Meanwhile, Back in California, It's a Zoo

Rather than dwell on the cold and rain today, the sudden resurgence of soreness in my ankle this afternoon, or even the heartfelt but predictable feelings of TGIF, it's time to look back at more of the California trip! So far, all I have covered is the spots of color I saw everywhere (murals, decorated switch boxes and trash cans, and so on), which leaves, well, a lot.

A Lot.

Like:

• cats (my brother's own, the ferals in his yard, and the ones we saw at a cat cafe)
• my brother's home! so adorable!
• yarn stores (just two of them, but good!)
• a play, not-quite-Shakespeare-in-the-park
• the architecture, which had me constantly looking up, and stopping for pictures
• and a very-thoroughly-photographed day at the Oakland Zoo. Let's start there!

This was on Tuesday (9/5), when we had awakened to concerned messages for my mother from people wanting to be sure she was aware of, and safe from, the incoming Hurricane Irma (I'm awake, I'm awake!). Before heading out, we had a late breakfast at (ironically) Awaken Cafe, where I followed a bagel and juice with this lovely thing:

It was So Good. Master chocolatier Michael Recchiuti knows his stuff, if you ever get the chance.

My brother (and from here on, he's just CR, I'm already sick of typing "my brother" all the time and we're just getting started) had told us that he had heard the zoo in Oakland was a decent one, and that they had just opened a gondola that was supposed to give nice views of the area. Happily enough, it was accessible by BART, so we found the right bus and rode it to the end.

Let me just start out by sharing what is sure to become a new family joke that will pop out of us at the least likely moments. CR was looking at the map of the zoo when he suddenly laughed, and pointed to a spot: "I thought it said 'goddamn bats'!"

If you look closely, you can see that most of the areas are just the name of the animals, but in this one case, unexpectedly, there is a proper name before it. See there in the center? Yeah, so if I suddenly say "goddamn bats!" and start giggling like a loon, that's why. Just so you know.

On to the animals! First, chimps. And when you notice that a pane of glass is all crazed, don't worry.

I wasn't worried! We were there at feeding time, and they were much less interested in us than they were in the direction the food was coming from.

Then there were these guys, a couple of gibbons, just hanging around, chilling.

And swinging, which made focused photos a challenge.

So I took a video. Of course, he was immediately swinging less, I swear, but still I think it's a little cool. (I hope it shows up; I'm not video-savvy.)(It's not playing for me; does it for you?)

I'm not sorry that I stopped before he relieved himself, though. I didn't need that on film.

Some flamingos.

I admire the one toward the upper right, with his head rubbing onto his back. The flex!

Next up: giraffes:

Head shot.

Oops, got an itch!

And, technically, there were giraffes and eland. Including this one, wondering why we were out in the hot sun instead of sensibly in the shade.

This lion, meanwhile, was doing a bit of both, and seemed to find it very relaxing.

Heffalumps!

This one was moving slowly around, picking up every little bit of anything and checking in case it was food.

Yup!

Off to keep checking.

Meanwhile, she was having a bath.

With her built-in snorkel.

I swear, she was still there.

See?

Also questing along, in search of the edible.

In the other direction, it seemed to be time for a zebra check-up.

Bribery works!

"Hey, you got any more treats?"

No? Moving on, then.

In the aviary:

Tic tac toe, three giraffes in a row.

Meerkats! Stripey, busy, often blurry. Cute.

Up the gondola! I will say that it was a rather hazy day; on a clear day, it would be stunning, but the views were still impressive.

Starting out, you can see this:

 Close up? Curious camels. "What are they doing?"

We're going up!

View of ... some city nearby.

And distantly, in the mist, San Francisco. This is why you should go on a clear day if you can.

There is a restaurant at the top, and as CR said, "How's the food? The view is incredible." The food was okay. And very expensive. But props to them for not charging more to ride the gondola. You don't have to eat up there. And next summer, they're opening more animal areas up there, too.

The tigers are near where you get on to ride the gondola up, and when we first went by, there wasn't a stripe in sight. But after lunch, we lucked out, and all four sisters were around. Striding, splashing, being stripey.

Time for a dip?

Having a think.

"Look, just because there are wet paw prints on the ball doesn't mean I was playing with it."

"I tell you, I was not playing."

"What are you doing?"

Backing into the pool.

"Ah, delightful!"

