Heading Home from Spring Break: a Few Loose Ends

There's a few little stories I forgot to include throughout the week (and enough events at the airport so far to write a novel).

Earring

Wednesday evening, I realized I lost an earring.  Sadly, it was one of my favorite dressed-up-nice-fairly-conservative-but-not-boring earrings.  Silver double teardrop dangles from an old friend.  Yesterday, Mr. Trizzle's putting stuff in the backseat of his car and says, "I found your earring!"  He pulls this gigantic silver hoop of the floor.  I started laughing, "that's not my earring."

Po-po

Mr. Trizzle spent a great part of the week trying to convince me to like the police.  Then, on Wednesday, an investigator came into the DA's office.  He used to be a beat cop in Oakland.  After listening to him for over half  on hour during lunch, he completely undid any progress Mr. Trizzle might have made.  In fact, he probably increased my agreement with NWA's sentiment.

I have yet to meet an honest, decent, or trustworthy officer.  You can keep trying, but you have a large mountain to climb.

The Airport

Mr. Trizzle dropped me off at BART.  The train I needed was on the platform.  The Air BART bus was waiting at the Colosseum BART station.  There was no line for check-in and only four people in front of me at security.  I was through everything in no-time.  And then things started to go downhill...

I accidentally left my boarding pass in the restroom.  Luckily, I realized it pretty quickly and went back for it.  I decided to get a green tea frappe from Starbucks to help me have energy to work on my computer during the flight.  Got my drink, got to the gate, spilled half the drink on the floor.  Splendid.  Got set-up, everything was fine, airport guy called clean-up.  Then, some lady decided to try to roll her suitcase over my power cord.  Rolled the cord (and power pack) right into the green tea/whipped cream pile, turned around, and left.  Thanks, now I have a sticky, soupy cord mess to clean-up.  Got it cleaned-up.  So far, no new issues.

While waiting for my flight, the gate loads a flight to Denver, with continuing service to Nashville.  I'm waiting for a flight to LAX to switch planes to Nashville (after an 1hr and 1/2 lay-over).  Funny how that works.

The clean-up lady just came - no more giant green and white slosh puddle.

Spring Break Day #9: The End of My Trip

But Mommy, I don't wanna go back!

Low key day, last minute things in the Bay.  Went to Top Dog today to get a veggie dog since I hadn't been there yet this trip.  That was the first place Mr. Trizzle took me when I first came with him to Berkeley in 2007.  It was well after midnight, and we'd been driving across the country for 3 days.  Yummy veggie dogg hit the spot.  You'd think with a great first impression like that, I'd like Berkeley more.  Oh well.

Second stop was a clothing shop down the street.  There was this great hoodie I wanted to get for Munchkinhead.  It didn't come in anything smaller than a Large.  In case you couldn't tell by her name, Munchkinhead is not even close to a large.  Sadness, no hoodie.

Last stop for the day, Mr. Trizzle's house in the Berkeley hills.  I don't know what it is about that place, but being there always makes me a bit disgruntled and rather depressed about being in California in general.  I wound up back at the hotel missing Wisconsin more than ever and wanting to hug my mommy.  But I didn't hug my mommy; instead, I bought bubble gum, ba-oompa-oompa bubble gum.  Actually, I worked on my paper for most of the evening.  Mr. Trizzle worked on job applications.

The Contra Costa Country DA's office notified everyone to expect to be laid off at the end of April.  The Board of Supervisors is cutting the office's budget so much, they'll have to lay off 33 attorneys.  That includes the entire misdemeanor department.  You know what that means?  Everything at Target will be free!  (As long as you only take it in batches that total under $400 each time.)  I keep hoping the DA is frontin' to try and scare the Board.  Mr. Trizzle's pretty sure his job is gone, so he's looking everywhere in the state.  When he looked at the jobs in LA, I said, "yay, we can move to Torrance."  He said,"what's that?"  Guess not...

