bobquasit | Reading

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С Новым Годом, and welcome home!

liveonearth

I've been going through my OUT OF CONTROL email and there are so many year in review emails coming from every direction....they share a theme of chaos and decline, which bums me out, but for the moment I'm indoors with hot coffee and doing all right. It's New Year's Eve and we have a LOT of humans coming over to the house, bringing food for the 6pm potluck and champagne for the 9pm "midnight" toast. That's right we're in the Pacific timezone but we celebrate at the same time as the east coasters, so that we can keep to our old-fart bedtime schedule of being asleep by 10:30pm. No point in driving around with all the drunks tonight!!

This morning I need to go run around and get a bit more champagne and some ice. Hope the potluck is potlucky enough. I tell people that I do "real" potlucks which is to say, if everybody brings chips and salsa, that's what's for dinner.

Lately I've been on the river a lot. We paddled down in the Eugene area on December 23, 24, 25. It was nice. No trees, no gifts, none of that consumerist celebration, instead just good food and laughs with friends. J & B are fast becoming really good friends and it is so nice.

I've had almost no contact with my family, just an occasional phone call to my mom or sis. They never call me. They're in Tennessee, and they don't get out much. My dad's in memory care and is doing OK. He cannot operate a phone anymore so we took it away and shut down the service. My mom is housebound in her hoard-laden home with my sister who is the more serious hoarder of the two. It's horrible to watch and I feel bad for my mother because she would benefit from having a social life, something to do other than watch TV, eat, sleep, eliminate, repeat. She is lonely. And sad. And dying soon, she thinks. She has really very little reason to live. My sister is depressed and unhealthy. I feel guilty. I want to save them but can't figure out how. I will be there in February, I hope she lives until then. I cannot take responsibility for the choices of my whole family, for the outcomes which are what they are. My own choices cost me enough. I wish that I'd had a more functional/less dysfunctional family but we are what we are. I wish that we humans had more free will than we do.

Willard is gone over to Joe's house to help him tarp something. Then to Powell Butte to go for a hike with his son. It's my chance to get some stuff done around the house...though I do wait for the tenant downstairs to be awake before I start making noise. Her bedroom is directly under my office, so I am in the livingroom as I type this.

shannon_a

We are heading home *tomorrow*!

--

I haven't really written about our AirB&B.

Over the last few years I've shuttled back and forth between hotels and AirB&Bs. When I was in Köln for the last Rebooting the Web of Trust workshop, I had a particularly terrible AirB&B (no AC, big-south-facing windows, serious noise pollution from a biergarten downstairs, very tiny), followed by a great hotel in Frankfurt on my last night before I flew back. We'd had a disappointing AirB&B in Berkeley the year before (poor lighting, noise pollution from the other half of the duplex, Ayn Rand books on the shelves). So it was to hotels for a year or two. And that was of particular help when K. was still on her scooter, as most of the AirB&B's had also been handicap inaccessible. However, the Hotel Shattuck Plaza where we stayed was a bit rundown (poor heating, and just not in great shape), so last year we moved back to AirB&Bs again.

We had a very nice AirB&B in Rockridge last year and would have booked it again if it was available. (My experience staying holiday after holiday in Berkeley for five years now is that the same AirB&B is *never* available. Maybe if we made our reservations earlier, but nope.) So this year we found several options again in the Rockridge area and splurged a bit to choose one of the nicer ones. (Probably only $20 or $30 a night more expensive than the other one we were looking at it, and it looked so nice in the pictures that it seemed worth it.)

It's indeed very nicely decorated. Recently redone. Gorgeous bathroom. Large, well-lit living room. Two comfortable places to lounge. Tiny bedroom, but as big as it needs to be (e.g., space to walk around the bed). The neighborhood is also nice. It's the first block where the foothills start to rise up on the east side of Berkeley (or Oakland really, we're just over the border), and that's where the increasingly fancy/expensive houses are. That means it's safer and quieter than places just slightly more low-land.

But the downsides:

First, the owners seem like obsessive paranoids. The lock is what I believe is called a dimple lock: it has side pins rather than the normal pins that would be pushed down by the bottom of your key. The locks tend to be harder to pick because of their overall design, and the keys are also much harder and more expensive to duplicate, which I suspect is the goal.

Likely due to that, the owners only gave us a single key, and yes there are two of us here. Perhaps that's fine for most couples and most other people willing to share a single bed while visiting together, but K. and I have different friends to see and different places to be while we're here. So we have to go through this stupid dance of locking the key in an outside lockbox every time we leave. If we mess up: someone gets locked out in the cold, possibly for hours. (Or someone needs to cut one of their get-togethers short.)

The particular lock they choose also sucks. You have to do another weird dance here, of lifting up the handle before you twist the key around to lock it. You have to do similar on the inside with a knob, and afterward you CAN'T GET OUT unless you first unlock the door, which seems like a fire hazard and that it should be illegal. (Maybe it is.) I have to guess that it was more secure in some way or another, further feeding their paranoia at the risk of our safety.

Also evidence of the weird paranoia: buried in the house rules (not anywhere you'd see before renting, nor even if you just read what they message you when your arrival date is drawing near) is the statement that you have to OK with them anyone coming into the unit other than the registered guests. Not staying the night, just dropping in for coffee or a game. (To which I said: yeah, I think not, and though I considered having people over on Sunday to game, it never became necessary.)

(Frankly, if you're that fearful of what might be getting done to your unit, so you're obscuring keys, putting in unsafe doors, and trying to keep people out, then you probably shouldn't be renting, but I'm also totally unsurprised by the attitude here in the Oakland foothills.)

