Tales From An Alternate Reality

Apart from the hotel snafu and leaving my meds behind, we had a great time in San Diego.

We started Saturday off by going to a cute little French cafe. Then we went to the Zoo. Sticker shock: Adult admission to the zoo for one day is $80! Holy cow! We rented a wheelchair to push HalfshellHusband around, but he'd still had enough after 3 hours, which was too bad. We covered about half of the zoo— it's huge! But we saw most of the birds, monkeys, and the African section. We never quite found the red pandas, and had to skip the giant pandas because you either pay extra or wait in line for more than an hour to see them. We missed the fossa, which was either indoors or hiding, but saw the serval (which was larger than I expected). We also saw the orangutan baby, the tiny Chinese alligator, and watched hippos snoozing underwater (but didn't realize we missed the chance to see a pygmy hippo! *cries*). The exhibits are large with really nice habitats, and the landscaping is beautiful. I could have spent the entire day there.

We went to dinner at BJ's Brewhouse, and had a monster pizookie for dessert. It was delicious, though our daughter shunned the blue ice cream. I can't really blame her.

Sunday, we went to the La Jolla Shores beach. Parking was a nightmare because EVERYONE was there, both local and people visiting for Spring Break. SO crowded, which was completely new. This doesn't happen in Oregon or Northern California— the weather at the beach is colder, so fewer people go there to hang out all day. Our daughter joined us, and we watched the waves and the little kids and enjoyed the sun.

Dinner was at La Cesarina, our daughter's favorite Italian restaurant. Sticker shock again! But really good food. I had ravioli with mushroom sauce, and HSH had (as usual) the lasagna.

Our daughter had to work quite a bit of Monday, but mid-afternoon we went to a cafe on an ocean bluff where people board hang-gliders to sail out over the beach. That was really neat!



Then we went to see the Padres/Giants baseball game. The stadium was really impressive, with lots of different types of food available. HSH and our daughter opted for hot dogs (what). I passed due to ongoing queasiness. The Padres' fans love them, and it was a great experience. I had qualms during the national anthem, though. The crowd near us was largely Hispanic and very patriotic, and it hurt to see that and know how badly we're treating them.

I'm not much of a baseball fan, so one of the biggest surprises for me was the number of left-handed batters. It seemed to be about 1 in 5, which apparently matches the MLB overall. Interestingly enough, my profession (embedded software engineering) also tends to have that same, higher proportion of left-handers. The new Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system is in play now. The Padres invoked it for one of the pitches, but the umpire was ruled correct. The Giants ultimately won that game (HSH was happy about that), though the Padres got their only two runs in the 9th inning, so it was close!

Our last morning there was Tuesday, and we had brunch at a New Zealand cafe(!) in the heart of downtown. It's our daughter's favorite place for French toast, and we all ordered it. SO good, though I wasn't expecting the cinnamon.

Then it was time to say goodbye, so we could get to the San Diego airport ridiculously early. It's always hard. We really wish our daughter lived closer. After the farewells, we had a slightly convoluted trip to the car rental facility, thanks to a couple of Google Maps glitches. That was a first! But the return went smoothly, and we got to the airport in time to spend about 2 hours sitting at the gate. \o?

It was great, but over much too quickly!

I got booted out of Idol: Wheel of Chaos last week, by the "poisoning" twist that's part of the game (and the chaos) this season. Very sad about that. :( I'd rather get voted out than be murdered sideways, and I know the other Poisonees must feel the same. :( I wrote a good story for a hard prompt, too, so I would have expected to survive another week based on it! ETA: Wait. Back IN the game again, thanks to another spin of the Chaos wheel! WUT.

That was also the same day my Hawaii sunburn started to peel, but I've still got some of those vacation feelings going. What a wonderful, relaxing time. We stayed at the Waikoloa Village Hilton, with a room overlooking the bay, the lagoon, and the (surprise!) dolphin area. Just sitting out there and watching everything was fun, and it also helped me get a sense of what was happening with the tides (which sometimes made the chairs and umbrellas by the lagoon inaccessible). I snorkled in the lagoon quite a few times, and saw lots of Moorish idols and parrot fish and yellow tangs, and even a spotted ray and a trumpet fish! Mostly, I read and people-watched and listened to the waterfall across the way. Lovely. I spent a LOT of time by the lagoon overall, and that's how I got sunburned three different times. I'm pretty sure I've managed to avoid sunburn in Hawaii entirely as an adult, up until now. Because it's always burning, never tanning...

