Trip report, part 2

Back home as I write this, but here's the rest of my trip report...

Tuesday, as I said, was the drive up to San Jose to see makovette. We had dinner at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant followed by ice cream at Coldstone. We then hung out at Mako's house until sometime around 11 pm-ish, then headed back to the hotel.

On Wednesday, we saw the San Jose Tech Museum and got to watch a "Blue Planet" episode in IMAX. The Tech Museum was a lot of fun, both for me in and out of character. :) I suspect Jake Clawson's background must be in some kind of engineering especially considering he designed nearly all of the weaponry the Turbokat carries. But I digress. After the Tech Museum, we joined Wolftribe to go see "Kung Fu Panda".

Thursday saw a trip down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where I got to check out the aquarium's newest exhibit, "Wild About Otters". I added an Asian small-clawed otter plushie to my collection. Those critters are definitely aquatic ferrets... with just as much energy and playfulness, even moreso than the sea otters. The other otters on exhibit were snoozing so they weren't as much fun to watch. While in Monterey, I also picked up a couple of presents for ionotter and krag_carbine.... only I need your snailmail addresses to send you the stuff (though I actually have Ion's address).

On Friday we drove up to San Francisco to check out Kung Fu Panda in IMAX at the Metreon. That was immediately followed by a drive back to San Jose to catch a matinee showing of WALL-E. I'm not going to say much about the latter except for that some of its scenes were really off-the wall... "Foreign contaminant... foreign contaminant..."

Saturday saw us meeting with a couple other friends, MathueTaxion and Kerwin, and checking out some classic cars, before heading back down to L.A. A couple of the cars in the collection reminded me somewhat of the cars that my mom and dad had while I was growing up. My mom had a 1972 Dodge Swinger and my dad had a Chevy Nova II. The car resembled a Malibu somewhat but the interior was different. (Anyone got any pix of the interior of a 1960s Chevy II, by any chance?)

On Sunday I flew back, dropped off technocollie at home, then headed home to zonk out. Yesterday and today it was back to work. Interestingly enough, I saw my sister-in-law's sister's family on board the flight home, and it turned out they were also on our outbound flight (though I didn't see them on the outbound one).

Since then, things have pretty much been back to normal, but it was a great trip (we dubbed it "NobuCon") and thanks to all those who helped make it a fun trip!

A few odds and ends...

My last entry was written mostly on Sunday but I fell asleep before I could post it.

When I came home Sunday night, Lani greeted me with quite a bit of meowing and has been rather verbal since. I guess she must have been really lonely without me. The past couple of nights she's stayed close, I think because she doesn't want me to leave her again.

For the past few weeks my workplace appears to have been adopted by a calico cat. It looks something like a yellow-orange tiger-striped cat (like Morris) that has had paint splattered over it, so aesthetically I don't find it very beautiful. It is, however, just as vocal as Lani, if not moreso, and definitely wants attention. Then last night, when I left work, I saw a black cat similar to Lani, except its paws and whiskers were white. It looks like this cat has decided to adopt my work center as well.

Side note to krag_carbine: can you give me your snailmail address? I picked up something in Monterey that I think you'll have fun with. :)

And finally, lemme close with a poll:

[Poll #1215839]