I feel like I've been blogging the past few days, but I realized last night that I've only been sending flickers, which don't show up here. And are 140 characters long and semi-incoherent. (BTW, how does "semi-incoherent" differ from "semi-coherent" and "incoherent?" Discuss it amongst yourselves.)
So, it's New Years Day (assuming you subscribe to the prevalent, yet utterly-irrational and randomly-assigned Gregorian calendar), 2009, and I've been visiting my parents and staying at my dad's house in San Diego since I drove down on the 27th. I'll be here for until the 6th or so, when I'm driving back up to SF. Not directly; I'm going to stop at one of the ski resorts in Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernadino mountains well east of LA. The current plan is to drive back up on Monday or Tuesday, snowboard for one day, stay overnight, snowboard again the next morning, and leave after lunch, making the rest of the drive back to the Bay Area that afternoon/evening. I'd planned on doing that alone, but my mom wants to go to the slopes for a couple of days, and she wants to visit me in SF for a couple of days, and since I'm driving up and there's an open passenger seat... she might as well come along.
That will require some trunk origami; my car was stuffed full on the way down, with snowboard, mountain bike, suitcase, big duffel bag full of snowboard equipment, cooler for snacks, misc Xmas presents, some plants, and more. It was even worse starting out, since I had the snake and aquarium (to the IG since she likes the snake, her apt is warm, and I wasn't leaving any heat on at mine), plus Jinx and Kyo in separate carry cases, plus their litter box, going to Malaya's. I actually had Kyo's box in the litter box, in the passenger seat, with Jinx on the floor below. And going back I've added a big screen monitor (in the box), mom's suitcase and um... mom.
We can manage in some discomfort... it's only 500 miles! Well, it's only 40 with the cats, since Malaya's a lot nearer my apartment than San Diego. Or even LA.
Speaking of mileage, it's funny how that works. It's 500 miles from SF to SD, or about 520 if you detour east a bit to avoid the helLA traffic on 5, and take 15 instead. The ski resorts east of LA are 120 miles from San Diego... and then it's 500 miles from there back to SF.
Que? Directions are tricky. Especially when windy, mountain roads are involved. I hope the weather stays sunny.
The first day down here was fun; a friend of dad was holding a huge wine-themed party. There must have been 50 or 60 open bottles of wine, all sorted by type and stashed in different rooms. So in some back bedroom there would be 6 different Syrahs, with a cheese plate and some crackers. And by the front door were two big tubs of ice with white wines. And in the kitchen was a plate of chocolate and pies with some dessert wines and ports. This was done in 10 or 12 places in the house, including the upstairs bathroom, and even the bedroom closet. Which was standing room only.
I didn't know anyone at the party, but after a few sips of 15 or 20 different vintages I didn't care, and was easily able to nod along as various old people introduced themselves with names I immediately forgot, before speaking at me about their various gripes of the world. Which I forgot even sooner. That party, after driving for 8 hours, unpacking at dad's house, and then riding an hour with him back north to the party, put me in a very relaxed mood. I didn't get drunk though, but not for lack of trying.
After the party dad and I did our minimal gift exchange; my presents to him don't merit mention, but you can be sure a calendar was involved. Him from me were better. Well, was better, since there was just the one, but it was what I wanted most of all. A new laptop, which he'd gotten a week ago after I saw it on sale but could not obtain since it was a discontinued model that was not in stock at any Staples in the Bay Area.
I've been "using" it each day since I arrived, and I'm getting to like it. I still dislike most everything about Vista, but once I found ways to disable almost all of the user-friendly, hidden controls, Mac-style nerfing that OS inflicted upon the stable frame that was XP, it became tolerable. I haven't found ways to do that with Word2007 yet though, and the all visual, "hard to find the real controls" bullshit picture menus they've added to the program makes it almost unusable. I was going to just put up with it while I'm here, since Word2007 came bundled on the laptop, but it's only good for 25 uses before it expires and I have to pay $100 for the full product. Needlessly to say, I'm not going to pay for it and will just install my old Office 2000, which I much prefer anyway. I'm just not sure I can wait another 21 uses of Word2007 to go retro.