Second, the unit, which was likely originally a basement and/or storage space for the nice house atop, has SERIOUS noise pollution issues from upstairs. K. took a nap after we got here on Friday, before our play, and she was woken up multiple times by people talking upstairs. Then, while we ate dinner and got ready, we frequently heard the thundering of stuff being moved around upstairs. I had thought it might be a miserable stay, but as far as we can tell there's been no one upstairs since that first day. I have a suspicion that it's a rental too, and was being cleaned on the day we got here, and we got lucky and it's been empty since. But given the annoying noise on the first day, I would never rent this place again, just because you can't expect the rest of the house to be unoccupied when you're staying.

Anyway, that's our AirB&B. We'll probably still be on the AirB&B side of things next year, as the overall experience has been fine, even if that was apparently due to the luck of non-occupancy upstairs.

--

Sunday was gaming day #1, with a few members of the old Endgame crew.

Very few members, it turned out, as E.V., who usually sets these things up for me, ended up sick. E.L. and S. and I got together instead, at E.L.'s place out in Concord. (Easy to get to from Rockridge BART!) It was a nice gaming day and we played three games that I do not believe are on BGA, and so we can't usually play when we're online: Railroad Tiles (because I continue to spread the gospel), Machi Koro, and Orléans: Invasion. The last was a particular treat because it's a favorite that I haven't played since 2019.

Orléans is a bag-building game with some pretty neat mechanics, while Invasion! is the co-op version of play. The Endgame crew all like the co-op much more than the original, whereas I'm totally good with either. It's the type of game that's too complex to play with the folks I'm gaming with in Kauai (K., my folks, and new friend M.), which is why I haven't seen it since we left. But maybe K. and I should give the co-op two play a try sometime. (When we have some time. Our three-player game took 2.5 hours, which by my memory is pretty standard for Orléans.)

--

Monday was a day of meals & theatre.

I had lunch with C&M. We went for a little walk in the Rockridge area afterward. That's pretty much our typical visit.

K. and I then had dinner with our financial advisor, A., who took over the business a few years ago and has slowly been meeting all of his clients in-person. (We talk via Zoom about three times a year, but that's of course not the same thing.) Apparently, when the business was founded by A's predecessor, all the clients were in the Bay Area, but there's been a gradual exodus since them, with people moving to the East Coast, Hawaii (we're not the only ones), and everywhere in between. A. has been making trips to see some people, but was able to meet with us because of our visit out here. We were apparently among the last people for him to see. (It's been a few years since he took over.) Obviously, we have a business relationship with A., but it's great to have a bit of personal interaction as well.

--

Before I write about the theatre, I should note that when I was at the Legion of Honor on Saturday, I not only saw the Manet/Morisot exhibit, but I also visiting with my favorite artwork in the museum's permanent collection. It's a small pointillist painting of the Eiffel Tower by Georges Seurat.

Which is a prelude to the fact that I had no idea that the play we were seeing Monday night, "Sunday in the Park with George", is all about Georges Seurat. And more so, about his painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte] (which is out in Chicago, not at the Legion of Honor).

It wasn't my favorite Sondheim (that's likely Into the Woods, which we saw on Friday). But it was thoughtful and it was an intriguing insight into the world of a post-impressionist painting (though from everything I've seen there wasn't a lot of attention given to historical veracity).

Appropriate for a play about Seurat, it was a pointillist play with a pointillist score and pointillist scenes. In fact, much of the play is spent introducing the various characters in the park (point-point-point-pont), so that we know who they are when they're all rearranged by Seurat into the actual painting (as the points resolve into the painting) as the act-one finale, which I found oddly moving.

I found the two-act structure weirdly similar to Into the Woods. In both plays the main action that's set up at the start of act one comes to a complete conclusion at the end of act one. In Into the Woods, it's the high point of the play, an inversion of the usual plot structure (where we'd instead expect a low point, where everything seems the worst). Maybe the same could be said for Sunday in the Park with George, as Seurat has completed his masterpiece(?), but it's fundamentally a more logistical conclusion. In Sunday in the Park with George, we then jump forward a hundred years to see some of how Seurat has been recognized, and also that his grandson (a made-up character) faces many of the same issues as him. It was a pretty surprising twist for the second half, but I hadn't realized that Seurat died at the very young age of 31, leaving just 7 major works behind (one of which I saw a few days ago, though as I said, it's a pretty small piece, unlike "Sunday Afternoon", which is 2x3m and took more than two years of work).

Overall, I loved the pointillist creation of the painting and also the idea that it embedded these people and their stories forever, so that they were all there 100 years later, when all but the youngest babe had passed on. The personal stories felt weaker to me and the more abstract discussions of art (create what you love, don't be afraid to do something new, etc.) were ... well abstract.

I admire Sondheim's consideration of the question, "How could I make a pointillist musical?" And I admire the fact that he mirrored the two Georges' take on modern-art with a modern-art musical. I'm thrilled to have seen it once. But I wouldn't feel the need to see it again, in part because of the distance that the story created from me overall, but also because I just didn't find the music that memorable. (I see people lauding "Finishing the Hat" and a few others, but none of them ear-wormed for me.)

--

Today is our last day. I'll be gaming with some of the folks who used to get together at my house on Thursday nights.

Then K. and I need to pack up, and we're off to the airport in the morning.

tcpip

Leaving the fine city of Buenos Aires, we embarked upon the Sapphire Princess to head to Antarctica. It's an impressive vessel, over 300m in length, over 60m in height, weighing 115K tonnes, and carrying 3.5K crew and passengers. I confess that in the past I have looked down on cruise ships, considering them to be places of vacuous culture whose greatest good is the opportunity to hide away and write a novel. Neither of those positions is incorrect; the place is full of bars and gaudy nightclubs, with multiple light jazz bands playing in various nooks, and with incessant piping of the worst of Christmas songs. But my assessment was also quite incomplete. Being the type of cruise this is, the rather impressive theatrical hall is also home to high-quality, accessible, and entertaining lectures, given multiple times a day by geologists, naturalists, and historians, concerning the Antarctic. The same location also hosts evening performances by singers, musicians, and comedy shows, among others. The most impressive was an Argentine tango dance that cleverly melded the history and representation of the dance into its performance.

