07.06.08
Posted in Gaming at 9:29 pm by claud9999
The independence day weekend this year was celebrated by many by gaming our brains out at the Embassy Suites in San Luis Obispo. The wife and I traveled down Thursday evening and stayed the weekend at the Madonna Inn (cheaper than even the con rate at the Embassy Suites, what’s with that?)
Friday PM, I decided to give a try at the D&D competition. More below.
Saturday AM, a decent game of Spirit of the Century (great game mechanics!), PM was a Car Wars-like game and some other pickup games, followed by the second round of the competition.
Sunday AM, the last round of the D&D competition, a couple games of Go Stop with Tom Jolly and friends, and the amazing-as-always auction. (Won at auction a playtest copy of Chill 3rd Edition, Avalon Hill’s Starship Troopers, and some other stuff.)
All around excellent con, particularly ’cause I get to see my friends and some great gamers I’ve played with in previous cons. If you’ve been to small cons, you know how enjoyable they can be. You can’t go expecting to play your favorite games, you must be open to playing games you wouldn’t normally play, but the camaraderie and character of a small con is so enjoyable.
Regarding D&D 4E:
I hadn’t played in a competition in years and years, and this was an excellent way to learn the fourth edition rules (aka 4E.) I had read some of the rules previously, and had some opinions, but wanted to go into the competition with an open mind. Both a game I play in and a game I run are using 3.5E and are considering making the transition…
I almost played a halfling paladin (I enjoy playing odd characters) but ended up with a Tiefling warlord. Of all characters to play, this combo wouldn’t be my first choice, but I’m always up for a challenge.
Needless to say, I ended up winning the competition (well, I tied for first in the final round, and the other winner gave me the prize ’cause she already had the core books and I didn’t, yet.) It was an excellent opportunity to play, particularly ’cause it ended up being 12 hours with the same character and playing with a variety of other characters in a variety of situations.
The competition didn’t have a lot of roleplaying–it was mostly puzzle-solving and combat (more than I would like) so I still can’t decide whether I like Tieflings or dislike them…Although I did get a bit of roleplaying in and at least once I made a decision based on the nature of the race.
I suspect ending up with the warlord was the best choice for a competition because it’s a class that focuses on effects that help other combatants be more effective, and I was able to leverage those powers appropriately. I tried to create a bit of a character behind Lucieus, but it is difficult when you have a clean slate.
My observations on 4E after 12 hours of play:
Combat: The powers are very interesting to play, and were quite difficult to manage early on (when we were all learning, new to our 10th-level characters, and confronted with very powerful foes.) But by the final round, I had a good grasp of what powers worked well where, and there was constant tension between spreading out (to tackle multiple foes as well as make it more difficult to be hit by area effect) and keeping close (to flank, as well as to benefit from powers that have beneficial side-effects for allies.)
Level comparisons: I think 10th-level characters seemed less powerful in 4E than in 3.5E (but then we were fighting liches, demons, and other high-powered opponents, I’m just used to wizards and clerics having much more powerful spells as well as fighter-types having fancy attack combos. Reading rules and game logs, it seems 1st level 4E characters are akin to 5th level 3.5E characters, so it’s more a shallow progression from powerful to more powerful in 4E rather than from weak to extremely powerful in 3.5E.
Powers: These make it easier for new players to create exciting, and interesting combos in concert with other players. I am a bit concerned that it could result in “one trick ponies” that use one or two powers all the time for the same effect, but overall I do think it’s an interesting change (and one trick ponies can be counteracted by good DM’ing and possibly some simple house rules forcing players to re-jigger their characters.)
Other concern regarding powers is that it may result in player laziness–if a player can’t do his one trick in 3.5E, he has to get creative and find some way to help. (I certainly see a lot of “one trick pony” behavior in all editions.) In 4E, there is a laundry list of tricks with varying effectiveness, so the creativity boils more down to picking which power when, rather than situations like, “I can’t cast any useful spells, let me see if I can do something else like distract the bartender while the fighter throws the bar stool.” But if you’ve ever played with players who are tired, distracted, or otherwise, they quickly become a significant hindrance in previous editions. At least powers will ensure the party won’t suffer if one player answers his cell phone or is IM’ing a friend at the same time.
