many anniversaries
G: Hrmmm, seems like we missed a
week. Well, John went away and then pulled me to him. We had a very
lovely 9th anniversary of our wedding.
But back to before that. My friend D-Dave came to town for an Animal
Rights Conference. He came straight to my house via the Metro from his
overnight flight. We hung out and had lunch and then we went out to
Nissan Pavilion (that thing is really far away!) to visit a friend of
his who was working a booth for
Peta2 on the
Warped Tour. She got us in for
free. The whole place was screaming loud and it grew tiring very fast.
D-Dave liked some of the bands though, so that was good. Unfortunately
we just missed
Joan Jett when
we got there. After the Warped Tour wrapped up we took D-Dave's friend
(forgot her name) and another person from the booth out to 7-11 so they
could get away from it all for a little bit. We dropped them back off
and made our way to D-Dave's hotel in Alexandria. We were planning on
eating at the
Sunflower
Vegetarian Restaurant but they closed before we could make it
there. The AR conference was at the hotel and I watched D-Dave set up
his table while enjoying the free food that was around. We were really
hungry by then. Thanks free food providers!
My parents came to town for a visit the next day, for a few days. They
went grocery shopping with me, and we went out to lunch or dinner a few
times - Chef's Secret, Vegetable Garden, New Deal Cafe, Chili's (where
I got them to make this - steamed veggies with a veggie bean burger and
a marinated portobella mushroom). Other than that we just kind of hung
around together. I showed Mom all the necklaces I'd made since she got
me into beading a little last Xmash. Cooperdad came over to visit with
them one afternoon, and he and Dad and John played Scrabble. Dad loves
Scrabble.
While we were at Chili's John called my cell phone from San Diego after
he finished his presentation at the
SPIE
conference. He said it was so nice out there he wanted to extend his
stay and have me join him. We had tried to get an inexpensive (and
within my time constraints) ticket for me about a week before he left
but couldn't find anything that seemed worth the trip. But now he said,
screw it, I'll get you a ticket and we can spend our anniversary here.
So the next night I flew out and he had a meal waiting for me from
Kung Food. I wasn't too hungry but it
was really good and I helped him eat it. The next day was our
anniversary but John had to attend some parts of the conference. So we
walked to the
Convention Center
and saw some of the city on the way. For lunch we went to John's
favorite Irish pub in San Diego that he discovered his first day,
The
Field. He was really into their potato leek soup. I had that and a
salad and it was good. The soup wasn't salty like most restaurant
soups. We went back through the Convention Center to get to the other
side where the ocean and
Seaport
Village were. We walked around for a long time looking at the cute
stores and the scenery. John had to buy a hat to protect his head from
the sun. We also bought a really pretty necklace, that I wanted myself,
for Lori. It's a large oval shaped aqua blue Swarovski crystal pendant.
We went back to the convention for a couple of presentations, then back
to the hotel. We went to dinner and Kung Food and ate like crazy. We
had the live Thai wraps, the Kung Food Salad, and a vegan pizza. For
dessert, we had their amazing live coconut "cheesecake" (with mango
sauce). It was incredibly good especially for a raw food dish. Oh, and
they serve young coconut water in the coconut - just chop the top off
and stick a straw in it. We had fun competitions to see who could get
the longest strand of young coconut meat into their straw by scraping
it down the sides. Then we'd slurp it up.
We also bought a bunch of packaged raw cookie type things from Kung
Food that got us through many times when we couldn't get a good healthy
meal right away.
So the next day we went to the nearest
Indian
Reservation Casino (John had already been once). He entered a
tournament and I wasted the most money I ever have, $40! On slot
machines. I only played the ones with real reels, not computer screens.
There was a non-smoking room, and I stayed in there and gave all my
money to two machines. Some folks (a group of three) next to me playing
similar (5 cent) machines were raking in the dough, but they were also
playing the maximum bet each spin (20 bets on 9 lines at 5 cents a bet
= $9 per spin) but they were hitting enough that I saw them win 3 times
out of around 10, with a hundred or two dollars each time they won. I
was happy for them but the machines clang for a really long time
counting out each 5 cent increment and the noise was a bit much.
Anyway, once I lost all the money I went out and John was just walking
out of the poker room, he busted out at the same time.
We drove around the area looking for something interesting but didn't
find much. Just California hills. On the way back to town we stopped
and bought John a pair of swimming shorts and a small tube of sun block
for the adventure we had planned the next day - a kayak and snorkeling
tour at La Jolla beach.
We had lunch at an Indian Restaurant in the city, then went to
Balboa Park to look around. I
took a lot of pictures and we walked around there a lot, but didn't go
into any of the museums except the Science and Discovery Museum. We saw
an IMAX film, Wired to Win, which was pretty good but maybe not meant
so much for IMAX. We had fun with the interactive exhibits - it was a
lot like the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
We met up with John's work mate Georgi and his wife and two kids for
dinner. I got to choose a Thai place and I loved the food. John and I
shared tofu and veggie satay skewers, a salad with tofu, and red
vegetable curry with oyster mushrooms. Georgi ordered Volcano Chicken
and out came a small corpse standing upright and on fire. The waiter
put the fire out and cut it up before giving it to him.