Due to a curious turn of events, I ended up presenting at the theatre itself on Christmas Day; the ship required someone to conduct an interdenominational service, and, with a bit of a background in such things, I offered my time. A pre-designed service had already been written; however, I was given the opportunity to add a brief introduction, introduce the readings (carried out by other volunteers), and provide a brief address. I took the opportunity to emphasise the importance of remembering how fortunate everyone present was to be on such a voyage, with the time, money, and health, and how everyone must not forget those who did not have this opportunity. I concluded with a reading from James 2: 14-18, which speaks of the need to feed and clothe all as a priority; "Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds". The message seemed to strike a chord; I am guessing that a number of the congregation have more than a sense of unease and self-awareness to be so privileged on such a journey. I will take this opportunity to, once again, recommend my preferred charity (life-years saved per dollar spent), Effective Altruism.

After Christmas, the ship ventured into Patagonian Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost permanently inhabited region on Earth, a wild place of channels, mountains, a plentiful supply of wind and rain, and an abundance of natural beauty. Our first port was Chilean Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan, where we were able to tender for a day ashore. It was a town with some charm, including the Sara Braun cemetery that held the remains of not only author Charles Amherst Milward but also the University of Melbourne's Walter Baldwin Spencer. There was a moment of greater excitement when there was a sudden change of weather on the return tender in the late afternoon, with winds reaching over 100kmh, which was interesting if you were on the top deck of a little lifeboat, as we were. The following day, travelling through the Beagle Channel, we reached Argentinia's Ushuaia, the southernmost city of the world, "fin del mundo", a fairly rough-and-ready place, but also surrounded by astounding glaciers and subpolar forests. The next step is the Drake Passage, notoriously known for the roughest seas in the world, and then Antarctica itself.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: South Atlantic Ocean
Current Music: Debussy, Suite Bergamasque

shannon_a

A few years ago we expanded our days-in-Berkeley (sometimes Oakland) from three to four, mainly to make sure K. had plenty of time to visit with all of her friends. Meanwhile, I do more efficient visiting of friends because I can meet them two or three at a time for gaming. That means that I often end up with a day free in the East Bay. Last year I went and saw _Wicked_, which wasn't available in Kauai's single theatre. Today, I kept trying to offer people my free Saturday, but everything ended up clumped up on Monday instead. So Saturday remained a free day.

I woke up with no plans for the day, other than the thought that I was going to either go to a museum or go for a hike. And I wasn't totally enthused for the hike. Though the rain stopped a few hours after we hit Berkeley on Friday, I'm sure the paths are all various levels of muddy. (I do bring extra shoes with me for that possibility, but would prefer not to end up caked in mud while staying at an Air B&B.)

I'd been thinking about the Oakland Museum, which I hadn't been to for years, and which I was feeling kindly toward because they, much like the Louvre, were recently the victims of a big theft recently [https://museumca.org/press/statement-from-oakland-museum-of-california-on-recent-theft-at-off-site-storage-facility/]. But then I discovered that the Legion of Honor had an exhibit on Manet and Morisot, respectively the "father" of impressionism and the only woman to appear in the Impressionism Exhibitions under her own name. That was a must see, and even though the Legion of Honor is about as far as you can get from us in San Francisco, I was determined to go.

So I headed out and an hour and a half later (after taking the yellow line BART and the 38R MUNI) I found myself climbing the hill to the Legion of Honor.

--

The exhibit was amazing. I always read all the text on an exhibit like that, and it painted an amazing picture of Éduoard Manet and Berthe Morisot and their long-term friendship, how he influenced her early work, and how she influenced his later work. The curation was quite good, because it painted them as very human people, much more than you often see at such an exhibit, but probably a necessary requirement when it was talking about not just their artwork, but their friendship (and the fact that Morisot eventually married Éduoard's brother, Eugène, who not only supported her continuing to paint but also managed a lot of her work, altogether unimaginable in the Victorian age, when women weren't even "supposed" to be painters).

And the paintings were of course incredible. The exhibit interweaved the work of the two painters, but often brought them together in similar pieces that really allowed you to compare their two styles: one pair of a seaside summer; one pair of a woman partially dressed in her boudoir; and a four painting sequence of women representing seasons, two done by Morisot (summer and winter), two by Manet (spring and autumn), the set of which had never been exhibited together before. (Incredibly, there's never even been a Manet/Morisot exhibit, even though she was long seen as his protégé, even before newer scholarship suggested that he was influenced by her work in turn.)

And of course I love impressionism, and this was an impressionist exhibit — though Manet is actually on the cusp, as he was a studio painter and a constant reviser, and certainly his older works appear much more traditional. Which may be why, as a whole, I thought Morisot's work was better. She really embraced the movement. (Which makes it more ironic that back in the day Morisot was called a poor-man's Manet.)

Anyway, awesome exhibit. Awesome, beautiful art. Great history.

The store had a book called _Paris in Ruins_ covering much of this ground in greater length that I almost picked up, but I decided I didn't need yet another book in our luggage. So, while I would have loved to give more money to the museum, it went on my Amazon list instead.

--

I got to hike too!

I'd been thinking about walking over to Golden Gate Park, which is in the same northwest corner of San Francisco, but I realized that there's actually a path down from the Legion of Honor, through the golf course that pervades that corner of San Francisco, to the Lands End Trail, which runs along the north side of western San Francisco, offering great views of the Golden Gate, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Marin Headlands. So I hiked down to that.

