July 2011 Archives

okay, done.

what i meant:

i'm sorry you are unable to figure this out on your own. have you considered a career path that does not involve technology?

the dude is spot on.

(i wish bikely wasn't so worthless. i don't like mapmyride but ferchrissakes bikely won't even load!)

anyhow, i did a hilly ride today. from bay tree park up parrot, down de anza, up polhemus, down ralston av, up alameda, then back down parrot to the park.

mmr says that's just under 11 miles and claims i did 790 feet of climb, proving that mmr doesn't know wtf it's talking about.

as i was coming down alameda i realized that to make this ride into HYKY (major) i could go up hillsdale (ow!!) then down/up de anza (it's got a nice 10% climb for a quarter mile or so) and return to the park via crystal springs and the obstacle course.

that sounds like a plan for next week.

if i wanted to really HYKY, once i finished de anza i could climb bunker hill, and then... what? thanks to bridge construction, the easy route home is blocked until 2013, so that'd mean more climb to get to cañada, and then i guess up the ralston trail and back down polhemus/crystal springs/obstacle course -- or, of course, ascension back to parrot.

that's a hell of a lot more than 800 feet of climb.

the possibilities for torture are pretty near endless.

How utterly astonishing that the magic of a geographic relocation has not caused these Mexican, South and Central American immigrants to suddenly develop a due respect for the concepts of limited government and the separation of powers developed by English Protestants two centuries ago!

I think VD should take a vacation to Juarez and learn all about "the concepts of limited government". It's a libertarian paradise, with guns and private enterprise everywhere and government nowhere!

It is very likely that "these Mexican, South and Central American immigrants" have a whole lot more experience with limited government than VD.

it turned out the lemon hart demerara rum we picked up is 151 proof. so... not exactly ideal for a queens park swizzle. maybe acceptable for a mai tai. gonna be a lot of bananas flambés around here.

and i guess i was right.

still it was disgusting to watch the right wing blogs (led of course by michele malkin and the execrable vox day) pile on to accuse muslim immigrants of the terrorism in norway. it didn't take long to find out that the mass murdering shooter was ethnic norwegian, but that didn't stop the right wing hatemongers from saying "yeah but i was just pointing out how bad muslims are, TOTAL COINCIDENCE".

still no corrections/retractions from MM or VD. not holding my breath.

i never saw the original TRON when i was young. the first time I saw it was last month, and I liked it, a lot. i liked seeing sheridan and the dude when they were young, i loved the action sequences and the cool lighting and great costumes. since i never saw it when i was young, seeing it now didn't spoil any childhood fond memories (i'm looking at you, "the last starfighter!").

I watched TRON: Legacy with no expectations, having not seen any trailers or read any reviews. Surprisingly, despite its flaws, or perhaps because of them, it was a great movie! Better than the original, which is hard to pull off.

First of all, it's misnamed. It should really be called TRON: Lebowski. The dude plays himself, not Flynn, man. Which is cool. That's cool, man. You know?

The flashy lights are updated with modern technology. It's got outrageously blatant T&A scenes. It's got well choreographed fights. It's got no TRON, which is a little weird considering the name, but the first one wasn't about TRON either, so I guess that's following precedent.

The biggest win, though, is the Daft Punk soundtrack. I didn't know Daft Punk could do soundtracky stuff, but they do, and it's both soundtracky and Daft Punkish at the same time. They've got an awesome cameo in the film, too, which came as a delightful non-surprise.

