Ramblin' Man

Sunday saw us head on an excursion to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Subrata set up this outing, and he and Susan, Chad and Camille, Mark and Yvette, and Debbi and I met for brunch around 10:30 in the morning, and then drove down in two cars. I think everyone but the two of us are Aquarium members, but we got in for free on Mark & Yvette's guest passes.

I think the ostensible excuse for the outing was a new octopus exhibit, although as far as I could tell they now just have two giant octopi instead of one, and both of them were hiding when we visited. Oh, well. Actually, what with Disneyland and all, I was too busy to keep track of the details of the trip, so I was pretty happy to be able to just go along without having to do any of the work. I spent much of the drive down either talking with Mark, or watching the navigation system in Yvette's Prius.

Debbi asked whether I thought we'd go to the Aquarium more often if we were members. I tend to doubt it. I enjoy aquariums, and Monterey Bay's is a good one, but the exhibits don't change enough for me to want to go more than about once a year, especially as it's a 90 minute-to-2 hour drive each way, depending on traffic.

The trip was welcome not just to hang out with friends, but also the beat the heat. We've been having highs in the low 90s around here - basically, one of our two weeks of scorching heat per year. The cats spent the weekend mostly lying around on cool surfaces, stretched out to maximize heat dissipation. Blackjack, Jefferson and Newton all got a good dose of brushing. Blackjack and Roulette don't care a lot for being brushed - they'd rather be doing other things, usually - but Blackjack was a good sport about it while he was sacked out.

Happily, it was sunny but cool in Monterey - and even a little foggy on the drive back. Of course, everyone else was going to Monterey too, so finding parking was a bit of a trick...

Last night I got together with my friend Lucy. It's funny... a while ago I wrote this entry in my LiveJournal (I was mildly disappointed it wasn't an interesting enough concept for other people to do similar entries in their, but whatever), and Lucy responded that we should actually get together once in a while, between ice ages, at least. So I responded in e-mail and said, "Yeah, sure, let's do it!"

And then Lucy got horrendously busy and had to postpone a couple of times. And then I got busy ramping up for the Disneyland trip. But I dropped her another line when I got back, and we finally hooked up last night in downtown Mountain View.

We ate at Don Giovanni, one of my favorite Italian restaurants, and it went over well with her, and we generally caught up on stuff. Lucy's pretty happy these days, it seems. She's also being much more diligent about her writing than I am.

Of course, maybe after I finish reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which arrived on Monday, I'll make time to write. (I always buy the British editions, and I never bother to pay for express shipping. Arguably I'm just cheap - an observation many have made before - but I'm also in no rush.) Ahem. I have to finish revising the novelette I wrote last year (aigh!), and I have a nifty idea for another short story which I need to write. And then, um, maybe I'll write something more substantial. Hefty, even.

Anyway, hopefully Lucy and I can swing getting together again before the next Presidential election. That would be cool.

Happily, it's cooled off some these last couple of days. The kittens have ended their two-week stay at Casa Michael and are back with Debbi for the week. I'm reading That Darned Book and watching baseball and workin' hard. Hey, how about that Apple stock price? It's a pretty good time to be a Mac-head and an Apple shareholder.