Yeah, it was slightly muddy, but not enough to coat my shoes, just requiring careful walking. And it was somewhat crowded, something that I don't expect for my hiking trails, but Lands End is clearly a big tourist destination at this point. There's a big hill at about the halfway point, and that took more effort than it would have six years ago, because I'm not regularly walking hills like I used to when I lived in Berkeley.

Overall, a gorgeous hike.

Afterward, I walked down Sea Cliff into the Richmond District and made my yearly pilgrimage to my local bank to pick up some cash. I thought about going out to Golden Gate Park at this point and even started walking there, but decided my legs were getting too worn out, so turned around and hopped back on the 38R to take me back to BART.

--

Ah, BART. I got there and it was a weird mess. There were talking about cancelling whole lines in their typical inaudible fashion, so I hopped on the first train I could get, which was a red line, which goes to Richmond (the city, not the district). It wasn't the yellow line that I needed to get home, but the first rule of BART in San Francisco is take-whatever-train-gets-you-to-the-East-Bay if there's a trouble.

So the Red Line train took me to Embarcadero, the last stop in San Francisco, and then it indeed STOPPED.

I looked up bart.gov and got a bit more info: a train was stuck at West Oakland (the first stop on the other side of the Bay), and the red and blue lines under the Bay were both cancelled. There was no mention at all of the yellow line, nor any word on what to do, but pretty soon some partially inaudible announcements said (I think) that the train I was on was being turned around for SFO.

Now I'd looked at some travel times while I was on that 38R bus, and they'd shown me all kinds of weird ways to get home, most of them involving taking an "NL" bus from the transit center. Suddenly, that made sense. So with the train still idling at the station, I got up and went upstairs, to head out of BART and over the transit center, with the hope of getting home *SOMETIME*.

Except that when I tried to exit the station, I discovered my Clipper card was gone. I searched through every pocket at least three times. And it wasn't there.

Though it seemed pretty pointless, I headed back down into the station, hoping that maybe my card had fallen out of my pocket when I sat down on the train, and no one had taken it, and the train would still be there, and the card would still be there.

Yeah, pretty unlikely.

There was indeed still a train idling where we'd been, and I was able to easily locate my seat from the landmarks in the station, and there on the blue seat was nothing ... or so I thought at first and second glance, but eventually after popping in and out of the train a couple of times, and finally determining this was indeed my seat ... I saw there was a blue Clipper card on the blue seat! I'd clearly put it in my back pocket (which I wouldn't have done when we lived here, it would have gone into a wallet or a jacket pocket with a zipper), sat down, and it had slid out.

So, I grabbed my Clipper and got off the train before it headed back to SFO.

But I ended up not exiting the station, because they were FINALLY saying what people should do. They said that the red line train was going to go back to SFO and that a yellow line train would then come in (on the same track! good trick!) and take us across the Bay.

So that happened. Under the Bay we went and to West Oakland and past the stalled-out train at like 1 mph, and finally back to Rockridge where K. and I are staying! Whew.

--

Staying in Rockridge has been super-convenient, which is almost certainly what we discovered last year as well. We're right on the BART yellow line, which means that we have straight-through transit to Concord (where I'm going today) and San Francisco.

If we were over in downtown Berkeley instead (where we stayed probably two years ago and maybe three years ago), where we're within a mile of our old house, you have to change trains that aren't timed well to get to Concord, which makes it a big pain in the neck, and you often have to rush from one train to another to get to SF (but not always; as that red line sometimes gets you through).

So it's weird that we're going to be in our long-time city-home, but quite possibly I will never go down to Telegraph Avenue or downtown Berkeley, which were our civic centers when I lived here. (K. is actually down in downtown Berkeley this morning, but it's just not on my itinerary at the moment.)

--

Today is gaming with my "Wednesday" group of friends. Tomorrow is lunch and then dinner with different people, then another play in the evening. That's my busy day. Then Tuesday is gaming with my "Thursday" group of friends, who I hosted at my house for many years.

Then, it's back home to our much warmer island. (But the brisk weather has been fine here, as long as we layer before leaving; the pause in the rain is very convenient.)

shannon_a

As I already wrote, Monday was our travel day, and the only thing that I didn't write about was its annoying end. We arrived in San Jose right on time at 9.30,pm but then had to wait almost an hour for our luggage.

I can't blame Alaskan (Hawaiian) too much, because they had a flight from Honolulu that arrived an hour late, just before us, and they probably had minimal ground crew that time of night and they had to prioritize the late flight over us, but it was still annoying.

I later learned that Alaska has a 20-minute luggage guarantee. You can get a small amount of credit or points if you complain about late luggage. But you had to do it in-person that their baggage office within two hours of either your flight's arrival or your luggage actually showing up (I forget which), which is just crap. Almost no one is going to go beg for a few points or credits while they're either waiting for their very late luggage or after they've *finally* gotten it and just want to go home. So, it's entirely performative (a word that I increasingly use to describe the East Bay now that I've been away from it for six years, though Alaska of course has wider scope). They can make extravagant promises (OK, not very extravagant), and never pay out on them.

But because of the luggage hijinks, we got into San Martin about 11pm, which was even later than the very late time we'd reluctantly agreed too. Poor Bob who picked us up and stayed up past his bedtime!

--

Tuesday through mid-Friday were our San Martin days, spent with my mom and Bob and at various times visiting with my brothers (and sister-in-law and niece and nephew).

Oh man, it is so wonderful to just be taken care of for close to four days. Bob and my mom prepared us all our meals and made sure they met our dietary restrictions (which is mainly the annoying no-dairy for me). They also had all the activities planned as usual. So we didn't have to do anything but enjoy company and relax and talk and play games and pet dogs. Nirvana!