My sister recommended that resort (she and her husband stay there often), and it was truly gorgeous. Possibly too big for HalfshellHusband, though? He struggles to walk long distances (foot pain and an arthritic back), so that was way more walking than he would have liked. If you started from our hotel, and walked the long way across the bay to the other side of the resort, I think it would be a distance of about 6-8 blocks. At least the Kona airport was small, compared to the ginormous one in Hololulu that he struggled to get through last year. It's not just the distance or the pain, either—the combination of heat and humidity in Hawaii make it hard for him to breathe. Still, he soldiered on as he always does.

With all of that reading, I have some books to recommend:
Blob (A Love Story), by Maggie Su - A feckless young women encounters a gelatinous blob in an alleyway behind a bar, and takes it home. Soon, she is attempting to mold it into the perfect boyfriend.
The Shamshine Blind, by Paz Pardo - Only the second sci-fi novel I've ever read that has the physical effects of color as its main theme (the other is Jasper Fforde's "Shades of Grey"). This book has a noir feel to it, with the main character hunting down fake pigment distributors and illegal uses of color in a dystopian world under Argentinian dominion. (!)
Secret Dead Men, by Duane Swierczynski - Del Farmer, a reporter-turned PI, tries to solve the mystery of his own murder with the help of the souls of the dead he has collected (and now houses in the Brain Hotel inside his head).
Gone, Baby, Gone and Prayers For Rain, by Dennis Lehane - This entire detective series is good, but these two books are both extremely well-written. It would be hard to say which is better, though I'll give the nod to the second one.

Soon to come: TV recs. But in the meantime, how have you all been?

I was going to post an update WEEKS ago, and then things got away from me.

Back just before President's day weekend (in mid-February), we drove down to Southern California to visit the kids. This was on just a few days' notice—our daughter usually goes out of town with friends over holiday weekends, but by Wednesday we'd confirmed both kids would be around, so we decided to go for it. This was during a week where I wrote an Idol entry and was reading other people's entries, and work was super-busy. On Thursday night, I was up until 2 a.m. booking hotels for Friday and Saturday night, because it took me more than two hours to find a hotel in L.A. for that first night. GAH.

I mean, it's always a pain for both L.A. and San Diego, but L.A. is so much worse. Our son is at UCLA, which is in an expensive area of the city, and there's this long stretch of 405 beforehand where there just aren't a lot of hotels at all, let alone decent and affordable ones. It's kind of a hotel dessert. We made this same weekend trip two years ago, and learned what happens when you arrive late at night in L.A. and need to park your car. So, in looking for something to the North that was less expensive than Brentwood/Westwood/Bel Air/Beverly Hills, I found myself backing up farther and farther along 405 and then eliminating one hotel after another on the basis of reported filth/grossness and bedbugs. Holy cow, HOW can it be so hard to find an L.A.-area hotel without bedbugs? Ugh.

We wound up at a Holiday Inn Express that I hadn't realized was right across the freeway from Magic Mountain. With the attendant early-morning Disneyland-like effect of children running up and down the hallways screaming. \o?

But we checked out and went to see our son, and spent the day at La Brea tar pits for reasons of GEEK! None of us had ever been there, and it was fascinating. The Boy and I went clear down to the bottom of the covered enclosure that exposes some of the fossils and liquid tar, and I watched the tar slo-o-owly form bubbles and *pop*. Also, there was a onsite kitty hanging out with some of the people who work in an outdoor tent cleaning and checking extracted fossils. :)

We had good time hanging-out with the Boy all day, plus dinner, and then we drove to our San Diego hotel. We met our daughter for brunch the next morning at the Shorehouse Kitchen, then walked to the beach after stopping along the way to look at a $3.5 million home that was holding an Open House. That home... it wasn't my style (too spare and modern), but it was impressive. The stove hood and other fixtures folded up into the kitchen ceiling, and a couple of rooms had sliding all-glass panels on two sides that you could open up to the outdoors. If your lifestyle were built around entertaining and impressing your friends, this would be the place for it!