The plot is ridiculous, and full of silly holes and Dude philosophizing. It rips off everything from Star Wars to The Matrix to A Wrinkle In Time. That's okay. Both movies were simply frameworks around which to build chase and fight scenes with bright lights and (in the case of TRON: Lebowski) awesome music. I wouldn't expect anything else from Disney but blatant ripping-off. You could fast forward through some of the more boring parts, but a better idea would be to just ignore what the dude is saying and watch Quorra or the set design and rock out to Daft Punk. Because that's what the movie is really about.

is a US senator laughing.

the self-satisfied "gang of six" were on npr while i made my breakfast, and one of them told a "joke" (ha ha ha, we're crushing america!) and the others chortled along with it.

then one of them went on to say that the senate is a body of patriots all doing what they think is best for america.

but even an outrageous lie like that isn't as grating as hearing laughter from such wastes of space. i would enjoy laughter from thomas jefferson or abraham lincoln, flawed patriots, but patriots nonetheless. today's senators are patriots only in the sense that they love living in a country where they're set for life with giant corporate kickbacks.

the etymotics have gone off to work. i got them initially for my sunday walkabout, but a quick test run on yesterday's sunday walkabout proved that they are useless when not mostly motionless. the sound of my footfalls was amplified to the point where i couldn't hear the music. the ety's went back inside to be swapped out for the grados, which have their own problems but at least sound pretty good when walking.

the ety's have at least 4 different ear attachments. i've tried 3 of them so far at work. eventually i get an itch on the inside of my ear, and that's a pain. but there are two really big upsides: they're so amazingly isolating that i can actually listen to classical music at work, and since they have no headband i don't mess up my awesome do.

the downside is that i don't think they sound as great as they should for what they cost, and they itch and even sitting and doing little more than typing, they transmit cable noises.

i can't say i'm thrilled with these, but at least i've found a use for them. since they're basically earplugs, i can turn off the music and still not hear anything, which is pretty nice.

courtesy of france, dragers, california, and very likely mexico.

went pretty much as planned, in the best possible way.

i gotta say, it was a good day.

i didn't even have to use my AK.

while spell checking his name, thanks to the magic of google, i discovered that overwhelmingly the cool steves are stephens with a ph, and the lame steves are stevens with a v.

cool:
stephen king
stephen hawking
stephen colbert
stephen irwin
stephen wozniak

not cool:
steven segal
steven spielberg (outlier)
steven tyler
steven jobs

it makes no sense, but there it is.

(or crown, if you will) for slowest ascent of king's mountain road. but i did the whole thing with no stopping or granny gear. it's been more than a year since i've done anything steep that's longer than ralston. i was about as tired as i could be this morning, with a heel abrasion and a lack of motivation, but i accepted no excuses and made it up. i much prefer the ascent. downhill, i got passed because i brake so much. i'll probably loosen up after a couple more ascents, but for now, it's a bit scary.

standing in line at mr. pickles, i overheard a conversation (not with difficulty) between the sandwich artisans and a guy who was probably a regional manager. the large menu has 25 numbered sandwiches, but the paper to-go menus are already showing #26, a not-yet-launched addition to the lineup. the artisans were lamenting that people were already ordering the 26, only to be let down when they discovered it couldn't yet be made.

so of course, as soon as it was my turn to order, i put on my poker face and ordered a #26. the poor dude was of course thrown for a loop, but i didn't leave him hanging long before admitting i was kidding. we all thought it was a pretty good joke. as he made my #19, i looked at the paper menu. #26 is to be a pulled pork sandwich. they all said it was great when they tried the samples, and i bet it was. i paid for my sandwich and drove to work.

in the elevator, with nothing else to look at, i looked at my sandwich. on the paper was a big =), and above that, it said "#26".

i laughed out loud in the elevator, har har har! fortunately, i had tipped well. =)

the preceding post was pure fiction, and entirely a joke. i do not have a routine. my actions are totally unpredictable! don't even try to guess what i'll do next!