Tomorrow, it's back to the Ville.  S'psd to be in the 70's all week; that'll be nice.

Spring Break Day #8: Almost Like a Real Vacation (or Help, I'm Turning into Daddy!)

I wanted to go to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk for my last Saturday in the Yay. But, with a forecast of high of 58 and the boardwalk being on the ocean and stuff, that idea was vetoed. So, I told Mr. Trizzle he had to come up with something fun that he hadn't shown me yet. He did a great job! We went to the Tech Museum in San Jose and then to the Oakland Carnival. (Even Daddy would have had a tough time planning a better day.)

The Tech museum in San Jose was not at all what either of us expected. Based on the on-line information, we both expected a museum about tech. Here's an old computer, here's how technology has advanced, here's where we're headed - that sort of thing. Nope, it was basically a hands-on science museum, aka full of kids.

The line to get tickets was super long, and there was one person working the counter. The membership line was non-existent, but there were two people at that counter. Since the line was so long, I said to Mr. Trizzle, "can I just run into the gift shop really quick to look for something?"

"What?"

"A thimble for my mommy. She collects them, so every time we go somewhere, we get one for her."

"What's a thimble?"

"(suppressing giggle) A thimble is something you put on your finger when sewing so you don't prick yourself."

"Oh! The Monopoly piece."

"(failing to suppress giggle) Yes, like the Monopoly piece."

"Why would they have a thimble there?"

"Because people collect them. It's one of those random collectors items. Most museums have them."

Mr. Trizzle continued to assert that he thought it was ridiculous that I would look for a thimble in a tech museum and that he strongly believed I would not find one. I came back about two minutes later with this:

All he could say was "w-o-w." Hee hee. Point for goldenrail! Mommy, you'll get your thimble as soon as I mail it.

The museum itself was pretty cool. I would have had a lot of fun there with my sisters, especially in the giant Tinker Toys playroom. But Mr. Trizzle was some fun, too. He played a quiz game with me (and won) and he took a picture of me as a hockey goalie.

Museum admission also came with an Imax ticket. We saw a film narrated by Robert Redford about the saving the Colorado River. At one point in the film, they're touring these old Native American ruins and this lady says, "you have to admire the Anasazi for building their homes where there wasn't any water." And, true to what Daddy would do, I thought, "no you don't! That's stupid; that's why they all died when there was a drought and now it's just ruins!" The movie was a bit annoying because it's Berkeley-ness was a little over the top. I also found it kind of ironic in an amusing sort of way that this movie was being shown at the tech museum because it kept talking about how bad all these technological developments were for the river.

After finishing up the museum, Mr. Trizzle was given an opportunity to one of the things he likes best - jam sticks in The System's spokes. He was given this opportunity in the form of a parking ticket. The ticket was for an expired parking meter. But see, here's the thing: the meter wasn't expired, it was broken. They didn't ticket him for parking at a broken meter, or for being parked there too long (there was a two-hour time limit, but the ticket was given an hour and a half after we parked). So what did Mr. Trizzle do? He took my camera and took pictures of the area and the broken meter and he's going to send them with a letter in that little ticket envelope.

The freeway was gridlock at some point on the way back, so we got off and took a nice tour of Hayward and Oakland until we got to the Oakland Carnival. We had seen the carnival on the way out to San Jose, so Mr. Trizzle said we could go if the lights were on when we came back. They were!

It was the most ghetto carnival I've ever seen. The scariest people were the ones working there. (Who, incidentally, were also the only white people there.) They had messy hair, scrunched up faces and, for the women, too much bad make-up. The scariest was the guy with three teeth and a beer in his hand, he was running this one ride that flips upside-down.

