What isn’t Apple, audiobooks, or alcohol is probably cats.
We enjoy traveling, and writing about where we’ve gone, what we did, and what we liked.
“You didn’t give me any credit for driving 85 [MPH] through Santa Clara County.”
“Sure I did. I wasn’t nagging then, was I?”
Complaints about driving speed during our second trip to LA
“You didn’t give me any credit for driving 85 [MPH] through Santa Clara County.”
“Sure I did. I wasn’t nagging then, was I?”
Photos of our trips to Costa Rica (end of May) and Los Angeles (last weekend) are now online.
Photos of our trips to Costa Rica (end of May) and Los Angeles (last weekend) are now online. There’s commentary along with the photos, or at least a few of them. Rochelle is writing more, to be published very soon.
A word about loading the photos. It’s slow, because there are no thumbnails, so each page loads every photo at full size, and because it’s all loading over my DSL line, which runs at 192Kbps for uploads. But once the page loads, clicking on individual photos should be very quick, almost instantaneous.
“Coke ’til two, sex ’til four.”
Heard in Costa Rica, as someone summarized their late night
“Coke ’til two, sex ’til four.”
Rochelle and I have great fun with each other while on vacations, but we don’t always travel well together. Our trip to Costa Rica was a textbook example. The passport problem was just the beginning of our troubles.
Rochelle and I have great fun with each other while on vacations, but we don’t always travel well together. Our trip to Costa Rica was a textbook example. The passport problem was just the beginning of our troubles.
We actually, for the first time ever, were completely packed well before our departure time. This was critical, because we’d made dinner plans with friends, to go visit RNM across the street (great food, spotty service). We’d intended to send them off with an hour of time left before leaving, but we were having a such a good time that we suddenly freaked out when we realized we had only 20 minutes to get ready and leave.
Among the many things we accidently left behind were Rochelle’s new flip-flops, really nice ones with loofa-style surface for massaging your feet as you walk. And we left some critical travel supplies (booze and sleeping pills), which meant our plane time was torture. Like democracy, air travel sucks, but it’s better than all the alternatives — especially if you can consistently knock yourself out.
I also didn’t get to pet all of my kitties before leaving, at least not the way I like to before taking off for a week. The taxi out to the airport is where I always think, maybe I should just stay home.
There aren’t very many direct flights to Costa Rica, so we were flying by way of Houston, where we had hoped to hook up with Rochelle’s brother for breakfast. But Code Orange got in the way of him being able to meet us, and we weren’t able to make contact by mobile phone to make alternate plans, so we just headed to our gate. Fortunately there was a bar literally right next to our gate, and the biscuits and gravy from the Popeye’s 100 yards away was astonishingly good. I think that says oceans about the food they serve on planes.
Two things did work out well for us. Our friend David was able to connect with us in Houston, and continue with us to Costa Rica (he was with us the entire trip, except the SF<–>Houston legs). And our flight timing, starting at 1am on Friday and getting us into Costa Rica at noon, was brilliant, because we were able to grab our rental car, race out to the hotel, throw our stuff in our room, and proceed directly to the pool and chill out. Once the waiter brought us drinks, we were almost completely recovered from our travel traumas.
So, getting ready for our trip, Rochelle was going to Xerox our passports, so we would have copies, just in case. I was in the tub, and she went to get mine. A minute later, she came down the hall, laughing, “A ha, Michael is a dumbass!” It turns out my passport expired on 30 April 2003. Oops. We had exactly 18 hours to figure out what to do.
So, getting ready for our trip, Rochelle was going to Xerox our passports, so we would have copies, just in case. I was in the tub, and she went to get mine. A minute later, she came down the hall, laughing, “A ha, Michael is a dumbass!” It turns out my passport expired on 30 April 2003. Oops.
We had exactly 18 hours to figure out what to do. Rochelle checked a Costa Rica web site, remembering that you could take a photo ID and your birth certificate, and that would be enough. It turned out that that rule had expired on 1 May. Oops.