i'm generally trying to avoid routines, but they're really easy to fall into, particularly when it means connecting with people and enjoying good food. now we have a sunday routine. it goes a little like this, and it went very nicely yesterday:

a hefty bike ride (or preferably a hike, but that wasn't in the stars yesterday since it's easier for three people to bike independently than for two people to hike slowly with a third...)
a quick shower amidst shouts of "i'm starving! hurry up!"
the inevitable wait while various parties do various things completely unrelated to getting to lunch
going to town for brunch
being told that the wait is thirty minutes, wondering aloud once again why we didn't make a reservation
looking at that one case at the antique shop that isn't quite what we need but closer than anything else we've seen
finally getting our seat at the counter
talking with chef jeremy
drinking an el perro locco [sic]
enjoying chicken and waffles, epic breakfast sandwich, or greasy burger
grocery shopping
driving home to Jah's Music
going for a very nice 5:00 walk through the neighborhood, checking out the flowers, the sun, and the music
lazy dinner at home with a great movie and a tasty beverage

that was my sunday last week, this week, and jah willing, it'll be my next sunday too (with the possible exception of a nice dinner out, but who knows?)

like all things, it must change. chef jeremy is leaving town, and the new guy doesn't have jeremy's charisma (or perhaps he does but it was hidden under the nervousness of his first day on the job). but hakuna matata, change is good, and we'll settle into a new routine as needed, to keep things enjoyable. that's what sundays are for.

1 distinctive shopping bag from the cave, with a box inside
1 planter of hops, or maybe grapes, or some other climbing vine not doing as well as our hops at home
1 really great view

my beef with guys like DP and VD is not that they hate women, gays, immigrants, atheists, and people who wear the wrong color of tie. as a general misanthropist, i hate all those people too, so i can dig it.

what i can't dig is putting forth bogus, illogical arguments. i mean, how hard is this:

IF A THEN B
A IS TRUE BECAUSE [ CITATION ]
THEREFORE B IS TRUE

it's not hard. but it's something that seems to escape the grasp of even the "my IQ is so high they had to invent a new scale for it" VD, who will often argue that his enormous intellect gives him insights that are simply not possible to be thunk by the very limited brains of we mortals. In the real world, of course, a high IQ is useful only for joining clubs of high IQ "achievers", and there are plenty of people with high IQs that never did anything useful with their lives.

i'd say that VD is just one of those people, but sadly, by having a blog (which I assume is read by more than just me) he has accomplished having an audience, and ironically, the pseudo-intellectual turds that he posts there are very likely made a little shinier in the eyes of his fans by the fact that his IQ is a higher than that of the average banana slug.

people are entitled to hate whomever they choose to hate, for whatever reasons they may have. but please don't pretend that your irrational hate is logical, and if you must, please use actual logic with evidence and citations.

kthxbye

i read "vox day" for the entertainment value. a self-declared genius who is inordinately proud of his high IQ and his wack-ass mohawk, "vox day" puts out daily screeds against immigrants, women, people who aren't christians, and basically anyone who has an IQ less than his stratospheric 115 or whatever it is that he's got.

now, "vox day" is a better writer than "doug powers", although both have rather embarrassing initials. still, his logical prowess is nothing to boast of, especially for a guy with an IQ that's got to be way up there in the high 120s or something.

here's some cherry picking from his latest:

Also, so few women genuinely look good in jeans that it's really best to avoid them altogether.

This one just proves that mr. VD doesn't get out much, or at least, doesn't get out much in California. Also, it's presented as a "humorous aside" which he hopes will subconsciously bolster his "argument" (which appears to be that all women should wear makeup and dresses and otherwise adhere to the VD Standard Of Feminine Beauty (TM)) without being backed up by "evidence", which is apparently not required when making arguments from his throne of mighty IQness.

Okay, so in the next sentence, he provides us evidence after all:

Consider Madonna, who is one of the leading examples of female accomplishment, and yet was likened to "a piece of gristle" by her ex-husband, Guy Ritchie.

Yeah, okay, a quote from a guy who divorced a woman describing the woman whom he divorced. I wonder what motivations Guy Ritchie might have to cast his ex-wife in an unfavorable light? Who, after all, has ever heard a person unfairly smear their ex? Not me, no sir, I've only ever heard people describe their exes in glowing, rational, and completely objective terms.

