End-of-the-Month Media Day

New pictures have been added to the Life, 2010 album and the West Coast Vacation, 2010 album. Enjoy!

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Review Day

There are no spoilers in these reviews.

Under and Alone by William Queen:
Reasonably priced at $6, this was the last Kindle book I read on our Washington-California vacation, and tells the tail of an ATF agent who goes undercover with a criminal biker gang for two years. It's a fast-moving page turner, even though some of the details seem more fictional than true. It also made me look shifty-eyed at all of the California bikers we'd pass daily around Santa Cruz and its environs.

Final Grade: B+

Neti Pot:
I've had some throat and nose congestion problems ever since my bout with strep throat last October, so I thought I'd try out a Neti Pot, which flushes out your sinuses with warm saltwater. It took a few tries to mix the right concentrate that didn't burn like drowning (1 cup warm-to-hot water and 1/4 teaspoon of salt per nostril, erring on the side of hotter and saltier), but I can tell that there are immediate results after flushing: it becomes almost effortless to clear the pressure in my Eustachian tubes. You don't actually get to see any grossness ooze out of your nose, which was kind of disappointing, but your airways definitely feel clearer in the aftermath. I've been using it daily for about two weeks now, so I can't tell if the effects will persist in the long-term. I also think "Neti Pot model" is an inauspicious way to break into the biz.

Final Grade: B+

Puzzle Dimension:
Puzzle Dimension is a turn-based 3D puzzler, where you navigate a ball around a maze collecting flowers so you can activate the exit. The ball is always on the "ground", so as you rotate onto a ramp, the entire world shifts around you (see a gameplay trailer here). The presentation is very nice, with old-fashioned Nintendo style music that refines into live instruments as you collect more and more flowers, and the puzzles get hard very quickly. There isn't much twitch-action, other than the need to hit spacebar to jump over gaps sometimes, but the camera can be a little tricky to maneuver when dealing with the more convoluted worlds.

Final Grade: B

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Trip Day: Santa Cruz

Part III of III

Our next stop on the whirlwind tour of Northern California was Santa Cruz, home of the family of Rebecca's dad's sister, as well one of her grandmothers. Santa Cruz was blessed with unseasonably fogless days while we were there, so obviously our super power was to bring the sunlight to unexplored backwater lands, not unlike the White Man in 1492. We took in a sampling of Santa Cruz beaches at Natural Bridges, a beach covered in seaweed and a dead sea lion where everyone in bathing suits stands at the edge of the fifty degree surf, shivering, and then goes home.

We also went to Roaring Camp, where we took an overpriced steam train ride up the mountain to have a picnic lunch amongst the redwoods, although we did not go anywhere you could drive a car through a tree trunk. For dinner, the DeLeon family brought out their best grilling recipes and we dined on giant slabs of marinated London broil and spare ribs.

The next day, we drove down the coast to Monterey, a waterfront area completely taken over by large gangs of sea lion pirates, commandeering rocks and boats alike. We were swarmed on either side by people trying to give us free samples of clam chowder, including a hippie who wanted to make sure I wasn't from Langley before giving us the samples. We had our first taste of raw oyster here, with "oyster cocktails" consisting of two oysters in a cup of brine with some lemon and cocktail sauce. The texture is definitely memorable -- I don't know whether it's worse to chew it or swallow it whole -- but I could see it becoming an acquired taste.

On our last day in California, we drove up the coast on Highway 1, taking in the vistas and occasionally stopping at a public beach. In general, there were very few signs that California as a state was flat broke, but the most noticeable was the overly full port-o-potties dotting the coast, which easily contained several weeks of digested food from the oceanfront Taco Bells and sometimes piled higher than the seat lid. When it came time to tally the final score, we agreed that California has nothing on the Outer Banks when it comes to beaches.

The End

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Trip Day: San Francisco

Part II of III

The first thing we noticed about the BART system in San Francisco is that the trains actually run on time, down to the minute listed in the scheduling pamphlets. After this temporal marvel, we learned that in transfer stations, you can actually get off a train, find your connecting train waiting for you, and simply cross the platform to hop on. After eons of walking two blocks to Gallery Plaza from the Orange Line (to prevent growing old in Metro Center), this fresh perspective on logic was thrilling.

We stayed in "suburban" Berkeley with Anna, Rebecca's aunt and consummate host, and traveled into the city to meet up with Annie and Andrea. On our first day out, we visited Chinatown, and it probably isn't racist to say that all Chinatowns look the same. This particular Chinatown had a traditional gate which was less impressive than a junior Congressman from California -- it barely spanned the road, and looked like a cast off prop from "It's a Small World".

After sampling free fortune cookies from the Fortune Cookie Factory, we walked 10 blocks to Japantown. When we stopped and realized there were another 10 blocks to go, we decided to take a bus the rest of the way, so we would be fresh when we marvelled at the giant mall filled with Hello Kitty and live koi. We didn't make it to any European-towns while on the coast, but we'll rectify that locally with a trip to Germantown as soon as possible.

On the following day, we took a driving/walking tour of Berkeley, and then when all of the chicks started shopping, I walked home to post my 12 of 12 and read in the sunshine. Although it was chilly in the evenings, the days were unseasonably warm for the season -- we were probably emanating East Coast heat from our pores, not unlike itinerant convection ovens. For dinner that evening, we met up with East-Coaster-turned-West-Coaster, Vu, and had some delicious sake and sushi in downtown Berkeley.

On our last day up north, we rented a car and drove up to Napa Valley for a wine tour. It took us several blocks of walking to locate the Napa city Visitor's Center, although we were informed enroute by a teenager that "that place is only worthwhile for old people like 30... no maybe 57". The retirees manning the Center were very helpful and loaded us up with maps and glossy uncompostable magazines, because when there are 450 wineries on a thirty mile road, the only way you'll get visitors is if you bribe the Visitor's Center to "highly recommend" your winery to clueless visitors.

We started with a tasting at Grgich, where they sacrifice their vowels for high quality grapes, and then had a bottle of Grgich zinfandel with burgers at a roadside stand. From there we hit a winery inside of a $41 million castle, followed by the Sterling Vineyards which was separated from the road by a 200 yard sky-car trip. This winery was near the top of the valley, and with the temperature hovering up near 100 degrees, it quickly drained us of the urge to visit any others. We returned to Napa for some highly-yuppy organic ice cream and free samples at the olive oil / chocolate sauce stands.

To be concluded tomorrow...

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