We drove to
La
Jolla to tour with
this company in
the morning. We were unsure whether or what stuff we could take with us
on the kayak, and John only had his hiking shoes. So after looking at
the beach for a while we went to a little store and got him some water
shoes (Speedos). We ended up putting everything in a locker and leaving
our shoes on the beach. John and I had separate kayaks, some people
were in doubles (with their kids). We were the first two into the water
and it was fun starting off, but then we had to wait a long time for
everyone on our tour to get out there. Then we all paddled to a buoy
and our guide Colin told us some things, like how the homes we cold see
on the hills facing the ocean were 10 million or more and the average
price of a home in La Jolla was 3 million. Then we paddled over to "The
7 Caves" which were under those homes. I thought from the brochure that
we were going to kayak throughout caves, but they were quite shallow
and you could just look into them. We did snorkel into one that was
open at the top. It took me a little while to get the hang of
snorkeling - it's been years since I'd done it, but once I did I had a
lot of fun. John loved it. Although there were only about 3 kinds of
fish to see there. One was the California State fish, the
Garibaldi,
and a couple of others. After snorkeling a while we got back into the
kayaks and headed back, but we paused in an area where there were many
many sharks swimming around under us. Don't worry - they were leopard
and shovel nose sharks - harmless bottom feeders. But still cool. We
paddled back to shore then got to go swimming off the beach with the
snorkeling equipment to see and swim with the sharks. Cool.
After we returned the equipment we walked down the beach. We saw
paragliders sailing around over the cliff tops and headed that way. We
walked and enjoyed the beach a little too long and ended up with
sunburns, but I had a great time.
We went back to the hotel, showered and went back to Kung Food for
dinner. Then we headed to
Tijuana
since I'd never been to Mexico before. I know that's not much of a
representation but it was still interesting. We walked up then down the
main street, Avenida Revolucion, where proprietors of stores,
restaurants and clubs called to us every step of the way. When we were
almost all the way back down the street we stopped in a little alcove
bar, with three barstools, right on the street connected to the kitchen
of a restaurant. They gave us chips and salsa, some sort of chili dip
and chopped onions and cilantro on the side. I was still full from
dinner so I didn't eat much. I had a
Sol beer (got to get
some, it was great with that little piece of lime) and John had a beer
too. We watched the kitchen staff make tortillas and such. I saw the
cook chopping raw meat on a cutting board and later chopping lettuce on
the same bloody cutting board. John had to tell me to stop making the
horrified look on my face.
John had two ideas - call Alfredo and order
mojitos.
We did, we chatted with Alfredo and we thought we were going to get
mojitos but the waitress came back and said they didn't have an
ingredient but they had a similar drink. John said okay but the drinks
turned out to be too sweet and not at all like mojitos. Oh well.
When we finally got back to the US we had a difficult time getting back
on the 5 to go north. There is one sign that tells you to go right.
Then you come to an intersection that has no sign and we had no clue.
We tried straight for several miles then turned around. We tried left
but turned around sooner. Lastly we went right and that was the right
way. Aggravating.
We flew back to MD the next day. Sunday I went to a little clay
workshop held in one of the Greenbelt Potter's basement studio. Since
then I've been lazing about. We had a few folks drop by last night -
Renata, Rich, Skip, and Izolda in that order. That was nice.
in security
Confused about whether I was allowed to bring my laptop in my carry-on
bag (I don't check in luggage anymore, I've lost too many things that
way in the past) I went to the websites for BWI and Southwest Airlines.
Both sites gave no information about allowed carry-on items, except of
course the new ban on liquids and gels, and both sites redirected me to
the TSA site.
On all my macs at work and home, when I went to
www.tsa.gov, the mac browser (an
application called Safari) hung for a while, then crashed completely.
This was very repeatable. In my experience TSA's is the only site that
ever crashed Safari. Ironic yet typical. Security agencies pretend to
give people a general sense of security, but often succeed in actually
making people less secure.
When I called TSA to get information regarding carry-on items, I was
required to give my name and number, for my own safety of course. I
don't feel any safer after giving strangers that information. I feel
slightly violated.
Another example: There's a security guard at my work with a gun, a big
SUV, and a german shepherd. The guy stops a lot of cars and makes a lot
of people sign meaningless papers while he and his dog inspect the
cars, inside and out. I can't find a single person who feels more
secure because of that whole mess, but there are plenty of people -
especially those who are afraid of big dogs or small guns - who feel
oppressed and at a greater risk of danger.
So that sucks. How do you keep security agencies on the right track,
toward providing actual security? How do you keep them from morphing
into storm troopers?
PS - I think if I had a car-sniffing german shepherd, I'd name the dog
"Dr. Strangelove." I think most security agents would miss the point,
even if they saw the film. Come to think of it, I think most of them
would miss the point of the film.
PPS - I did finally find out that you can still bring your laptop in
with your carry-on luggage, as long as your laptop is not made of a
liquid or gel, and as long as it doesn't run off certain
Dell batteries.
PPPS - Just kidding about the Dell part.
:-j