Often biking or pickleball or both are scheduled, but Christmas visits tend to be a bit tighter than Thanksgiving visits because of how the days fall, and in addition, it was forecast to rain the entire time we were there. (It did not, though there was some decent downpour one of the nights. Apparently the atmospheric river swung north of us.)

So instead we had visits scheduled. Tuesday my mom scheduled a nice Christmas ham dinner with some friends and my brother J. Wednesday we had our typical shrimp Christmas Eve dinner and my brother R. made it for that. We had our familial Christmas that night, a Christmas Eve tradition for many, but never for us. (But, it fit R's schedule and kept Christmas from being crazy, and meant I got to start reading one of my Christmas books that night!) Then Thursday of course was Christmas, which means we went to Hollister to visit J's family, including niece, nephew, and sister-in-law L.

What that listing of meals and visits doesn't include is the gaming. We played at least a baker's dozen of games from Tuesday through Friday morning, not including kiddie games played with the niblings (and I can remember at least three of those). The Wiedlin family has always been big on gaming. I grew up playing card games like Euchre and Hearts and Golf, but we also had games like Twixt around, and of course I was starting to build up a collection that wasn't _just_ D&D (but was often other games put out by TSR). And so we always bring a couple of favorite games with us when we come. This year it was _Railroad Tiles_, _Cascadia_, and _Between Two Cities_ (the last being one that comes with us pretty much every year because it plays up to seven, but is still pretty small, unlike say my pimped-out Seven Wonders set, which is HEAVY). But my mom has increasingly been playing game with her uke and pickleball groups over the last year! So I think there was even more play than usual, because everyone is in the gaming mindset. Which is great, because in-person gaming has been more sparse since we moved. (Though we're working on that!) And that's how we hit at least 13 games. Everything we brought (with _Railroad Tiles_ being the break-out hit) plus _Harmonies_ (which my mom bought based on my journal entries talking about Kimberly and my's frequent play). We also played a few games that I definitely usually would not: _LCR_ (which probably should be categorized with the kids' games, and which I explained is an "activity", not a "game") and _Rummikub_ (which was simultaneously too random and too thinky for me).

Besides gaming, we also had the pups Joy and Zeke getting lots of attention. And my mom encouraged me to get going on the uke again, as I fell off as the year got hard (c.f. sending Elmer to Boston). My mom found me a few books of fingerstyle (fingerpicking) on the uke, as she knew I'd been enjoying the riffs for _Here Comes the Sun_, and they were terrific. I fooled around with a bunch of classics before finally settling on trying to properly learn _Yesterday_. (Yeah, there's a theme there.) On our last day in San Martin, I was lounging back in my seat, picking at _Yesterday_ again and again while we talked, which was pretty cool. Much more fun than just going off to a private room to practice.

--

Ah yes, and Christmas proper. As I said that was over at my brother J's house. L prepared us an absolute feast of deserts, appetizers, and a main meal (though I was pretty light in what I ate because my guts were pretty upset shortly after our arrival).

Everyone else had exchanged presents previously, but the rest of us swapped with J. and family (and mostly with the kids, who absolutely tore through their presents, not even pausing to see what one was before they went on to the next). My niece L. is still as sweet as ever, frequently throwing herself at people for hugs, even K. and me, who she just barely knows since we're a once-a-year sighting. My nephew J. is more obviously quite smart the older he gets, mainly in the way he talks, but also in working on a spatial puzzle-game (_Little Red Riding Hood_) that my mom had got. The two of them were both pretty wild when they were at my mom's house with J. on Tuesday, but they were on their best behavior on Christmas, though as noted the present opening was very frenetic.

--

Friday was our last day in San Martin. We had bacon and eggs in the morning (mmmmmmmmm!), then played some games (I think I might have won those two, after my mom being the main winner over most of the holiday). At 1 o'clock we headed northward.

We made in a stop in San Jose to visit with my sister M. and brother-in-law J. and other niece A. They were just returning home from their own Christmas visits and got back about half-an-hour before we came by. Usually we miss them because they're still away, so this was a bit of a surprise. We might have spent more time if we'd known! (But I don't know, as I said, figuring out the logistics of Christmas is always a little tough.)

Then at about 3.30 we landed at our AirB&B in Rockridge.

--

We actually had additional plans for the day! A play in San Francisco at 8pm! (I had wrangled us an early check-in to our Air B&B so that we weren't pressed for time, and that worked out great.)

The play was at the San Francisco Playhouse, which neither K. nor I remember at all from when we lived out here. I thought it must have been new, but no it's been around since 2009 or something. I eventually decided that we must have noticed it and decided we didn't need another musical theatre because we were already seeing four musicals a year at the Berkeley Playhouse.

Anyways, it's a neat venue because it's in the Kensington Park Hotel. You go up a flight of stairs to their mezzanine and then up one or two additional flights or stairs and around some corners to get to the theatre. And if you have tickets for the mezzanine of the theatre, that's ANOTHER flight of stairs. It was delightfully maze like (but also a bit much for K's knee).

I wondered what the weird multi-level room where the theatre now is had originally been, with my guess being a ballroom. (I've been in a similar upper story, multi-level ballroom in one of the older hotels in downtown Berkeley, though I can no longer remember which.) It turned out that the Kensington Park Hotel was originally built as an Elk's Lodge! The room we were in had originally been the Elk's meeting hall, but after the Elks started renting out space in their lodge in 1981, it was converted to a 750-seat theatre. It had been cut in half twice since, and now is a 199-seat theatre for the San Francisco Playhouse, which means that original room must have been huge. Besides being neat, it was a nice venue. We had seats in the front row of the mezzanine, and they were great seats (and cheaper than the orchestra would have been).