Classes: I feel like powers have caused the classes to be more homogeneous, the power choices are different but clerics seem even less different than fighters, warlocks, wizards, or rogues. Perhaps with more play it would be more clear, but it wasn’t in this “campaign”.
Conclusion: The game I am playing in is currently at 4th level in 3.5E, so it might be appropriate to take the plunge to 4E (but at 1st level in 4E). The game I am running just started 2nd level, so 4E is probably not appropriate but it might be interesting to try translating the canned dungeon and see how it changes the balance of play…
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06.08.08
Posted in Art Galleries and Museums, Artsy Fartsky, Contemporary Art, Technology at 7:27 pm by claud9999
So I lucked out and attended the 01SJ in 2006, which was such a cool event that I hoped it would return as promised. Sure enough, it did, and this one was different but just as amazing. Fewer events, but the SubZero street fair and a bit more focus on local artists was much appreciated. I attended almost all of the events I wanted to (missed the DJ Spooky event and the Target Day in the Park events on Saturday due to a conflict) over the period of a number of days.
Wednesday - Opening ceremonies; this was the only opportunity I had to see the “High ‘n’ Low Rider” sculpture (a scissor lift with a hydraulic platform on top that danced and spun by remote control) and I’m glad I saw it. Apparently, they were running on battery power so they had to somewhat limit movement, but still it was an impressive piece of machinery-art. Wish I could have seen more, I don’t know if they ran it after the opening ceremony. I really appreciated the anodized metal, chrome, and automotive paint used to detail the piece. Next up was a walk over to the city hall rotunda, to see the place lit up via projection from the inside (as opposed to the lighting from outside at the ‘06 event) with animated computer-generated tentacles growing slowly from the first floor to the second. Last was the “Portal, Wormhole, Flythrough” projection sculpture, which alas looked more impressive during construction. The concept was to show tunnel fly-thru’s from various computer games and movies and whatnot, but many were low-resolution or not even oriented correctly, breaking any sense of illusion.
Thursday - Movie night for me, I spent the night watching movies starting with the shorts at the “Future Films” exhibition (only caught 30m or so.) After that, at 6pm began the playing of Cory Archangel’s “Untitled Translation Exercise”, wherein he had some Indian actors (?) re-dub Dazed and Confused with little/no emotion. I haven’t actually seen the original movie, but it was still enjoyable and amusing to see re-dubbed by folks who probably have little idea what they’re saying. (Sorry, this could be taken the wrong way, I see it more as a view of how what we take for granted in American culture is Ameri-centric and how it loses meaning when seen from other cultural viewpoints.)
This was followed by “Spectropia” by Tony Dove and R. Luke DuBois–an “interactive film performance” where the two film makers used computer workstations with IR motion sensing to do things like control the pacing and editing of the film during playback, plus typing on the computer to control speech/video synthesis characters that interact with the audience. Nice ideas, a bit rough on the execution.
Saving the best for last, “Late Fragment” was not only an amazing film(s?) but a surprising amount of work to develop three films with storylines that cross at “hubs” and where the viewer (using a DVD player) can follow one character’s story or switch to another. The switching was fairly seamless and felt like we were watching a professionally-edited movie with a heart-wrenching trio of storylines. Only minus was not being presented with an example of how the story would play out with different choices. Still, I’m going to pick this DVD up, it’s a landmark piece of work along the lines of TimeCode. Excellent chat with one of the directors after made it worth sticking around for, wish I could have asked more questions. Wonderful Q&A.
Friday - Left work early, visited the San Jose Museum of Art for their exhibitions (Superlight, Robots, and some post-minimalist exhibition). Superlight had some very interesting pieces, namely Shih Chieh Huang’s “Twilight Zone” sculptures — animated fantastic creatures fabricated from the fetishistic computer parts from the casemod subculture, sculptures hanging from the ceiling that blink, make noises, and inflate and deflate plastic bladders (made from plastic bags used in packing, I believe). Completely mesmerizing. Also particularly of note was Genevieve Grieves‘ “Picturing 
the Old People”, which were HDTV’s turned sideways and arranged side-by-side, playing slow video loops of classic scenes being set as if they were turn-of-the-century photos of frontier folk and Native Americans in their staged b/w photos common in that era. (A-la David F. Barry’s highly-staged 19th century portraiture, which I happened to see at the Museum of the Rockies in March, how coincidental!)
