Organisms Like Mermaids

28 April 2002

So. Yesterday's plan was to head to Stan and Judy's for brunch, then up Mt. Tam, then out to Angel Island and then back into Sausalito for dinner at Fukusuke before heading home. (For those of you in need of a scorecard, Stan and Judy are Timprov's aunt and uncle.) The plan was revised almost immediately, as it took us an hour to get up to Stan and Judy's. An hour. Last time it took three. We had adjusted for Saturday morning, but not enough, so we were still embarrassingly early. It was all right, though, they seemed happy to see us, and we had a good brunch (with strawberry rhubarb pie after...yum...) and talked with them. Whenever we're around Stan and Judy, I feel like I should take notes on all the things they've done around the Bay Area and think are worth doing. They always have lots.

So we went up to the top of Mt. Tam and hiked their loop trail up there. It was a very nice mountain, very pretty. In some ways superior to Mt. Diablo, but mostly just different. There's a good deal more to explore up there, and I would like to go back. (Hmm. Kind of a theme this week, I think.) But after that, my foot was absolutely killing me, and Timprov suggested that perhaps we shouldn't go out to Angel Island and hike around some more. Instead, we went to the Bay Model.

Oh my. There was a group of Chico State students there getting a docent lecture, so we listened in on parts of it. And while there were some really interesting things in the lecture that you couldn't find out otherwise, the docent was such a big dork. Such a big dork. He said, "I learned from a group of fifth graders that the Bay looks like a mermaid. So you have to think, if you say, 'Hey mermaid, I'm going to grab your stomach,' is that going to be a happy mermaid? No, that's an unhappy mermaid. Or, 'Mermaid, I'm going to cut your nose off,' is she going to be happy? No, she'll be unhappy. So if we think of the Bay as an organism like a mermaid...."

That was when we wandered off. An organism like a mermaid. Um, yeah. Anyway, the Bay Model closed at 4:00, and as far as we knew, Fukusuke didn't open until 5:00. So we wandered a bit into downtown Sausalito. And found The Great Overland Bookstore Company. Ohhhhh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my. They had so many books. Not so many in an absolute sense, but so many we wanted. Oh. I got a folklore book I've been looking for (about folklore as a field of study, not about specific stories) as research for one of the Not The Moose characters. I got an out of print Christopher Fry play. Angry Young Spaceman and Damnation Alley. A cheap copy of The Female Man. And a 1955 memoir from the then-recently retired head of MI-5. Mark got a two volume set of math stuff, a book of science essays (which I'll read, too), and a book on Go. And Timprov found three, count 'em, three books on Malaya. It's reasonably easy to find books on Malaysia if you go to the travel guides. But historically, when it was Malaya? Oh, forget it. But this place had three. And a book on the Hungarian Revolution for both of us. And. Their San Francisco location, which is not far from Chinatown, is holding a book about Finland for me -- a British man's perspective on years there. Could not sound more perfect for the NTMB. So I'm excited about that.

Then we had juice/tea/root beer in the back garden of a deli and talked and waited for Fukusuke to open. Then happy Japanese food, oh, so happy. And then we came home and hung out some more. Ceej attempted to give me ice cream under false pretenses. Mark watched cartoons. Everybody stayed up late enough to be worn out.

Also, I love User Friendly. Again. The guys were going on the DMCA (again) yesterday, all three of them, and so was I, a bit. I had told Ceej that if he wanted to watch Mark and Timprov just go, he should say those four little letters. It wasn't that he didn't believe me, I don't think. Anyway, good stuff.

And it's Michelle's birthday!

Very good stuff. Even with the mermaid.

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