Home-cooked steak on the gas grill for dinner! After that we watched our DVD of “Fellowship of the Ring” – we had three hours before midnight and we wanted to drive down to the end of the street to watching the big synchronised firework display over the ‘Strip, so it seemed like a good way to pass the time, particularly as we were planning on seeing “The Two Towers” again with Derek and Teresa sometime in the next couple of days.
As it happened, midnight arrived faster than the end of the movie, so we “Took” a break and went out and braved the cold. We were not the only ones to do so! Lots of people driving out to find a place to pull over on a rise overlooking the valley.
So, the final episode of Firefly screens tonight. It only managed half a season before being canned. My friends outside the USA will probably not get to see this fine piece of TV, rats. Ironically, the final screened episode is actually the original 2-hour pilot episode, which remained un-screened until now.
I hear that the actors contracts run out at the end of January. Is this ironic? With the equally admirable program Farscape having its last episodes aired in January, there’s got to be some hideous joke about programming projects that I get involved in all coming to nothing.
We heard nothing from the RP3 re-deployment dude today.
I did have a previously scheduled one-on-one meeting with my boss that was kind of enlightening about some of the team dynamics over the last few months, but basically he reiterated that our job positions have been eliminated due to lack of work in the pipeline. It’s clear that it’s nothing personal, at least as far as he is concerned.
We woke up this morning after another troubled sleep. From the 15th floor it seemed as though the Sun was having trouble getting up as well, the buildings around the central business district were lit up in a very half-hearted way. Looking down we could see some people sitting in the hot tub down on the lower roof level – I wondered if they’d been there all night?
After a shower we got dressed, packed, and went downstairs to check out. Lisa attended to the details while I went and got us coffee and a bagel from Einstein Bros.
After sitting for a while in the crisp air and morning sun, we decided that we *would* try and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West compound after all. It’d be a shame to miss it, seeing as we really didn’t know when we were going to be back here in Phoenix.
We drove East, then North on the 101 loop and exited at Cactus Road, which just kept going East… until eventually it hit Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd. We figured we were in the right place. In fact, straight across from us was the sign for Taliesin West, complete with double-spiral logo.
We arrived in time for the 10:00 am “Insights” tour. We took lots of pictures. It’s a fascinating place…
At about 11:30, got back on the road, took 101 loop West, then 17 North, then 74 (Carefree Highway) West to reconnect with 60 just south of Wickenburg.
We stopped at Wickenburg to top up the gas tank and for more coffee, another breakfast, and a pit stop. The Two Wheels Cafe had an interesting corridor between the booths and the toilets, through a narrow door and down a passage marked “The Necessary Trail”, pasted with cartoons and witty sayings. Beautifully painted doors on the bathrooms.
We headed North on 93 out of Wickenburg. There were many many traffic cops and speed traps. We made an extra attempt to ensure we stuck to the speed limit, as our Nevada license plates made us an easy mark.
It was a pretty uneventful ride home. We stopped again in Kingman to top up with Petrol and we were going to stop for a pot of tea or coffee but the road didn’t want to take us past anything interesting so we just kept on driving.
We arrived in Vegas in time for rush hour – hooray – but traffic wasn’t too bad and we got home at about 4:45.
The cats were acting weird, and had obviously had an “interesting” time while we were away. Kami was running around in a silly way, and Karma was hiding and refusing to eat any fresh cat food. Later in the evening they both settled down, a bit. They obviously had got on each other’s nerves a bit.
It turned out that our room had two double beds rather than one Queen. That would have been fine – I don’t mind snuggling – but the mattress was defective and seemed to really only want one person on it at a time.
As a result, it wasn’t that comfortable. We both slept rather badly but whether this was the bed’s fault, or just because we were stressed out from our news yesterday, we didn’t know. Both probably.
Lisa checked our home voice mail – No messages from anyone.
