tkil

During the first week in August, the family went to San Diego for one last vacation before deliriumdreams started her PhD program, K started high school, I started my new job, and the boys got back into schoool. I'll try to post a full description later; suffice to say that we wanted to try to hit all the places that we had come to know and love in SD, and we had some success.

The very last day, though, we planned something special. K had it mostly figured out, but the boys were clueless. We were going to swim with the dolphins!

For better or worse, there was no human swimming involved: us silly primates stood on a shallow shelf, and the dolphin did all the work. I was a little underwhelmed by our trainer; she seemed to be phoning in her performance. (Granted, it was 10a on a Sunday, I don't entirely blame her ... but for the cost-per-minute of this event, I really hoped for a bit more, and the other groups seemed to have more enthusiastic trainers, so...)

Anyway, it was a pretty neat experience. If there were a place where I could actually swim with the dolphins, while being assured that they were being treated well ... I'd probably go for it. Not sure there is such a place, nor whether there should be such a place.

Having said all that, we were amused to discover that Anna Paquin was playing with the same dolphin just two weeks earlier!

Exhibit A: the lovely deliriumdreams smooching Maggie (August 9th, 2009)

Exhibit B: Ms. Paquin making kissy faces at Maggie (July 26th, 2009)

Went to Sabbat for only the second time ever tonight. Had a great time, gawking at the outfits with my lovely friend J.

Ran into fishnetfatale and stop_no_dont there -- *wave*! One of my classic cases of taking two hours to make sure they really were who I thought they were, but that just made it all the more delightful.

Now to try to get to sleep sometime before dawn.

Just in case people don't go back and read my previous entry, the warning's been cancelled. I took a look at the ocean, didn't see anything out of the ordinary at 22:15 which is about when it should have hit here if the predictions were correct.

Oh well. Maybe next time. :)

Felt a little guilty for sleeping in despite having made vague plans with my sister, but since they slept in as well, I don't feel too bad. :) Lounged around the house until about one, then headed out to Ranchos for lunch.

I'd been planning on sitting by myself and working on the Reader's crossword puzzle, but R was there and invited me to sit with her group of friends. They were lots of fun: the two gentlemen were both geeks (one at IBM, one a gov't contractor, both working with computers) and generally leftist, Tilley-wearing, world-travelling good people. As we were finishing, we were accosted by the food reviewer for the Reader, who is a charming fellow from New Zealand. We'll have to see if our quotes show up in next week's review...

After eating, we walked over to a local supermarket (because R had remembered a good deal on compact flourescents, which T wanted to buy a handful of and bring home to Maryland(!)), then R went to the pier while the rest of us walked to the Ocean Beach People's Co-Op; I wanted to pick up some soap, and V and M wanted to show T and S the spiffy new building.

From there, I went to Obee's while the other four headed over to Dog Beach. I finally got around to working on the crossword puzzle, which wasn't as easy as usual -- there were two spots that had me stumped. At least I did better than the bartender T, who usually outclasses me easily at crossword puzzles. If it weren't for the fact that he's from England, he'd completely blow me away; as it is, some of the more obscure Americanisms still escape him.

Finally, someone turned up the scenery knob today. Just at Obee's, there were three girls who were insanely attractive; add that to the cute waitress, and one of the cutest waitresses from another pub stopping by for a drink, and it was very distracting. Earlier, there was some wonderful scenery at the co-op -- not surprising, really: take a town that is [in]famous for it's fabulously fit population, and hang out at the health food store. Wow.

A nice day of decompression. Which should come in handy, as a friend is coming over for some computer help tomorrow, then I'm flying to DFW for work Monday-Tuesday, then to PHX next weekend for a show (but I get to see deliriumdreams, YAY!), and lots more travel, visitors, and general busy-ness. Whew.

Had a wonderful visit with J and S, as well as chancellor_d this weekend. It was far too short, but we had lots of fun. They arrived Friday evening, and we had some yummy Ranchos for dinner. Turns out that S and D's friend D2 knew a lot of people in common, and both played guitar. In fact, the rest of that evening was an impromptu guitar session at my house; D and I were just slacking and listening, but J, S, and D2 went on for quite a while.

