Fisherman's Wharf and did a driving tour of Sausalito. Because my Jetta's rear window is adhesively fixed to the frame, the installer advised us not to drive it for a few days until the glue had dried. That meant we had to drive the rickety old Tercel, with its bad alignment, broken tail light, and rubber-sealed new rear window. The left tail light was recently broken by a rock or something, and now sports a nice round four inch hole. I've been lackadaisical about fixing it since the car is dying and i'm reluctant to pump money into it. I've been worried about getting a fix-it ticket, so usually when i spot a patrolling policeman i try to hide the car's rear end from him. However, jaunting around Sausalito i glanced in my rear view mirror and saw that the car immediately behind me was a police cruiser. Sure enough, a block later his lights were on and he pulled me over. Thankfully, he let me off without a formal write-up, instead encouraging me to go get it fixed. Whew. After that we headed over the Richmond Bridge (and the island i will someday convert into my Man with the Golden Gun-style fortress) to Berkeley for dinner with Bill's friend Troy at the yummy Chaat Café on University Ave. Unfortunately with Bill's flight leaving at 9:30pm from SFO, we had to cut out any trips to Amoeba or Rasputin's in order to send him off on time.

While those events certainly put a damper on the weekend, things started off brightly on Thursday night at the Popscene appreciation party, a free show by UK buzz band Kasabian. V had swung guest list passes for the two of us as well as Naomi, Geoff, and Gary, so we bypassed the enormous line that had been forming since the night before. We were among the first ones inside 330 Ritch, and set up camp a few feet from the stage. Before long the smallish club was sweltering, packed with indie kids awaiting the boys from Leicester. Openers Mad Action did well to take my mind off the oppressive heat, dishing out some ear-splitting rock in the style of the Warlocks and Low Flying Owls. I liked them so much i bought a cd on the way out, telling the drummer i thought they kicked ass. Between sets the heat really began to take its toll, with Geoff heading for the back and the possibility of a cool breeze from the door. An Irish girl behind me decided to rest her head and arms on my back for five minutes or so, prompting Jenz to ask if i knew her. At last the house lights dimmed and Kasabian took the stage to the opening synths of "ID" and proceeded to get the crowd shaking for 75 minutes. Jenz, Gary, V, and i somehow found the mental toughness (or stubborness) to hang on to our spots at the front through to the end of the epic closer "Club Foot". In my assessment the band eclipsed their wonderful show at Slim's from a few months back. The singer commented that this was the best show they'd played yet in America, with fantastic energy and enthusiasm in the crowd. My feelings exactly. Definitely worth way more than a little lost sleep.