The seller accepted my offer, without changes. The mfg rep is processing the loan paperwork with her lender, but I'm also on Lending Tree because the interest rates she quoted me are pretty high compared to what I have seen out there, especially for a <$150k loan. I checked with my insurance agent, they use someone else for mfg homes, but will give me a few $$ off for also having the car insured by them. I got a quote from progressive, they want twice as much. Both will only cover $150k, not the full replacement price. esurance gave me a quote from Safeco, which fielded it at 10% less, but their form did not recognize it was a mfg home, so that may be bogus.

Taxes come to about $50 a month. Utilities are not in the equation because I pay those now, Comcast says they serve that address so I should be good for cable and internet.

Work was pretty slow, so I found some more corporate online classes to sign up for. I watched one, 2 years old, on how cable TV is moving to IP, and while it was a well done marketing presentation, we've been selling in that field for about 10 years.

Team meeting had some revelations. Minor ones, though about two of the new company's local-ish offices moving to our building this month. Parking may get tight. 

Lunch with Automation Guy, we went to the Thai place which was too full last week. The key is to wait till 12:45. We can take lunch any time, but most of the worker bees in the neighborhood strap themselves into noon lunchtimes. Barn Thai is the sign on the place, and Automation Guy laughs that he expects to see cows inside. I explain that it's really pronounced "bahn" which means "house". Thai House because reverse word order (in Thai and most Asian languages, nouns come before adjectives, verbs before adverbs).

Back at work my tennis elbow was hurting a lot so I switched my mouse to left-handed mode. Did the same when I got home. I'm just ambidextrous enough to be able to do that.

UPS, three things to pick up, then home. As usual most of the mail went into the trash or the shredder, but there were two checks from a class action settlement against AT&T Mobile. One was for about $5.00 the other for 3¢.

Online, grabbed the last two months' statements from my 3 credit cards, and the last 2 from my CU and emailed them to mgf rep.  So we should be done with that load of crap until it's time for the park approval process. And she said we have most of that covered already.

On to BASFA because MNF was not a game I was interested in. Passed around the 3¢ check and got many amused/amusing reactions. Reviewed Les Miz, pocket review. It was lightly attended, so things went quickly, done in just over an hour. I got in a couple of puns, no zingers, though.

---

In other news, my last remaining uncle died this afternoon. Call from my Baltimore sister, who said our aunt asked her to make the calls. Sis said he died peacefully in his sleep, I said it was probably the only thing in his life he did peacefully. I phoned my aunt, their eldest son answered, I gave him my condolences and then talked to her. She was in shock, but managed to brave it out for a few minutes. Uncle Dave was a New Yorker. A Bronx New Yorker. He did everything forcefully and with supreme confidence. When I was a kid he kind of scared me, force of nature that he was, and kind of annoyed me because he always thought he was right, loudly. But during the past 10 or so years we'd been communicating a lot**, and oddly enough, he usually was right. He had dimensions to him which he had not talked much about until lately, which is a shame because if I had known as a child, I would have admired him more and sooner.

He was a WWII veteran of the combat engineering company which helped liberate Italy. He left a job as a welder to enlist. After the war he worked for 25 years as a railroad post office employee up and down the east coast. You can read more about that career choice here. His final job, I think, was head of customs inspections at JFK Airport. I know that was his job, he met me at customs when I came back from the Peace Corps. I'm just not sure it was his last one.

**He had macular degenration since 2007, so I started recording 15-minute mp3s messages and emailing them so he could "read" my messages without my aunt having to be there. She wrote most of the replies, being a retired executive secretary, but I had also taught him how to record messages, and he used that to communicate with friends. Elder son helped get him started. We corresponded about once a week, but he would phone if something in  one of my messages raised a red flag, or if he had some medical advice which needed to be shared urgently.

---

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
???

The trip on Amtrak to Santa Barbara was on time or early at every stop, but somehow it felt longer then the last three times, which weren't. I guess when you have seen the same scenery so many times, there isn't much left to hold your interest. One thing which surprised me is there is a huge hangar at Edwards AFB which has what may be the world's largest American flag painted on the side. Last time I passed by it had a NASA logo, no it sports a SpaceX insignia. weird that an allegedly commercial endeavor is given a building at government facility.

