Greg and Ellen Compared

That little Amazon.com page of mine continues to garner attention, even though, in my opinion, Amazon has done a lot to improve their customer service situation since I first posted my rant about them in 2002. The page certainly brought me my 15 minutes of fame, with the stories on NPR, and in the New York Times, U.S. News, the WSJ and so on. It’s really got legs!

But now it’s also given me my own Canadian twin. I got a blog comment the other day from Greg (you’ll have to scroll down a bit to see it), who saw my picture in a PC World story about customer service. He put together the above comparison shot. Are we twins? You be the judge.

I’m not saying that thrill is gone, but will say that this mileage report is less exciting than any before it, mainly because it’s almost exactly the same as last time. I went the same number of miles between fill-ups, and I put in the same number of gallons of gas in the tank. No real fluctuations. Except for the price! Gas has dropped from $3.619 to $3.329 a gallon. I’d probably really care a lot about this if I owned a car, but I only saved 29 cents.

Odometer at previous fill-up: 232
Odometer this fill-up: 310
Miles between fill-ups: 78
Gallons of gas put in tank: 1.53
Miles Per Gallon: 50.88
$$ spent: $5.10
Cost per mile: 6 cents

Waiting for a bus that would never come

My dad is here for a nice long visit, and, yes, we’ve been making him ride the bus. In the picture above he’s waiting for a bus that wasn’t actually running that day. My fault - oops! I’m sure a two-hour trip home from Land’s End via public transportation is a great way to learn about the city, though.

We’ve done nearly everything: hiking in the parks, going to a ball game, taking a cruise on the bay, hitting the museums, going on walking tours … and of course, eating. We’ve been to Moki’s, Pizza Delfina, Alioto’s, Ti Couz, Zante’s Pizza, Louis’s and Taqueria Cancun; still to come, A16 and Greens, plus whatever else we can squeeze in.

Hiking to Bass Lake at Point Reyes

Last weekend we had a lovely hike at Point Reyes National Seashore. It was a fun and beautiful reminder that we live in California, and there’s a lot of amazing stuff to see out here. We’ve done a lot of traveling this summer, but now we have a few weeks in a row at home and we’re planning to make an effort to go full tilt back into our tourist mode, making sure to throw in some week-night cultural activities as well, not just waiting for the weekend.

Tomorrow my dad arrives for a nice long stay, and we’re looking forward to showing him the city (and it’s restaurants, of course). It’s supposed to be a sunny, beautiful weekend, and we have lots of things on our to-do list. I suspect there will be pictures taken.