Oh, the play? That was _Into the Woods_, the first of two Sondheim plays that we expect to see while we're out here (the other being _Sundays in the Park with George_), and the first of three we hope to see in the next few months (as the Kauai Community Players seem fond of Sondheim and are doing _Assassins_ in April).

I've seen the movie and I love the movie, and I loved the play. The interweaving songs are so clever, and even more clever on stage, with interesting staged nuances like days being broken up by people reporting on their lesson learned, which I'm pretty sure wasn't in the movie. The interweaving faerie tales are of course terrific too. All around it's an amazing creative design, and so I'm thrilled to see the original on stage. And there was a reprise of _Agony_ that wasn't in the movie!

--

Sitting next to me was a young woman who had clearly never been to a musical before. When she talked to her date at intermission, she said things like "It's hard to understand what they're singing, it's ... lyric" and "You have to know what they're singing to understand the plot" and "The songs are all dialogue heavy." She also didn't like the fact that the play was "too happy."

Well, she got to act II and I heard two "Oh my God!" exclamations at some shocking moments and after that two "What the Fuck!"s after additional shocks (that were not quite as traumatic as the first two: one was when a character thought dead returned and the other was at an inappropriate kiss).

I hope the second act helped her gain an enjoyment/understanding for musicals, but we later saw them go by on the street, and her date was still trying to explain things to her.

(Well, I guess _Into the Woods_ is a slightly twisty, complex, deconstructionist type of play, so it might not be the best first musical. But maybe it is, because it's awesome.)

--

The person sitting next to K. was also interesting, but apparently less enjoyable. He apparently elbowed her, kicked her, and constantly burped. And that then there the Tik Tok women he constantly watched before the show and during intermission, dancing in tight, tight clothes.

--

In any case, we had a great time, with the only issue being that it was tough to get out of that maze with 197 other people also fighting their way free. But we eventually made it to the street, and we'd already negotiated that we were going to call a ride-share so that we'd get home at 11.30, not midnight.

So we did.

And we did.

And that's been our first four days in the Bay Area, with us just settling into our first night in Berkeley (Oakland, really, we're a few blocks over the border) as this entry ends.

tcpip

After the glory of Machu Picchu, the next step was a return to Cusco for a couple of days. The hotel this time was the Novetel, which, like others in the historic old town, has a simple entrance with grandeur inside. It must be said that in the overwhelming majority of cases, the character of the old city has been kept quite intact. The time afforded the opportunity to visit several new sites in the time remaining (I travel like a demon possessed for the deep and rapid immersion). This included the Museo de Sitio Qorikancha, the Monumento a Pachaceteq, the Museo Historico Regional, the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, and the Museo de Arte Popular. The first was notable for examples of Incan trepanning and artificial cranial deformation, along with a performer of traditional pipes, and the second for superb views of the city. The third included an excellent range of archaeological and historical artefacts as well as a contemporary exhibition by Abel Rimache Condori, which followed well into the fourth, which included a surreal and disturbing exhibition, "El holocausto de los inocentes" by Esther Diana Ttito Chura. The fifth was small, strange, and didn't really fit the title.

Following Cusco was a day of flights; Cusco to Santiago, Santiago to Buenos Aires, three countries in a day, before settling into the modern Hotel Grand Brizo. Whilst only here for a few days, it was another case of rapid and deep immersion and a great deal of walking between the numerous sites I had on my agenda (learning the Travelling Salesman Problem is useful!). Buenos Aires is a city deeply affected by various European migrant populations and its own sense of artistry, rightly earning the title of "The Paris of South America". French and Italian architecture is abound (e.g., Teatro Colon), parklands and boulevards are vast, and people make quite an effort to dress up every evening. For myself, it was also an artistic pilgramage to honour their most famous author Jorge Luis Borges, which I did by visiting the Centro Cultural Borges, which hosts a variety film, theatre, and artworks by others, and the wild visions of the peripatetic polymath Xul Solar whose museum - and former home - was unfortuantely closed.

A better part of a day was spent meandering through "El Ateneo Grand Splendid", a theatre that has been turned into a bookshop (Buenos Aires is a book-lover's dream city), then the impressive La Recoleta Cemetery and the equally impressive Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. The visit also included the enjoyment of interactive and participatory dining, "The Argentine Experience", which involved several courses of local dishes, wines, along with producing (and eating) your own empanadas. Alas, the stay here is all too short, and the list of places I wish to visit is still quite long. I assure you, Buenos Aires, I will return. You are quite an amazing city.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: South Atlantic Ocean
Current Music: Le Festin, Camille

tcpip

With Cusco continuing to serve as a home base, a journey to Machu Picchu is definitely necessary. The best and quickest journey there, at least for those who don't have time to undertake the four-day hike along the "Inca trail”, is via train between Cusco and the appropriately-named nearby town of Aguas Calientes. The old train meanders slowly, wobbles often on the thin gauge, and breakdowns are common, as we discovered on the return journey. Nevertheless, the views are quite spectacular, aided by a glass roof. At Aguas Calientes, we checked into the pleasant and stylish Hatun Inti hotel and prepared ourselves for an early morning shuttle bus to Machu Picchu. This is, without doubt, the best to time to go. Not only does it avoid the increasing number of tourists that make this journey, but it is also an appropriate time to give recognition to Inti, the sun god and chief god of the Incas.

