ince I remained in San Diego for over a decade after I moved out of my mom's house after high school, both my parents (divorced decades when they lived in North Carolina, but both living in San Diego since 1985, for reasons too involved to explain here) were used to seeing me at least every couple of weeks, if not more often than that. I enjoyed seeing them as well, but I didn't let that stop me when I had the opportunity to live with Malaya, 500 miles north of San Diego. I moved north in August 2003, and since the parents wanted to meet Malaya, and see me, they've made several visits up here since I moved. Dad's come more often than mom and my stepdad, simply because dad can afford to fly in more often, and he also comes by on business trips once or twice a year.

All that preamble aside, this page collects the blog entries about the various parental visits.  More recent additions go on top of the page.

January 26, 2004

My mom and stepdad were up from San Diego, visiting here for the first time since I moved last August, and meeting Malaya for the first time at all.  They arrived Thursday morning, and we had dinner and toured around a bit on Thursday, then again on Friday, and spent Saturday in SF, doing touristy stuff. Nothing amazing occurred during their visit, but they both seemed to like Malaya quite a bit, and she got along well with them, finding my stepdad especially interesting to talk about, due to a lot of shared life experiences and background interests.

They invited us to join them for a week's vacation on Kauai sometime this year, when they've got a slot due on the luxurious time share property they are partners in, and we're considering it.  By which I mean we're considering if we can afford it, since while the lodging is virtually free, we'd still have to cover the plane tickets and car rental and food and drink and such there.  But it would be a fun time, and I'd like to go, even if it is in August when it's getting hot here and is hot there also.  I haven't been in Hawaii in years and years, last visiting with my dad in the early 90's, and it's nice there, but I like it mostly for the outdoor stuff, snorkeling, hiking the bamboo forest type trails, etc.  Lying on a beach and getting skin cancer is not a selling point of a destination for me, especially not after living in San Diego for nearly my entire adult life, where I could go outside and get a sunburn probably 330 days a year.  Not that I ever did, given my computer-related, indoor-intensive lifestyle and interests.

Anyway, back to the visit here.

On Thursday they came over here in the afternoon and met the skittish kitties and saw the condo and we drove around the area some, and ended up having a nice, semi-expensive Italian dinner that Malaya and I treated them to.  After dinner we returned here and had hung out and talked for a while, while trying to lure the kitties into petting range.

It's funny, since while Jinx and Dusty are ever so bold and never out from underfoot when Malaya and/or I are here, when anyone else comes over they head for the hills.  I assume that's because there's never anyone but us here; we go out a lot and see some friends sometimes, but they virtually never come over here. Aside from dad on his two visits, the last other person here was the gas company guy to check our pilot light and furnace back in October or so.

Mom was much looking forward to petting the kitties, and cuddling the cute little fuzzy Jinxie, and she was disappointed that such a treat was denied her.

She got to see them, and with heavy use of bribes, in the form of salmon-flavored kitty treats, we got both cats into the living room and eating from various human hands. It was just that as soon as the treats were gone, the Jinxer would retreat to watch from a safe distance.  Dusty eventually got unscared/lazy enough to just sprawl out and sleep on the purple chair, but he was easily taken for granted at that point.  It was the elusive, "you can't buy my love that easily" Jinx that mom wanted in her lap, and was ultimately denied.

Jinx hasn't been a lap cat for a couple of months, not for anyone. She was constantly in my lap the first few weeks, then sporadically in laps if we were on the couch for a while after that, but since December or so she's not been on a lap at all.  She'll walk over us, especially if we're holding food, but she won't settle down and sleep on Malaya or me.  She'll sleep on the couch next to us, and she's on our legs all night in bed, but not in here where we could pet her.

It's odd too, since she has no objection to being petted, and in fact enjoys it, usually rolling over on her back and purring and stretching.  She just won't settle down on human bodies.  We're hoping it's a phase she's going through and that she'll get back to lapping later on.  Even though Dusty is constantly on any lap that will support him, especially Malaya's.

I'm always walking into the bedroom to find her sitting on the bed reading or on the phone and sitting with her legs crossed, or bent up under her, or in some other lapless fashion. And usually Dusty is right there, lying halfway sideways across her knees, or ankles, or in some other clearly uncomfortable position.