There were way too many small children on the train, but they didn't cry or scream, and mostly kept close to parental units.

I brought plenty of snacks, only made one run to the snack bar for a soda. I had a bulkhead seat, no tray, so I stayed in the lounge car until I was done. Should have also picked up a bottle of water. There was a water dispenser near my seat, but no cups. :-(

Oh wait, I know why it was boring. This is National Train Day, but there was almost nothing on board or at any of the stations. The first year, there were exhibits and live music at SLO and gifts for kids at SBA, but this year nothing at SBA (in the morning there was a free ride on one of the short spurs, but that ended by noon) and at SLO there was a lemonade stand, hidden in a corner.

It was a long slog from the train to the motel with a backpack and a carry bag with leftover snacks and my jacket, in the hot sun. The street which i usually take which cuts a couple of blocks off the trip is all dug up at State Street so I had to go the long way. Several jerks riding bikes on the sidewalk despite clearly marked bike lanes. Lots of smokers here too.

without the baggage and after it cooled down some, it was an easy enough walk back to State Street for dinner. There is a place on the corner with the. Perfect. Location, and it was almost empty. On a Saturday night! The prices are somewhat elevated, but reasonable for the location. I had th grilled salmon hollandaise with steamed spinach, and it was great. So was the house salad  and the coffee ice cream sundae. $38 after tax.

Plans for tomorrow:
10 am whale watching cruise
Wing it, staying overnight, returning Monday

Well, the superbowl is not going at all well, so I thought I'd catch up on almost a week of lost journaling.

Last real entry was on the train Monday. Skip to Tuesday. They kept saying they were running late, but when we got to Sacramento we were more than half an hour early. The sun wasn't up yet. I stayed on the train, very sleepy. The rest of the stops we were early, but we got delayed somewhere south of Oakland, and managed to just make it on time into San Jose, about 10 am.

Home, feeling poorly, but managed to pet the cats, top off their water, unpack, shower & take drugs and get to work around noon.

There was a lot to do at work, but nothing worth writing about. They had a town hall meeting way too early, so I caught the replay. It was a pretty good update on the Arris acquisition, they gave a lot more actual information than we got when Google was buying us.

Can't remember lunch or anything except going home to very affectionate cats.

---

Wednesday my cold was still hanging on, work kept my mind off it for the most part, I had some bug fixes to verify and some automation to work on. Home, faked some soup for dinner from Chinese BBQ pork and a couple of frozen won tons. Bed, woke up often. Kaan mostly stayed on the foot of the bed.

---

Thursday I was able to wrap up an automation script which was just waiting on a bug fix. They fixed the bug and it was easy from there. Starbucks for lunch, I think. The one near the furniture store, not one of the usual ones. There was a Brigadoon rehearsal, I was feeling just well enough to go - not contagious, just a stuffed nose and a mild fever. This was a run-through of what they had done so far, and I had not been blocked in 3/4 of it yet. We did my solo, and I was very displeased that he has me take center stage for it, which doesn't match the lyrics. He has not made allowances for non-dancers, so I've had to make allowances for myself. It looks like we will keep rehearsing to the boom box, which sucks big time. Music rehearsals don't start till the 11th, which is bass akward. Normally you learn the music first.

The good news is there are lots of pretty women, and many of them hang around me a lot, since I am the candy maker. The bad news is the director has all of us onstage all the time, pretty much. It's one way to do the show, but I think it detracts from the leads.

There is a dance number which is annoying me a bit. We have a very tall ballerina of Amazonian proportions (except she has both breasts - big ones), who is beautiful, graceful and a joy to watch. The character she is dancing with is a foot shorter than her, has a significant paunch, and it just looks wrong. He has no dancing training other than country dance.

We're supposed to go at 9, he kept us till 10:30 to block the end of the dance (lots of ensemble stuff, some of which I can't do, I need to talk to him about that).

Home, crashed

---

Friday was not feeling much better, but not worse. Work was again busy and I was able to wrap up yet another automation project which was waiting for a bug fix. Can't remember what I did for lunch, but I know I didn't go with the gang because they went too early [again]. After work I went to Office Max and looked for something to ship the Boskone art show photos in. I found something perfect, except it was way expensive. The 10-pack of 12x18 envelopes comes in a box which was the right size, but it was $25. On my way out I found their cardboard boxes, and got one which was 18x18x12, and went home with that. Of course it was too small for 12x18 photos.