For our final act at the zoo, we hopped on the little train ride to Wild Australia, where they have wallaroos and emus. (Oddly enough, no extra charge for the fancy new gondola, but if you want to ride the little old train, that costs extra. Not a lot, but still. Odd.) The entrance is off to the side of the main zoo entrance, in Adventure Landing, with a bunch of other little-kid rides.

We had to wait a bit for the driver, and were a little unsure whether it was going to be worth it.

Oh! Hello, emu. (It was worth it.)

They did not respect the train's right of way on the tracks.

"What do you mean, your tracks?"

He had to blow the whistle to encourage them to move along.

And yes, we saw a few wallaroos, too. They were just a little more shy.

But the emus were not shy at all.

This one was in front of the gate out of the area, a little too close for comfort.

I don't know if they ever try to jailbreak, but the driver wasn't taking any chances. Muttering to himself about how it's always the last ride of the day, he parked the train and got out.

Gave the emu a stern lecture, with directions.

And made himself big, so the emu would listen.

"I was just leaving anyway."

"See? I wanted to be over here."

It was really cool.

However, note that "last ride of the day" part? We came out to find that the gates back into the zoo were closed up. Which would have been fine, except the bus left us off at the lower entrance, not the main one, so we had to get back there. Pro tip: walking around is possible, but it's a lot longer that way.

On the plus side, I found this in the parking lot. I believe this is an emu feather.

Hand for scale.

So that's kind of a cool thing to have.

And I'm not sure I've ever been so glad to get on a city bus. (It was a good day, a lot of fun, and worth it, but my ankle was Not Impressed with the walking.)

We had dinner that night at the Tribune Tavern, which was really good! When I saw that they brew their own root beer (called Many Roots Beer), I had to try it, and so interesting! Which is not meant as a slam, honestly. Not my new favorite ever, but I'm so glad I tried it. The food was delicious, too.

So, there, that's one day of the trip told!

Doing My Best

I not only want to write about the trip to California, I still very much intend to, but it won't be happening tonight. I have just enough of a headache to dampen things like coherence and ... I just paused to try to decide what else it's dampening, and thought about typing "everything," which I think sums it up.

Let's just say that, for one example, when I read in my current report that something is "wrought with a higher risk of failure"--well, I knew that was wrong, but it took me a little bit to realize that he meant "fraught" instead of "wrought." They are different words. They rhyme. They are not interchangeable. But I had to look them up to make sure they meant what I thought they did. (Which they did. Happily, the headache isn't that bad.)

So here are a few random things.

• I had my regular appointment at the dentist last night; I've been going there maybe, I don't know, two years? and only last night did the hygienist and I realize that we are in the same water aerobics class. (I thought she looked awfully familiar for someone I only see twice a year, and not for the last 20 years or anything.)
• Carlos has had a few bad mornings this week, when he just can't get over the fact that I am working, and not in bed with him. Which is a little salt-in-the-wounds on the days that I would far prefer his idea; it just doesn't pay the bills. But he keeps nagging and nagging.
• On the other hand, I have stopped giving in to his piteous, middle-of-the-night begging for me to lift him onto the bed, and he is jumping up once more, after only a few pathetic meows. So the world record for spoiled cat goes to someone else, for now.
• Apple Festival is in two weeks! I hate that the weather is cooling off and it gets darker earlier, but hockey is coming back, and soon it's my birthday, and Apple Festival. Yay.
• Then it's a month to Rhinebeck! This is one of those blessed years when there's a weekend between the two, which will make my October much smoother. (And, given how September is going, I'm going to need that.) This is my 8th time going, whoa (every year except 2015 since 2009), and only the second with the cushion weekend.
• Tonight's Bruins game is on TV, hooray! This headache needs to go away, or at least not get worse. Don't harsh my hockey, head. Some more of the veterans are playing (Bergeron!), and I get to see them (radio just isn't the same).

Aaaannnd, that's all I have. Go Bruins!

Hockey-Hockey-Hockey Time Again

I was still in the middle of post-trip fuzz last Thursday, when the Bruins opened their full training camp, but not so much that I didn't notice when the news broke that the Bruins had finally (finally, finally) signed free agent David Pastrnak, something I had been waiting for with increasing worry for over two months (face it, the Bruins don't have the best record when it comes to retaining hot young talent). He's so good; I first mentioned him here in 2014, and often since, as by now he has proven himself pretty decently. The last few months have been full of hockey-blog posts that boiled down to (and sometimes stated outright), "Pay the man! Just pay him!" And the Bruins kept not doing it.