At times like that I'm half glad that Jinxie is not a lap cat, even though I pretty much never sit down in any weird position that she might take advantage of.

Mom didn't even get a Dusty in her lap, since he was sticking to his chair.  But the kids went from hiding in the bedroom (Jinxie got up under the covers and slept there, undiscovered, for hours.) to warily peeking into the living room to entering the living room to taking treats from the visiting people's hands, and that was in just a couple of hours over a couple of days.  If we had regular visitors who were here for hours at a time and who were nice to the kitties, I'm sure they'd soon get used to it and would be friendly, or at least not run and hide.

And that's easy for me to say, since we will never have visitors of that sort.

Saturday we drove over to Mt. Diablo and had a nice time sightseeing and taking lots of pictures and hiking a bit.  It was quite a different experience than when Malaya and I were there back in October.  Then it was very warm and very clear and very sunny. I have yet to put more photos of it online, but here's one that I posted back then, just to give you a general idea of how things looked from the 3900 foot peak.

Here's how it looked from the summit last time.

And here's one from this time.  Few more clouds, eh?

The clouds were actually very cool, since it wasn't cloudy on the ground.  You could see clouds overhead, but it was just sort of overcast, not actually dark or gloomy or anything approaching rainy.  We could just barely see the peak of Mt. Diablo while we were driving towards it though, and couldn't see any of the foothills at all.

As we started up the winding roads towards the peak, we entered the clouds at 500 or 800 feet, and were in them, with all misty and gray, until about 3000 feet, when we got through the top of them and were in bright sunlight. So all of the clouds were between perhaps 1000 and 2500 or 3000 feet.  However, the minute we got up over the top of them and into the sun, the view was amazing. All was gray and misty below us, with only a few isolated peaks peeking up over the thick layer of clouds between there and here.

Here's another shot that's not from the very top of the peak, but up high enough to look down on the world.

These photos don't do it justice, owing to the limitations of my bargain brand digicam.  The actual clouds were more distinct and clear in our eyes, with the bits of visible hills in the distance a deep blue color, next to the gray clouds. Looking down at the hills below us, we could see them sort of swimming out of the wispy clouds, and as we watched they'd grow more or less clear as the wind moved the clouds across them.

Unfortunately, the clouds weren't thick enough to really give us a "stepping into the sky" feeling.  As we went down it just got gradually grayer, until it was cloudy overhead.

I've seen days where the peak of Mt. Diablo is clear, and there are thick, white clouds between the ground and the peak, blowing into it and breaking up against it.  Those days it would be damn cool to walk up there and see the clouds coming, and we'll have to try and get up there sometime when the weather is cooperating.

Last up is a shot of mom and Glenn walking along a typical trail, this one between the summit and Devil's Elbow, a prominent rock outcrop that Malaya and I scaled for fun.  I like the look down the steep hill, into the clouds below.  It's great hiking up there this time of year, on a non-rainy day. It was nippy though, probably in the low 50's, and it had been getting down into the 20's and lower at night.  They had "watch for ice" signs all over the summit park building, which was unfortunately unstaffed on that day, due to budget issues.

When I'm president I'll cancel 5 missiles off of the next big order, and use that money to raise the pay and fully equip every current soldier, and double the funding for every state park and park ranger in the US.

Yes, I know what you're wondering.  "What will you do with the $100m left over?"   I'll think of something.

Saturday was the day I mostly planned to talk about, since on that day we rode BART over to "the city" (Which is what the locals call "San Francisco." Malaya visibly cringed every time I referred to it as "Frisco" when I was first living up here, and even "SF" is considered a bit gauche.) and did touristy things.  It was okay, but I didn't have a very good day, so I don't have a lot of jolly exploits to relate.

I didn't get much sleep, since we were set to drive over to the parents' hotel and then walk to the nearby BART station.  It's about a 40 minute ride from there to downtown SF, within a couple of miles of all the world famous tourist stuff: Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz views and bay tours, Union Square, city hall, etc.