I'm happier with the new display, which I picked up at an after Xmas sale at Fry's. I was going to drop $150 on the cheapest quality 22" monitor, but Dad was unimpressed with the image quality and urged me to get a better flatscreen. Of course the better ones cost a bit more money, but when he said he'd throw in a hundred bucks, my panorama swelled noticeably. Suddenly those tiny 22" screens didn't seem quite adequate, and the 24" and 26" were beckoning. Hell, even that legendary 30" apple cinema display looked nice, but those were still $1700 even on sale, and I'm wasn't smoking that much crack.
I ended up with a good quality Acer flatscreen, 24", for about $320. The biggest difference is that the 22" only run up to 1680 resolution, while the 24" jump to 1920x1200. And that's hella porn. I've been in 1280x1024 on my old, old, old 20" CRT monitor for years, and adding almost 700 pixels in width is just glorious. I can now effortlessly put two full width programs side by side, with still space to the edges of the screen for easy icon access or IM contacts or other fun-ness.
I'm not sure how I'm going to do this once I get home, though. I'll use the big monitor all the time, replacing my old massive CRT death trap, (where the hell do you dispose of a 75lbs/35kg CRT monitor anyway?) but my new laptop is blessed with considerably better specs than my two year old tower (despite costing hundreds less), and I got the laptop since I've been wanting some portability. I want to write (or blog, or do website work) sitting in bed sometimes, or in the park, or at a coffee cafe. Plus I'm dating more lately and lots of the potentials live in The City, and traffic is hell getting in or out at rush hour. I can easily see making a 6pm date and leaving at 3, getting into SF in 20 minutes instead of the 50 it would take if I left at 5, and spending 2 hours in a Starbucks, working and enjoying myself before the date. If only there was um... anywhere... to park for free in SF.
Plus, if I sit in bed and work, I can have dual, dueling lap cats!
Anyway, all those happy fun activities and purchases and plans went on Sunday, after I drove down here on Saturday. Sunday night I didn't sleep well; it felt like I had an inflated balloon in my tummy, and I woke up early and started a fun day of evacuating vile liquids from each end, at roughly half hour intervals. With death-like naps mixed in every 3 or 4 hours. Monday morning, I had the distinct feeling that my stomach was full of swamp water, or pond scum. Something foamy and disgusting that I had to get rid of it. Not that I had much choice in that matter.
I ate a can of soup and about 4 crackers all day, in small installments, slept restlessly that night, and felt slightly better on Tuesday, though there was still a lot of lower intestine unhappiness. Finally that settled down later Tuesday evening, after some heavy consumption of Immodium AD pills, and Wednesday I was pretty much back to normal. Just in time for dad to get sick with something similar to what I'd had. So we had to cancel our New Year Evening dining plans, and he just laid around all evening napping and feeling sick and taking medicine, while I put in a few hours on our ongoing joint novel project and texted the various women I'm semi-dating. Sadly, all such women were 500 miles north of me, and were busy telling me about the fun activities they had planned that evening. None had hot dates, but were out with girlfriends, eating, seeing movies, etc. I wasn't feeling that great yet, and I'd been up since 6am so I wasn't tempted to go downtown to some bar/party in San Diego, but it was a pretty lame evening in a dark, quiet, cold house with dad suffering in the bedroom and all my potential social activities (and midnight kitheth!) pining away in Northern California. I didn't sleep well the night before and I'd been up since 6am, so I worked on the novel and went to bed @ 11. It was far from the first New Year's Eve I hadn't paid any attention to in my life, but I'm pretty sure it was the first one in my adult life I wasn't at least awake to welcome in.
And now it's Thursday the 1st, and I'm feeling about normal. Dad's still on the ropes; I had to make a supermarket run this morning to get him some sickness staples; chicken soup, plain crackers, jello, etc. I picked up a Dr. Pepper and some Pringles, since I hadn't had any sugar or grease intake in days, and felt dangerously low on my unhealthy reserves. (The replenishment process proved foul and unsettling, but ultimately necessary.)
I don't think Dad's going to be up to snuff for any revelry or eating out tonight either, so I'll probably do something with my mom and stepdad, if they're not under the weather. That's the trouble with planning social events with old people in the winter; they're always sick or recovering from being sick or about to get sick. At least so it seems to my youthful, seldom-ill vantage point. I'm sure they'd have their own (differing) perspective on this issue.
And now, before more sickness can descend, I'm going to have some lunch and go for a bike ride. I don't want to have dragged that thing down here (and then taken it back north) for nothing. And since this is San Diego and January, it's a beautiful day with a cloudless sky.
Labels: san diego, vacation