Also jumped over to the Discovery meadow to check out “Homouroboros” by Peter Hudson (apparently a big Burning Man sculpturist.) The sculpture is an interactive experience where participants drum on digital drum pads long enough to get the monkeys to rotate around. Looking through the LCD shutter eye holes of cabled masks, that make the rotating monkeys into a zeotrope animation. Amazing work.
Vietnamese food for dinner (uninspired, alas), then on to the SubZero fair. The museums on First were a good way to spend the remaining hours of light while the fair was finishing setup, probably my favorite pieces were at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles including a video of water-soluble dress designs, a dress made out of videotape where the tape records the making of the dress, and a pair of outfits woven with wires and LED’s and the San Jose Institute for Contemporary Arts which had two amazing portraits by a very talented painter, very large pieces that capture their subjects with great emotion and use of color (actually not part of the 01SJ but nice nonetheless).
The fair was definitely the highlight of the 01SJ this time around, there was so much to see and do and to take in. Folks were very happy to chat about their art, and I enjoyed watching the works of the graffiti artist Sean Boyles and two of his friends on a side street, along with the antics of the Minneapolis Art on Wheels (MAW) collective projecting on walls and working with the Graffiti Research Lab to make large-scale digital graffiti projections. Music was awesome as well, and the crowd was big but not overwhelming. MAW folks were even kind enough to give me one of their hand-printed flyer, which I will cherish. Nice bunch of folks, who I hope will make their nearly-cross-country journey again in the future to visit us in the Bay Area. (Yuri’s Night Bay Area would make a great forum for their work, as with Boyles!)
Saturday - Spent recovering from the busy week, going to a friend’s wedding (Chinese seafood feast!), and a quick visit to the VIP reception on top of the Tech for some photos and taking in the view.
Sunday - A bit more taken in of the Museum of Art, some Vietnamese sandwiches (YUM) eaten at the park while watching pre-teen skateboarding and then the California Theater for “Beyond the Score - Classical Music Exposed - The Rite of Spring”. I’ve been a fan of Stravinsky ever since I heard the excerpt of The Rite of Spring on the Fantasia soundtrack, and it’s amazing to listen to the “Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky” recordings, so I was happy to hear that this was part of the VIP ticket. Apparently, according to the ticket agent, it was never relayed to the Symphony that this deal had been struck but she honored my pass and gave me a seat in the middle of one of the back-most rows, which was a very good spot indeed. Only problem was an 
occasional weird positioning of horns when they echoed off a side wall, and a bit of muddyness to the sound, but still quite good for a free (well, sorta free) seat. It was great to hear the history of the composition of the piece, woven with the orchestra playing excerpted passages compared with traditional tunes played on traditional instruments. After the intermission, the whole Rite of Spring was played straight through by the orchestra, a very fine performance, true to the Stravinsky Conducts Stravinsky take, and generally well played and conducted. It was quite surprising to me how loud a full orchestra can play, I can imagine how that must have felt for the first time, when the riots erupted. (I enjoyed the end-note of the symphony so much that I bought my wife and I two tickets for the Russian Piano Competition happening on the 14th of June.)
Summary: 01SJ was a stand-out art and cultural event that I am extremely happy to have been to, and I greatly hope they’ll be back in two years. It was a little rough around the edges but I was so happy to have some real culture in my backyard. As a friend mentioned, every other year is a good pace, giving artists and organizers some serious time to get ready for the next one.
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05.15.08
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized at 12:51 pm by claud9999
Found out that The Proclaimers were playing in Portland and Las Vegas, and my wife really liked them, so we decided to make a small vacation out of it. We flew up to Portland on Saturday, lunched at a greasy spoon diner (pork loin lunch, yum!) and spent the afternoon driving along the Historic Columbia River Highway (pdf). We stopped at the Crown Point Vista House, Latourell Falls, Shepperds Dell, the Bridal Veil Falls, and the Multnomah Falls. All were very nice, our favorite had to be Shepperds Dell, which was also one of the least trafficked and secluded.
