DLand - Give Me an S ...

So Thursday you missed quite a show in my office. I was trying to unplug the filter on the 110 gallon fish tank so we could get the motor replaced. Well, I unplugged the wrong part and then this bizarre mixture of water pressure and suction was beginning to turn the front room into a lake before I could make it stop. I estimate about 10 gallons of water ended up in the floor. Basically, from the moment I pulled the wrong tab til I pulled the hoses out to break the suction "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" was my mantra. Gallons of water were pouring into the reception area. Gallons. Amazingly enough, Sweetpea brought the wet/dry vacuum by the office and it pulled it all up. You could barely tell the floor was wet when I finished. But it wasn't really what I was planning to spend my morning in the office doing. Sweetpea saved the day. This weekend was Gay Pride in San Francisco. The B52's were playing downtown. I was talking to Mark the Mormon and he said that normally they have the American Library Association conference the same weekend. This year it was a week early. Ah, well. Can't see and do everything.

Got a whole lot of nothing done this weekend. Mostly cleaning the kitchen and doing some laundry. And vacuuming the stairs. I'm telling you it was a regular thrill a minute Chez Sweetpea and Me.

Speaking of Sweetpea, he's lost 28 points so far on Weight Watchers. Go Sweetpea! He is the weight loss champion of our house! There's a whole new piece of his closet that he's delving into that he hasn't seen in a while. I'm the captain of his cheerleading team! Who's the man? Sweetpea's the man! Time to go show off my pom poms.

DLand - Go West!

So much happened while in California. More than I can wrap my brain around it seems. First, I did do some work, which involved waking up at 5am to answer phone calls and then go to a few meetings. They were overall uneventful. The best part of my whole adventure has to be the trip "up country". Up country basically involved trekking into the middle of nowhere Northern California (Mid-o'-Nowhere County, I presume) and adventuring around the property that Carl has up there. It was some of the most breath-taking scenery I have seen in a very long time. I don't know that I could live up there permanently but it would certainly be an excellent place to visit for a week every year. I got to drive an ATV while up there. They are more fun than any human should have on four wheels. I absolutely must own one, although finding a place to drive it will take some work. Also saw some coy that were as big as my leg. They really were beautiful fish. I could have done without the catfish as big as my leg, but mostly because they sorta creeped me out.

Father's Day was spent doing some work again (like I said, the conference was mostly uneventful). After that was dinner at Le Soleil, a French Vietnamese restaurant. We didn't choose our entrees so expertly, but the spring rolls and soups were fabulous. Even my Saigon beer was excellent.

Every time I go out west, I start to like it a little more. It's really indescribable. A part of me could be tempted to move out there. I just can't think that far ahead. For now, we'll stick with visiting.

DLand - Leaving on a Jet Plane

On the plane to San Francisco now. This week has been crazy busy with work. I got to see the HOV lanes switch over from one direction to the other at 12:45am the other night on my way home from work. And was back at work at 7am. Good thing I like my job. :) So San Fran holds the excitement of the annual American Library Association conference (too many librarians in one place if you ask me). But it's really an excuse for us to visit my fathers-in-law, Carl and John. It should be a hoot. We're supposedly going “up country” to see Carl's piece of property on Saturday. That should be exciting. I'll take some pictures and post them.

So today, Bossman, his wife and I go to lunch. I had been itchin' to eat at Ragazzi's for a while now. They have the best manicotti. So we get there and they seat us in one of those half circle booths (the kind they have in chinese restaurants). Mrs. Bossman is a bit tardy so our waiter comes over and gets our drink orders. On his way to the drink stand, he knocks over this rack of trays that go down like a house of cards. Bossman says, “hehe, I'll move over here so he won't be able to spill stuff on me” and we all have a little chuckle about that. Then he comes back and proceeds to dump Bossman's entire Coke all over him, the table and the bench around us. Not only that but I was bone dry until he was trying to clean it up and splashed me with it. It was a regular comedy of errors. Bossman took it in stride and good humor, but this guy had to have been the klutziest waiter I've ever seen.

We're flying into the last bit of daylight left and there are lightning storms all around us. It's amazing to see. It's really as if Zeus himself were throwing bolts. Or perhaps there's a smith in the clouds working over his forge. Sweetpea is glued to the window and just used his dinner napkin to clean the glass for a better view. We're in first class now, too, so he's got a prime seat. Bossman said that letting him fly first class for the first time across the country will spoil him and cost me thousands of dollars for years to come. I just think it's kick ass to have a table cloth on my dinner tray. We don't even use table clothes and real glasses in our house. Like casting pearls before swine. Oink, oink is all I gotta say.

(this posted once I got to a network connection as I'm not paying $8 billion to post this from the plane)