california trip, part 3

Had breakfast with Puzzlebox, Rand & Adam, and Taunya's kids. Can't remember the restaurant name. Jeff and Andrew came to pick me up at the hotel at noon. They somehow missed seeing me waiting in the lobby and wandered about the second floor a bit, meeting more folks on the way. :-) People directed them back down to the lobby.

Went to a giant Borders store. Wow, great place! Jeff loaded up on tech magazines. Had lunch at an extremely popular (judging from the line which was, fortunately, fast-moving) burger place. Went to Fry's next. Amazingly enough, they didn't have any film for my camera (I need Advantex film) in spite of having pretty much everything else under the sun. Did find a camera shop shortly afterwards, tho.

Drove to Mountainview to visit our friend Bruce, met his girlfriend Christie. We used to hang out with Bruce at the University of Toronto in our undergraduate days. Bruce is now an astronomer currently studying the surface of Titan...we got to see some impressive-looking pics. We also went for a very nice walk with their dog Oozle (sorry, don't know how to spell the name properly, but that's how the name is pronounced). Oozle loves water. We walked through a park near Stanford University where Oozle romped happily through a creek with other dogs, pausing occasionally to run up the hill to shake water on us. Bruce and Christie have a lemon tree in their backyard! I'd never seen a lemon tree before.

Next, we visited our friend William (another friend from U of T days) at Xerox PARC, met his girlfriend Mona. Xerox PARC is very cool. We got to see the famous Bean Bags, and the Coffeepot Webcam setup, among other things.

The seven of us went to Su's Mongolian Barbecue restaurant in Santa Clara. VERY interesting place! Not much in the atmosphere department, but the food experience was great. Basically, you take a big bowl and load it up with whatever raw stuff you want, choice including frozen meat of all kinds (sliced into very thin pieces) and stirfry vegetables. The Californians advised us to pile our bowls as high as possible since the stirfry process created shrinkage. You add whatever sauce mixture you liked, then handed your bowl to one of the cooks. The cook dumped the contents onto a large flat cooking plate, where your supper sizzles and is shoved around for a several minutes until done, at which point it is dumped back into your bowl. There are also a number of yummy side dishes to choose from to complete your meal. Yum. We were allowed seconds as well, but I was full after one bowl.

After dinner, visited with William and Mona a bit in Mountainview. Found out what agapantha looks like (a plant that is taking over their garden; Mona has waged war against it), met their cats. Drove back to Santa Clara, watched X-Files at Andrew's place.

To be continued....

california trip, last part

Had breakfast with Andrew and Jeff at a restaurant called The Good Earth, where I also bought two cans of their famous Cinnamon Spice Blend tea (the best cinnamon tea I've ever had). After breakfast, we went to the store at Apple Computer Store where I bought a copy of DEADLOCK, a game Paul Kwinn worked on at Accolade. I had watched with morbid fascination as one friend after another had succumbed to this addictive game, and it's finally available for Macs! I've opened up the box but have been too afraid to install it. I also bought some Apple logo stuff (sweatshirt, cap, etc.). They even had a UNIBALL MICRO (the best pen in the entire universe, as everyone knows) with the Apple logo on it.

We met Paul at his work for lunch. Accolade is very cool; we got a brief tour. Paul's work cubicle was disappointingly neat, though. One of Paul's workmates had a much more interesting work area, a collection of a zillion (at least it looked that way) action figures. After the tour we went for lunch at a place called Chili's. Back to Accolade for some obligatory photos near the Accolade sign (David Goulden's Silicon Valley tour was an inspiration). I'll post some here, of course.