We stayed in Vancouver, WA, at a Phoenix Inn Suites. The hotel was ok (I’d give it 3 out of 5), but the price was right. Not exactly true suites, and a bit rough around the edges, but no significant complaints. Dinner on Saturday was at Patrick’s Hawaiian Cafe in Vancouver, which was quite good and a great local spot. What a menu, this restaurant had, plus live music to boot.
Sunday we decided to avoid the mom’s day crowds and drive up to the ape cave, located on the side of Mount Saint Helens. Unbeknownst to us, the cave is a mile hike from the parking lot, and the mile trail was covered in snow with no markers or even an indication as to which direction we wished to hike. Warning to winter/spring travelers wishing to visit this cave: bring snowshoes and a GPS with the lat/lon of the cave entrance and/or a trail map. We enjoyed the drive, nonetheless, particularly there was very little traffic. On our way back, we stopped at the Oregon side of the Bonneville Dam and took the lovely tour. Dinner was at the Döner House, also in Vancouver, a fast food German restaurant, which was very good (as good as most German restaurant food I’ve had) and not busy.
Monday we headed into Portland via their light rail train system (MAX). The Chinese garden was our first destination, which was quite lovely. Definitely a different experience from the Japanese gardens we usually see, more of a focus on the courtyard design and the way windows and doorways create portals into the garden scene (almost as if framing a beautiful painting.) Lunch at a dim sum restaurant, a quick visit to Powell’s books (I’ve been trying to cull my book collection, so no interest there), then we tried to go to the art museum or some of the galleries, all of which were closed ’cause it was Monday. Dinner was at a lackluster Lebanese restaurant.
Tuesday was spent in Washington Park, first in the beautiful Japanese garden, then the Portland Zoo. Both were quite impressive, much better than we had expected. The zoo even had halfway-decent food (better than most zoos). The evening was the concert, with a nice meal of Cuban cuisine before. The concert was good, but not great.
Wednesday, before flying out, we had a couple hours which we spent by visiting Horsetail Falls, which we missed on Saturday. The hike was beautiful, hiking behind the upper falls was neat, and it was great fun seeing a pika about 20′ away from me in a pile of rock. We flew home after visiting the falls.
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05.02.08
Posted in Labor Unions, Politics, Rant, Uncategorized at 9:14 am by claud9999
The South Bay Labor Council (AFEU is an affiliate, and I’m an officer of AFEU) has been fighting for a living wage for employees who work at the SJC airport. It is shocking that employees who regularly work inside the security zone as “passenger service workers” (the folks who help out the disabled with wheelchairs and electric carts, for example) are paid an average of $16,640 a year and they do not receive health care or other benefits. Not only is this unfair and inappropriate, it poses a risk to the security of passengers and planes.
Read the full report: http://www.buildingabetterairport.com/other/BBAReport.pdf
And more details at: http://www.buildingabetterairport.com
(Note that San Francisco International [SFO] has a living wage ordinance and employers saw an 11% reduction in turnover of these employees. Less turnover results in reduced costs and increased airport security.)
Feel safe flying, now?
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04.08.08
Posted in Politics, Rant at 12:24 pm by claud9999
- The pottery barn rule.
- Mission Accomplished.
- As they draw up, we draw down.
- The surge is working.
- Six-month surge.
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03.19.08
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized at 3:02 am by claud9999
Went to the 2008 IEEE Aerospace Conference (I was the lead author on one paper and secondary author on a second) over the first week of March. Decided to head out a couple days early to get the tourism stuff over early.
Wednesday, Feb. 27 - flying out. Late lunch in Butte at a little pizza place. Ok food, nothing special. Checked in to the Gallatin Gateway Inn. We had stayed there one night in Oct. 2001 when we last visited Yellowstone, and were looking forward to
staying there again. Dinner was very nice, particularly the brownie dessert with caramel ice cream, caramel corn, and drizzled caramel on top. What, no nuts? No raspberry drizzle? No strawberries cut delicately and splayed out? PERFECT. The brownie was amazing, so amazing that we got it the second night.