Now, since what is feminine is by definition the opposite of what is masculine, one can readily determine feminine traits by considering masculine ones.

Citation needed.

Confidence, courage, independence, ambition, strength, decisiveness, straightforwardness, simplicity, and self-reliance are all core masculine traits.

CITATION MOTHERFUCKING NEEDED!

Seriously, wtf? He just made that list up and used the word "are" as if just because his massive 130 IQ shat out a sentence it magically becomes Revealed Truth. Not only that, but apparently these things are "core masculine traits", and are thus unavailable to women, and that women who strive for independence, courage, or simplicity are out of bounds and messing around with traits reserved for dudes. Huh?

Ignoring the ridiculousness of his revealed bifurcation of traits into arbitrarily "masculine" and "feminine" categories, i can say with my own revelatory certainty that i can't think of any guy i know who wants a woman who has no self-reliance. fuck that, tie your own goddamned shoes (and then go make me a sammich!).

Of course, since even the most masculine woman is less masculine than the average man, the attempt to imitate these masculine traits tends to ring false, hence the inherent humor in young women who march about asserting how strong and independent they are as they visit their therapists on Daddy's dime.

My wife isn't the most masculine woman, though I'm sure VD would find her far too masculine for his "tastes". Still, I am sure that he and I could both agree that "ass-kicking" is strictly the purview of masculinity. His argument states that women only "imitate" masculinity, and that "false female bravada [that] crumbles the moment it is challenged". And yet, any of my loyal blog readers will surely agree that my wife could quite easily kick the ass of the sadly-mohawked VD, likely without breaking a sweat (sweat, of course, being strictly out of bounds for a feminine woman). I am certain that VD considers himself at least "the average man", but if a woman, not even "the most masculine woman", is less masculine then him, but can still kick his ass, what does that say for his argument? I'm just a simple country programmer, but I know a thing or two about logic. Don't they teach logic in MENSA? His arguments are so easily falsified that I wonder if he's just trolling us all.

Men are attracted to women who smile, who bat their eyelashes, who blush, who are supportive rather than challenging, who trouble to make themselves pretty, and above all, who appeal to their sense of play rather than their sense of work.

Who the fuck elected VD spokesman for "men"? Also, note that his list of attributes is in no way mutually exclusive with his previous list of forbidden masculine attributes. I see no reason a woman who bats her eyelashes (constantly? or just once in a while? O great spokesman for "men", please illuminate us! with what frequency must a woman bat her eyelashes to be attractive to us simple low-IQ men?) can't also be self-sufficient (or kick VD's ass).

anyhow, dear readers, i leave you with an image of a hideously masculine woman looking awful in some terribly masculine clothes.

ICK.

Quick, get her into something less masculine!

Ahhh, much better, finally, she's attractive...

anyhow, i get it, that's actually an actress doing actressy things. so here's a couple of masculine women doing manly things (professional sports! without makeup) who are obviously failing miserably at being attractive to any man.

threw a pretty nice (and small) party last night. i'd stressed for two weeks about our acras recipe, but with the help of my brother the fry cook (with later input from one of the guests, an accomplished indian cook and pakora expert), we pulled it off. we started with 1.5lbs of salt cod and must have made close to 100 of the fish fritters, and they all got eaten.

also, we had a basic salade martiniquais of corn, carrots, cucumber, and tomato. that got all eaten too, to my surprise.

we drank a lot of ti punches but ultimately, the ti punch is not so great in this climate (though i drank mine with an ice cube which tempers the sweetness of the cane syrup and makes for a better drink) and the guests demanded more fancy mixed drinks. i rose to the occasion and crafted a daiquiri, two queen's park swizzles, three mai tais, a blood and sand, two beachcomber cocktails, a gin twist, and an "i'm done" dark and stormy for myself. at one point, because there was so much gear strewn about, i began building a cocktail in the melted-ice remains of a previous build, and had to dump it. heh. other than that, i'm kinda proud of my bartending skills (or the skills of my friends to pretend i'm a good bartender).

