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magidBy the numbers
Hours in transit: 20
Days worked: 4
Hours worked: 37
[Other work numbers elided so I won't feel I need to lock the post.]
Pounds of cherries (mixed Bing and Rainier) eaten by the (9 people at the) vendor's office: 20
Kosher restaurants eaten at: 2
Museums visited: 1
Laps swum (for a very loose definition of lap): 7
Free breakfasts at the hotel: 3
Number of pillows on the hotel bed each night: 7
Charge per car per night to park at the hotel, in dollars: 10
Dollars spent on durable goods: 8
Types of trees seen: Meyer lemon, apricot, fig, (crab?)apple, orange, possibly quince, redwood. And there was a hummingbird outside the hotel the first morning, which was a beautiful way to start the day.
The trip out was dominated by the people in the row behind me. Six seats, one taken by a woman traveling alone, the rest used by a woman and her five kids, ranging from toddler to teen, and a small dog, who barked some. The mother seemed to have brought no entertainments with her, nor was she responsive when the baby cried. And one of the active kids sat behind me and kicked my seat. Which I didn't comment on until we had landed, and were sitting on the tarmac for half an hour waiting to disembark ("deplane" is such an ugly word. Accurate, I suppose, but ugly. Plus I always think of Tattoo.), when I finally couldn't take it any more. I was polite, but got one of those teen looks of being put upon. And one of the little ones ran down the aisle at a time when everyone was supposed to have seatbelts on (garnering glares from lots of passengers). And another played with one of those light pointers until the pilot made an announcement to stop... and he did it again, until the steward told him it would be confiscated if he did it again.
I was very glad to get off that plane, despite the crew being very helpful and cheerful.
The rental car was one of those retro ones, a taller one with those curves to evoke the 40s, a PT Cruiser, I think. It was strange driving an automatic, but it did mean it was easier to clutch whichever Google map I needed at the time, since there wasn't as much for me to do. The annoying part was how the steering wheel blocked my view of the dials, including the speedometer. I hear I should have been able to move the wheel, but I never got around to reading any manual, if there was one, and the wheel itself was in a reasonable location for me. Also, it took me a while to realize that the window controls were on a central panel, rather than being at the windows. It was kinda cool to be up higher than usual, but strange to have no sense of speed.
Driving around was strange not just because of the lack of stick shift. People were slower, actually going the speed limit (except sometimes exceeding it on the highways), just being generally more mellow. I suppose that's more healthy, but it was strange not having people crowding up so much, trying to make the next light, and so on. There were signs posted about red light violations; avoiding a $281 fine is pretty good incentive for not pushing it. Some other road differences: when there was a lane drop, there'd be arrows painted on the vanishing lane, indicating that people should get over (and they did, before the lane went!). There was more information in general painted on the lanes (speed limits, etc). There were quickly-cycling red lights on many highway on-ramps, letting one car go at a time, so traffic didn't bodge up nearly as much around an exit, because the traffic was coming on intermittently. Exit signs usefully told the next three exits, but often only referenced them by cross street without municipality, which was not so useful for a driver not already familiar with them.
There's a lot more sun while driving around. It shouldn't seem so: a sunny day is a sunny day. But the topography of the place, having so much flat giving way abruptly to serious hills, somehow emphasizes the sunlight. I took the Dunbarton Bridge over the southern part of the bay, and enjoyed the contrasts, passing salt flats, then water, and seeing bare hills with trees tufting them when the plain just stopped. It's interesting seeing desert so close to 'civilization,' without the architecture being dominated by stone.
Another ramification of the geography: the microclimates around San Francisco. I'm used to pretty big areas having basically the same weather, so I was impressed to see the variation in a small radius around the city, because of the coastal breezes and how the hills bunch together. I was definitely lucky being in Palo Alto, where the weather was very pleasant pretty much the whole time (and when it got warmer, it wasn't all humid, so it was much more bearable. Arriving in the humidity of Boston, however, was a drag, rather literally; it felt like I was dragging along, even more than just manoevering a little wheelie bag.).
I felt almost like a fruitarian this trip. There were vouchers for some free breakfasts at the hotel, of which I could eat cereal, yogurt, and/or fresh fruit. Unfortunately, the first two both had HFCS, which I've been trying to avoid, so it was all melon and pineapple for me. Then I'd go into the office, where there were loads of fruit available all the time, including the aforementioned cherries, grapes, watermelon, and plums. I focused mostly on cherries (they're never affordable enough here to really go overboard on) and watermelon (for the liquid; the office was warm, and the tap water not so palatable; I ended up feeling vaguely dehydrated much of the time).