We had a lot of fun. We both went on the Tilt-A-Whirl, the pendulum-thingy that they called 1001Nachts (there was this girl that sat next to us and kicked two little kids off - who had, in all fairness, just ridden - so that her boyfriend could get on the ride. He had some nice shiny grills in his mouth; I was a little jealous.), and that ride that flipped upside-down; it's called the Energy Storm. That ride was terrifying! I was slipping all over the seat, my head flew out sideways and I couldn't bring it back in. And to make it worse, being upside down that long made my head start to itch. Can't scratch it - still have cornrows! Mr. Trizzle also went on the Gravitron to use up the last four tickets, while I got a snow cone.

For dinner, we headed to one of Mr. Trizzle's fav Chinese places (one we hadn't been to yet), the Pink Place. I felt so awful that I could hardly eat anything. I had half a little dish of vegetable soup. Mr. Trizzle managed to eat the rest of it, but he wasn't feeling great either. I was so sad. When I was a little kid, we used to go on all the rides all day long, and spin around in the living room for fun. Now, like Daddy, everything makes me sick. It sucks! We paid for our very small dinner and headed back to the hotel. I was in bed by 8:30 on my last Saturday night in the Yay. :( At least the day had been a lot of fun.

Spring Break Day #7: The Lawyer, the Commodore, and the Pro-Wrestler

And they all sailed out to sea.  Ok, not really, except maybe the commodore, but they weren't in a tub anyway.

Today, I went into the City (that's SF for you non-yayers) to have lunch with one of my fav attorneys from City Hall that I worked with a lot last summer.  It was a nice lunch (very yummy veggie burgers) and great to catch-up.  I also got to stop in and say hi to my old supervisor and other attorneys with whom I worked.

After lunch, I headed out to Daly City to hang out with my uncle some more.  Several years ago my Aunt Cindy was supposed to be Commodore of their yacht club.  Sadly, she passed away before she had the chance to serve.  So, Uncle Stevie served as Commodore for her instead.  (He sent Daddy a card that was like a get-in-free-anytime card for any yacht club.  Daddy had no idea what to with it.)  During the past year, Uncle Stevie's live-in friend was the Commodore.  She passed away near the end of last year.  Now, Uncle Stevie's the Commodore again.

We spent the afternoon just chillin, catching up on family gossip.  He also made a yummy snack of tomatoes with basil and mozzarella cheese. :)  And I showed him how to email a file.  (He's still light years ahead of Daddy, who can't send an email at all unless he's hitting reply.)

I headed back to the East Bay on one of the longest BART rides I've taken, from almost one end of the line, to almost the other end.  By the time I got back into El Cerrito, the sun had completely set, so Mr. Trizzle picked me up from the BART station.  That was really nice of him.

Mr. Trizzle found something totally new and different to do in the evening.  We stopped at El Cerrito plaza for dinner (Chinese for him, not Chinese for me), and then headed into Oakland to a place called Parkway Speakeasy.  It's an old-schoolish movie theater with just two screens.  No rows of cramped-in folding seat , no $20 popcorn that you have to put your own butter on,  no getting lost trying to find the right screen. 

The concession stand is huge, and serves real food like sandwiches, salads and pizza.  And get this, the popcorn is regular popcorn, with real butter!  The seats inside are couches and comfy chairs  with little end tables next to them.  If you order food that needed to be cooked, the staff brings it to you and takes the giant letter they gave you at the concession stand.

Mr. Trizzle and I found a nice comfy couch and I curled up into a nice warm ball.  Once it seemed like almost everyone was in the theater, Mr. Trizzle went back out into the lobby to get concessions.  He came back with a metal bowl of popcorn and a bottle of white wine.  I felt like I should have been sewing instead of watching a movie!  We ate popcorn, sipped on wine, and watched the guys that run the theaters tell us about what's coming to the speakeasies.  Then the movie started, and that was pretty much the end of eating or drinking for me.

Mr. Trizzle has this thing about only going to see movies that have ranked really highly on Rotten Tomatoes.  Personally, I think this is a really stupid way to pick movies.  It doesn't matter what it is, if Rotten Tomatoes gives it like a 97%, he'll go.  Why should a bunch of critics know better about what kind of movies you like than you do?  Anyway, the movie was filmed partially in that hand-held home-video way that the Blair Witch Project was notorious for.  I was getting really bad headaches from not being able to focus on anything, and nauseous from all the jolting on screen.  I gave up on eating and eventually even on looking at the screen.

