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Caught the first morning 3D non-IMAX showing of Harry Potter at the Mercado at 10:30 (actual movie started at 10:50), I was there at about 10, but there was no line, and the theater never got more than 15% full. Mostly adults.

Non-spoiler review is pretty simple.Read more... )
Bottom line: worth matinee 3D and the online $1 ticket fee.

Next on the agenda was Costco, to pick up the 12x18s I'd ordered. Last night I mapped out three possible layouts for RenovationSF art show, and sadly I can only display 11 or 12 photos. It depends a lot on how many landscape and vs portrait I choose. 8x12s would have allowed close to twice that. Considering I have 43 valid candidates, 5 of which are costume portraits I have permission from the subjects to display. So I need to pare the remaining 38 down to 6. Boo hiss. I wonder if it is too late to buy another pair of panels. No, that would be overkill. Probably. Deadline was July 15 to reserve space.... I suppose it would not hurt to ask if there are panels left.

And the final project for the day was to find something to wrap Heidi's present. It was going to be in a padded envelope, but I wanted something birthday-ish around it. Office Max had a possible bigger envelope. CVS gave me too many choices: boxes, bags, paper, tissue paper. I selected a roll of wrapping paper and one of those annoying swirly ribbons (I like the traditional ones better but they had none). Home, had a snack in case the promise of lots of food at the party did not come about, wrapped the gift, grabbed the camera and my SJ Sharks jacket and headed out to HMB.

Half Moon Bay State Beach is lovely. Heidi had reserved a camp site (I will try to spend a weekend there soon) , but it only allows two cars, so the rest of us had to park half a mile away in the beach lot. I brought my camp chair, and my Sharks jacket which I never needed because the famous Half Moon Bay fog never made an appearance. I spent a lot of time talking with Heidi's dad, who was a photographer for a lot of his life, and I'm guessing he's about my age, though he looks much younger. Chatted with a lot of people, was surprised I did not know any of them, because most are theater people. But come to think of it, in the 20+ years I have known Heidi, we have never been in a show together. We've never auditioned for the same show either. Very odd, that.

They close the gates at sunset, and since there wasn't any real food at the party I bailed at about 8 and attempted to have dinner at a local Thai place called Bangkok House. It took a while to get a menu and order, food was delivered quickly. The fish cakes were over-cooked and the little sauce in the dish with cucumber, carrot and onion bits was something unidentifiable, and not Thai. It was watery red, maybe ketchup way watered down. They were served with a steak knife. Knives at the table are taboo in Thailand (no weapons at the table!), and fish cakes should be cuttable with a spoon.

BBQ pork ribs were served piping hot, again with a knife, and with a sauce dish which was billed as spicy lime. This is finger food, the knife was an insult. The sauce was inedible. Thai BBQ is done with sweet/hot sauce - usually watered down honey and chili pepper maybe with a touch of lime leaves, which are bitter. I took the ribs home, I'll make the right sauce for them and they should be fine.

The tip went down to 10% when it took 15 minutes for anyone to notice I was done eating.

At 8:50 (they close at 9) a family of East Indians, complete with infant in a car seat, Mom, Dad. brothers, sisters, grandma and grandpa barged in. The hostess tried to tell them they were closing, but they stood their ground, and the hostess asked the cook, who agreed to stay late. A good business move, maybe. It rubbed the curmudgeon in me the wrong way. I won't be going back there again.

By then it was 9, traffic over the hill was reasonable, and I was home in 35 minutes.

Party photos will be on Flickr Real Soon Now.
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My favorite park 'n' ride for light rail was completely full - something I have never seen before, so went around to the next one, which is a HUGE lot, and was almost empty. I think my first choice was filled with neighborhood cars making room for visitors. Caught the 10:27, got to the convention center in plenty of time for their 20-minute day pass registration routine. It was not made easier by them holding next year's reservations in parallel, sort of. Regular reg ends at noon, 2012 starts at noon. But they were so slow processing today's peeps that it ran over.

Last day of the con, it ended at 3. There was some major eye candy, but not as much as last year. Of course last year I went on Sunday, and stayed for the masquerade. Anyhow, got some good photos, left at 2:30 to make the 2:45 train.

Home, had a snack then drove to Sunnyvale and bought a fishing license at one of the sports stores, and some simple fishing gear.  Too simple - I discovered when I got it out to the car - the pole only splits in two, very awkward, so I went to another store across the street and got a telescoping rod & reel which fits into a knapsack. And it came with some more tackle. At the first store I also picked up propane tanks for the camp stove, a set of stacking cutlery and a stacking pot/pan/bowl, all camping size. Home again, checked the camping gear on the patio and did not see my electric lantern, but remember it is in a plastic trash bag of stuff I'd pulled out of the trunk a year ago when I thought I was going to have the car painted.

The license is a strip of something paper-like, probably waterproof but I won't test that, wider than a cash register roll by maybe an inch, and about 5" long. In other words, it won't fit into a wallet or a standard card holder. Maybe a passport holder will work.

Downloaded my photos to the PC, did some online stuff for an hour and then it was time for BASFA. Unusually slow service tonight, they were out of soup, and all of my favorite pies. Some orders came out wrong.  Something seriously wrong in the kitchen. Our waitress has been with us for a long time, knows what most of the regulars order, and is very efficient, so it's not her.

Things started well, but Read more... )



Plans for tomorrow:
Depends on the weather.
And on the job follow-ups, if any

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howard stateman

September 2022

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