We talked to the concierge about things to do and see. The Peter Gabriel concert wasn’t until 7:30 and before that we were meeting some friends in the restaurant upstairs for dinner, so we had the whole day basically to walk around the city.
The concierge was very helpful and gave us maps and brochures, which we looked at over a breakfast grabbed at the Einstein Bro’s Bagels located on the ground floor of the hotel. (Coffee and bagels – the basics.)
At 11:00 we walked across a road bridge to The Phoenix Civic Plaza, at which point Lisa did a double-take as she realized that she’d been here before, at this exact place: After Microsoft bought Fox Software, they had a big developer’s conference in Phoenix. The speakers (of which Lisa was one) were put up in the same hotel we were currently staying in. It was during the Summer, and she remembered making the journey from the hotel to the Civic Center in the bright sun and scorching heat trying not to melt before they got to the building. We stopped and walked about the civic center walkways, admiring the gardens and reminiscing about the early days of FoxPro conferences. At that time, Lisa and I hadn’t yet started dating, I guess you’d say, but I do remember her describing the Phoenix conference to me at one point.
Was it a sign? And if so, of what?
On the other side of the Civic Center was Heritage Square, a piece of Phoenix Olde Towne that has been maintained, along with a small History Museum and a Science Museum. We spent a very pleasent time walking through the exhibits at the History museum, reading up about Phoenix early days. (It didn’t explain why there were two 2nd streets though.)
The Science Museum was full of school children who had obviously spent all morning there – they were eating their lunch, and left shortly afterwards, leaving relatively empty exhibit halls behind.
The Planetarium was fun. So was the ham radio station they had running there, manned by retired engineer-type people.
At around 4:30 we returned to the hotel room – I had a headache, I took a pill – and rested up before taking the lift up to the Compass Restaurant on the top floor of the hotel at 5:30 to meet Linell and Bob for a quick dinner.
Linell is an old friend of Lisa’s from when she worked during the Summer between high school 30 years ago!
It was a nice meal, actually I think my dish had the nicest piece of pork I’d ever tasted. The vegetables were a bit weird, though. Grilled but not cooked very well.
We bid farewell to Linell and Bob – we had an evening concert to attend.
We were supposed to be driving to Phoenix first thing.
But before that, we had to get the cats settled, which basically means making sure they had extra dishes of fresh water, plenty of kibble, and even a couple of dishes of tinned food. They’d eat good today, but then have a couple of nights of inattention.
We got out the door by 10:30, with a quick stop at the local Texaco for me to check the tyre pressure. It was a bit high – I’d been generous last Sunday when I stopped for petrol and topped up the air pressure in preparation for the journey.
It took about an hour to get to Hoover Dam, which was very impressive. One day I would like to stop and do the engineering tour, but not today. Across the State line and on the other side of the river (in Arizona) we stopped so that I could take off my jacket – it was getting warm in the car – and also took a few pictures.
We stopped at Kingman for an early lunch of Chinese food at the “House Of Chan”. (Lisa observed that this had the same name as a favorite restaurant of her dad Stan’s back in New York.) We also topped up the gas tank at this time.
About halfway between Kingman and Wickenberg we whizz past the town of Nothing, Arizona. Yup – it’s called Nothing. The population is claimed to be 4. (See http://henrysworld.com/roadtrip/Arizona/nothing.html.)
We then drove to Wickenberg and stopped for coffee and leg stretching at an Espresso joint on the main street.
Somewhere on the road between Wickenberg and Phoenix I remember passing a sign that said “Surprise! City Limits”. This is a real place (http://www.surpriseaz.com/).
It was getting dark and we still had a way to go, heading South-East. There was a great sunset going on to our right.
We were following instructions from Yahoo! Maps, which avoided taking us on freeways and instead directed us to take an older, major road called Grand Avenue which ran from the outskirts of Phoenix right into the center of town. It did this by literally running diagonally down the grid of streets, giving us 6-street intersections: two streets crossing at normal right-angles, then Grand Avenue charging through at 45 degrees.