The problem, for me at least, was that I never really woke up.  I often get up on and go on 4 or 5 hours of sleep and I'm fine, but for whatever reason on Saturday I was just drowsy and vacant all day.  Malaya and mom thought I was angry or grumpy, since I had no expression and just stared off into space.  But that wasn't it, I was just mentally unplugged. I'd sit on a bench and stare out across the people for 5 minutes, and then realize that I hadn't had a single thought in my head the whole time.  Just blank stare and glazed gaze, resulting in nothing.

This is about as opposite my normal behavior and state of mind as it's possible to get, though I do wish I could summon that up when I wanted it.  I wasn't bored for a minute all day, other than in the late-afternoon 50 minute wait for a table at the Cheesecake Factory restaurant atop Macy's at Union Square.  During the 40 minute ride on BART I don't remember a single thing, going in or coming out, other than the pack of high school girls who were next to us coming home, all giggling and chattering mindlessly and loudly about school things and curfew and SF tours and the prom, etc.  Ordinarily I'd be bored on BART with no sensory input inside of 5 minutes, and would need to talk to Malaya or mom or Glenn, or would start analyzing every other passenger on the train, or would think about the next chapters in my novel, or whatever.

Anyway, I didn't enjoy the day much since I was so out of it and disinterested in things.  Malaya tried to cheer me up and be a good girlfriend for the ride over and a few hours there, but after lunch we were touring a shopping area and I inevitably got angry over something stupid that would normally have not even registered on my radar, and snapped at her, and after that she was angry with me and made no more efforts to cheer me up or talk to me, though she was still somewhat chatty with the parents.

But gray mood or not, we saw much of the sights of the city.  We rode the cable car from the end turn around spot back to China Town and walked through it, touring a bunch of the little shops.  Most of them seemed like (What I imagine) a 7-11 in Beijing; all the same normal small item crap you're used to, with lots of cheap Chinese and SF-themed souvenirs crammed into every square inch of store space imaginable.  Very low prices on lots of stuff, but not much worth buying.  Especially not at the start of the day, when we were going to have to carry it around all day if we got it then.  We didn't.

We looked in oriental rug stores, admired wall hangings, browsed through jade jewelry stores and crafts centers, cringed at the ungodly caterwauling an old Chinese man playing a so-called Chinese violin was creating, and so on.  They did have some lovely marble and granite and jade-carved statues, but they cost a fortune.  Little animal figures the size of a thumbnail were $80-$120 at one representative place, and larger pieces, breadbox sized, were thousands and thousands.  A large lion figure that I liked was $20,000, and lots of other large, heavy, carved stone things didn't have visible prices, which opened the door for lots of easy, "Pick it up and see what the tag on the bottom says."

It's fun to joke about possibly breaking something that costs more than you're likely to earn in the next three years.

I took my camera along, of course, and took some shots of the bay, Alcatraz, the sea lion infestation at Pier 39, and more.  I've yet to sort the shots to see if any are any good, but I'll likely get some shots up in the days to come.

One thing near the end of the day that amused me was Macy's.  It's a giant store right on Union Square; there are 7 huge floors of merchandise, and another smaller store across the street that's got all of their men's clothing. So yes, that's 7 stories of ladies' clothing, lingerie, make up, and home furnishings.  Want to pay $50 for a hand towel, or $18 each for small glass tumblers?  You're in the right place.

The only reason we were there was because of the Cheesecake factory on the top floor, and we rode the insufficiently-large elevator up to the top and got on the list, finding out there would be a 35-50 minute wait for a table.  (It was more like 55 minutes.)  Quite a while when all we really wanted was some cheesecake, having eaten relatively big and relatively overpriced lunches just a few hours previous.

Of course we did what most everyone does there; got on the list, took our pager, and went to tour around Macy's.  The last/other time I was there with Malaya I was in a great mood and we had a lot of fun browsing around the 6th floor, the one below the restaurant, where they have their furniture and living room and bedroom sets.  I blogged about it at the time; $5000 for a couch and footrest type leather stuff, and then you can tack on $10000 for a nice carpet, $3000 for a love seat or recliner, $3500 for bookshelves and a coffee table, and that's just getting started.  Table lamps for $500, floor lamps for $1000, and that's not even including the TV, stereo, etc that you'd need to add in with the furniture.