Machu Picchu itself is quite an extraordinary complex of buildings with characteristic dry-stone, and is rightly considered on modern lists as a "Wonder of the World", and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located on an Andean mountain ridge at a height of roughly 2,5K metres, it was probably an emperor's estate, with an average population of around 750, with goods and services coming in from all directions supplementing agriculture "andenes" (constructed terraces). At the time of the Spanish conquest, the site was abandoned, and knowledge of its existence remained lost to the outside world (locals knew of it, of course) for centuries until the rediscovery in the early 20th century by Peruvian explorer Agustín Lizárraga. For myself, I have had a quiet fascination and interest in Machu Picchu specifically and pre-Columbian civilisations of the Americas more generally; the Pueblo, the Iroquois, the Olmec, the Teotihuacan, the Mayans, the Toltecs, the Cañari, the Aztecs, the Incas and many more. This is certainly something I share with my good friend Justin A., whom I visited before leaving Melbourne and with whom I discussed his far more extensive and in-depth journeys from some decades in the past.

I feel like writing more extensively about the Incas now, having some direct experience and extensive conversations with our Quechua guide. However one matter I wish to address the notion of the Inca Empire as being "mysterious" which, of course, leads to all sorts of wild speculations. What we do know is that they were an early Bronze Age civilisation that was the largest in South America. They did not have a fully-developed writing system, but used quipu a sort of rope-based tally system which allowed for complex calculations. They had advanced drywall masonry, extensive agricultural systems, including freeze-drying. They had no currency but used barter and corvée labour for taxes. They did not develop the wheel, but used rollers and stones when required. Their emperor was seen as semi-divine, "the son of the Sun god," and they had a hierarchical and polytheistic religion. They practised trepanation, cranial deformation, and child sacrifice. In summary, they were not so mysterious, but as a result of their geography, they developed a unique society that has a lasting interest.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: South Atlantic Ocean
Current Music: Delibe, Dôme épais le jasmin

shannon_a

We were up at 6am to make sure we had plenty of time to be ready & settled before we headed to the airport for our yearly trip to San Martin & Berkeley.

But, not a lot to do this morning other than get our final stuff together and tell the cats, who were unnerved about us being up so early, that all was OK.

(All was not OK.)

--

I had thought we were going to have to go in early because I couldn't get checked-in yesterday. This was the first reservation I made since the Alaska & Hawaiian Airlines websites were united, and their unification has been VERY BROKEN.

I had great troubles making the reservations. Because among other things the Alaska and Hawaiian flights aren't actually unified. So I couldn't mix the two airlines, which is what you want to do from Hawaii so that you can take an interisland Hawaiian trip to whatever Alaska flight is most convenient. Instead, I just had my single Hawaiian option (through Maui), which gets us into San Jose later than we'd like (and even later than usual this year). Or, thanks to the merger with Alaska, I could take a trip through Portland or Seattle that would get us in tomorrow!

(Thanks no!)

I also discovered that I couldn't use my mostly-Hawaiian miles for Hawaiian flights, only Alaska flights. (See above: thanks, no!)

Anyway, I finally managed to get some reservations, and then when I went to check in yesterday I couldn't check in. I had two different confirmation numbers (maybe one Hawaiian and one Alaskan? I'm not sure). Neither was recognized online. One was recognized in the app, but it wouldn't check me in.

Fortunately, the airline(s) have good chat support and the person said something about codeshares, which obviously shouldn't have been the case because I'd made a Hawaiian reservation through the Hawaiian website, but obviously the whole system is FUBAR, or at least was a few months ago. Nonetheless, they were able to fix it so I could check in.

(We'll see if I have the same problem when I try to come home: betting, maybe.)

Anyway, that meant we left for the airport at about 8.45, which was enough time to stop at Subway for a sandwich (because my dairy allergy has gotten bad enough that I suspected whatever Hawaiian served would be inedible, and sure enough it was a hot sandwich with cheese and pesto cooked inside) and arrive by 9.30.

--

I am now "Atmos Silver" thanks to my use of our Alaskan and Hawaiian credit cards.

Among other things that gives both me and my traveling companion (K.) two pieces of luggage each, which is twice what Hawaiian used to give me (but apparently dropping in half next year).

And it gives me priority boarding, right after first class, but not my traveling companion (K.), who has to wait with the rest of steerage.

Which seems kinda screwed up.

But I went ahead and boarded first on our interisland flight because you really need the overheads if you have backpacks because the spaces under the seat are quite small on those puddle jumped (or at least one of the wells is, the one closer to the edge of the plane).

And then I waited to board with Kimberly for the long flight from Maui to San Jose, but when we got up to the line the person verifying that gate lice weren't invading the small boarding area indicated that I had to go to the (empty) first class line and K. had to wait in the steerage line.

Which seemed even more screwed up.

--

I usually have all the fun tales of people behaving badly, but there were less than usual.

The interisland flight was just half full or so. I think the long flight is less full too. The seats around me are all full, but we're at the front of coach. And, people seem to behave less badly on the less full flights. (I'm sure there's a lesson there somewhere.)

Oh but there were some children at the Maui airport that were _horrible_. They were running FULL SPEED in circles around the gate, screeching at the top of their lungs, pretty much for the whole 20 or 30 minutes we were at the gate. I heard the mom say, once, "Don't run!" while she was looking at her phone, after which they proceeded to run away a few seconds later.

I was afraid they were going to be shrieking the entire time on the plane, and maybe even running FULL SPEED. But it's been blissfully quiet.

Oh, the one other case of someone acting badly was a guy who thought he could keep his rollerbag in the aisle next his seat on the plane. The flight attendant just picked it up and put it in the overhead, telling him that his fire hazard wasn't allowed, so there was no room for argument.

--

Oh, not behaving badly, but a really weird lady at the service desk at our gate at Maui.

Just as our plane is starting to load (which kinda made it acting badly), the lady goes up and says, "I need to change my seat, my husband doesn't want to be so near to me."