Besides not really being able to enjoy the movie because I couldn't physically watch about half of it, the plot was boring and depressing.  I don't like to waste my time filling myself with other people's bad emotions.  I have enough of my own.  If I'm going to spend two hours (or more) of my life in a fictional land, it better be happy or at least vampire funny (i.e. House of Yes). 

I was quite disappointed.  The movie sounded bizarre when Mr. Trizzle read the info, but I was willing to give it a shot.  After all, I wanted to see the speakeasy, but uck!  Ok, ok.  There were two good things about the movie:  The Music, it was a lot of 80s hair metal except for when younger strippers were on stage, then it was Stuntin Like My Daddy and other newer hip hop; and the fact that about half the movie takes place inside a strip club.

I may stop agreeing to movies Mr. Trizzle picks out because of their Rotten Tomatoes rating.  He did that once before with a DVD.  Michael Clayton.  NOT a feel good movie.  (But has sticking ability - I just found the actual title of the movie by googling a quote I remembered from it.)  Actually, maybe I can use this Rotten Tomato thing against him.  I just Rotten Tomatoed a slew of my favorite films and THE Pride and Prejudice, the one with Colin Firth, got 100%!  Boogie Nights and The Producers are also in his "will-view" range, possible Arsenic and Old Lace, too. Hee hee.

Spring Break Day #6: Productivity

Yesterday was a pretty low key day.  I spent most of the day recovering from the previous night and morning's nightmares and working on my paper.

When Mr. Trizzle came back from work, we headed into Berkeley.  He picked up his dry cleaning, (the suit I made looks really nice now that's been professionally pressed - that means I did a good job :) ), got his hair trimmed (I got a little nervous when a large disoriented guy stumbled into the shop with an almost empty open bottle of Absolut), and then we went to get some dinner.  Korean BBQ for Mr. Trizzle - i.e.  some rice and a big BIG pile of meat, Italian for me. :)

That's it, not very exciting, just nice and chill.

Spring Break Day 4: Family Time in the City

Today, I spent most of the day hanging out with my Uncle Stevie.  We toured art galleries in San Francisco in the morning.  I had no idea there were so many art galleries tucked in all over the place like that!  There was some pretty interesting stuff and some pretty scary stuff as well.  We also visited the Yerba Buena gardens  and walked behind the MLK waterfall.  We toured the area a bit, too.  (Art galleries don't open very early....)

For lunch, we met up with Uncle Stevie's good friend who works just a few blocks from where we were.  We had a really yummy lunch at a Asian Fusion restaurant called Unicorn.  When we first arrived, we were still waiting for Uncle Stevie's friend.  The waiter sat us at a small table in the center of the main aisle and said he'd add a chair later.  Then Uncle Stevie's friend showed up.  He knew everybody.  They moved us to a bigger table out of the path of the wait-staff.

After lunch, Uncle Stevie and I walked down to the Embarcadero to go inside the ferry building.  We glanced at the shops, looked out over the water, and headed back inland to see some sculptures around the city.

It was raining on and off most of the day, but the rain was very nice to us.  It only rained when we weren't walking outside.  When we went to get the car out of the parking garage, it was sunny and actually starting to get warm.  As we pulled out of the garage in the car: torrential downpour!  It worked like that most of the day.

We headed over to the East Bay in the early afternoon to avoid traffic later.  We hadn't been out of the car 2 minutes in Berkeley when we saw a booth for signing petitions to overturn a state law.  Vampiring Berkeley.  We tried to find some good things to do in Berkeley, but didn't have much luck.  The Berkeley Botanical Gardens were closed because the first Tuesday of the month is maintenance day.  The Berkeley Art Museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.  So we settled for wandering around, visiting bookshops and game stores and having an afternoon snack at a small Italian cafe.  It was still fun, but boy are my legs sore!