The two restaurants I managed to get to were the Holy Land Restaurant in Oakland (felafel and grilled meats sort of menu; the kebab in pita was excellent, also the eggplant salad) and Izzy's Brooklyn Deli in Sunnyvale (limited deli menu plus some fish; the Moroccan-style salmon was very yummy). It was great that there were options, especially because I'd had the impression that there weren't many kosher certified places in metro San Francisco.
The one touristy thing I did was go to Stanford's Cantor Art Center, because they were hosting an exhibit of Tuareg crafts. I've thought the Tuareg were fascinating for ages, and I really didn't want to miss this. So I crammed in a lot of work on the 4th, then left in time to see the exhibit. It was fascinating, seeing all the silver and leather work, knives, swords, bracelets, amulets, bags, camel gear, tents, veils, and more. There were video loops and music to listen to, also. Gorgeously-decorated leather bags (small ones to go around the neck to huge ones to hold water or tents), with fringes to emphasize movement. The jewelry was interesting, too, with 21 different kinds of crosses used (none of which looked like crosses to me, having four arms coming out of a middle circle, so no actual plus sign). The videos included part of a wedding, so I could see turbaned, veiled men on camels, gorgeously dressed women ululating, etc.
There was time to see some of the Rodin sculptures as well, but nothing of the rest of the place; I wouldn't mind going back someday (and see more of the campus, as well; it's spread out enough with many palm trees about that I got no sense of the university at all).
The Fourth didn't feel very much like a holiday. Some of that was because I'd worked much of the day (as did everyone else there), but it also just didn't feel anything like at home, where it seems everyone is figuring out their vantage point for watching or avoiding fireworks, or planning group activities, and so on. I wasn't up for dealing with crowds, and ended up in a friend's back yard, listening to the clamor of fireworks not restricted to registered users only (I could well imagine myself in a war zone, perhaps from a century or two ago, especially since they went on for hours, and were in conjunction with nothing in particular), occasionally seeing the sparkle of one high enough to clear the trees.
Porch update: 8 grape tomatoes, 2 sungold tomatoes
Hours in transit: 20
Days worked: 4
Hours worked: 37
[Other work numbers elided so I won't feel I need to lock the post.]
Pounds of cherries (mixed Bing and Rainier) eaten by the (9 people at the) vendor's office: 20
Kosher restaurants eaten at: 2
Museums visited: 1
Laps swum (for a very loose definition of lap): 7
Free breakfasts at the hotel: 3
Number of pillows on the hotel bed each night: 7
Charge per car per night to park at the hotel, in dollars: 10
Dollars spent on durable goods: 8
Types of trees seen: Meyer lemon, apricot, fig, (crab?)apple, orange, possibly quince, redwood. And there was a hummingbird outside the hotel the first morning, which was a beautiful way to start the day.
The trip out was dominated by the people in the row behind me. Six seats, one taken by a woman traveling alone, the rest used by a woman and her five kids, ranging from toddler to teen, and a small dog, who barked some. The mother seemed to have brought no entertainments with her, nor was she responsive when the baby cried. And one of the active kids sat behind me and kicked my seat. Which I didn't comment on until we had landed, and were sitting on the tarmac for half an hour waiting to disembark ("deplane" is such an ugly word. Accurate, I suppose, but ugly. Plus I always think of Tattoo.), when I finally couldn't take it any more. I was polite, but got one of those teen looks of being put upon. And one of the little ones ran down the aisle at a time when everyone was supposed to have seatbelts on (garnering glares from lots of passengers). And another played with one of those light pointers until the pilot made an announcement to stop... and he did it again, until the steward told him it would be confiscated if he did it again.
I was very glad to get off that plane, despite the crew being very helpful and cheerful.
The rental car was one of those retro ones, a taller one with those curves to evoke the 40s, a PT Cruiser, I think. It was strange driving an automatic, but it did mean it was easier to clutch whichever Google map I needed at the time, since there wasn't as much for me to do. The annoying part was how the steering wheel blocked my view of the dials, including the speedometer. I hear I should have been able to move the wheel, but I never got around to reading any manual, if there was one, and the wheel itself was in a reasonable location for me. Also, it took me a while to realize that the window controls were on a central panel, rather than being at the windows. It was kinda cool to be up higher than usual, but strange to have no sense of speed.
Driving around was strange not just because of the lack of stick shift. People were slower, actually going the speed limit (except sometimes exceeding it on the highways), just being generally more mellow. I suppose that's more healthy, but it was strange not having people crowding up so much, trying to make the next light, and so on. There were signs posted about red light violations; avoiding a $281 fine is pretty good incentive for not pushing it. Some other road differences: when there was a lane drop, there'd be arrows painted on the vanishing lane, indicating that people should get over (and they did, before the lane went!). There was more information in general painted on the lanes (speed limits, etc). There were quickly-cycling red lights on many highway on-ramps, letting one car go at a time, so traffic didn't bodge up nearly as much around an exit, because the traffic was coming on intermittently. Exit signs usefully told the next three exits, but often only referenced them by cross street without municipality, which was not so useful for a driver not already familiar with them.