Thursday, Feb. 28 - Drove down to W. Yellowstone for a snow coach tour, but first a quick breakfast of buckwheat pancakes, yum. The snow coach from Alpenguides amazing fun. We were packed in like sardines, and it was great fun. The pop-up roof was well worth it, when we came across elk and bison in the roadway folks could pop 
up and take photos safely and with little interruption to our trip. Much time was spent in the Old Faithful area, enough to see two eruptions and have lunch in the snow lodge, plus a visit to the castle guyser which was erupting constantly. Ride back we stopped at the mud pots, which are my favorites. Although I remember them being bigger when I was a kid…
Dinner in the evening was again at the Inn
, and was very nice again. This time, I had the Sonoran-spiced chicken breast, which was perfectly cooked and nicely spiced. Another glass of the same wine as Wednesday, delish (some Paso Robles red, I don’t remember the winery or variety, but it was very good, and I like to drink wines from my alma mater’s neighborhood, particularly when I find their wines at far-away places like this.) And we split the brownie this night…I was tempted by the bananas foster but my waistline thought the better of it.
Friday, Feb. 29 - Decided to wander around town, and noticed signs pointing us towards the 
Museum of the Rockies. I’m a museum junkie, so what the heck. Little did I know that this museum packed an extensive, and very important, collection of dinosaur fossils. These include the largest t-rex skull, a full t-rex skeleton installed in a display in the same arrangement it was found on the hillside, and a lot of other skeletons. Very interesting. Getting hungry, we decided to grab some lunch downtown (I kinda wished there was a dining option at the museum, but no biggie). We tooled around Bozeman, what a neat downtown! Not a chain store in sight (on the main drag, the chain stores are segregated to the south/west side of town) and some unique buildings. Happened across the Cateye Cafe on a side street and we had a late lunch of comfort foods (me: turkey shephard’s pie, her: grilled cheese with bacon.) We were stuffed and happy. Note to self, though, cianti does not go with turkey and potatoes. Everything was very tasty, including the cianti, and the staff was nice and friendly.
Evening, we decided to make the jaunt back to Butte to catch The Clintons playing at The Silver Dollar Saloon. We got there a bit early, not knowing what the parking/crowd situation would be like, and we had a couple drinks and some popcorn. (Only other option for food was pork rinds.) We were so stuffed from our late lunch that we didn’t need anything substantial, and the drinks were cheap, so who am I to complain? The band started promptly at 9pm, and they rocked! The acoustics, the crowd, the band were all jamming. The show lasted ’til 1:45am (yes, almost 5 hours) with only one 10-minute break mid-show. Seeing this band with locals was so worth the trip, you can’t imagine. Folks were singing along to many of their belters… Needless to say, the show was worth the trip, and I’d recommend The Clintons to anyone wanting to see a good show. Probably the best live act I’ve ever seen, although The Slackers (who played the lamplighter in Campbell, CA, a couple years back) would be a close second.
Saturday, Mar. 1, took the wife to the airport (on the way there it was snowing fairly hard, and my favorite part was driving past a couple horses running in the snow, what a sight!) Spent a couple hours in the Museum again (this time taking some photos), then picked up a co-worker from the other airport and headed up to Big Sky. Oh, had some mediocre Chinese food in Belgrade before heading up.
Sunday, Mar. 2-Thursday, Mar. 6 - Attended the 2008 IEEE Aerospace Conference. I was not particularly impressed by the venue (confusing layout, staffed almost exclusively by college kids, expensive) but the conference was great fun. On Tuesday, a co-worker from JSC and I headed down to the 
Lone Mountain Ranch for a day (~5 hours) of snowshoeing. I’d never done it before, and we had a blast. It was snowing most/all of the time, but generally little wind and we were warm the whole time. Buffet lunch at the ranch house was wonderful, and quite inexpensive for what was served. A real class-act, this Ranch. Much more calm than the chaos that is Big Sky. I didn’t get a chance (nor was I particularly interested) to do some downhill skiing. Perhaps next time.
Friday, Mar. 7 - Flew back to San Jose. Little did I know that the following week was spring break for the University of Montana in Bozeman. If/when I go back to the Aerospace Conference, I’ll try to make sure to find out when spring break is and plan accordingly. (It might have been wiser to stay a couple days after the conference…Although travel was fine.)