After a brief beach visit, we went to our daughter's house (a rental she shares with 3 other people), then to Balboa Park to stroll through the artists' village and the botannical garden, and to watch a man make truly gigantic soap bubbles and set them free.

That was followed by a trip to the Winehouse in San Diego's Little Italy, where we had the cheese platter and some wine and played Scrabble in the upstairs room, and then we went to dinner at one of the Puesto locations. Shrimp tacos, mmmmm...

It was a busy, wonderful day, and after we said goodbye to our daughter we drove to Bakersfield and looked for a hotel. That had worked out before, but I didn't want to book ahead of time in case we either didn't make it that far or wanted to go further.

Throughout the trip, I spent part of the drive to L.A., then to San Diego, and then to Bakersfield reading a bunch of Idol entries I'd copied into giant Word docs. Then I'd post comments using the hotel Wifi and gather more stories to read for the next leg of the trip. I managed to get through them all and vote in both the main competition and Second Chance, which was pretty good. But by the time we got home Monday afternoon, I was pretty tired—and it was back to work again the next day. \o?

Still, what a great trip. It was totally worth it!

We got home from Hawaii last week, and I've been flailing around unpacking, working, and catching up on chores ever since.

We spent the second half of our trip in Kona, the sunnier side of the big island. Our first stop on the Kona side was at Snorkel Bob's, to pick up equipment for the rest of our stay. I love Snorkel Bob's—the prices, the convenience, the weird humor, the thoughtful guidance in snorkeling etiquette. Plus, the recommendations for where to snorkel.

Our Kona hotel was a 1-bedroom apartment-like suite in a resort hotel, chosen because of the fitness room and the private kitchen & washer/dryer. Also, it was more-or-less on the beach, as opposed to being a block or two inland (or inside town). There was a golf course in the way, but you could still see the ocean beyond it. What is it with golf courses on the big island? So many hotels are coupled with them. They're like an infestation. :O

The first few days were still kind of rainy, but that didn't spoil anything. Our tendency to go snorkeling at high tide was more of a issue. ;) I've never had any reason to care much about the tides—I grew up in Oregon, where the ocean is so cold and the waves and current are so strong that you never go in above your knees anyway, and you're always looking for beaches that are sandy. For snorkeling, you want reef areas, and that often means beaches where waves will throw you against the reef or the rockier parts of the shore when the tide is coming in. I got quite a few bruises and gashes from our Friday/Saturday snorkeling. :O

Friday night, I went to a luau with our son. He really wanted to try the full luau experience, which we hadn't done during his previous trip to Hawaii. (Mainly, because his sister would have hated all the food, and luau prices are a lot to spend for dinner rolls and fruit punch). HalfshellHusband didn't want to go because he couldn't eat most of the food (his diet has severe sodium restrictions). So, the two of us went to the Voyagers of the Pacific Luau, at the Royal Kona Resort. The band was very good, and the entertainment featured songs and dances from most of the Pacific Island cultures, which was really neat. The highlight was (and is always) the Samoan fire dance. The Boy was duly impressed, and he had a great time and ate allll the food. We even both tried the purple sweet potato, even though neither of us likes sweet potatoes. It wasn't bad!

Our son wanted to go on a snorkeling trip by boat (like we did on the previous trip), but when he and I looked at the various brochures, we decided that a night-time trip to see manta rays would be even better! We had an early dinner, then went off to join the boat. This was a wet-suit excursion, where floating 'lattices' are used that have strong blue lights shining downward every 8 feet or so. The lights attract plankton, which in turn attract the mantas that eat them. You hold onto the handles at the edges of the structure and just float face-mask down and watch and wait. The mantas get very close, looping head over tail beneath you as they eat their way along the illuminated area.