Faked some soup dinner, and went to bed way too late after making the bid sheets and control sheet for the art show. She sent us non-writable pdfs, there is no way I am writing by hand, so it was a lot of copy and cut and paste work. At least I had the titles on a spreadsheet already.

---

Woke up at 1:30 pm. The cold was worse. I got up and dressed and was headed for Office Max to spend that $25, but the  garbage needed taking out, and lo and behold in the cardboard recycle area was the box from an ASUS video display which was pretty darned close to perfect, and free. So I took that inside, packed things up, weighed it, went online and printed UPS shipping and return labels, taped it up and blacked out all the bar codes that were not UPS, and took it down to the UPS store. Got that done in time to be an hour early to meet Janice at Starbucks, where I was going to start this tome but Facebook distracted me.

Janice was just back from 2 weeks in NJ as a Red Cross volunteer working with hurricane Sandy victims, and was pretty tired, so she had me fill her in on Conflikt, and we'll talk about her adventures next week.

Earlier in the day while things were falling out of the freezer compartment at me, I saw I had raw chicken thighs and drumsticks in there, so on my way home I stopped at Safeway and picked up the chicken soup makings I didn't have - which was really only green peas and gizzards (but they didn't have any of those). Decided to add corn, and buy a couple of fresh parsnips because the one in the freezer isn't fresh and was kind of small. I also bought a pizza and cream puffs for Superbowl Sunday, and some frozen dinners.

Home, hauled out the huge cauldron and filled it with chicken soup makings. This is basically my mom's recipe, but a little more generic. She used Manischewitz mixes:


 
and added a chopped onion and celery and sliced carrots. I buy the barley, beans, and split peas in bulk, and I start off with a gallon of chicken stock, and add chopped garlic, bay leaf, salt, ground pepper. Mom cooked it the usual way, I make it crock style - low heat overnight so to meat comes off the bones and the bones are soft.

So that was my 1 am snack.

More than 2 tired.
Slept very little last night. Insomnia till after 3 am. What saved me from falling over at work is three separate projects cropped up at the same time, busy busy.

---

I haven't written anything about Sunday. It was a busy day with 2 blood pressure raising football games. The Cinderella teams won, which is Right. I like both teams, and while I would enjoy seeing my home team win, I'm perfectly happy to see the other team's city get trashed. Baltimore has a reputation for burning down significant sections of the city after national championships. Lately that's mostly been U MD.

At about 3 pm or so I started making Kourabiethes (Greek shortbread cookies) for the Brigadoon potluck, from the original recipe. They came out much better than last time, but I still overdid the flour a little bit.

The potluck was okay, there were a lot of salads which did not appear edible to me, but there was also a variety of appetizers. The cookies went over well until they cooled off and stuck together. I'd made about 3 dozen, I took home about 15. 12 seconds in the microwave and they separated out fine.

The potluck started a little after 6, and at 6:30, WAY too early, the costumer brought out a relic from Renn Faire who proceeded to entertain us with what he claimed to be the way an authentic Scotsman puts on a kilt. I sure hope they don't do our costumes the way he showed us - basically 15 yards of cloth folded into about 50 pleats and then belted. This may have been the way the warriors who lived in mud huts dressed, but it's not what the audience expects, and is entirely unworkable on stage.

This left very little time for introductions, but those are mostly useless to me, I forget names. Easier for me to read the cast list and look up faces online.

Read-through started at close to 8, thanks to a lot of bureaucratic nonsense which would have been better handled through email. They brought a boom box instead of an accompanist, so we had to sing over the voices in whatever not very good recording they had picked. At 9 it was time to stop, we had not made much of a dent in the show.

So we're not off to a brilliant start, but I've been in much, much worse. This cast is very friendly, there are many hot women, some remarkable voices and the music is very pretty.

The woman sitting to my left when we did the read-thru was a bit of a disconnect for me. She's ethnically Korean, but she has a gorgeous soprano voice, and no accent. The no-accent didn't surprise me, I know several Korean-Americans who speak American, but I don't think any of them sing unless they are drunk. Korean karaoke is not pretty.