after that we (mostly) all drunk-walked down to the local churrascuria for an extra two hours of gluttony. the clean up this morning is daunting but at the end of it, i think we'll have some new cupboard organization plans, which will be nice.

lost another pound this week. if i'd had a bag of doritos last sunday, it coulda been 3. took the bro out for french/moroccan food last night. i've decided that that place is better for lunch than dinner. at lunch they have the greatest croque madame i've ever had, though i haven't been to france. at dinner, they have some really good fois gras (growing up i never would have guessed i'd eat so much fois gras...) and some very interesting moroccan wine, but their lamb tagine was unbalanced and chewy, and their chicken couscous looked bland.

still, we're likely going back, and one of these times we're going to let on that we kinda speak french.

i don't think i know a single person who likes their job.

trying out my cowon, who knew that pink floyd went so well with coffee and bananas?

epic noodling ride.

i wasn't feeling great, and the weather sucks, but i forced myself to ride. i set out and diverted from my usual (read: now boring) route, and took flea street toward ralston. when i got to the hill, i decided that even though i was too tired to do it, i'd do it anyways. then, at the top, i thought: it's lame to turn around, hard to go forward (and climb ralston or take the flea street hill back up again), so why not take a right on cipriani? besides, there was an old dude right there watching me so i couldn't be lame.

so i went up cipriani, but i didn't want to ascend ralston, so i took a right at some point, and for the next 30 minutes i became progressively more lost.

i went down big hills knowing i'd have to come back up, and avoided climbing big hills not knowing where they led. i got thoroughly turned around, and decided to ask for directions, but found nobody to ask. finally, to my surprise, i ended up at the "intersection" of ralston, cipriani, and san juan (which i was on). at last! I knew where I was! and there was a woman out that I could ask directions from, now that I didn't need her.

so i got on cipriani to take it back to flea street. i derped my way forward at some intersections and proudly patted myself on the back when i saw an intersection ahead that looked just like flea street. except that it wasn't. it was the "intersection" of ralston, cipriani, and san juan. i'd gone in a big hilly circle. crap!

so rather than embarrass myself again and miss lunch, i just bit the bullet and got on ralston, which i hate, and braved the traffic and the steepness that I didn't want for today. after that, I knew the way home.

the funny part is that while hops immediately got why this was funny, and while everyone on reddit said "wait, isn't that all women?" the original artist thought only his schizophrenic wife has this habit...

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

i finally broke through a weight loss plateau, and not only did i break through, i lost 3 lbs in a week instead of the usual 1.

so my new weight loss plan is simple: a bag of doritos every sunday until i'm 185 again.

but seriously, how the fuck am i supposed to vote for this guy?

seems like the internets are full of it today.

shortly after reading this:

To no one's surprise, Exxon/Mobil was lying about the severity of the Yellowstone River oil spill

I came across this:

We have a regulation problem, not a revenue problem

absolutely we have a regulation problem.

excellent article about the real promised land

while we're all focused on the nebulous "homosexual agenda", the "international banker's agenda" is progressing quite nicely, with support from every major or contender ruling party in the world.

don't you be wastin' all your money
on syrup and honey
'cuz i'm sweet enough

the greatest fear of creatures like DP is that people will grow (or be raised) to realize that gay people are just people: with the same troubles and joys and triumphs and failures as everyone. some like to parade around naked, just as straight people do. some are a bad example for children, just as most straight people are.

ultimately, the march of freedom is irresistible, and when DP and his ilk find themselves on the losing side of history, they will have to come up with a new set of scare tactics. the "homosexual agenda" is for people to be happy with what they are, and tolerant of what others are. it's not scary at all, unless you can't cope with people being different or your kids not turning out as you'd hoped -- that is to say, unless you can't cope with life itself.