I roamed pretty widely trying to kill the 45 minutes, and roamed quickly since I was alone, not wanting company and being mad at Malaya for being mad at me.  The clothing was interesting and varied, all priced higher than I'd ever personally consider paying, when identical stuff is available elsewhere for a fraction of the price. The thing I found oddest was on the ground floor when I wandered into the make up department.  It's not like at a normal department store, where they have make up on display and a few girls working there.  At this Macy's they must have had 100 people working the area, and every brand of cosmetic you've ever heard from had a private little area with several high chairs and powerful lights and tackle boxes of open products that they were quite eager to plop you down and slather on you.  It was like being backstage at a fashion show; all of these phony salespeople with their crisp all black or all white outfits, racing around and trying to get women to sit down and endure some lip gloss or eye liner, while eyeing all of the other people walking around like they were dirt.  When you're in a store where the lipstick sellers are snooty, you know it's a bougie place.

The people working there were interesting also.  92% female, and 90% of them were hot, tall, thin, tight clothing, etc.  The men there were all uber metrosexual, or probably just plain homosexual with the fashion obsession gene in full force. Mostly short and very neat in their little outfits and tailored facial hair.  I found the whole wandering through the section rather surreal; like these people who inhabit this other world that I know nothing about and have no interest in living in, or even in learning more about.

It'll be funny if I end up successful with my writing and have to go to New York publishing parties with upper crust NYers who are all so caught up in their little scandals and insular little world, and who are so convinced that everyone else cares about them, or wants to be them.  It'll give me some blog material, at least, and I'll just hope that if I have to endure inane dialogue with them, I can keep from telling them that 99.9% of the people on earth don't know or care anything about their little hopes and dreams.

Of course I'd mean it mostly as an insult, but they're probably take it as a compliment; further proof of their superiority and cutting edginess.

Blog material, anyway.  "Flux goes to the big city."

As for this recent big city trip, it was pretty lame, but I'd like to go back again at some point, ideally once I had some money so the prospect of throwing down $20 on fish and chips at a nice restaurant on the bay, or $7 on a slice of cheesecake or $5 on a Pepsi wouldn't so depress me that I'd just rather go hungry.

And it would be nice if I had a decent amount of sleep too.

I'll get my chance pretty soon, since dad's going to be here in mid-February, and he'll be in the city on business, and he's invited Malaya and me over to see him one day, and he'll put us up in a hotel there and we can tour around some and do some other city things.  However dad will be paying for it, which should at least partially alleviate my guilt over the absurdly high prices for pretty much everything.

Not entirely, since just because it's not my money being wasted doesn't mean I'm happy about wasting it.  But I'll try to loosen up and not think about how much I'd rather just be home with sleeping kitties beside me and my keyboard under my fingers and Chapter Four in my head.

I'll never be happy or comfortable in a big city.  I just feel too crowded and dirty the whole time, especially when I had to ride a train to get there, and don't really know my way around at all.  The minute I got home I took a shower and then a bath, eager to sluice away the filth of so many dirty people breathing on me, and my clothing went straight into the clothes hamper; even the long sleeved shirt I wore over a t-shirt, even though I was never sweaty or rained on.  Everything just feels so dirty after being on concrete and pavement all day.

And this is SF; one of the top tourist destinations in the US and one of the most beautiful cities anywhere.  I try to imagine being in a really crowded hole like New York or Chicago or any other major city, and I just shudder.  I've always wanted to visit Europe and tour around the great cities there, but I'm not at all sure I'd enjoy it.  It's all the crowding and lack of clear space, inability to drive without hitting a stop light every 50 feet, and pavement and stone and buildings crowding overhead everywhere.  I hate it, and always find it amazing and incomprehensible when people want to live in a huge city.  People really love living in them, all of them, and they feel alive and vibrant and excited in the crowds and the steel and concrete jungle.

Ugh. It was odd for me, since I could so directly contrast my near ideal walking place; the empty trials of Mt. Diablo, where I'd been the day before.  I feel so alive and happy and content when I'm alone, or with some friends, out in nature, with minimal crowding and very few other people.  Perhaps it's the redneck in my heritage coming out and resenting the big city folk and their big city ways?

Scary thought.

