Perambulations with Karen

No, I'm not dead. I'm not even merely sleeping. I've just been really, really busy.

This past week I've mostly been busy hosting my friend Karen, who's been in town partly on business and partly on vacation. I took Monday and Tuesday off to hang out with her, too. It's been worth it, though!

Karen was staying with other friends through Saturday morning, and got to my house around noonish on Saturday. Then we and Debbi went down to walk the Mountain View Art & Wine Festival, which is the larger of the two art fairs Mountain View hosts during the summer. We walked through the Jehning Lock Museum, which is fairly new and which I hadn't yet visited. They happened to have copies of two new Images of America books which I picked up: Mountain View and Moffett Field. We each picked up a little something at the fair, which we usually do, and it's always fun to look. Fortunately it wasn't too hot!

Saturday night we went to The Improv in San Jose to see Jeff Dunham, a comedian/ventriloquist whom Debbi really likes, having picked up his DVD, Arguing With Myself. He's really quite funny, and a bit off-color (which doesn't bother me in the least). The opening act comedian was also pretty funny, so overall we had a good time. The drinks at the Improv are good, but the food is overpriced and small, which was disappointing. But, live and learn!

Sunday Karen went off to walk a race, as she's gotten into racewalking in recent years, so we didn't see her until the afternoon and we puttered around on our own stuff until then. When she got back, we drove up to go to the Ghirardelli Square chocolate festival. We expected the awful traffic, although the parking situation seemed even worse than expected. The festival itself was no great shakes, in my opinion: The chocolate was mostly unremarkable, and the whole thing I thought was not really worth the whole trip. But again, live and learn. Now we know.

Traffic getting out of the city was pretty bad, so I was a little late getting to the Keplers speculative fiction book group, which was discussing Charles Stross' Accelerando. It was a small group, but a decent discussion. Afterwards Karen and Debbi met up with us to go to Su Hong dinner.

Not having as many years at her current job as I do at mine, Debbi didn't take time off this week for Karen's visit, so we headed off to the coast by ourselves on Monday. We had brunch at the Main Street Grill in Half Moon Bay, and then walked around downtown Half Moon Bay. Karen ended up finding several books she wanted, as well as some earrings, so it was well worth the trip just for that! (Never mind that I love the Main Street Grill.)

For a change, I decided to drive us south of Half Moon Bay, and we stopped off at the couple of beaches along the way: Manhattan Beach is a nice little cove tucked in behind a golf course near Miramontes Point - it's a little weird to get to the coast by walking between two sides of a golf course, though. Further down we stopped at San Gregorio Beach, which featured many surfers enjoying the nice weather and medium waves. And then we made the obligatory (to my mind) stop at Pigeon Point Lighthouse, which unfortunately is still closed following some age-related damage a few years ago. The view around the lighthouse is still terrific, however, and we did see some sea lions bobbing in the waves.

We finally ended up at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, which was closed (either for the season or because it's a Monday in September or both), but the arcade was still open so we played some skee-ball and a few classic video games - boy, have I gotten rusty at Robotron 2084 (we used to have one at work, but it went belly-up a few years ago). We also did a little shopping in downtown Santa Cruz before driving home to join Debbi for dinner.

Tuesday Karen had to go do some work so she dropped me off at a Starbucks for the morning and then picked me up and we had lunch. Then we headed up the east bay and walked out the pier at the Berkeley Marina which juts quite some distance out into San Francisco Bay, and clearly once went out much further. (If you look at it on a satellite map, it looks like it was once three times as long!)

We wrapped up the day by visiting the Ghirardelli Factory Outlet Store in San Leandro, where we bought perhaps too much chocolate at a nice discount.

Karen stayed with us for a few more days, but I went back to work on Wednesday. So the rest of the week was pretty quiet, but we had a good time. It's always good to see her! And it motivates me to go out and see some things I haven't seen before.