July 10, 2006

San Fran I

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | Vacations and Photos | TrackBack | Stumble

July 9, 2006

Ugh

So, travelling sucks more than I remembered. We got three hours of sleep, left the house in the capable hands of A's brother, and went to the airport at 5:30 a.m. Got all checked in. Waited for the boarding time. Yea, the announcement to bo--

I mean the cancellation of the flight. UGH.

So, everyone practically ran back out of the secure area and back to the ticket counter. Luckily, our local airport only has the equivalent of puddle jumpers, so it's not like there were 100 people in line in front of us. But there were enough to make us really nervous about what was going to happen. Two people are at the ticket counter. What the hell???? Another comes out. Disappears. They teased us like that for a while and then finally had 3 people helping us and another one helping people getting checked in for flights that weren't cancelled. We were lucky. There was a bus to O'Hare leaving in about an hour and a flight to San Fran that we should be able to make easily from there. Originally, we were going to fly to Minneapolis and then to San Fran. This was going to be somewhat easier.

Cell phones are an evil, evil invention in the wrong hands. Really, this is not a non sequitur. A teenaged girl sat behind us on the bus, spread across both seats in her "aisle" and proceeded to talk LOUDLY to everyone she knows. I contemplated turning and telling her I saw a horrible wreck and needed to call 911, could I borrow her phone? Then I was going to take her fooken battery until she got off the bus. :) A informed me this would not be a particularly good idea. Finally, the child lost cell service ...
after we learned that:

• she'd been in lots of programs like this
• she liked this program more
• she didn't want to go home
• Adam knew her name the first day. How could he know that? She only met him running through the sprinklers the night before. Did he remember her from that? (This was, apparently, never resolved for certain.)
• she ignored the call when her mother tried to beep in
• generally when she leaves these programs, she cries hysterically
• she loved this program most of all, but she did not cry hysterically
• she SO did not understand why she was not crying hysterically this time

At that point I hestitated to turn around and ask if it was perhaps because she had matured a little, but given the phone conversation, I think I can rest assured that she had NOT matured very much.

Then we were finally at O'Hare. And ooooo! After we got our boarding pass and got in the security line, guess what? We were SELECTED! Oh joy of joys!

Really, the "special screening" is not that bad. The pat down scared the crap outa me beforehand - I do NOT want to be felt up by some random woman - but it wasn't like that at all, actually. The screening of our stuff was really interesting. They opened up each carryon bag and swabbed it inside to test for explosives. She tested my watch, too. Watching her test the laptop was kinda cool. She just swabbed any area where the machine might have been opened up and explosives placed.

All this took maybe an extra 5-10 minutes at most. Not bad at all.

On the plane to San Fran, however, we got stuck by the evil-family-from-hell. Toddler girl-child, boy around 6, girl around 8. Mother's emotional age was maybe 9 at best. Great, so FOUR kids and a Dad who tried to escape the drama by pretending to sleep. Why do I say pretending to sleep? Because Mom-the-genius brought some games for the kids. Good, right? Not when the game is a card game called slamwich in which the child is supposed to slap the cards at some designated point OR call out STOP THIEF at another point.

The eldest girl and her mother played this game frequently. The eldest child delighted in slapping the tray on the back of Dad's chair as hard as possible. She kept waking ME up, so I know Dad was NOT sleeping.

Then again, the poor man may very well have been used to that level of noise in his home, so who knows.

Needless to say, the constant stream of musical chairs in the family and littlest shrieking from time to time for no apparent reason other than their portable DVD player did not seem to be working, the plane ride SUCKED.

We finally got to San Fran around 3 p.m. their time, which was 6 p.m. our time. Got to the Pickwick Hotel around 4, decided to go walking the neighborhood for somewhere to eat and discovered there's an Apple Store just down the street. *rubbing hands in utter glee* In fact, the other half already reminded me that we want to do lots of things on this long trip and I was not allowed to max out all of my credit cards and spend every cent I have in the Apple Store. Damn.

Anyhow, it's 6:30 and I'm done sleeping for now, so I thought I'd take advantage of the quiet moment to post. I love my laptop and its backlit keyboard ... makes being on the computer in a totally dark room much easier. But I'm not going to be able to resist waking up A and trying to drag her out the door to Fisherman's Wharf and Alcatraz much longer.

Should be posting pictures for a few days after this instead of full posts. Enjoy!

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:12 AM | Comments (2) | Vacations and Photos | TrackBack | Stumble

July 21, 2005

More from the Shedd Aquarium

Well, I tried to post this yesterday before a Battle of the Blogs battle, but something went crazy screwy at the server level and, as I got ready to hit post . . . blam, no access to the database, no access to anything within Moveable Type, no post. (And, of course, I got slaughtered in the battle, too.)
Without any explanation of what happened, though, 18 hours later, here's the entry:

So, fish are usually a bit on the boring side for me. I like seahorses, turtles, frogs, rays and the like. But taking pictures of the frogs at the aquarium was particularly frustrating.

This little guy posed for me a couple of times before high-tailing it up a "tree trunk."

I thought I had this picture done up just right, but it was a very early shot when I was still too excited at the cool stuff to truly notice how much glare and reflection was appearing on the glass. When I look at the whole photo in its 1600xwhatever glory, I can clearly see a translucent ghost of myself reflected in the glass. *sigh*

Posted by Red Monkey at 3:22 PM | Comments (0) | Vacations and Photos | Stumble

July 18, 2005

Shedd Aquarium

So one of my most favorite things in the world is taking pictures. I don't like taking pictures of people - I prefer landscapes and animal pictures.

So, I thought I'd share a few of the pictures from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

Jellyfish
I just love these little glowy guys. I tried to take better pictures of some jellyfish at the Brookfield Zoo, but the camera battery died. I was frustrated, but then, I went a little crazy taking pictures of the mama gorilla and her baby just before we got to that area. So, this picture comes from the Shedd aquarium which was NOT set up for picture-taking.

Ray (sting ray? manta ray?)
And here you see what I mean that the Shedd is NOT set up for picture-taking. (Like it should really just be there so I can be picture-happy. Yes, I said it, a major city aquarium should be there so I can point my li'l camera and get snap-happy. But you see what I mean, anyhow.)
Anyhow, the lights were set at the wrong angles so you always got glare on the glass from the back-lighting. These pictures were taken with no flash . . . and after the first couple of pictures I realized I also had to wait until all of the other folks had walked past, position myself just right so I didn't get my own reflection in the glass and then still manage to frame the picture right.

Tomorrow a couple of pictures from the Brookfield zoo.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:58 PM | Comments (0) | Vacations and Photos | Stumble

July 11, 2005

vacation

So, my sister and her husband are beginning a trek and adventure in the morning. They are moving from Texas to New York City. (And every time I think that, I hear the Pace picante salsa commercial. "New York CITY?")

Jenny is an elementary school music teacher with a job in the city now. Alejandro is a jazz guitarist, wanting to take his chances in NYC. They'll be passing through on their way to NYC, so I'm swinging over to my aunt and uncle's house to meet her for a few days and probably won't have internet access - or uninterrupted writing time, although I'll bring my notebooks and write when I can and post when I get back.

I wish them the best of luck on their move and their new careers. And I'm just hoping I get through this trip in one piece!

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:50 PM | Comments (0) | Vacations and Photos | Stumble