But look, they didn't screw it up! He missed a few days of camp, having to fly over from the Czech Republic (or Czechia, I'm not sure how widespread the new name is)(he just calls it Czech himself, to confuse me further), but now he's signed, and camp is on, and the exhibition games have started.

Because not all the preseason games are broadcast, on Monday night, the first game against Montreal, I went online to see if the Canadiens' station was carrying the game, and found a baseball game, of all things in the hockey-mad north. The best I could find was a French-language station covering it, which I listened to for a while, picking out words here and there--at least I understood that it was Boston 3, Montreal 2 at the end of the second period*--but overall not getting the full idea of what was happening. Still, hockey! It sounded right, even as it sounded wrong.
*That was the final score, and no matter how much you believe that the results don't matter in the preseason, beating Montreal always feels good.

Last night they were in Boston, and the game was on the Bruins radio station, so I could listen to it in English. And you know what that means, right?

Internet, bah! Transistor radio time.

Then tomorrow night's game is on NESN. We're just all over the place here. And so happy that hockey is back.

I'm Getting a Reputation

But of all the reputations I might have, "person who will be glad to take any knitting needles (or yarn, or other supplies) from you" is certainly not the worst I could have. I left the chiropractor yesterday newly adjusted, and with this:

Just a random handful of needles (and one crochet hook), the sort of thing I've gotten handed down over the years from Grandma. I'm glad to have them; you never know when a specific size will come in handy. But the intriguing ones are the gold-colored ones, in the middle.

PLASTEEL NO. 3, it says; they appear to be plastic-coated steel, giving them both strength and flexibility. Number three is the size (US), but Plasteel knitting needles are unheard-of in Google-dom. Seriously, I can't find a thing. I turned to Ravelry, and found, in an old conversation about flexible needles, mention and a photo of what are clearly the same thing. But that's it: I can find nothing else. My Google-fu is usually decent! This is a puzzling situation. Any other ideas?

Color Everywhere You Look (California Edition)

Clearly my reporting on the trip to California is going to be done piecemeal, but for today, I thought I would show some color.

The East Bay is not quite as, well, tourist-ready as San Francisco, I don't think, but it is its own place and has plenty of color, both figuratively and literally.

Ow, Literal and Metaphorical

Luckily, I didn't make any plans for today after getting the mammogram done, because it was quite painful, and I have spent the hours since muttering "Ow, owwwww," without conscious thought, which would be problematic in a lot of social situations. This time wasn't quite as bad as the call-back I had in 2012, but almost. Owwww. You have to do it, at least it's only yearly, but ow.

On top of that, I was frustrated today in a quest relating to my little tablet, which has recently started to complain about how it's almost out of storage space, and whining about how it isn't going to be able to doooooo anything if I don't make room. I had already moved all my photos off the thing, which I hoped would help, but I have three games on it that turn out to take up a ridiculous amount of storage space, and I want to keep them, so I was hoping there would be another solution.

Unfortunately, the solution seems to be "get another tablet with more storage space," which isn't the end of the world as a concept, but multiple AT&T stores later, no one has what I want, which is small (for a tablet) but large (in terms of storage; meaning more than 16GB). Mine is seven and a half inches by four and a quarter, and it fits in my hand fairly comfortably, but the 16GB is clearly not enough. All I want is the same size outside, bigger inside (paging the TARDIS).

(One of the guys who helped me almost fell over when I told him that one of the reasons I don't want to switch to a smart phone, in place of the dumb-phone-and-tablet combo, is because I'm paying about $50 a month for this. Apparently this is impossibly low. Suits me fine. I am NOT paying $100 or more monthly for what I use it for. No.)

The last store offered to order one for me (because of course they didn't have it in stock), but it's about half an inch longer and half an inch wider, which puts it straight into "uncomfortable to hold" territory for me. And since the arthritis is only going to get worse over the years, I'm pretty sure I would have hesitated at that, even without the $250 price tag, which oh my god are you kidding me? When I got this one two years ago, I paid $15 total for it (well, plus taxes I'm sure, but you know what I mean). I mean, I get it, it's nice that you can pay it off monthly, "just ten dollars a month," but it still adds up to "you're joking, right?"