I did learn one name, a drop-dead gorgeous woman in her 30s. Personal trainer/Pilates instructor. I looked her up on the cast list then on Facebook, and she appears to be married, darn it. I hate when that happens.

So that was Sunday.

I wrote about Monday  already

The rest of today was busy. Lunchtime I dropped the slides off at Costco to be scanned, the last 300 from my Thailand Peace Corps days. Then home, picked up the phone I'd bought on eBay which should have been here a week ago, and a very heavy box which had a big bag of cat food. This food is star-shaped, the same food in the smaller bags is pellet-shaped. WTF?

After work I took the eBay phone to Verizon and had them transfer my service to it. It downloaded my stuff from Google while I drove to Amtrak, got my tickets and a parking pass for tomorrow, and was pleased to see about 10 empty spaces in the parking lot.

Home, spent a lot of time updating the phone to the latest system & Android releases, and then grabbing the applications I like to have and setting them up.

That done, I packed as much as I can for the trip. Will add meds and toiletries in the morning. Cat food towers are topped off, will do their water in the morning. Litterboxes are clean. Took out some garbage. Chose which camera gear I'm taking.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Home
Work will be busy
Probably will go home for a short time before heading for the train station. Probably leave here at 7:15 to get there early enough to not have to rush.

Of course I was up early the one day I didn't have to be. Was done with my morning PC stuff by 8:30, I think, watched some TV, maybe college football, put my legs up with ice on the painful knee. Got so bored I went back on the PC.

I gave myself an hour to find parking just in case Amtrak's lot was full, which it was, with no one leaving any time soon. After touring the neighborhood and finding that it was ll permit or metered parking,  I asked at the Amtrak desk if they had any suggestions, because all the other parking was Caltrain, which doesn't allow overnight parking. She said "Storage parking lets you stay for 72 hour) and pointed me vaguely in the direction of the HP Pavilion lot, which does not.

So I asked the the HP Pavilion lot, the attendant says he is asked that a lot, but has never found an answer. I had time to drive downtown and park somewhere and take light rail back to the Amtrak station, but did not think any of those lots allowed overnight, or more than one night. I tried the almost completely empty lot which used to be a supermarket, which is now a city lot, I read the fine print on the pay station and it said there was a 72-hour limit, but it would only issue tickets good till 3 am the next morning. So I paid for 3 1-day tickets for my numbered slot, and will hope for the best. There are no events at the pavilion till Dec. 6, so I should safe from being towed.

Got to the platform 20 minutes early, and was puzzled because the electronic sign on the train said it was #730, but there is no #730. Mine was 734. It said Sacramento, though, and there were a lot of people waiting for the doors to open. Which they did 9 minutes before the 12:50 departure time.

I got a good window seat on the non-sun side, and spent some time configuring my camera's GPS unit. I had sent it in for a firmware upgrade, and of course they had wiped my configs in the process. The new firmware took longer to find a signal than the old firmware, but other than that it seems to work. I only took a few pix, then put the camera away and went to the cafe to get a hot dog and a root beer.

I had the pair of seats to myself until we got to Martinez, and the car pretty full. Of course the widest jock on the train sat next to me. Some people just don't think.

The scenery is very pretty, and I mostly watched, except for some napping, but I have taken those photos many times so I left the camera in the back and didn't disturb Jock, who had whipped out his laptop and put his tray down on it. I was hoping he ws getting off at Davis, but he stayed till SAC.

They have totally redone the station. It is now mega-huge, the tracks are underground and a mile from the station. There is a LONG ramp up which is too steep for anyone in a hand-driven wheel chair. They must have spent a couple billion on this renovation, but they left out the passenger in their planning. There is a cart between the train and the station, but when we got off the train they made it sound like it was for people who could not walk at all. I'll be using it tomorrow, for sure.

Outside the station, I popped into Starbucks, but they have removed all the Sacramento/California mugs and replaced them with Jesus mugs. Okay, not really Jesus, but you get the idea.

As I came out, there was some emergency vehicle coming toward the intersection where I was going to cross, so I walked toward the next one a block away, but as i was walking no less than seven fire trucks converged on the building across the street. So I took off my pack, took out my camera, put my pack on again and started taking pictures. About 15 firefighters with air tanks on their backs went in the front door of the place, it's an apartment building, and they were followed by about 8 more who were carrying folded hose, red blankets, a blower, a squeegee, grappling hooks (like for closing windows with eyes on the latches), axes and I forget what else. A fire engine left the front of the building to let an engine-length rescue truck in, and a ladder truck whipped out its ladder and put it up against an open window on the 3rd floor.