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03.11.08
Posted in Art I Like at 9:38 am by claud9999
I suppose you could call it “swirly expressionistic modern contemporary art” or somesuch. All I can say is I like it. Similar in many ways to other artists I like, particularly Sarah Applebaum, Matthew Ritchie, Robert Goodnough, Julie Mehretu, Jane Fine, and Reed Danziger.
http://aurorarobson.com/
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02.20.08
Posted in Gaming, Rant at 10:26 am by claud9999
Friday night, went to see Barry Manilow. I’ve never been a big fan, but I appreciate a decent pop tune like his or Streisand or Clooney and they are all consummate showpeople so the opportunity to see him perform live, when my wife’s best friend impelled my wife to attend, drew me to the show.
I think I’d enjoy an Einsturzende Neubauten concert more (with earplugs, surely)…but San Jose, cultural stepchild to SF/Berkeley, rarely gets anything but the big pop acts.
The opening act (whose name escapes me, it was that “eh”) was ok, it seemed more like a high school jazz band than a professional act, but apparently many folks enjoyed it. I thought the funk melody was particularly eh, if I wanted to hear some good funk, it wouldn’t be from a mediocre jazz band. And the engineering was ok, the lead singer’s keyboard was barely audible in parts.
Then, after much time, Manilow’s show started. Boy was it loud! Isn’t that sad, to say that a Manilow show was too loud for me? But I suppose, given the screaming from the ladies a couple seats to my left, I wouldn’t have heard anything if it weren’t turned up to 11. But at that volume, all tonality dies and all I hear is white noise. Luckily, that only plagued the opening (and closing) songs, and the best part (the slower tunes) were quiet enough to be pleasant. A little feedback on the louder tunes, but overall well engineered and produced. Manilow was the image of showman, playing off his act in parts as unscripted, and adding in some unscripted interactions with the audience in stride. Overall, a worthwhile show.
Saturday-Monday were occupied by Dundracon, in San Ramon. I am not a big fan of big gaming cons (I forget which was the last one I went to, up in Burlingame) but the bug hit me, and a friend highly recommended the con.
Saturday: arrived ~8:30am, too late to crash a Saturday 8am game, and not likely to crash a 10am game. I was surprised that games had started but the reg desk didn’t open ’til 9:30am. The staff took my $50 and gave me a badge with efficiency, but they all seemed dour. Yeah, a con is a lot of work, and a lot of attendees are real losers and quite annoying, but a little friendly banter or at least a smile would have been nice when I’m being friendly with them. (And unlike other attendees, I didn’t stand in the way while I tried to make chit-chat about my favorite game of the week.)
It would also be much more realistic to have all games start at the same time in their slot (say 9-1, 2-6, 7-11) and any game lasting more than 4 hours should take two slots…Or a timeline chart showing the start and end times would make it much more clear what commitments I was making when I registered for a particular game.
I registered for afternoon games and then wandered around to find a pickup game. About the only games that folks were playing in the open gaming were Euro games, which I will only play with friends when forced. They’re all good, but I didn’t feel like learning yet another game.
A new game designer was doing demos of a fun party game called MagnetX which uses polished hematite magnets on an acrylic square playfield. Place a magnet on the field without forcing others off or letting any touch. Basic, fun, and enjoyable for a while, and a game my wife would play since the rules are extremely simple. Bought a copy and some other games from the game room, and had time to spare. Wandered some more, checked out the Axis & Allies collectible war game going on, played a fun game of Zombies!!! with some guys.
The afternoon game I ended up in was a “Spirit of the Century” game. I really like the system, based on the FUDGE open gaming system. The aspects are particularly fun; for example I added an aspect to my character called, “Ear-piercing scream.” If I burn a fate point, I can use the scream to my advantage. If the GM gives me a fate point, he can use the aspect against me. Overall the game was ok, the GM seemed distracted and unprepared but overall he was able to carry the evening well enough. Ending up before 10pm, I took the opportunity to head home and catch some sleep.
I heard that a drop-in Dark Heresy (the new Warhammer 40k RPG) session was starting at 8am, but I found out that it started at 10am instead. I was concerned that it would leave me with few options, and an old-school AD&D session started at 8am. I was able to crash the game and enjoyed it fully. Old school dungeon crawl with a great DM. Afternoon, played a pickup game of Hackmaster, which was new to me. I really enjoy the Hackmaster system; it addresses what was wrong with AD&D, adds a great deal of detail and unity (combining many of the add-ons from AD&D), and maintains the old-school feel.
Monday was spent playing a very quick (and very deadly) Descent game, followed by Ticket to Ride, a couple demos of Go Stop (a Korean flower card game).