So, if anyone knows of where/how I can get my hands on a small tablet with more than 16GB, that works on AT&T's systems, let me know, would you? I tried poking around online, but thanks to that first point up there, I am clearly lacking the patience for this kind of search today.

Owww, owww...

Shifting Back to Normal Life

My mother flew down to Florida today, and is on her way home. According to reports, she may need to replace her garage door, which is on the side of the building that essentially got scoured by the hurricane (fortunately, not the side her condo is on), and there are roof tiles down, and exit signs, and the globes over outside lights; mostly that level of things. The building has power (which means air conditioning), and water (under a boil order), and the most inconvenience sounds like it will come from waiting for the elevator to be repaired. She can deal. We'll see if more is revealed, but for now we are still firmly in the "so lucky, could have been so much worse" camp.

As for me, I finished the work week with a sigh of relief, and have been hanging out this evening, knitting, with Carlos. (Happily, the rain that passed over us did not include boomers, a trend I hope continues.) We may not quite have normality yet, but we're close. I mean, I have my annual mammogram tomorrow, and I don't know how much more prosaic life can get (preemptive wince).

Speaking of knitting, I'm too tired for details tonight, but here are a few teasers. This, started on the airplane:

And this, finished.

Still Here; California Tales Coming Soon

September continues to be a weird month for me: at least, the first half.

The trip to visit my brother went great (much more on that to come, obviously), but it was tiring (mostly in the ankle department), and then our (already a red-eye) return flight Thursday night was about 90 minutes late, and the whole thing was just so exhausting that it took longer than I thought it would to recover (I was expecting all day Friday, but I thought Saturday would be better than it was). On top of that, all the hurricane-related news out of Florida has been a lot to deal with; we were, understandably, immersing ourselves in the news, to the point that it was startling to look out the window here and see sun and no crisis.

As you may recall, my mother had been scheduled to leave here last Saturday, so of course that didn't happen; her flight was cancelled while we were still in California. I rebooked her, tentatively, for this Friday, and as far as we know now, that is still on (they had flights go down today, so I am optimistic). Some of the people in her building have made it there, and are reporting mostly very small damage, considering. (I mean, really: her building is identifiable in the storm line when you zoom all the way in on this NOAA map.) And the power went back on sometime on Wednesday, which is great news. She will lose everything in the fridge and freezer, I'm sure, and the machine itself, which she was already planning to replace (it started leaking, just a little, earlier this year), may be toast. But if that's the worst of it, we will not complain.

And I don't count it as complaining when I say that it has been rather odd to have my mother here for so long. I have lived alone for many years, and I'm used to it. She's usually here for a day or two at a time, and a week of even the most considerate house guest (which she is--and I'm not just saying that because she reads the blog) is just a strange thing for me. Though I am home from the vacation, and back to work, things have not returned to full normal yet.

Though the part of "not fully normal" that means I don't have any laundry to do for a while is nice, I must say...

Where We Are

Up to a point, this whole trip has gone according to plan. My mother flew to Boston on September 1, and she and I flew to California on the third. We had a great time with my brother, but while we were there, she started to hear from friends about how Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida. Before we left California on Thursday night, her flight from Boston to Florida on Saturday had already been cancelled. For now, she is scheduled on a flight on this Friday, but that has to be considered tentative until we hear about the condition that southwest Florida in general, and her area and condo building in particular, are in, following the storm surge that is expected to come tonight.

So, for now we're fine. We're waiting. We're tripping over each other, a little, but still tremendously relieved that she isn't there, trying to deal with the situation. And soon, we'll know more than we know now.

Which is to say, I have some 300+ photos from the trip that I haven't even gone through yet. Blogging about it will come, sometimes. But not right now.

Home. Fine. Tired.

Just wanted to say that my mother and I are back here, safely, after a great trip, and she's going to be staying for a while, since as you can imagine her flight to Florida tomorrow has been cancelled. But we're fine, if cross-eyed with exhaustion. More to come!

Old (Old, Old) Car Question

I guess I was just kidding about not blogging! No, I really am going away, but my mother and I went to Wilson Farm today and they have this great old car on display at the front, and we were wondering how old it was. Anyone have any idea?

A crank on the front!

Got four wheels and a running board, I'm a Ford, a Ford, a Ford (Girl Scout camp!).

The perfect plate, certainly.

And check out the minimalist dashboard.

Bonus gourd shot. Fall is coming!