The bread and wine we got were pretty good, at least.  As was the dessert.

I'm going off on another jaunty wine-tasting jaunt tomorrow with dad, heading up north to the Sonoma area this time and the really famous Northern California vineyards.  It should be fun, but this event requires us to leave around 9, which means I'll be getting up 4-5 hours earlier than usual.  Ugh.

This time I shall endeavor to remember my camera.  Which means it'll probably be cloudy and drizzly and ugly, after the last time I forgot it and the weather was picturesquely cloudless and gorgeous.

___________

Dad's Visit #2, November 2003

November 13, 2003

The bread and wine we got were pretty good, at least.  As was the dessert.

I'm going off on another jaunty wine-tasting jaunt tomorrow with dad, heading up north to the Sonoma area this time and the really famous Northern California vineyards.  It should be fun, but this event requires us to leave around 9, which means I'll be getting up 4-5 hours earlier than usual.  Ugh.

This time I shall endeavor to remember my camera.  Which means it'll probably be cloudy and drizzly and ugly, after the last time I forgot it and the weather was picturesquely cloudless and gorgeous.

November 14, 2003

Thursday I went on my second wine-tasting expedition with dad, on the one day he was up here after flying up Wednesday on a business trip.  The last time we drove down to the Livermore Area and tasted a lot of wine at half a dozen vineyards of little renown.  This time we wanted to try somewhere different, so we headed up north to Sonoma.

Napa Valley is the most famous wine growing region in the US, and they do make some good wine, but that's the problem.  They're too well known, and every noob and wine tourist shows up and crowds into the places and as a result it's all become quite commercial, almost like mini wine Disneylands in front, while they still have their serious business of growing grapes out back.  I like to call them "grape orchards" just to watch wine-lovers leap all over each other to be the first to say, "vineyards" as if anyone didn't already know that.

I derive pleasure from odd things.

So anyway, we drove up to Sonoma, which is actually a little farther north than the Napa Valley, but not by much.  It's petty damn pretentious and expensive and touristy as well, but not quite so bad as the more famous ones in Napa.

Last time I wrote a lot more about how the tasting goes, but I forgot my camera.  This time I remembered my camera, so I'm going to narrate via photos, rather than describing everything in tremendous detail.  I took over 80 photos, and will put up a Sonoma trip photo page at some point, but for now here's a quick half dozen shots of various things.

The captions are below each shot.

 

Here's the front gate of "California's Oldest Premium Winery," as the sign says. One thing all of these vineyards have going for them is gorgeous architecture and landscaping; all the better to put you in the mood to drop $260 on a case that you want to mail back to Aunt Bessie's bridge club in Annapolis.

There are crushed gravel parking lots, lots of trees and open grass areas, picnic tables beneath gorgeous trees, winding paths through the woods, and of course the scenic expanses of rolling hills, all carpeted with wine orchards.

 

This is a pic of the grounds at the Buena Vista vineyard.  The outside was better than the inside, since they don't have very good wine, and wanted $8 for a tasting (you get a splash of half a dozen different bottles).  Dad mostly wanted to see it for the historical relevance.

We looked, we took photos, and we drove elsewhere to consume famous vintages.

 

This is the original and still in use wine grotto at Buena Vista.  Wine must be chilled while it's aging, and back in the 1800's they clearly didn't have refrigeration. So putting your vineyard somewhere with caves was a very useful thing, and the deep limestone grottos in this area were no doubt among the leading reasons they started growing wine grapes here.

You can't tell from the photo, but inside this tunnel it's very dim, and very deep.  It went straight back into the hillside, like a railroad tunnel, but very narrow.  We couldn't go down it, but it had to be 200 feet straight back, judging by the dim string of lights that hung overhead.  Both sides were solid with stacks of wine barrels, piled up more than head high.

 

Here's a shot of me at the Buena Vista vineyard, in my jaunty wine-tasting attire.  You'll note that this is virtually identical to my jaunty mall-crawling attire, and clothes-washing attire, and so on.  Bonus points if you can tell just how badly I need a haircut.