In the evening, we met Mr. Trizzle and his mother for dinner at that Chinese restaurant we almost went to on Sunday.  That's the reason Uncle Stevie and I had come into the East Bay in the first place.  Dinner was nice.  The food was good and the company quite enjoyable, despite the varied interests at the table.  Mr. Trizzle was still on a great high from having won a hard case in trial last week.  (Jury came back Monday, guilty on all counts.)  Trizzle's mom was glad to be out of her regular work/study routine.  (She's taking a teacher's exam in two weeks.)  Uncle Stevie said he enjoyed the day out and about (and wouldn't have to leave his house for another week after all this).  And I was glad to be with so many fun people and enjoying my spring break.

Hooray for another happy day. :)

Spring Break Day 3: A Greater Appreciation for Vandy

Today, after a morning of working in the hotel room, I voluntarily went into Berkeley.  Why do I do these things to myself?

There was a book I wanted for my paper.  Found the full text online...in Italian.  Not very helpful.  Found out from WorldCat that the Berkeley library and Boalt library (Berkeley's law school) had copies of the book.  And also that the closest copy to Nashville was probably at Nathy-Boo's school in Iowa.  Easy enough decision, time to get on BART and head to Boalt.

On the mile-long, completely uphill, walk from BART to Boalt there was a girl standing on the sidewalk handing out pamphlets.  (in your best sing-song voice) "It's a beautiful day to save the forests; let me tell you more about it!"  Vampiring Berkeley.  It was overcast, cold and rainy.

Boalt Hall is ug-ly.  Vanderbilt is very pretty.  Boalt is also under construction.  I found the library fairly easily, even though there was no welcoming Miss Phyllis to guide me in the right direction.  What I could not find easily was a seat in the library.  At quarter to three in the afternoon, every seat in the place was taken.  At Vandy, the place is nearly dead that late in the day, especially on a Monday.

I needed a little help finding my book because the library has several floors of stacks.  The girl at the Patron's Desk directed me to the 4th floor.  I took the elevator up and exited into a hallway with three unlabeled doors.  Well, one door had a label; it said "Stairs."  50/50 chance with the other doors.  What do I do?  Listen?  Go In?  Walk into a Wall?  I listened.  I heard a Tax Collector.  Oh no!  Run away!  Wait, the Tax Collector is chasing you!!!!  Just kidding.  I didn't run away.  I went in.

And it seemed like I somehow walked into a 4th floor dungeon.  The ceiling was so low, it barely cleared the top of my head.  Row after row of metal shelving units spanned the room, rising out of the concrete floor and blending in with the pipes above.  In the dim light, I could hardly find the call number I needed.  A row of windows lined one side of the warehouse like room, but they were covered in that white-don't-look-in-my-bathroom sheeting material, taking away much of whatever extra light the overcast sky was willing to share.

I headed back downstairs, book in hand, to scour out a seat.  No luck.  "Maybe there's secret study places like at Vandy..."  I started exploring.  Floor after floor of dungeon.  I found a help-me-I'm-short stool against a wall of empty shelves (where study hutches would have fit perfectly) with outlets in the middle of the wall.  I pulled up the stool, turned my jacket into a cushion and made myself a little study area.

After I finished in the library, I wandered around the Cal campus until Mr. Trizzle was finished with work and could get to Berkeley.  The campus is actually pretty nice inside, once you get away from the streets.  Minus those protesters and vampire.  There's tons of trees on the campus!  And this one area has such big trees and vines and bushes and stuff, I was totally expecting a dinosaur to step out into my path.  I don't get why people are sitting in trees behind the stadium when there's a bunch more of the same trees everywhere on the campus.  Oh, and a circle of fresh cut stumps with a sign that the "open space" is going to be utilized by planting a garden.  News for you: garden = no longer open space; it's a garden!

