Long but Fun Day

Got up at 8, put on my robe & Birkenstocks and took the shopping bag of soda cans out to the curb for the homeowners assn. drive. Went back to bed.

Up in time to get the car to the shop to have the flaky Kenwood unit pulled and a new Pioneer unit installed.

Took the bus to the mall, walked around it twice (downstairs then upstairs) with a stop for lunch (sourdough clam chowder bowl). Noticed many many mother-daughter pairs, and was surprised how often Mom was in better shape than daughter. Lots of families. It isn't prejudice when an ethnic group demonstrates a trait more often than not, so I'll just blurt it out: children whose parents are from India, especially the boys, run out of control and out of reach of their parental units far more often than others. Hispanics display some of that too. In Asian couples speaking not-English, the woman holds onto her man much more closely than other ethnicities. Young Hispanic women tend to stand behind an a little to the side of their man.

There was a lot of eye candy, many women in stretch track suits or spandex. And way too much jailbait in short shorts.

I left in time to get back to the shop at 1, very surprised they had not been done an hour earlier, and my car was just being parked back in the lot. They lied about the very expensive backup camera I already had being compatible - it only shows reverse. I had left the cable to control it in the trunk, but the tech didn't bother to install it. He offered to when I pointed out the missing features, but I was already late. Maybe some other time.

Next stop, the Sunnyvale Players set shop, way on the other side of Santa Clara. Almost missed it because the director put the wrong unit number on the address. Not moch left for me to do by the time I got there, three artists, the tech producer and the director had been there since 10. I painted the edges of two flats, helped move two others, but mostly chatted with the folks. Director wants to see the group get an artistic director and a finance person, and start doing good but not well-known shows. IMHO they need to start doing well-known shows again.

Home, rain coming down like an Oregon Coast storm, big drops from way high up, no distinct clouds just gray.

In the driveway I experimented with some of the features of the Pioneer unit, and was not pleased that the iPod cannot co-exist with the phone's bluetooth apps. Disconnected the iPod and listened to Pandora but the ads bugged me. And they had adjusted the voice for the GPS to 100%, which was like being screamed at. And there was no way to adjust it in flight that I could find. Found it finally, for my next trip.

Next was Bob & Sharon's Bad Movie Night. I punched their address into the GPS and it started out taking me a route which seemed okay, but then it became clear it thought the address was about 20 miles from where it actually was. I had punched in Redwood City, but it overrode that and pointed to Portola Valley. I finally punched at the screen until it turned off the routing, and got to a familiar landmark and onto the street off El Camino I remembered taking last time, then punched in the zip code instead of the city and the GPS took me the last 2 miles.

I was almost an hour late, but people were still chatting in the kitchen, pizza was in the oven. We moved to the livingroom, and they powered up Netflix, and started with a Divine/Tab Hunter gem called Lust in the Dust, but it wasn't bad enough so we switched to Dinosaur Island, a T&A spectacular with lots of bare breasts and even one or two scenes of full body simulated sex. Truly Bad. Next up was Zeta One, a British film which manages to make a game of strip poker with the incredibly sexy Yutta Stensgaard into a yawner.  Later the film was renamed The Love Factor, probably in a vain attempt to raise box office scores.

It was getting on toward midnight, I left while others headed for the hot tub.

Home, I didn't use the GPS routing, but the map drove me crazy. I had somehow managed to changed the settings to make it a wireframe, with the map always pointing north and the car moving in whatever direction it was going. I far prefer to have the map pointed in the direction the car is moving. Home, in the driveway I reset everything and got back the 3D directional view.

Way too late now (2:30 am)

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep in
quick trip to the produce store hoping for some large limes
1 pm a remodeling guy is supposed to come by to give an estimate for replacing the bathroom shower with something larger than a closet. I suspect this is not the person I will be using, but I wanted an estimate for when I call the ones in our homeowners assn magazine.
6 pm Q2Q at the theater.