Meanwhile, personnel from the other five trucks continued to unload stuff and get hoses ready.

Seven fire trucks, one rescue unit and a supervisor's car. And not a single policeman to direct traffic, which was weaving between the emergency vehicles on one of the busiest roads in the city. No police ever showed up in the half hour I was there. The light started to fade, and when it got too dark for good pix, I put the camera away and walked to the hotel.

There was no smoke. No one was taken out of the building. There was no dramatic ladder rescue. I'd bet real cash dollars that this was the most over-responded to false alarm in the city's recent history. Maybe the state's.

Check-in was delayed by the customer ahead of me checking out who had to read all the fine print on the page before paying. Got a nice room with wi-fi on the 2nd floor overlooking the pool, which I forgot was heated year-round. There were people swimming till it closed at 10.

Ditched my bag, grabbed my Kindle and went to Old Town, and there's another change. Used to be from here all you had to do was cross the street and cut through a parking lot. Now that parking lot is a multi-story garage, and while cutting through is what I did, it's much longer than just crossing at the corner.

I ha planned to try a place called Fat City, but when I got there it was where I'd had dinner my last visit. So I walked to the waterfront, and took a peek at the "Polar Express" which is what they have renamed the steam engine train. The steam engine is in the barn covered with Xmas lights, they are running a diesel. :-(

Looked at the riverboat's menu, nothing caught my eye. The next place on the row was blaring jesus music, no thanks. Next one again had nothing of interest on the menu and the last one was packed to the gills with screaming children, and there was a 50-minute wait.

Walked around old town and finally found this place called Ten22. Bizarre menu, but some interesting stuff on it. Stunning hostesses and buswomen. The person who told me the specials was not my waiter, he was off somewhere else, and finally got to me after 10 minutes. But people checked up on me in the meantime, so it was not so horrible. I ordered the elk steak, which the menu said ws served with creamed spinach and something that sounded like potatoes and cauliflower au gratin. And I ordered the house salad, no choice of dressing, vinaigrette is built in. The salad arrived quickly, in the hands of a very pretty blonde who seemed to love the feel of the pepper mill. It was a lame item, just a few spring leaves in vinaigrette, with a couple of string onion rings on top. Tasted fine, though. Somewhere in there my waiter came by to apologize, he said the bread was being warmed up. As it turned out, what he forgot to add was it was being warmed up on the truck which just left the bakery in San Francisco.

The steak made it to the table in decent time, about 15 minutes, and it was HUGE. Thick and large. It was pretty good. The au gratin was okay, the spinach was not really creamed, as much as pan fried and drizzled with something off-white.

When I was done, one of the comely buspersons gathered up my plate, but now there were four people at the table next to me, and my waiter ignored me while he served them. After about 10 minutes I had a chance to ask for a dessert menu, which he brought in a few minutes, and then left me for 7 minutes (by this time I was using my stopwatch). I told him I'll skip it. He brough me the check right away, and then disappeared again for 5 minutes. The fellow who had told me what the specials were (I think he was the bar waiter) took care of my payment. I did not leave a big tip.

There are plenty of places for dessert in Old Town, and I decided to go to Fat City, remembering something about having enjoyed dessert there. I told the nice lady as I walked in i was just interested in dessert, she recommended the world famous banana cream pie, so I ordered that and their "nutty Irishman" coffee. The pie was mostly banana and not much cream, with a meringue topping. It was okay, but not world famous quality. But the service was, so she got a big tip. The coffee was very alcoholic, so i sipped slowly.

Back to the hotel, this time going around the parking structure, following some other folks.

Nice view of people in the pool, one of them of the female bikini-top-wearing persuasion.

Good wi-fi connection, too. But not A/C outlet by the desk, so I'll charge the laptop overnight from one on the other side of the bed.

Plans for tomorrow:
Sleep some.
Maybe watch some football
Check out and be at the station by 10 am. Take the cart to the 11:09 California Zephyr to Reno
Reno by about 4
Silver Legacy hotel
Walk around town
Try for a mug at Starbucks

This is the best whale shot I got Sunday. We were maybe 50 feet away.