A quick internet search turned up Plan B, travisa, which is able to do same-day passports in four cities in the U.S. One of them — thank god — is San Francisco. Rochelle called them, and the cut-off is 10am. It was 8:30am, so plenty of time. They even were able to take the photo.
The damage: the US Government takes an extra $60 to do an expedited passport renewal. travisa’s service fee was $139 + $10 for the photo. Doing the math, that’s an extra $210 above what it would have cost if we’d done this after getting back from France — which is when I should have noticed this.
What’s really fucked up about this is, we decided not to take the direct flight from SFO to San Jose, because it was an extra $110 per person. One hour of massage in Costa Rica is $20, so that would be five massages. So we decided we could deal with the indirect flight by getting massages, and come out even, or ahead, really, because we were going to do the massages anyway.
Well, that’s how the stupidity tax works, you think you’re getting ahead, and in an instant you wipe it all out. Ah, well…
As many of you know, Rochelle and I have been involved in graduate studies for a couple years now, and we’re finally coming to the end of the program. We’ve been doing a lot of coursework, including extended exercises at home that are not required to graduate, but are required for complete mastery. Rochelle has just one class session left, while I have two, and then it’s just final exams for us.
As many of you know, Rochelle and I have been involved in graduate studies for a couple years now, and we’re finally coming to the end of the program. We’ve been doing a lot of coursework, including extended exercises at home that are not required to graduate, but are required for complete mastery. Rochelle has just one class session left, while I have two, and then it’s just final exams for us.
We’re about to go on a short vacation, and are taking all our study materials with us. We’ll get home, and two days later take exams. Then we’ll get our Ph.D.s, and become eligible for field work with our favorite professor! If you can believe it, there’s actually a waiting list for volunteers for his trips, so it’ll probably be next year before we can head down to Mexico with him and do some original research.
There’s a short description of our program available online, if you’re interested in more details. Yes, it’s a Ph.D. in booze. What did you think we would be studying???
For those of you who may not be interested in everything I write (hi Mom, sorry about all the technology stuff), here are some channel-specific RSS feeds.
For those of you who may not be interested in everything I write (hi Mom, sorry about all the technology stuff), here are some channel-specific RSS feeds:
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We just ate cheese for dinner. Four really fucking good cheeses, air shipped to us from France. Rochelle read about Fromages.com in the New York Times, and talked Hilda into splitting a shipment with us. Our selection arrived this morning.
We just ate cheese for dinner. Four really fucking good cheeses, air shipped to us from France. Rochelle read about Fromages.com in the New York Times, and talked Hilda into splitting a shipment with us. So they ordered a selection of nine cheeses, which arrived this morning.
It’s a really cool service. You tell them on what day you want the cheeses to arrive, and they will ship it overnight the day prior, for delivery the day you select. So if you’re taking the cheeses to a party, or throwing your own, it’s easy to schedule it so they’ll be at the peak of ripeness when you get them.
We ate a lot of phenomenal cheeses while we were in France last year. Yes, there’s great cheese available right here in the Bay Area, but there’s really nothing like the cheeses we enjoyed overseas. So, while it’s a little expensive, it’s worth doing from time to time.
It also seems like a great way to thank France for their courageous stand against the pressure of the US to launch an attack on Iraq. We’ll be eating French cheese, and drinking as much French champagne as we can in the coming weeks.
That’ll be a hardship.
Photos of our meal from Gerard Boyer are up in the photos section. This was the best meal of our trip to France, and the most expensive. We both had the fixed price lunch of the day, with the only difference being our desserts.
Photos of our meal from Gerard Boyer are up in the photos section. This was the best meal of our trip to France, and the most expensive. We both had the fixed price lunch of the day, with the only difference being our desserts.
I felt badly about going to this 3 Michelin star restaurant in slacks and shirt, instead of my suit, but we’d just gotten it back from the fiasco with Virgin, and I hadn’t had time to unpack it.
