This morning I had my associate review. This is an Acme administrative bureaucracy thing, it’s supposed to happen every year. It’s where you get to fill out an online self-rating system, pick three other associates that you work with to rate you, and then your leader (manager in acme-speak) rates you also. Then you get *this* meeting which involves the leader, yourself, and the party political officer, I mean Associate Developer (or A.D.) going through the ratings talking about where they don’t measure up or diverge from each other.
I have nothing to worry about, they’re quite happy with my job performance, etc. Of course this doesn’t mean anything in today’s economic climate. In two months there could be a financial crisis of some kind that would require another cut in the payroll, and a good review doesn’t make me any more confident that I would make the cut. All it would take is a *rumour* that Acme was being investigated for accounting irregularities…
Enough about work. During the afternoon Derek and I drove Teresa to the airport for her flight back to the East coast, while Lisa covered for me back in the office. It’s been great having her with us, no matter how short the time. Derek leaves in a couple of days, it’s back-to-school time all over.
At around 9:30 I changed into my “Topographic Oceans” T-shirt and we jumped in the car and drove to the Hilton for the Yes concert, which was due to open at 10:30.
This was the last show of the current tour, and I think it is fitting that Lisa and I saw the first one in Seattle, and the last one here in Vegas with Teresa and Derek.
I had some initial worries that the show would be a reduced 90 minute one due to performance policy restrictions in place at the Hilton theater. However, the newsgroup reported that the previous night’s show was a good 2 hours and 10 minutes, and that the Hilton people were understanding and adaptable. (Apparently the 90 minute limit is a minimum to prevent acts from short-changing the audience…)
Derek & Teresa aren’t dedicated fans of the band, but they like good music and can respect and enjoy excellent musicianship when they see it, so I’m pretty sure they had a good time.
The show was pretty much the same as the one we saw earlier in Seattle, except that they dropped the solo numbers and one piece (The Revealing) and added an additional encore, Yours Is No Disgrace, which frankly I enjoyed more.
It was after 1:00 am by the time we flopped into bed.
I think we all slept in this morning. I doped myself on allergy pills left over from the spider bite prescription (I stopped taking them for *that*, they didn’t do any good) and covered myself in a soothing pink lotion that apparently works for sunburn, insect bites, etc. Although not totally effective, the perfumed smell was bearable and it got me through the day ok.
I can’t remember what we had for dinner – did we fire up the grill? I think so.
We woke up early, which initially seemed like a good idea, given that we were going to be driving back to Las Vegas in the afternoon. Maximize the time we have in the company of the rest of the family, right?
Breakfast turned into an extended affair as people came out at various times during the morning. We got to look at some photos of Anna when she was young, and some of us worked on finalizing the list of Wedding Invitations. Derek and Teresa and I were interested in another swim before we left San Diego, so plans for a lunch out were scrapped (We were still full of breakfast! Thanks Judy for the excellent cinnamon roll thingy.) and the kids and I swam in the pool for an hour or so while the others talked wedding stuff and looked at photos. (I think.)
Now is a good point to say an extra Thanks! to Judy and Marshall, we had a great time over those couple of days, thanks to your generous hospitality.
10 minutes in to the drive home I kind of insisted that we stop off at the Carvin showroom so that I could play a particular guitar through an amp, and ask some more questions about various construction options.
And then, yeah, I couldn’t help it, I ordered a guitar. Delivery time estimated 4-5 weeks. Arggh, it’s going to be a long wait.
Driving back East to Vegas, it was pretty uneventful, except I missed the last Barstow exit and we had to do a kind of weird loop through the back roads of Barstow. Found a place to eat dinner in a Sizzler. Adequate food, nothing special.
It was totally dark when we stopped at Primm for a toilet+caffeine stop, this time I decided to try a Tazo Citrus from Starbucks. (Teresa had had one on the way to San Diego and generously allowed me a taste and I decided that the next opportunity I had I’d give it a try.)
However much we might distrust Starbucks’ coffeeshop globalization campaign, they do push good stuff. Tazo Citrus…. mmmm. Say no to the obligatory offer of “cream” on the top though.
On the way from Primm to Vegas, I broke out in an itchy rash, all over. Argh! Sunburn? Allergic to Tazo Citrus? (please, No!). In the orange shadowy glow of the road lights, I could practically *see* raised bumps breaking out on my forearms.
Driving North into the Las Vegas valley on I-15, we passed a big billboard on behalf of the Hilton, announcing “YES 2002 Aug 24-25”. Two nights, and we’ve got tickets for tomorrow night’s show, heh heh.
We arrived home with no complications other than my dermatological insanity.
After the spider bite fiasco, I really wasn’t keen on itchy rashes. Could this be heat rash? Did I get too much sun while in the pool that morning? As yet, no answer to this question.
After a refreshing night’s sleep, we awoke to a deserted house, fresh coffee perking away, and a pile of bagels next to the toaster. All right!
Eventually the rest of the household emerged, rubbing sleep from their eyes in some cases, or running off to work in a business-like fashion in the case of Marshall.
We had very leisurely morning discussing what we would do with the rest of the day. Eventually we settled on: Visiting Fry’s Electronics; a drive out to Coronado Beach for a swim; then back for showers and a change of clothes before going out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant of some repute in the Old Town area of San Diego.