Monday morning the plan was to walk across the street to the Carriage museum, and see what they had there. Backstory: When I worked for the Daily Astorian in Oregon in 1973-4, my friend Hilary (with one "L") who had directed me in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, invited me to meet her friend and his carriage collection. I did a photo spread for the newspaper. Her friend was quite a legend in the science fiction community, though I was mostly unaware of it at the time. I just knew him as Graham. Hilary and I are still in touch (last week she sent me a cool card - she always addresses the envelopes in calligraphy, so no matter what is inside, the envelope is a keeper.). He was Graham Doar, who wrote several early sci-fi TV classic episodes back in the late 40's, early 50's.  Anyway, I went there knowing photos would be amusing for Hil.

This one caught my eye

It's a very interesting museum, lots of carriages but also a huge collection of saddles and tack. Very poor display, though. Most of the vehicles are up on a ledge or out in the back parking lot not on formal display. The saddles are behind glass, and some clever person designed signs for each one set inside a horse shoe, but they are too small to read.

It's free, it's worth going to and making a small donation. There were no humans anywhere near the displays  when I was there.

Checked out of the motel as a family of 6 Japanese tourists invaded the alleged breakfast offerings. I had seen two of them the day before - they were hard to miss. Two women in neon pink, one in very tight jeans and one in stretch pants. Both had amazing round bubble butts. Turns out they were a mother-daughter team. More on this family later.

Walked to the main drag, the bus went by when I was half a block away. Decided waiting half an hour for the next one was less painful than walking 20 minutes. It was 10:15, I was in no hurry.

Bus took 2 minutes to go that 20-minute walk distance. Win. Walked a block to the 24-hour coffee shop, had iced tea and one of their giant almond croissants. Wandered across the street to the train station, an hour and a half early. My Kindle kept me entertained, and so did the occasional eye candy, which included the Japanese family. They were seated in front and to the side of me. The way it broke out was: young man and young woman, in their 20's, maybe married, maybe just engaged. His parents and her parents. He was really cute and had that Japanese assertiveness gene, and I just really wanted to ( TMI here ) But that passed quickly when he showed his romantic side. As soon as they were seated, the young couple plugged in their laptops and tried for a wi-fi connection, of which Amtrak has NONE. FAIL!. He figured this out in no time, put his computer away and fired up a Japanese soap opera on her machine, and they snuggled together and watched it. Later in the trip, he gave his dad some help with a new tablet. Nice guy, I wish him well.

The camera went off by accident, I swear. :-)

Her dad, OTOH, was extremely annoying. He sat there much of the trip cracking sunflower seeds with his teeth, using his cavernous mouth as a sounding board. It sounded like cracking walnuts in a cave.

The train was packed. I was lucky to have no one seated next to me, but my "window" seat had the divider between the windows, so totally crap for photos. I hardly took any. The lounge car had three or four very loud drunks and no empty seats. Where were all these people going on a Monday? Sheesh.

The ride was mostly uneventful until San Luis Obispo, where there was a crew change. The new conductor made the announcements which th previous crew had neglected, such as "drunks will be put off at the next stop". They sobered up pretty quickly. He also pointed out interesting sites and sights, and gave some Little Known History. For instance, who knew that Norma Jean was the first Castroville Artichoke Queen? One thing he missed, though, as we passed through San Miguel, I saw a sign on a bar called The Ranch, which said "We Now Serve Mexican Food", as if it was the only non-Mexican place in town and had succumbed to popular demand by offering tacos or something. When I got home, I found them online here. It appears to be a gay show bar, which only serves Mexican food.

We were side-tracked once, and for some reason we didn't start up again until 15 minutes after the other train had passed. There was a lot of slow going, for no apparent reason.  Even though we were a little bit late, we were not late enough to get a true sunset over Elkhorn Slough, so I faked it with manual shutter/f-stop settings.

Nice sepia tone look was the result.

We arrived in San Jose just about on time, I drove home to a very vocal cat.

As usual, all my best photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/how3ird/sets/

It's 1:28, my apartment's lights are set to turn off at 1:30. I will push the magic button to turn them back on when that occurs.