Said good-bye to Paul ( :-( ), then went off to the Monterey Aquarium. This place was amaaaaaaaaazing. I highly recommend it to anyone remotely near Monterey, but then again anyone living near Monterey will likely have a lifetime membership :-). Amazingly huge tanks (I recognized the one used in the Star Trek whale movie), stunning display of ocean life. I had to keep reminding myself I was actually watching REAL CREATURES, not a movie. Saw sharks, fish of all kinds (the giant sunfish was the most bizarre-looking), octopi, squid, sea birds, otters, crabs, etc. etc. The jellyfish exhibit was my favourite. Giant tank with a light blue screen that was lit in such a way to give it infinite depth, with huge orange jellyfish undulating in all directions. Airy atmospheric music piped over the loudspeakers. The overall effect was magical, and I know I'm doing an abysmal job at properly describing it. All I can say is that I could easily have spent an hour or more just staring at this exhibit. Feeding time in one of the tanks was also impressive...Jeff and I just expected food to be tossed into the water as the fish fought over it. Instead, a diver went down and distributed the food, miked so that she could answer questions from the gathered crowd; you could barely see her sometimes with the cloud of hungry fish swimming around her (sharks, too! but they seemed content with the bits of squid she gave them).

After the aquarium, we drove to Carmel to look for something to eat. The sun was just going down, so we stopped by one of the beaches to watch it set. Had seafood at a restaurant called Flaherty's, and I found some wine that I really liked (Monterey County Riesling 1996, very sweet). Got pleasantly buzzed, had creme caramel for dessert (my favourite dessert in the whole world, if you didn't know).

It was a nice ending to the trip. Packed when we got back to Santa Clara, left the next morning. Wow, was it cold when we stepped out of the Toronto International Airport. Anyway, many many thanks to our friend Andrew for putting us up (and putting up with us). Thanks also to the Consonance concom for organizing such a great convention! Lots of fun.

Back to reality now...

joel in sing out

Congrats to Joel Polowin! Sherman Dorn reports that Joel's parody of "Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind" (Christine Lavin) appeared in the most recent issue of SING OUT! v. 42, # 4 (Spring 1998).

Part 3 of my California trip report follows (report so far can be found at http://www.inkspot.com/blatherings/articles/california98.html)...

ut practice

Went out with Allison and Jodi last night. Going to meet them again today; we're going to be briefly visiting with Mark Osier and Kathy Cogswell, who are in town for the Dorsai Thing.

brussel sprout story

Allison, Jodi and I drove out to one of the airport hotel yesterday to visit for a few hours with Mark Osier and Kathy Cogswell (both in town for a Dorsai event). Great seeing them again! We got to hear one of Mark's new songs, ate a pile of junk food. :-) Looking forward to seeing them again at Contata in July, where Mark is the Toastmaster.

The other day I took my three-year-old niece Sara to the Royal Ontario Museum. She insists on taking her plastic Mickey Mouse lunchbox with her.
"Are you sure you don't want to leave it at home?" I ask.
Sara looks at me as if I've lost my mind. "It has my lunch in it!" She goes on to describe this pretend lunch (which includes icecream) and how much she's looking forward to having it. I let her keep the lunchbox and we head for the bus station.

As we pass the corner fruit market, Sara suddenly stops.
There is a frozen abandoned brussel sprout lying by the side of the road. We talk about it a bit (what it is, how it got there), then I encourage Sara to come with me to get to the bus stop. She keeps staring with enormous interest at the brussel sprout. I see the bus come around the corner. It passes us. It stops, gets a passenger, goes on. I sigh and ask if Sara wants to take the brussel sprout with us. She nods. She asks me to hold her Mickey Mouse lunchbox for her (I end up carrying it for the rest of the trip). We take the brussel sprout and wait for the next bus.

On the bus, Sara decides the brussel sprout is a girl and names it Susie. She clutches it tightly in one mitten until we get on the subway, at which point she plays with Susie, talking with Susie's squeaky voice. We use the lunchbox as a skating rink. I steadily avoid meeting the eyes of the other commuters, knowing that if I look up I will surely see horror in them, horror that a mother could possibly be too cheap to buy her daughter a real doll and forces her to use Susie The Brussel Sprout instead. At one point Susie slips on the ice and goes rolling down the subway car, narrowly misses being crushed by some guy getting off at his stop. Abandoning any attempt at self-respect, I go running after the brussel sprout as if it's the most precious thing in the entire world. I can feel everyone's accusing eyes on me as I hand it back to Sara, who clutches at it in tearful relief.

Ruth called me up yesterday to ask (in a very nice way) that I not let Sara befriend any more roadside vegetation. Turns out there was quite the scene when they had to explain why Susie had to be thrown out. Sigh.