The mantas were beautiful, and the whole experience was really neat up until about 30 minutes of time-in-water. That was when the dreaded progression of horror began: "What's that sensation? It's weird. I don't really recognize it. No, wait—oh god, it's nausea, isn't it? No, I refuse to let that happen, that is unacceptable. Stop it! Oh, maybe it's gone now. Hmm, hmm, hmm. So relaxing. Hmm, hmm—urk, I think I'm feeling it again. No-no-no-no-no! Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, everything is fine..."

That went on for about five minutes before it became clear I had lost the war, and I struck out for the boat. Hit by a surge of it on the ladder while making my way onboard, and forced it back down until I got to the bench near the edge where we'd been sitting on the trip out. And then it was too much. Ugh—right over the side. It broke my 42-year streak of not having thrown up, and I even remembered to take Dramamine beforehand! Nuts. I've struggled with this on past snorkel tours, and it's usally the boat, but I've been hit with it while in the water once before.

Still, I wouldn't trade the experience of having done that trip for anything. No regrets.

We had hoped to drive up Mauna Kea to see the sunset and stars, but that wasn't possible this trip. ( Read more... )

Something else we didn't see? Most of the creatures making the unfamiliar sounds we heard during our trip. Outside the house where we stayed in Puna, there was something that talked nearly 24/7. We could hear it day and night, in all kinds of weather, but we never managed to see it. It might have been a bird or an amphibian, but who knows? And why didn't its throat get tired?

It was definitely not one of the shrieking frogs around the Hilo area, though. ;)

It was a great vacation, and a wonderful opportunity to spend a lot of time with The Boy before he heads back to school again. In three days... :O

Why oh why is that song in my head? :O

It's been decades—I can't even remember what Puffenstuff looked like! I do remember his human sidekick, Jack, and that Puffenstuff was probably on right before the bizarrely dull "Kukla, Fran, and Ollie" (a show that signaled the end of Saturday morning cartoons, and which we watched with the same grasping denial with which you eat the lousy bottom-of-the-pumpkin Halloween candy that was never worth eating before, but is now sadly all that's left of the good times you're desperately clinging to).

*koff* Or maybe that was just me?

I've avoided Googling H.R. Puffenstuff, because as long as I don't, he still looks like my random mental image of him. Which strongly resembles one of Maurice Sendak's 'Wild Things,' but with a lot more orange and hot pink.

So, we got back from vacation a couple of weeks ago, but we're leaving again to squeeze in a last-minute trip to Hawaii with The Boy before he goes back to school. We wanted to do this in June with both kids, but our daughter balked and asked us to think about September instead. And now she can't go, because she's working. Which we pointed out to her at the time, but hey...

We're really looking forward to it, but since I've been heavily researching and planning and booking since last Friday, the lead-in has been wall-to-wall flailing. Now I need a vacation from that.:O

In the intervening two weeks, it's mostly been pretty hot here—too hot to bike outside, some days. Between the heat and planning for the trip, I haven't spent much time in the yard since before the LAST trip. But my recon from back then showed a few areas that are really suffering from the sun and scorching temps, and a phenomenon peculiar to lavendar in our climate:

Lavendar Bush: It's so hard being me! You have no idea. The heat, the pressure to perform... I can't take it anymore! /o\
LB: *sporadically dies off in scattered chunks*
LB: Also? I've randomly decided to spawn a friend about eight inches away...

We added a different variety of lavendar in another (shadier) part of the yard this Fall, and it's doing that now too! The lavendar in England and France doesn't behave like that. :(

Still no major headway on weed-proofing the vast spread of bare dirt in our yard...

After a nice week-and-a-half in Oregon visiting family, we're back home again in the Sacramento heat. Where our A/C is still out, and the repairman couldn't meet with us yesterday or today, so these near-100-degree temps are making us desperate. :O

While up north, I went to Tryon Creek a couple of times and visited Portland's Saturday Market (where I bought another pair of earrings from the Dreamspirit vendor, whose work I really like). We ate salmon and blackberry cobbler (SO good), and got thorough exposure to Calamityware dishes (featuring doom ranging from volcanoes and giant squid to UFOs and zombie poodles). I hiked most of the Silver Falls State Park waterfall loop, visited with my mom some more, and succumbed to the lure of Monster Cookies once more (the peanut-butter-chocolate-chip and oatmeal-chocolate-chip are my favorites). Then it was back down the highway through the smoke to Sacramento, where our lonely son awaited us. We thought he'd be working most of the time we were gone, but there were a lot of unexpected days off, and... he needs company. :O

I went bicycling Thursday after 10 days off, which was enough rest-time that all of the saddle-sore areas are hurting again. Also, I got my 4th yellow-jacket sting of the season. /o\ WHY?