It was a day of Fri. Work brought a new test to document and run. It was one of those which took a few seconds to set up, then push a button and wait 15 minutes. Then test to make sure pushing the button didn't change anything. And then change something and repeat the whole mishmash.

Went to Andy's BBQ with five of the gang, had the tri-tip sandwich because I didn't want to pay for and couldn't finish a platter. Took the meat off the buns - that was the whole sandwich, no tomato, lettuce, onion or anything. Not even a pickle.

After work Plan A went into effect: CalTrain to Milbrae BART to SFO. Lots of waiting because the train from my local station does not always stop at the Milbrae BART. Kind of a WTF, you would think all trains would stop there.

Left work at 6:30, got to SFO at 8:15.

Looked for the EVA desk, found it pretty quickly, except it was being the Air New Zealand desk (a whole row of them, actually) and the sign said EVA did not open till 9:30 pm. Found a food court, but was not thrilled with the lines. Not long, just not moving. At that end of the terminal there is a fantastic display of old microscopes. Probably about 70 of them. Took my time crossing the terminal through that display, found the other food court, which was not much better but I did manage to get won ton soup before 9.

Shrimp won tons FTW!

9:30, EVA, found the desk on the end for ticketing - the other dozen were checking people into their flights. The nice lady said she could not make reservation changes except for that day's flights, I would have to call the number I already had called. Since I had called the national 800 line, she suggested calling the SF office (I had that number). Will try that Monday. They keep office hours, not airport hours.

On the way back to BART there was another display, this one of old automatons. Toy-sized things like a bear which plays the cymbals, a man in a wizard suit playing hide the bean, lots of other neat antique stuff.

Except for the displays, it was a wasted trip, and they did not really make up for the 5 lost hours.

I don't know if it's all of BART, but that train which goes back and forth between Milbrae & SFO is disgusting. Filthy. The fabric cushioned seats are coming apart, I sat under a section of weatherstripping about 6 feet long which was hanging from the ceiling. And the noise through the tunnel is horrible, and has got to be way above OSHA-approved levels. 

Caltrain, OTOH, has some nice new cars, and is maintained pretty well. Except the first car I boarded on the trip home was sweltering - no air conditioning or fan, and the windows don't open. I switched cars and all was well.

---

I'm worried about my memory. My doctor's nurse called, trying to get me to come in for a blood pressure test. It is now about 25 minutes, from work or home, to her clinic. The central clinic which is HUGE is only 5 minutes away, but somehow she couldn't find a way for me to take the test there. I told her it was really not possible to do this, and besides, what kind of blood pressure test would it be if I'm rushing to get there and back? I told her I had a meter at home, and could take a week's worth of readings and fax them in. She was okay with that. She asked what my readings have been, and I remembered them being normal, about 120/65. Got home, pulled out the meter, and it was still in its case from when I moved in October. The batteries were dead. I was sure I had used the machine a few times since then, but obviously not. Took my BP and it was through the roof. Not surprising. I have gained weight, not exercised, and all which goes with it, since the new job.

It's just that I clearly remember using my home machine to take my BP recently. Argh.

---

Plans for later today:
Nails
Robogames.

Finally got dressed at noon, after much time online. Updated my phone's data to include my travel info, did some apartment hunting (found two possibles), printed the Worldcon program grid using the printer's double-sided feature, only to find they put Sunday between Thursday and Friday. On purpose. They wanted to have Friday and Saturday on separate pages. Okay, it saves them an extra sheet, but it means I needed to waste paper by printing single-sided to put Sunday where it belongs.

Started writing my packing list.

The car badly needed a wash, thanks to bird foo from the last 3 places I'd parked and the inside of the windshield not coming clean with Windex. I ordered some glass wax, but it's coming from Vermont by pack mule, and won't see it until I am back from Reno. Got in the car, pulled out the dozen car wash coupons, and they were all expired. Back to the apartment, found a Safeway receipt with a current coupon. Car wash was way busy, 10-minute wait to drop off the car, but pretty quick turnaround after that.

Home, watched some of the Raiders game on the new TiVo, pleasant surprise that the image is more vivid than the old TiVo. Aspect ratio is better too. It did not help the Raiders' play at all, though. And how I hate watching football played on a field with a baseball diamond in it.