D2 is hitchhiking and ridesharing his way around the Southwest; he's based out of Austin, Texas, and came in with chancellor_d. One of his ex-girlfriends is in the area, and she came over to pick him up. The guess is that the weird hippy / geek / guitar factor freaked her out a little bit, but she stuck around for a few songs anyway.

Saturday we went to the beach. I had a new sunshade that I'd never tried before (worked well, although I need longer stakes to feel comfortable that it won't blow over in the wind), so that was fun for my geeky ex-boy-scout side. We grabbed a few sandwiches at Poma's along the way, and spent a couple of hours on the beach. It was sunny and warm when we got there, then about two hours later the marine layer came back in. J and S went for a couple of long walks, and D mostly napped. :) I whiled away the time looking at the cute scenery, then went for a bit of a swim -- the water was bracing but not painfully cold. Must swim more this summer. (And might chop all my hair off to do so...)

We had some yummy fish tacos that night -- J and S had only ever had Denver-based fish tacos, so they were pleasantly surprised by the yumminess. A few more beers were sampled, but we went to bed pretty early.

Sunday we had a slow start; eventually we got lunch at Newbreak Coffee. D took off to see the boats and then drive either up to LA or back to PHX, while the rest of us went up to the Wild Animal Park. I'd never been there on a weekend before, and it was packed! It took us almost two hours to get onto the tram ... which was fine, since it was warm enough that walking the whole time would have been a drag. Interesting conversation in line, too; an older couple next to us were nice enough, but we very carefully avoided most political talk after they mentioned they'd just gotten back from a religious mission to Africa. J and S had to head north after that, while I just came back home and relaxed.

Monday was a nice lazy day: lunch at Ranchos; worked through the Sunday NYT crossword puzzle. Only drama was a friend who called me for help moving her out of a house due to relationship doom, but it seems that things got smoothed over for now. Hope it works out for them...

Well, deliriumdreams had to go back home this week, which makes me very sad. It also means I can get more sleep (which is funny, because she sleeps way more when I'm around than when I'm not...)
( papering the neighborhood )
( boring work stuff )
( the monitor story )

deliriumdreams and I saw Collide at Brick by Brick tonight. It was a great show! They're touring the West Coast right now -- if you get a chance, check them out.

The opening act was Call Me Alice; they were pretty interesting, had a lot of fun, and had lots of fans in the crowd. There was a weirdness where it felt like a bunch of Stevie Nicks impersonators had gone to an anime / goth cosplay event and tried to act like Hole, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. (And they were very perky and friendly after the event, too -- I didn't pick up their CDs this time, but since they're local, I hope to see them again.)

Collide is mostly Karin and Statik (complete with sTuDLyCaPS!), but they had a full band on this tour. The oddball was probably the bassist, who was playing something very odd for most of the show -- it almost looked like a Chapman Stick, but it had a body on it. The rest of the band was up to snuff, rather more rocking than I would have expected. Statik and Karin both lived up to image; he looked like an extra from The Matrix and she was more beautiful than I'd expected, and wearing a very classy "techno-geisha" outfit. Mmmm.

Speaking of visuals, there were a few girls that I'd been watching off and on throughout the evening, and we ended up standing behind two of them in the crowd for the main set. One, a tiny (and I do mean tiny) little woman, was really getting into it, swaying and gyrating. Her butch girlfriend left for a bit, and when the frat boy next to her got touchy, she started making out with a leather-n-chains girl on her other side... And when the girlfriend returned, she joined in.

I couldn't resist telling them that they'd succeeded in making me jealous of all three of them. :)

A fun night for all.

The score so far this year:

Good monitor (19" NEC Multisync) died mysteriously.
TV died mysteriously. But it came back to life (sigh).
Hard drive in slinky (my server in colorado) died.
Hard drive in speedy (my home linux box) died.
Replacement hard drive for speedy died (mfg date: 2004-08-09. died: 2004-11-??. two months?)
Software update rendered my powerbook unusable earlier today.

So I'm hanging out, drinking Scotch, and re-installing OSX. (I had bought a replacement HD, meaning to put it in "eventually" ... that seems to have become "now". Oh well, it should be an upgrade -- from 4200 RPM 60GB to 5400/80.)

Now I just need to do data recovery off the respective drives.

How's everyone else's hardware karma going this year?