It was a good trip overall, despite my mother's devil-dog, who is much, much worse than he was in January. In addition to charging, crowding, excessive barking, and following you and nipping at your butt, he now also lunges at the door and scratches at it. My mother wants to be his 'friend' instead of his master, so he has no manners at all. Ugh. She would never have made that mistake as a parent, but this is not her first neurotic, obnoxious dog. After the last one died, everyone hoped she wouldn't get another one, yet here we are...

One more day left, and then I have to go back to work again. I'm not ready, but it'll probably distract me from the inevitable post-vacation eater's remorse. :O

We got home last night (-ish) at 1am, after a long, long day of travel and a visit to the National Portrait Gallery with our daughter. She was right—there WAS a lot to see there. Parts of the Civil War section (the Emancipation Proclamation with Lincoln's image via the text! Johnson's betrayal of Lincoln's promise to slaves depicted as Iago undermining Othello!) were geek-tastic. The travel home part began at around 5pm, with Ubering to the airport, and the first flight of two left at 7:30. I SO wish I'd remembered that we'd be leaving at dinnertime, and flying for 3 1/2 hours. That was one uncomfortable flight. The second, after a speed-search for food at Denver before boarding the plane, was mostly an issue of staying awake. Also, the newer 737 planes? The passenger seats are smaller front-to-back than their predecessors by at least 1.5 inches. Long-legged people, beware. :(

It's the last day of voting for Idol, and I'm not faring well in the polls, but still hopeful! My two entries are here and here, and links to voting polls (two) with all entries are at the bottom of each. Please read and vote if you can!

The cat was extremely happy to see us, and we let her sleep in our son's bed last night. He wonders why we don't let her do that every night, but that will make his leaving for college all the harder on her! She does go up and snuggle with him every morning, though, and he just leaves his door open as it's easier than being awakened by her scratching at the door to be let in...

Other news: any questions I might have had about whether my plantar fasciitis was getting better are DOA. Ugh. My feet (arches especially) hurt a lot with all that walking and standing over the last week-plus, and they're back to that early morning pain again. This is after more than a year of time off from running, which has been longer than I wanted! Stupid feet. Why must you fail me?

During our travels, I tripped on an ill-placed rock at a cafe our second morning there, and fell hard and spectacularly. Nothing broken, I think, but major bruising on the rump and arm where I made contact, and I jammed a finger that is still swollen and sore. No injuries for HalfshellHusband, though all the walking was tiring (and yet he made it) and his feet hurt a lot (terrible shoes). He had some dizziness episodes, but not many—which was better than we expected, given what was happening before we left.

Yesterday, an articulated bus had an accident in DC's Chinatown, right next to where we had lunch. I thought the heavy rear bus caved in through one of the construction plates covering a large hole, so that the street ate one of the bus tires, but it may be that the bus skidded on a plate? Hard to say—the road was completely dry, and the accident happened awhile before we got there. I'll bet the bus driver was worried about job security after that, though it was kind of a freak accident situation. :O

Okay, better get back to work and unpacking. It's our son's birthday today, so everything is in flail mode. Including the sky! Though actually, not so much here, sadly. We're in an unimpressive locale for the eclipse...

ETA: I still think that bus accident involved tire-eating. One of the construction plates was really bent, and also, if you stop a rear tire on the back half of an articulated bus, the front will swing around like that—kind of the obverse of a jackknifing truck if you brake too hard from the front.

Our vacation in Washington DC is nearing its end, and the whole thing has gone by very quickly—except for those times when it's so hot and muggy that it feels as if time is standing still. This weather—ugh, what a challenge.