the sad part of this is that our fine president Obama and his crowd will be just as inconvenienced. his fake support-without-support of gay issues is designed to send winks and nods to gay rights supporters, to keep them voting D, but his staunch inaction on the matter is intended to avoid scaring off "moderates". by playing all sides of the issue, Obama and Pelosi et al are hardly better than the closeted gay Republicans using the issue to scare people into voting R.

in my own introspection this morning, i wondered why i'm so riled up about this. after all, i know few gay people, never talk about gay issues with anyone, and aside from voting as you'd expect me to based on this post, i'm not politically active on the issue.

but i'm generally pissed off by disingenuousness. i honestly believe that anyone intelligent enough to operate a computer and make blog posts with sentences that parse coherently, if not logically, is intelligent enough to realize that Californians, and Americans, are not under a constant barrage of incessant gay propaganda, and that even if we are, the ultimate consequences to straight Americans are minimal, if extant at all.

i'm irritated by fear mongering and lying by people, like DP and rush limbaugh, that clearly have enough brain cells to use their intelligence for good, but instead choose to sit by the sidelines making snide remarks against strawmen, perpetuating lies and divisiveness.

i am hardly a paragon of unity myself, but i make an effort not to live in constant fear of non-threats.

i missed the time slot for my gay french lessons by writing that last post. now i have to go on a gay bike ride in my gay neighborhood with the gay sunshine and gay forest. it sure is gay in here. am I in California?

i follow a number of right wing blogs, and i especially enjoy the unfortunately initialed Doug Powers. His post today exemplifies several very problematic things that I've noticed about "conservatives" over the years. And all you need to know is in the "moonbat" tag and the opening sentence:

Why do people live in California?

The "conservative" view of California, held by people living outside of California, or more intensely, people living outside of San Francisco or Berkeley, is that we Californians are a bunch of doped out homosexual atheists creating a living hell for ourselves and brainwashing kids with evolution and the gay.

All those things are entirely true, but the fact that it causes non-Californians to wonder why people would want to live here only serves to illustrate how sad it must be to live in parts of the country that don't have gay brainwashing.

I personally have been brainwashed by the gays to love our weather, our friendly people, our thriving tech economy, our lovely beaches, our wonderful forests, the cock, our secular schools, our secular government, our general lack of government invasiveness, our incredible food, our great sailing, our very nice shopping, large muscular hairy men in leather, our anti-anti-intellectualism, our world-class wine, our world-class distilleries, our culture of tolerance, our culture of yoga pants, and our place as the last center of innovation of any kind on the continent (more or less).

I probably forgot a few of the things that I've been gay brainwashed to love. I know that gay brainwashing is the only reason I would like living here, since California has nothing worthwhile of its own to offer, and any reasonable person (who doesn't look vaguely Mexican) would make a beeline for Arizona the instant our Legislature considered some Legislation.

For years and years of listening to right wing "thinkers" like DP and Limbaugh and Coulter, this is a common theme. Ignore California -- hell, pretend you don't have a vacation home there -- and all the wonderful things we have here, and all the wonderful things we've created here, and fixate insanely on the occasional gay pride parade which nobody is forced to attend, or the occasional bill which is not aligned with the right wing agenda, or Anything That Happened In Berkeley. Berkeley is not California, though in many ways it embodies the best of our state. But when a right winger has an axe to grind, Berkeley's most silly bits will stand in for the whole state of California.

The execrable DP writes:

Will kids be able to read and do math? Who cares! Actually, given California's financial situation, the government prefers citizens who can't read or do math -- but dammit they'll know Harvey Milk's inseam measurement!

Kids are already failing to read and do math, thanks to the bizarrely Big Government No Child Left Behind Act signed into law by none other than Republican George W. Bush. Anyone not motivated by insane rage (or cynical yellow journalism) would quickly realize that the struggle of gay people for civil rights is a major part of the history of this state, if not this country.