Coffee date with Janice at 4, went to Starbucks at 2:30 and used the extra time to organize the Hugo entries on the Kindle into their various groups, and transfer the program grid too. It's too small to read at 100%, I'll have to up the font size when the time comes. But am super-impressed with how good it looks.

Long chat with Janice about my blind date last week, and her not being at the SJ Jazz festival (which is like a Catholic missing Easter Sunday mass). She is off to SE Asia on a tour just as I'm coming back from Reno. I'm jealous, partly because I'd like to take the tour and partly because her DDG single RN next door neighbor is going with her.

Home, printed out my Amtrak bar codes for Tuesday's trip. Also includes a return trip a week from Monday, which I probably won't be on, but don't want to cancel until next Sunday, or if I get a solid confirmation before then of an 8/22 start date at Moto. If it slips to 8/29 I'll use that train ticket. As soon as I get to Reno, I'll cancel the SJC-RNO leg of my 8/19 Southwest Airlines ticket. Will keep the 8/21 RNO-SJC leg till the last minute.

Plans for tomorrow:
Call the CPA, arrange to meet sometime during the day
Shop for train snacks
Visit two apartments (if time allows)
Pack
Early bedtime for 4:30 am wakeup
 

I was in Starbucks on The Alameda plunking away at a journal entry after getting back to SJ too late to avoid rush hour, posted it, and it is gone. It is not even on my netbook, which generally saves the last item I was working on, posted or not. Hmmm.

Not much to say about today. I was up on time, had breakfast at the motel lobby, finished packing and walked to the train station an hour earlier than I'd planned. I got to watch the LA passengers leave. This time I was taking the Pacific Surfliner, which is the local version of the Coast Starlight, sort of. Instead of LA to Seattle, it goes from San Diego to San Luis Obispo. It was supposed to depart Santa Barbara at 10:15 to make a 12:50 bus connection to SJ.

It was 35 minutes late getting into SBA. The conductor blamed it on having to "hand-crank" three wheelchair passenger on board, but I don't buy that for an instant. Maybe 5 minutes of the lateness was due to that. When the train was announced as pulling into SBA, it was a false alarm - a long, long, empty freight train was coming in from the other direction, and the Surfliner was delayed until it went by. So much for the alleged Amtrak right-of-way law.

We were later and later into each stop, and got to SLO an hour late. The bus is an Amtrak bus, and it starts in SLO, so it had to wait for us. I knew the bus would not be as comfortable as the train, but did not expect my carry-on to be too big for the overhead rack. And I did not expect the restroom to be "for emergencies only".  Because we were so late, the driver announced that they would not make the usual food stop in King City, but he forgot there were passengers to let off there, and the 5-minute drop-off ended up being a half hour restroom and food stop. If I had known, I would have gotten off the bus and grabbed some food, but by the time it was clear this was not going to be a short stop it was too late.

The bus made more stops than I had expected. Paso Robles, King City, Salinas. We arrived in SJ about 5:30, and not wanting to fight rush hour traffic, I drove half a mile to a Starbucks on the Alameda where I spilled half an iced venti chai latte, finished the rest while plunking out the mystery posting, and then walked a block and a half to a place called Tee Nee Thai, which caught my eye because of the pun. It is a tiny space, and in Thai "Tee Nee" means "In here" or "over here".

The seating is cramped, tables are too close together, and it was a surprise to see a white guy as host/waiter. Two Thai women showed up later. I ordered Something Different™: Tee Nee Special Duck which said it was boneless duck grilled with garlic and served over Chinese noodles. It was delicious, but those noodles were not Chinese. They were some very thin ramen-like wheat noodles, and they were (blasphemy!) served with a knife because they were basically a bird's nest, impossible to handle without cutting. I may eat there again, but I'll stick to what I know. And I'll ask the white guy if he speaks Thai.

Home, got the photos onto the PC. I don't think there will be much going onto Flickr. The window glare on the trains and bus was worse than I thought, ISO 1600 was noisier than usual, so pretty much none of my en route photos are worth uploading. There are some from the LandShark ride and walking around town which are not so bad, except the camera keeps screwing up the exposures.

Completely forgot about BASFA. Oh well.

Opened the pickles which I'd put in the fridge Friday evening. This batch is milder and crunchier than the last, which was the whole point of trying again.

Plans for tomorrow:
Make an appointment for the car recall/35,000 mile checkup for wednesday.
Laundry