Truckee

We're on our annual 'get out of Texas in August' vacation. As I've previously reported, this summer has been rough in terms of temperature. As I've left it's finally started to rain on and off, and the temperature is predicted to be only in the upper 90s. But with the rain, it's humid, etc....

So I'm up at altitude, which is lovely.

However, let me send out a general comment that watching 'live' events on the west coast sort of sucks. I speak in general, because that "previously recorded" note on top of the "LIVE" that ends up in the corner of your television feels just mean.

And more specifically, because you've had to take the already depressingly tape delayed Olympics, and delay it further. Here, where to actually watch quite a few of the events live would be entirely reasonable to do. No no, you get to see things a full 24 hours later as well as 3 hours after the east coast. My biggest current irritation was the 3 hour delay of the men's marathon that took place Sunday morning in Beijing - you know, because watching something live that started at 3:30 pm on a Saturday afternoon is such a difficult thing to do....

But I digress.

Highlights of the trip thus far:
* Got a genuinely cheap rental car - yay for off-airport car rental locations!
* $25 hotwire rate for a room on the club level at the Atlantis. It was a really swanky room.
* Already 1 trip to Sierra Trading Post - and their Labor Day Sale time of year
* Walking, hiking, skating, running, and maybe some boating are all in the plans.

Trip to San Francisco, part 1

Ok, so it's not all that novel - a trip to San Francisco. I mean, Tom is there all the time. But this is the first trip I've made up there in quite a while. As always, Tom was working, but I wandered about a bit and found some nice fun things.

Here's the Ferry Building the day I visited. I had to wear a coat on occasion. It was fabulous. While it was a beautiful blue sky in this direction, if you looked across the bay, it was foggy and crappy, so I elected not to bore you with a picture of that.


I visited the Timbuk2 store. Timbuk2 bags are available in many places, including my favorite Sierra Trading Post. However, they are based in San Francisco, and there are some fabrics and styles of bags that are only available there. I got this nifty new custom bag.


I did run across a janitors strike near Union Square. I walked along with them for a bit.


More to come.