After wandering around long enough to get my fill of beautiful old buildings scrunched in with weird-looking modern ones, bicycles flying past and people dressed like sloppy clones in the name of 'diversity where everyone belongs', I headed over to the blue and yellow restaurant to meet Mr. Trizzle for dinner.  Dinner was very nice.  He got Chinese; I didn't; we were both happy.

P.S. I counted people in high heels during my 4.5 hours in Berkeley: 1.  3 if you count like Mzzzz Jones.

 

Spring Break Day #1: Round and Round the East Bay

Hello from the Yay!  Yesterday was my first full day of the "vacation" part of my Spring Break.  It consisted of a bit of a tour of the East Bay.  (click on images to see larger version)

Start: El Cerrito - I'm staying at a Super 8 in El Cerrito.  It's pretty nice.  The room has a separate little living area with a couch, table and desk; plus, there's a fridge and microwave.  The hotel has free wi-fi and a continental breakfast every morning.  A big bonus, which will be very helpful later in the week, the BART station is close enough that I can see it from my window.

Stop #1: Richmond - Being Saturday, Mr. Trizzle had to go into work.  He was in trial most of last week and had several witness rosters to fill out, plus some filing to do and an appellate brief to finish.  His office building and the adjoining courthouse sort of look like a middle school built circa 1950.  I liked his office because his desk reminded me of my daddy's (see photo).  I think the tree adds just the right amount of needed color.

Stop #2: more Richmond - After finishing up and Mr. Trizzle's office, we headed to The Legend's house to visit him.  He wasn't there. :(  We had tried calling first, but his phone was off.

Stop #3: El Cerrito again - It was well after lunch time (for me, Mr. Trizzle often forgets to eat) so we headed to El Cerrito Plaza for lunch.  And guess what we saw!  Berkeley students protesting. Imagine that.  Apparently they don't want Panda Express on their campus for a bunch of reasons.  They were handing out pamphlets that articulated their reasons in one very long quote with bad grammar and poorly structured sentences.  These reasons included that the food isn't healthy, the inauthentic nature of the cuisine will offend the authentic diversity on the campus, and the chain doesn't buy local "animal friendly" ingredients.  Ummm.... ok.  After eating at Panda Express, Mr. Trizzle wanted his picture taken with the protesting panda.

Stop #4: Berkeley - After lunch we headed to Mr. Trizzle's house in the Berkeley hills so I could watch him do his laundry and chat with The Legened on gchat.  (Ok, ok, I was supposed to be working on my paper, but it was frustrating and my seat on the bed was not comfortable, and there's a bit of animosity in that house.)  Somehow, all this took several hours, so by the time we left it was after 8pm.

Stop #5: brief layover in another part of Berkeley - We had to drop off some stuff Mr. Trizzle had borrowed from his friend J.  It was quick stop on the way to dinner.

Stop #6: Albany - Dinner time!  We had yummy (and cheap enough) burritos at Gordo's in Albany.

Stop #7: El Cerrito - We headed back to El Cerrito Plaza to do some grocery shopping at Lucky's.  I figure, being in a hotel for a week and a half, I'm not eating out every single meal.  So, we picked up some snacks and sandwich materials.  that way I can  also pack Mr. Trizzle lunches for work.  (Like I said before, he forgets to eat.)  Mr. Trizzle was so funny in the grocery store, "isn't this place huge?!"  It was the same size as all our Pick 'N Saves back home, but it is much bigger than the grocery stores out here, so I'll give him that.  El Cerrito Plaza is one of my favorite places out here.  Besides having a big grocery store, it has a Ross, and my absolute favorite, a brand new HUGE Jo-Ann.  ;)

Stop #8: Back to Richmond - Last stop of the evening, Mr. Trizzle had to pick up some more files from work to work on that evening and today.  It only took a few minutes.  He just had to sort through those huge stacks on his desk and pull out all the DUI's and petty thefts.

End:  Back at the Super 8 in El Cerrito.