And there's some astonished back and forth, and the lady says, "Yeah, we're two rows apart, but he wants to be as far away from me as he can."

The staff just changed her seat for her.

That was apparently a good Hawaiian vacation.

--

Ah, the end of the year seems to mean it's the time of the year for things to start breaking.

So we'll have stuff to deal with when we get home.

--

When I got November's power bill, I saw it was higher than expected, which always leads me to looking at how our solar power is doing. I discovered our battery had shut down entirely. After some conversations with our installers (Rising Sun Solar: great if you ever need solar power on Hawaii), I learned there'd been a big recall of Tesla Powerwalls because the ones that made for one or two years tended to burst into flames, which is a definite downside.

But, it turned out, ours wasn't in that recall: it'd just spontaneously gone down. Once we got that nailed down (which was me making sure we didn't have to wait for a recall that didn't actually include us), they were able to pull all of the details from the Powerwall thanks to the wonders of the modern age, and they let me know that our 6-year-old Powerwall 2 was going to be replaced by a brand-new Powerwall 3. Which is terrific. The new release of the battery isn't a big deal, although it allows us to draw more energy from it at once, which will keep us from going to the grid when showering or running the dryer. But having a new battery without 6 years of degradation is great, and I'll know it isn't refurbished, because the Powerwall 3s aren't that old. (It just came out last year.) Oh, but I think there will be some issues with compatibility, because the new one integrates an inverter, but that's a problem for not-today.

(Yeah, I hate buying from Tesla, but we locked in in 2020 before we discovered Musk was a neo-Nazi piece of shit, and they're really the only answer for solar batteries in any case.)

No one knows when the new battery will be arriving, but it'll be when it'll be.

--

And Julie the Benz is having her annual end-of-the-year breakdown. It's another check-engine light, but she's been riding somewhat rough since we had our problems mid-year with her almost dying on the way to the airport, so we may well be at the place where it's better to get a new car than to repair. (She is 16 years old at this point.)

My dad and I tried to read the error code with his reader on Sunday, but it just gave "link errors". I think maybe her errors might be in German.

So I have an appointment for her about a week after I get back, and we drove her pretty minimally this last week (and plan the same on our return), and then we'll see what we see.

It'd of course be good to stretch out her life another few years, but I also increasingly wouldn't mind a car with more modern bells and more modern whistles.

--

Expected to be working on some Designers & Dragons on the flight, and I've done a tiny bit, but mostly haven't felt like it.

Thought I might close out another book on these plane trips (in first full draft), but nah, it'll probably be a January project.

Because I guess I can vacation?

tcpip

After Lima, the next part of the tour was the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Cusco (Qusqu) city, former capital of the Incan Empire, "navel of the world", and recognised as "capital histórica" in the Peruvian constitution. Although conquered by the Spanish and subject to many centuries of colonialism, the permanent population of the city is of Quechuan background and uses this indigenous language. The old city, designed in the shape of a puma, the sacred terrestial power, has structures that date back from the Incan times, whilst the majority of the cobblestone roads, churches, and residental-commercial establishmentes are from the colonial period or the more contemporary Republican period up to mid-20th century styles where, after a major earthquake, much of the city required restoration. With numerous Incan and colonial sites of note, it is the major attraction for tourists and colourful locals who are all too willing to dress in colourful traditional clothes as they parade their alpacas about.

Our initial stay was at the Hotel Costa Del Sol, whose simple entrance belies a pleasing interior. Well-located, it was a short walk to two major parks, the Plaza Mayor and the Plaza Regocijo, the former home to the imposing churches, the "Catedral del Cuzco" and the "Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús", the latter especially rich in Baroque design. Both of these feature grand Gothic ceilings and are full of gilt items and late traditional religious art. Keeping to the theme, nearby is the "El Convento y la Iglesia de Santo Domingo" and the Incan "Templo del Sol Coricancha". The integration of the Incan masonry into the Spanish church is quite impressive here, as is the artwork, museum information, and gardens. A short distance, and overlooking the old city is the Incan fortress and vast grounds of Sacsayhuamán, the underground shrine of Qenko, and nearby Tambomachay, a collection of terraced aqueducts, canals and waterfalls.

Travelling further afield in the following days, we ventured into the Sacred Valley, whose rich soils provided for much of the old Incan Empire and which had been inhabited since the Chanapata civilisation almost three thousand years ago. The Inca complex at Písac provides a very fine example of the terraced agricultural techniques of the area, as well as an impressive collection of old buildings. Also of special note in the Sacred Valley is Ollantaytambo, a grand example of terracing and irrigation, storehouses, and a massive temple. Just before entering the Ollantaytambo, I also experienced a slight accident - there was a bump in the road, and I managed to donk the top of my head on the ceiling of the bus quite convincingly, taking out a chunk of my epidermis and requiring first aid attention. The next few days would be spent with the now-bald wounded area receiving regular treatment of disinfectant cream, covered by a makeup-removing pad (rather like a small yarmulke), and then by a rapidly purchased brimmed alpaca-felt hat. It was far from a serious wound, but the possibility of infection due to dust was significant, so multiple layers of precaution were taken - all in time for the journey to Machu Picchu, one of the greatest wonders of the world.

Current Location: Buenos Aires
Current Music: Complete Sonatas, Saint-Saens

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October 2025

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The Diary of A Simple Man

Why?

Reading

Привет! LiveJournal imports may be slow

year in review? not so much

The Vacation Draws to an End

Crusin' to the End of the World

To San Francisco! (Again!)

Four Very Busy Days near the Bay

Cusco and Buenos Aires

Machu Picchu and Mysteries of the Incas

Travel Day! (& It's the Broken End of the Year)

South America Part III: Cusco and Sacred Valley, Peru

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October 2025

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