It is hilarious to hear a "conservative" complain about the quality of education of this nation's children. For right wingers, complaining about what are kids are being taught is a very weak position. While DP fancifully imagines that we Californians want kids to learn about gay inseam measurements, real "conservatives" all over the country are suggesting that we let the kids decide what is fact and what is fiction.

Under our next "conservative" presidency, kids will be presented with math and reading on one hand, and Harvey Milk's inseam on the other, and be asked to choose for themselves which they prefer to learn about. Teach the controversy!

due to recent events in my life, not least the reading of a most exceptional book, i've stopped saying "god bless you" when people sneeze. however, people still say it to me, and after 30 years of cultural reinforcement of the acknowledgement of sneezing, i feel a painful and awkward void when my companions sneeze and i greet their bodily function with only silence.

hops suggested i say "gezeundtheit" but I really don't like germans, so that's out. "salud" has the misfortune of making sense and not being funny. so i've gone with the absurdist benediction of "that's what she said!" this irritated a sneezing hops on the drive home yesterday, and by this morning i'd forgotten all about it, until i sneezed while i was preparing breakfast, and heard a shout from hops office upstairs: "THATS WHAT SHE SAID"

i haven't laughed so hard in the morning in quite a long time (TWSS).

it wouldn't have been a great vacation.

to dopealope for the incredible hospitality this long weekend.

i say "basically public" because only 3 people read this crap, and only dopealope comments on it...

anyhow, thanks, that was awesome, and here's a little thank you link:

a little thank you link.

for the rest of you, hops and i spent the weekend in slo, with one minor bike ride for exercise and baked goods, one trivial bike ride to retrieve a car left overnight at a restaurant because nobody was sober enough to drive it, one respectable 32 miler through wine country, and a quick flip-flop/barefoot hike up to the top of bishop's peak.

i'm ashamed to say that i've never hiked bishop's peak until now, but having waited this long, at least i did it in style, which is to say, covered in dirt, largely barefoot, and swathed in a bitchin sweat soaked linen shirt.

though i'd hardly call directv "functional", we did watch more tv than expected this weekend, including marathons of TNG, BSG, and I Love Lucy. It's ridiculously difficult to find anything to watch on directv, unless there's some trick I've missed, and hops and i were stunned at the number of commercial interruptions. still, the atmosphere didn't seem right for reading, especially at 3am when an after-lunch espresso woke me up.

on the way out of town we stopped at the splash cafe where i was shat upon by a bird. seeing the drop of yellow turd on my arm, i turned to the folks at the next table and said, "i think you squirted me with some mustard from your sandwich!" hops said it was more likely bird crap than mustard, and my optimistic illusions were then shattered. i honestly had thought it was mustard. i am still pretty sure that's what it was.

anyhow, after wiping the mustard off my arm, we plowed through a clam chowder bread bowl with seafood topping, calamari (undercooked, yecch) and chips, smoked salmon tacos, and a whole lot of lemonade. that was actually one of the larger meals of the weekend, and i enjoyed it all the way back home in the car, thanks to the chowder burps.

on hops demand, we went to pismo beach saturday afternoon. i warned her that the water would be cold, and feel three times as cold as it actually was since the memory of the caribbean was so fresh in our minds. i sure was right. i don't remember the california pacific being so cold, but then, i haven't been in it in a decade, probably because it's so frigging cold. 30 minutes later we were acclimated and had a fine time, but it's still no comparison to the caribbean, and the beach was crowded with people, dogs, lifeguards, and vehicles, in stark contrast to the near-deserted beaches of martinique.

anyhow, i can't go comparing every place i go to martinique, that's just not fair.

we had a fantastic weekend, and though tomorrow we must go to work, it's good to be back. i think. we'll see.