So that was a bit nerve-wracking.
When Grand Avenue finally gave out, we were deposited in the center of town, where we got lost. It wasn’t our fault! It turns out that Phoenix has a mirror image thing going on – a street called “Central street” with parallel streets running 1st Ave, 2nd Ave, 3rd Ave, etc to the West, and 1st St, 2nd St, 3rd St, etc, to the East.
Our hotel was on 2nd Ave. We were on 2nd Street. We didn’t know any better.
We got out and walked around, and a nice lady (who was presumably getting herself home after a day of work) told us how to get to our hotel. It wasn’t far away.
After we checked in and parked the car in a nearby parking building ($7 per day) we showered, got into bed, and watched “The West Wing” on TV.
On the way back home from seeing Equilibrium, it was only 4:30 but both Lisa and I were very hungry all of a sudden. So a minor detour – an early lunch at the Wok’s Inn at Centennial Center.
The food there was alway great, only this time they had a new waitress who was getting at least one dish per table completely wrong. She was trying so hard, and getting flustered…
In our case we ended up with “Orange Chicken” instead of “Orange Peel Beef”. I confess I was so hungry I ate most of it before we noticed.
Here’s the thing: Later this evening we were watching the season finale of “The Sopranos” on TV, and there was this scene where Tony goes to the door and it’s the chinese take-out guy. Tony says, “Did you check the order this time?” and the guy says “Yes, it’s all there” and he pays him and goes back to the table. He’s sitting down taking out the cartons and he exclaims, “#$%^@! They forgot the Orange Peel Beef again!”
The fortune in our cookie did not shed any light on this.
Ah, there’s nothing like a Saturday. Especially when it follows two days that basically felt like your standard weekend, it’s like getting an extra weekend.
Nothing much happened. I stayed in my office and worked on music stuff.
Lisa is busy reading the second book in the Galactic Mileau quartet (by Julian May) and I don’t expect to see her until mid-afternoon.
*
It has been overcast and drizzly today and the house never got a chance to warm up. We’ve activated the air conditioning to goose the temperature in the house at 6:00am, ready for us to emerge tomorrow morning. We’ve been wondering if we could hold off activating the heating until Dec 1 – it’s close enough.
We have a busy month coming up: YAYC on the 3rd (yet another Yes concert); a trip to Phoenix on the 11th to see some friends and also a Peter Gabriel concert; Derek and Teresa arrive later on for the holidays…
Two things achieved today: Getting our mortgage in order; and framing my photographic enlargements.
First, we sent off our papers to the bank to get our mortgage refinanced. Rates had dropped so we wanted to take advantage of that. Thanks to Lisa’s quick action, several days ago we got a rate locked before the rates started bouncing back, and today we completed the paperwork and got it fed-exed off to the bank people.
It’s a bit of work to do the paperwork, but it’s worth it. The new rate is 2.75% lower than our current rate! The math works out in our favor no matter how we play it.
Secondly, a second visit to Aaron Bros Art Supplies, this time accompanied by my actual prints, and with Lisa’s helpful eye we picked out some frames and a matt board.
This evening I cut the matts to size and framed the pictures and they look great on our living room wall. I’ve always wanted to frame these.
I’m sure I’m not the only person fascinated by sunsets, and these photos were taken during two separate sun setting occasions: One set of a time-lapsed setting sun over San Francisco Bay taken from the Berkeley hills in 1994; and the other (Taken much later) is panoramic montage of a rather spectacular bunch of cloud formations taken during a blushing sunset from our back veranda at Carlysle Road in Auckland, NZ.
This is a place for me to share random thoughts about Life, The Universe, and Other Things.
My brain is running a simulation of a human. It is a highly-trained neural network. It’s not perfect, but so far it’s been close enough to fool all the other simulations.
The Opinions Expressed Herein Are My Own. All Rights Reserved Except Where Explicitly Relinquished.
Recent Comments