Fry’s Electronics one of a chain of stores, sort of like Costco for geeks. Imagine Radioshack or David Reids only in bulk supermarket form. We got the cables we needed for our new SubWoofer, and a couple of cool music DVD’s too. The others found stuff they wanted too, including a Dance Dance Revolution pad for the Playstation. (I could try and explain that last one, but I think I’ll leave it to experts, and merely say that if you think of Whack-a-Mole with boots and a dance track, you’ll have a pretty complete image.) Anna is a whiz at DDR.
It was fun driving around the freeways of San Diego, particularly with Anna in the passenger seat next to me doing the navigating.
The Sun was warm, the sea playful, and the breeze obligingly refreshing.
The drive back seemed to co-incide with rush hour, but thanks to Anna’s expert directions, we arrived back at the house in good time.
After showers and a change of clothes, it was back on the road to Casa del Pico for dinner. (See http://www.bazaardelmundo.com/dining/pico.html.) Josh, Anna and myself went with Judy, while L, Derek, and Teresa went with Marshall. That way there was no chance of my getting lost driving around in San Diego, and besides, it meant that if I wanted to have one of their famous margaritas, I could do so with impunity as I would not be driving.
Judy dropped Josh and myself off with directions to the restaurant, while she continued on to find a car park. The restaurant was inside a kind of village courtyard, among a whole bunch of other eateries and craft shops. The bad news: the queue for tables at Casa Del Pico stretched right through the courtyard and out the other archway! The good news: the food smells were great, and we had lots to look at, and anyway, I always enjoy an opportunity to talk to Josh. We inched slowly forward, while other people swapped in and out of their placeholder positions in the queue.
After about 20 minutes, Marshall and L showed up with D&T in tow, but still no sign of Judy and Anna. It was another 20 minutes before they showed up, and while Josh, Marshall, and I held our places in the queue, the others went shopping. The courtyard area was crowded with people, and there was a mariachi band playing somewhere nearby.
Eventually a couple of tables opened up close by, and all eight of us were seated. Was the food worth the wait? I think I would answer a qualified yes. I enjoyed the food a lot, and the experience was good, but I’d still try and hit an off-peak time if I were to go back there. Good company makes a lot of things worthwhile… Oh, and I can now see why Casa Del Pico may have been rated “the best margarita in San Diego”.
Full of energy (not!) we got up at 5:30am, threw our overnight bags in the car, and drove South on I-15 towards San Diego. The idea was to beat the sun up (which we didn’t quite manage to do) and leave the Vegas valley before it got hot (which we succeeded in doing).
We stopped for breakfast at Barstow at Chrissy’s Cafe, which L and I remembered stopping at for dinner a year or so ago back when we drove our car from San Francisco, full of house contents, and a desire to get to our new house in Las Vegas.
The pancakes were not quite as good as I remembered them.
There was not much to see on the way South, just desert, and road works, and minor towns.
We took a pit stop in a town called Perris, and I know we then nulled out the benefit of the pit stop by walking back to the car via Starbucks and getting coffee.
We drove into the outskirts of San Diego at about 12:00, but before arriving at Marshall & Judy’s place we had a very important stop to make: The Carvin guitar factory and showroom. Derek and Teresa and Lisa were very patient while I wandered about trying out different guitars and looking at all the other items in the showroom. Yum.
I can’t remember where we stopped for lunch – I think it was a Hawaian-themed burger joint up the road from Carvin.
We pulled in to Judy and Marshall’s driveway at about 1:30pm, and pretty much flopped for the rest of the day. Some of us went swimming, some of us took naps… I seem to remember a game of Poker that broke out late afternoon and continued until the sun went down.
I was pretty tired after all the driving, and the rest of the evening is a bit of a blur… I remember meeting Anna’s brother Arthur (well, for the second time anyway) and a fantastic dinner arranged by Judy, we ate around the table… at some point we begged tiredness and fell asleep relatively quickly in the very comfortable guest room.
My arm is definitely healing now – those antibiotic pills must be working. The allergy ones seemed to have no effect.
The new speakers arrive today. I had some trouble connecting the sub-woofer correctly, mainly because we have some in-wall wiring that wasn’t quite compatible without an adapter, but after a quick phone conversation with the support technician, all was fixed and a quick blast of the THX Test program on the “Close Encounters” DVD proved it was working.
In the evening we drove out to McCarren and picked up Derek and Teresa, who looked great. We tried to eat dinner at PF Changs, as per usual, but they were very busy, so we instead drove around the corner to the Aladdin, and ate at the Todai Seafood Buffet. It was good, but a little expensive, and really better if you like seafood (duh!) If you have a birthdays you can go free, which is great for birthday parties. 10 days earlier would have been ideal…
After dinner we shopped at the Gap, they had a sale on and Derek and I found some cool monochromatic T-shirts…
The bread product colloquially known here as the “English Muffin” performs quite adequately as a crunchy breakfast substrate, in cases where bagels are not available.
It is, after all, merely a marmalade delivery device.
“You take it out, toast it up, and get your fix?”
“You get your fix.”
(paraphrased from The Insider, apologies to Touchstone Pictures)
On Monday, L and I rearranged some of the stuff we’d been storing in the garage. We’re kind of making room for some of the storage option changes that I mentioned earlier… Anyway, one of the things was to put one of the rolls of carpet that we have had since our great carpet caper (see April 2001) behind this big box of polystyrene packing and bubble wrap that we’ve saved over the last few years – since before we moved!
Long story short: I was bitten by a spider (a brown one) and got a very serious looking red patch on the inside of my elbow which was very concerning. Doctor visit ensues.
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.
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