Travel, in person and in media
Had a lovely time in San Francisco.
I stayed with my college friend R., which was a treat. Also got to have dinner one night with old friend G. & his fiancée, and another night with the most excellent laurashapiro.
Four days was barely enough time to get a sense of the layout and a taste of the neighborhoods, so it served as sort of the sampler tour. Highlights for me were:
- Catching a city bus from the east edge of Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach: a quiet weekday morning on the Pacific, a few joggers and dog walkers, waves and wind-carved ripples on the sand
- Eating shrimp-and-leek and spinach-garlic dumplings in Chinatown, peas and cherries and tomatoes from the Ferry Building farmers market, "Harvey Milk and Honey Graham" ice cream from Humphrey Slocombe, clam chowder at Fish. in Sausalito, morning bun at Tartine bakery
- Taking a three-hour hike through Muir Woods with R.
- Climbing narrow wooden stairs up Telegraph Hill, winding among close, lushly gardened homes
- Hearing the wind howl and watching the fog roll across Sutro Tower one evening from the Castro
- Watching the machinery run at the Cable Car Museum
- Playing pinball and wandering through aisles of antique carnival games and creepy fortune-telling machines in the Musée Mécanique
- Touring the kink.com sets. :) R. even came along.
- Seeing the building where they set the interview part of Interview with the Vampire
I caught a cold on the way home, so basically all I've done since then is watch a lot of TV and movies and spend a few days at the office.
On Saturday I decided to make it fun by setting up mini-marathon themes, like "Australia" (more of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries season two, Tracks, Rabbit-Proof Fence). Other times, random pairings turned up unexpected similarities. Like how Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Turbo both featured a sudden and hilarious Auto-Tune song. Or how Talk of Angels and the second Bridget Jones' Diary turned out to have f-->f-->m love triangles.
Hm, what else did I watch? 12 Mile Road with Tom Selleck, which was like The Horse Whisperer lite; Touching the Void, which was pretty good; and Her, which I'd give maybe a B? I can't decide whether the ways in which it broke formula and tried to have insightful commentary on gender, relationships and societal attachment to technology outweighed the parts that were same old, same old. Interested in seeing Ex Machina at some point.
Caught up on Game of Thrones and John Oliver; watched some Ace of Cakes reruns; tried to watch the season premiere of Penny Dreadful but got bored.
Plan is to see Clouds of Sils Maria tonight with childhood friend and Avengers: Age of Ultron tomorrow with fan peeps. Kristen Stewart is my main draw for the former, and Hugo Weaving and Thomas Kretschmann for the latter, although I am given to understand that Weaving will be in the mask and TK has only a small part? Alas. We'll see.
I stayed with my college friend R., which was a treat. Also got to have dinner one night with old friend G. & his fiancée, and another night with the most excellent laurashapiro.
Four days was barely enough time to get a sense of the layout and a taste of the neighborhoods, so it served as sort of the sampler tour. Highlights for me were:
- Catching a city bus from the east edge of Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach: a quiet weekday morning on the Pacific, a few joggers and dog walkers, waves and wind-carved ripples on the sand
- Eating shrimp-and-leek and spinach-garlic dumplings in Chinatown, peas and cherries and tomatoes from the Ferry Building farmers market, "Harvey Milk and Honey Graham" ice cream from Humphrey Slocombe, clam chowder at Fish. in Sausalito, morning bun at Tartine bakery
- Taking a three-hour hike through Muir Woods with R.
- Climbing narrow wooden stairs up Telegraph Hill, winding among close, lushly gardened homes
- Hearing the wind howl and watching the fog roll across Sutro Tower one evening from the Castro
- Watching the machinery run at the Cable Car Museum
- Playing pinball and wandering through aisles of antique carnival games and creepy fortune-telling machines in the Musée Mécanique
- Touring the kink.com sets. :) R. even came along.
- Seeing the building where they set the interview part of Interview with the Vampire
I caught a cold on the way home, so basically all I've done since then is watch a lot of TV and movies and spend a few days at the office.
On Saturday I decided to make it fun by setting up mini-marathon themes, like "Australia" (more of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries season two, Tracks, Rabbit-Proof Fence). Other times, random pairings turned up unexpected similarities. Like how Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Turbo both featured a sudden and hilarious Auto-Tune song. Or how Talk of Angels and the second Bridget Jones' Diary turned out to have f-->f-->m love triangles.
Hm, what else did I watch? 12 Mile Road with Tom Selleck, which was like The Horse Whisperer lite; Touching the Void, which was pretty good; and Her, which I'd give maybe a B? I can't decide whether the ways in which it broke formula and tried to have insightful commentary on gender, relationships and societal attachment to technology outweighed the parts that were same old, same old. Interested in seeing Ex Machina at some point.
Caught up on Game of Thrones and John Oliver; watched some Ace of Cakes reruns; tried to watch the season premiere of Penny Dreadful but got bored.
Plan is to see Clouds of Sils Maria tonight with childhood friend and Avengers: Age of Ultron tomorrow with fan peeps. Kristen Stewart is my main draw for the former, and Hugo Weaving and Thomas Kretschmann for the latter, although I am given to understand that Weaving will be in the mask and TK has only a small part? Alas. We'll see.