 

This is a random shot of this somewhat disturbing corn stalk twist, with assorted pumpkin accents. It was about thirty yards out in a field by the parking lot at another winery, where dad dropped some names from his wine tasting work and got an in with the staff, and as a result secured us no charge tasting.  They were doing any five from their tasting menu for $5.  We got to try every single wine on the list, for free.  Which sounds great, but when you have two or three swallows of about 18 different types of wine, mostly Zinfindel, inside of 30 minutes, with nothing to eat and only occasional sips of water to cleanse your palette, you can feel it.

I could walk out, but I was woozy, and found myself babbling. I almost never curse in conversation with my dad; he doesn't really care, and he curses himself a bit, but I just make an effort not to do so.  So first thing when we get back to the car and we're talking about the wine, I go, "Christ, they poured us a fucking army of zinfindel, eh?"

You'll note that 1) I cursed, and 2) what I said makes no goddamned sense at all.

Dad was driving and he swallowed less of the fermented fruit than I did, plus he's used to drinking, while I hardly ever do it.

I'm fine, twelve hours later, aside from my tummy, which still feels sort of gurgly and acidic.  I can taste wine with every deep breath, despite eating a ton of Chinese for dinner, having left over Chinese later, and then a veggie burger and tater tots for a midnight snack.  Oh, I had a bowl of Cheerios in there somewhere also, mostly in an effort to soak up the wine that's still somehow sloshing around inside of me.

 

This last shot is from the quaint little park in downtown Sonoma.  It's a square (rectangle) and there are little crafts shops, home decor shops, old hotels with restaurants, and just plain restaurants all the way around it.  Very touristy, but in mid-November we're a bit past the summer rush season, so it wasn't bad.

There were a lot of ducks.

M

Dad's Visit #1, September 2003

September 2, 2003

My dad is coming to visit for a few days, and we're going to have dinner with him Tuesday night.  Plus she's working a lot lately, mostly due to me prodding her to get going on it, and giving her brilliant advice and insights into how she should write it.

Well, that last bit is bullshit.  But the rest is true.

Dad had talked about coming up to visit sometime around the end of August, but he never specified an exact date until he sent word that he'd be arriving in Oakland Tuesday evening, September 2nd.  He's flying out the 5th, but from San Jose, since he's going down there Thursday evening to stay overnight at the house of some old friends.  So basically he'll be near the condo Malaya and I share Tuesday evening, Wednesday, and Thursday morning, and then it's back to San Diego.

He's mentioned possibly moving up here a few times, and I think that would be cool, just so long as he was living at least 10 or 15 miles from here.  It's not that I don't want Dad in the area, but just not too immediately near by.  He's not the type to start dropping in unexpectedly; I don't believe he every came by my apartment in La Mesa unexpectedly, and I lived there for five years, alone, and it was less than 15 miles from his house.

Oh he came by quite a few times, but it was always planned in advance, like he'd be playing golf at a nearby course and pick me up afterwards to go out to dinner, or that sort of thing.  Never a sudden knock on the door and a "Guess who?"

So he certainly wouldn't be dropping by at all hours up here, especially since I'm living with a real life girl and he wouldn't want to intrude on our pre-connubial bliss. But just the same, I'd want him far enough away that any visit, me/us going over to his place or him coming over here, was not a surprise for any of the parties.  It's just better for everyone involved.

But it would be nice to see him more frequently, mom and my step dad too, for that matter, though they really like living in SD. I think dad does, but he's always making those older person noises about wanting to move from his house into a smaller condo, one where he wouldn't have to tend a big yard and worry about maintenance and remodeling and all of that happy shit.  Hell, I'm 29 and I don't want to worry about that sort of stuff, so I certainly don't blame him for it.

He thinks it's too hot in SD in the summer, and he doesn't have any enormous amount of friends he'd miss terribly if he moved up here.  But I think he likes living somewhere he knows so well after 20 years, and he'd probably think the winters here were too cold and rainy.  I'm just speculating though.  I know he misses me and hasn't had any luck finding that "special lady" in SD, so maybe he'd fare better up here with a larger pool of intelligent, independent, liberal women near his age.

Plus he loves the wine.