You may have noticed that two Idol entries went up yesterday. Trying to write two entries while on vacation visiting family was a real challenge! I'm hoping to stay in this a little longer, and have a chance to write further entries where I can focus, so please read and vote if you're so inclined. All entries for this week are linked at the bottom of those stories.

The writing struggle, apart from the time in which to do it... I've been having trouble staying awake at night in this time zone (so, no long stints there), and in the mornings I'm just stupid. We've been getting up at the equivalent of my 5:30 am, and I normally get up around 8:00. Just getting my head together enough to shower or go to the gym is a struggle. My brain is muddled until about 11:00.

We've spent a good amount of time with our daughter, when she hasn't been working. On her birthday, we visited the Supreme Court and the Jefferson Library of Congress (wow), and saw Dunkirk.

Saturday, we went to the Newseum (really good, so much better than I expected. The Pulitzer Prize photo exhibit was terrific, but there was also a 1989 Berlin Wall exhibit, historic newspapers and printings, and exhibits on 9/11, civil rights, and chasing terrorists. Of the ones we visited). Sunday was the National Zoo (panda butts! Happy elephants! Cute children! Also the fattest fish I've ever seen). Tuesday we did the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (i.e., about 4 hours of space stuff plus the Wright Brotherz exhibit, because HalfshellHusband and our son and I are space geeks). Wednesday was The Capitol, the National Archives (i.e., actual copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights), and a night tour of several of the monuments and memorials. Thursday was the Smithsonian Natural History Museum (dinosaurs!) and a brief and disappointing visit to the Museum of American History. Today, we saw the White House exterior from a distance (it's all barricaded off), the Jefferson, F.D.R., and Martin Luther King Jr. memorials (the King one is really nice), and part of the National Art Gallery-- with a speed round through the Impressionists, since the museum closed sooner than we expected. Well worth it, though.

It's been around 90-degrees and humid here the last few days. Weather-wise, that translates to sweating ALL through your clothes and then sweating some more. UGGGGggghhh. And thanks to hotel discount deals, we're also staying at a very nice hotel and having to do our laundry in the sink, like peasants. Not for the first time... \o?

More later, but in general the people in D.C. are really nice, and the Metro system is awesome. :D

I was tagged by tsuki_no_bara for the following meme:

The rules: during the next five days, post three positive things about your day and ask three people to do the same so the positive attitude can gain some ground.

1. Our anniversary trip to Yosemite was wonderful, and very welcome. :D

2. Biked today, since I wasn't able to all weekend. My feet and legs were happy to stretch out and not be involved in hiking, as they have had enough. :D

3. We're rewatching the HBO No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, now that we've read some (or in my case, ALL) of the books and liked the casting so very much.

I hope everyone who celebrates Easter had a happy one! We got back from Oregon late on Saturday night, and did not get around to dying the eggs that had been boiled the week before. But we had an Easter Egg hunt anyway, with plastic eggs and chocolate things inside, so it all worked out. Plus, the kids' Easter baskets. They're teenagers, but it's still all about the chocolate.

We had a nice visit with my parents, though it's hard to see them aging. My mom is 88, and Dad will be in a few months. They're still doing better than a lot of their peers, but it's not as easy for them as it once was.

We played glow-in-the-dark mini-golf in Portland while visiting my sisters, which was really neat! Putting is still my nemesis. It's a complete crapshoot.

I finished Haunted before we left for Oregon. I rarely give up on books, but I was sorely tempted with that one. It was needlessly disturbing. Creative, yes, but overall very much not fun. Up in Eugene, I finished Divergent, and got halfway through the "must read this!" book I brought, partly because my mom had a Jeffrey Deaver book (Lincoln Rhyme series) I'd never read. Now I'm midway through both. I managed to get all of the Thursday Next books downloaded onto my Kindle before we left, so my son could re-read as many of those as he needed. Fortunately, he figured out how to access footnotes on Kindle, because those are crucial for that series! He made it into book 4 on the drive home. That kid reads faster than I do...

I also madly tried to read all the Idol entries, and did the voting... only to have the voting aborted within the hour before the deadline. Argh! That eye-bleed was all for nothing!

Now I'm slogging through the workpile at the office. Happy Wednesday. :O