The Mornings After

[howeird]

Not much to say about Monday. Made a frozen pot pie for breakfast which had been sitting in the hotel room's fridge's freezer compartment since Thursday. Packed, walked to the light rail at about 9 am, got off near the Amtrak station but stopped in at a small grocery store for snacks first.

Was way early for the train, which is fine, I had First Men in the Moon on the Kindle, there was much people-watching to be had. King Street Station has been undergoing the world's slowest renovation, and did not look any different this time from a year ago. They have a completely effed up check-in system which confuses the heck out of most first-timers.

Found my sleeper room, opposite side of the train from the trip up - I asked about moving to the other side but the attendant said all the mountains would be on my side. That turned out to be Bad Advice, because there was lots of fog and low clouds, and the only mountains in view were the Olympics on the other side. I spent a lot of time in the parlor car looking out that side. Disappointing trip as far as the view went.

Unlike the trip up, this trip there was no ice for the drinks, the attendant didn't keep the drink station stocked (there is supposed to be juice, champagne and sparkling water), he never checked in on the passengers, and didn't offer refills for the water bottle-ettes in the sleeper rooms. No tip for him. OTOH the dining car staff this time was friendly and mostly efficient. Nice people joined my table for all three meals. The parlor car attendant, however, was rarely there, and mostly bitchy when she was.

Amtrak has severely cut down on the time spent at stations stops, they only let you get off the train in Portland, Eugene, Klamath Falls (at midnight), Sacto, and Emeryville. Ridiculous. It's not like the trains are timed to connect to anything.

We were mostly on time all the way up, about 5 minutes late into SJ due to some slowdowns after Oakland.

Drove home, unpacked, showered and changed, went through the mail, started downloading photos to the PC and went out to have my nails done.   Time to try a new place, I looked on Yelp again and found one in the strip mall where I used to do my laundry. Top Hair & Nails. Nice place, a woman named Gracie took care of me, she is very good, did not make me bleed or hurt like the last two places, and kept up a conversation well. When  told her I speak Thai she said hello to me in Thai (she's Vietnamese) and pointed to one of the hairdressers who she said was Thai. So me and the hairdresser had a little chat in Thai - had to keep it short because she was doing someone's hair at the time. Anyway, that was a win, I will be back in 2 weeks.

Also took out the garbage, petted the cats. Domino is sneezing a bit, but isn't showing any other symptoms. Hmmm.

Dinner, watched Syfy's Megapython vs. Gateroid starring an anorexic Debbie Gibson and an overly plump Tiffany. Horrible acting, inane special effects, WTF music, and way too much blood and gore for TV. And no sex.

Got the Conflikt photos online at Flickr, and posted a link to the con LJ site. Click here to see the set. Thanks to all the available darkness, I did not take many pictures this year.

There were not a lot of outstanding photos taken from the train, I may not even bother to post them anywhere. I'll take another look later in the week.

Plans for tomorrow:
Nephrology appointment
Banking to do for the trust account
Work