They still treated us wonderfully, and the food was spectacular. I would imagine that at different times of the year, or during different economic times, the dining room is packed, but we were able to dine peacefully in a half-empty room.
Recommended!
Latest photos from France (yes, I’m still working on this), of the stone markers used to indicate which fields belong to which houses. We passed hundreds of these while driving in the countryside around Reims and Epernay.
Latest photos from France (yes, I’m still working on this), of the stone markers used to indicate which fields belong to which houses. We passed hundreds of these while driving in the countryside around Reims and Epernay.
Rochelle was the one who started the photo series, with a scream that we needed to stop. She’d spotted a marker from Salon Le Mesnil, probably the rarest of the markers we drove past, and wanted a picture. And with that, we were stopping every few miles, or hundred feet, to snap another photo.
Many of them are quite beautiful. We’ll be continuing to photograph these stones.
This last weekend Rochelle and I went to visit friends who moved to Las Vegas four months ago. Our friends, now officially locals, took us on a whirlwind tour of their favorites, mostly bars.
This last weekend Rochelle and I went to visit friends who moved to Las Vegas four months ago. While they’re still looking for permanent work so they can apply for home loans, and settle in permanently, they’ve definitely scoped out the lesser-known parts of the city.
One of our evenings included visiting the Double Down, an infamous bar where no one ever gets thrown out. (We have two friends who have managed to do it anyway, including one of our hosts.) They serve a drink with a bad reputation, “ass juice”, which is basically the dregs of all their bottles. $1 a shot, and it’s different (tasting, color, etc.) every night. It’s vile and evil, and I wouldn’t drink anything else when I’m there.
When we awoke the next day, we wanted to burn the clothes we’d worn the night before — the smell of cigarette smoke had penetrated them so deeply we thought we were back in the bar. Rochelle and I have a bet whether it ever comes out.
The best find was Makino, an all-you-can-eat sushi place. Normally these unlimited sushi buffets are horrible, with minimal amounts of the good sushi, which is snapped up in seconds when it’s put out. Not so Makino. We were awed by the quantity, quality, and variety of the sushi. My first plate alone had more than $15 worth of sushi on it. I ate two more after that (those were smaller, though). The photos are up, you can see for yourself.
Most disappointing was the champagne bar in Paris (the casino). You would think they’d be able to get it right — the place cost millions of dollars to build — but no. In reality, most of their customers probably aren’t that discriminating, and the connoisseurs go to a good restaurant. Our tasting flights were not cold enough, and several of the champagnes were somewhat flat. Completely unacceptable, if you care about these things. By way of comparison, in France we almost always were served from freshly opened bottles, and even watched some hosts pour bottles down the sink rather than serve them past their peak.
We decided that if we ever went there again (they did have a nice selection of champagnes by the glass), we would sit at the bar, to supervise the pouring of our glasses and push back the unacceptable ones.
We had originally intended to have dinner at the restaurant in our hotel only once, on our first full day in France, but had ended up eating there our first night because we were too tired to go elsewhere. So when we arrived for dinner for which we had actual reservations, we were greeted even more warmly than the previous evening.
We had originally intended to have dinner at the restaurant in our hotel only once, on our first full day in France, but had ended up eating there our first night because we were too tired to go elsewhere.
So when we arrived for dinner for which we had actual reservations, we were greeted even more warmly than the previous evening. We also knew the champagne was excellent, and immediately ordered a glass as an aperitif.
Our meal lasted five courses, at the end of which we were stuffed. The photos will show you we ate well, though I can tell you they don’t do justice to the food at all.
One thing we didn’t take a photo of was the most expensive item for the meal: a bottle of Roederer Cristal. A very good price at a store in the US is $100; in a restaurant it’s quite a bit more expensive. In France the damage isn’t quite as bad, and we got to drink it at the store price instead of the restaurant price. Nevertheless, while we enjoyed it, we decided it wasn’t for us. We drank many champagnes we liked better while in France, most of them one-fifth the price, or less.