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01.02.08
Posted in Travel at 8:16 pm by claud9999
The wife and I decided to go away somewhere for a short getaway over the xmas holiday, given that she had 11 days off and while we should have visited family, we wanted to travel somewhere near. I thought of Sonora or somewhere else in Calaveras County, I wasn’t familiar enough with the towns and the reviews online were very mixed for any place I found at all intriguing.
I ran across a bunch of positive reviews of the hotels in the Yosemite National Park, and I thoroughly enjoyed staying in the Yellowstone National Park way back in ‘01 so I thought, what the heck. While the Ahwahnee sounded interesting, and the lodge also sounded reasonable, I settled on the Wawona ’cause it lacked TV’s in the rooms and I thought it would be a bit more quiet and out of the way.
In reviewing options for our stay, I noticed the Bracebridge Dinner package option and was floored by the price, but thought there must be something to this dinner. I was afraid it would be some Victorian xmas affair with lots of Christmas Carol crap and jingle bells and all that. I was surprised and impressed with the often traditional and unique music, and the Elizabethan storytelling made it worth giving a college try.
Best part, I kept the whole affair a secret from my wife until the day we were driving out to the valley. Her work and other holiday stress were weighing on her mind much, and this provided a much-needed distraction as she tried to guess and prodded me regularly for hints. I kept them to a minimum, and even let her make incorrect assumptions to side-track her a bit; she really likes to research every aspect of travel and I wanted her to be surprised.
We were very surprised, the trip to the valley was easy-going (driving out on the 23rd, leaving first thing in the morning) and we lunched in the Yosemite Lodge cafe before heading to the Wawona. The hotel is basic, to say the least, and a bit worn around the edges, but it served our purposes and kept us away from crowds (the valley was quite crowded) and noise. The staff of the Wawona and it’s attached dining room were quite nice, the breakfasts filling but nothing outstanding, the lunch and dinner fare was very nice and worth every penny.
The xmas-eve Bracebridge Dinner was amazing, worth every penny. Music, food, decor, staff all top-notch. Only two minor complaints; too much drinking by many of the guests and a couple times the music players were a bit off time (I’m hyper-sensitive to timing in music.) We shared a table with a family of 7 that must have drank 8 bottles of wine throughout the evening, and one woman on the shuttle to/from the Wawona tossed cookies before our trip back.
The history of the dinner is as interesting as the event is enjoyable, definitely read up on it if you don’t know the history. My wife was ecstatic, and proclaimed it to be the best xmas she’d ever had. Doesn’t hurt that she got many compliments on her dress ($45 from JCPenny’s, $12 shoes to match.)
Xmas day we also took the bus tour of the valley, which was ok. Saw much of the same things as we saw on our own, and was a bit pricey for what we got, but it passed the time and kept us warm while we got even better views of the sights.
Xmas dinner was a special menu at the Wawona, which was quite nice. I had duck with cranberry sauce; very tasty. She had the salmon, which was a bit overdone and dry. But overall dining in the valley, even at the lodge (twice for lunch) was enjoyable and far exceeded our meager expectations.
Snow in the Wawona Valley was minimal, far less than the Yosemite Valley, but enough to make a walk around the ‘hood on the 24th a challenge. We did some exploring (mostly driving) of the Yosemite Valley but we mostly relaxed and spent time in the room reading and whatnot. It was good to get some serious, uninterrupted reading done; two more PKD books under my belt, “The World Jones Made” and “Clans of the Alphane Moon”, both quite excellent and quite different. I guess you could say that I had an all-Bay-Area xmas, Dick being a local for most of his life. I have to wonder how often Dick visited Yosemite and what he did there.
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12.06.07
Posted in Politics, Rant at 8:38 am by claud9999
First, it’s interesting that the much-touted NIE was held up for over a year by Cheney ’cause they didn’t like what it had to say. Does that mean that W knew for a year that Iran had no nuke weapons program? (Thanks to Harry Shearer’s Le Show for that “outside the bubble” news item.)
Second, what I haven’t heard any pundit, representative, or anyone (not even David Kay, hello? Mr. Ex-inspector man…) suggest is to insist on Iran have inspectors monitor their weapon program as a pre-req for lifting sanctions. Duh.
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