As I posted about yesterday, the stores up here have a vastly-larger wine selection than comparable stores in SD do, and dad loves wine.  He never has more than a glass or two a day, but he likes a wide variety of it, and he loves talking to the people who make it and he loves going to vineyards.  And there are quite a few wine growing and producing operations in the San Diego area, but nothing in the US can compare to this region.  The plan for Wednesday, while Malaya is busy with her filial duties, is that my filial duties will involve taking a drive with dad up to the Napa Valley area, and visiting some of the vineyards. Dad knows a lot of the wine growers, as in he could call them up and get the owner on the phone and get us a guided behind the scenes tour, private tasting, the whole lot.  I'm not a big wine drinker, but I am a moderate wine-sipper, and I like the horticultural process and the idea of things.

I'm happy to go see some big vineyards, and I find the whole romantic, quaint, old-fashioned, European, etc, image of grapes growing over wooden T's all up and down picturesque hillsides a lovely image. And I'd love to go down into the huge cellars and see oak casks large enough to drown an elephant in, and all of that.  The part I'm least interested in is actually consuming the product, or taking away bottles of the grape stuff, though I suppose I could play along with that if need be.

Anyway, I'll be taking my camera on Wednesday for the tour, and will hopefully get some good blog material out of it, at the very least.  Plus it will be cool to see dad again, and I can drop hints about how it would be cool if he decided to move up here at some point in the future.

I was hoping we'd have glorious weather and he'd be leaving the typical July/August/Sept cloudless 90's in inland San Diego and entering lovely cool and crisp 70's up here.  Unfortunately the last two days here were the hottest in 3 weeks, and there's more of the same forecast for tomorrow, while San Diego is chilling in partly cloudy high 70's.  Doh.

As for dinner tonight, nothing is decided. Dad is flying in, renting a car, and driving to his hotel which is about 8 miles from here.  And it's not that we're janky, there's just no room for another person in this condo.  One bedroom, one small living room with a love seat, and that's it.  Dad wanted a real bed in a hotel and some privacy and comfort, and that's what he's got. After he gets to the hotel we're going to figure on a time and place for dinner, which Malaya is thinking she'll barely have time for, with all the work she has to do for work.  She might even drive us over, and then take off and leave me to hang out with dad for a while longer, depending on how things are going with her schedule.

Alas, the curse of a real job.

September 5, 2003

Speaking of dad, as I did yesterday and was half a dozen paragraphs ago, he checked out of his hotel Thursday morning and came over here around 10.  I drove and took him around to various stores in the area, mostly wine stores, where he found a pretty good selection and got to lecture me about what was what.  My greatest enjoyment of the day was looking at the locked up expensive stuff in one place; they had numerous champagnes in a cold freezer where the average price was around $150, with lots of them over $250 and a few in the $400 range.  They had another big locked freezer against a side wall with hundreds of bottles of super expensive and rare wines, mostly old French stuff, and no bottle in there was less than $150, lots were in the $500 range, and several were over $1000.  The king was $1799.97, and no, I don't remember what it was.  Not like I'm ever going to drink the stuff, even though it would be fun to say that I had.

Mob kills rich prick after he brags about drinking a bottle of wine that cost more than anyone in the mob earned in the last month.

Now that would certainly qualify for the list of Darwinian items up above, now wouldn't it?

Dad also got to see Malaya at her work for a few minutes, and then we drove all the hell around here trying to find some place to get a pizza, and were met with utter failure. As I said some days ago in my big food differences blog, there are really no pizza delivery places here, and not even any smaller local places selling it.  It's very weird, since the socioeconomic cross section of this area isn't that much different than the upper middle class suburbs my dad lives in in San Diego, and if you stand on the street corner any night around 6pm, you'll see half a dozen pizza delivery vehicles go by every fifteen minutes, and in the three small strip malls in his area, I think there are 5 different fast food pizza places.

And none at all here.

It turns out that there is one small local place across the street from one of the strip malls near here, but it's one that I've never seen with my own eyes, and it's not any major chain, it's just a local Italian restaurant that also sells pizza to go.  But that does not deliver.

So dad and I had to settled for Jack in the Box, since dad needed to get on the road to drive down and see his friends in Santa Cruz for dinner Thursday, before he flies out Friday night from the San Jose airport.  It was nice having him here, and I may blog about that more tomorrow, but for tonight I'm signing off and going to bed.

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