There's a lot more sun while driving around. It shouldn't seem so: a sunny day is a sunny day. But the topography of the place, having so much flat giving way abruptly to serious hills, somehow emphasizes the sunlight. I took the Dunbarton Bridge over the southern part of the bay, and enjoyed the contrasts, passing salt flats, then water, and seeing bare hills with trees tufting them when the plain just stopped. It's interesting seeing desert so close to 'civilization,' without the architecture being dominated by stone.
Another ramification of the geography: the microclimates around San Francisco. I'm used to pretty big areas having basically the same weather, so I was impressed to see the variation in a small radius around the city, because of the coastal breezes and how the hills bunch together. I was definitely lucky being in Palo Alto, where the weather was very pleasant pretty much the whole time (and when it got warmer, it wasn't all humid, so it was much more bearable. Arriving in the humidity of Boston, however, was a drag, rather literally; it felt like I was dragging along, even more than just manoevering a little wheelie bag.).
I felt almost like a fruitarian this trip. There were vouchers for some free breakfasts at the hotel, of which I could eat cereal, yogurt, and/or fresh fruit. Unfortunately, the first two both had HFCS, which I've been trying to avoid, so it was all melon and pineapple for me. Then I'd go into the office, where there were loads of fruit available all the time, including the aforementioned cherries, grapes, watermelon, and plums. I focused mostly on cherries (they're never affordable enough here to really go overboard on) and watermelon (for the liquid; the office was warm, and the tap water not so palatable; I ended up feeling vaguely dehydrated much of the time).
The two restaurants I managed to get to were the Holy Land Restaurant in Oakland (felafel and grilled meats sort of menu; the kebab in pita was excellent, also the eggplant salad) and Izzy's Brooklyn Deli in Sunnyvale (limited deli menu plus some fish; the Moroccan-style salmon was very yummy). It was great that there were options, especially because I'd had the impression that there weren't many kosher certified places in metro San Francisco.
The one touristy thing I did was go to Stanford's Cantor Art Center, because they were hosting an exhibit of Tuareg crafts. I've thought the Tuareg were fascinating for ages, and I really didn't want to miss this. So I crammed in a lot of work on the 4th, then left in time to see the exhibit. It was fascinating, seeing all the silver and leather work, knives, swords, bracelets, amulets, bags, camel gear, tents, veils, and more. There were video loops and music to listen to, also. Gorgeously-decorated leather bags (small ones to go around the neck to huge ones to hold water or tents), with fringes to emphasize movement. The jewelry was interesting, too, with 21 different kinds of crosses used (none of which looked like crosses to me, having four arms coming out of a middle circle, so no actual plus sign). The videos included part of a wedding, so I could see turbaned, veiled men on camels, gorgeously dressed women ululating, etc.
There was time to see some of the Rodin sculptures as well, but nothing of the rest of the place; I wouldn't mind going back someday (and see more of the campus, as well; it's spread out enough with many palm trees about that I got no sense of the university at all).
The Fourth didn't feel very much like a holiday. Some of that was because I'd worked much of the day (as did everyone else there), but it also just didn't feel anything like at home, where it seems everyone is figuring out their vantage point for watching or avoiding fireworks, or planning group activities, and so on. I wasn't up for dealing with crowds, and ended up in a friend's back yard, listening to the clamor of fireworks not restricted to registered users only (I could well imagine myself in a war zone, perhaps from a century or two ago, especially since they went on for hours, and were in conjunction with nothing in particular), occasionally seeing the sparkle of one high enough to clear the trees.
Porch update: 8 grape tomatoes, 2 sungold tomatoes
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-09 06:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-09 07:29 pm (UTC)I don't know why they'd be better as preserved lemons (compared to using them for pie or ice cream or cucumber salad or something).
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 02:53 am (UTC)And there was art by four artists in the Oakland airport, part of some kind of open studios, which was cool.
And I got to try a new-to-me flavor of Chocolove chocolate bar: 60% dark with dried cherries and powdered chili. Yum.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 03:37 pm (UTC)I hope working the holiday last week at least earned you some useful comp time.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 05:07 pm (UTC)(They were touting their sleep-wonderfulness, ranging from lots of pillows to optional lavender scents to an eye mask to a CD with relaxing sounds to a guaranteed wake-up call.)
I think I've got a couple of the days I'll need for the chagim covered now (which just about brings it down to "all sick and personal time for the year").