Quite the blogging gap, there. Some of it was due to my eccentric reluctance to mention visitors when they’re visiting, out of some fear that an IntarWeb Stalker will deduce that they’re not home and, I don’t know, shave their pets or something. Some of it was due to very bad family news that I don’t want to reduce to a footnote. Some of it was just because of the good ol’ lazy.
Anyway, I took a few pictures of our guests and they’re safely home now.* The guests, not the pictures. We went to Monterey Bay Aquarium which is where all these pictures come from; I am not a persistent or mindful photographer even though I now have a camera with me at all times. Thanks, iPhone!
There is a place where you can crunch down in a little Plexiglas bubble and let a breaking wave crash over you. I think Rilla is imitating the fish.
R:tAG could not come with us because he was officiating at a chili cook-off for fans. So we made him a Space Otter puppet as consolation. We got some Looks in the crafts room, because we were accompanied by neither children nor adults, but we had fun. The Space Otter’s phaser is especially cool, I think (it’s to open the Space Clam that he’s holding in his other paw. Space Otters have evolved beyond rocks!). Most of the otter was pre-printed shapes to colour and cut out, but surprisingly we had to make our own phaser. Kaz did a great job with it.
And then we ate at a restaurant that was on a pier sticking out into the bay, and it was pretty good despite the aggressive seagulls and the attack seal.**
We (all of us) also went to the Exploratorium, which we’d never been to before (shame! Shame!) and despite ferocious traffic*** it was fun too. The docents there wear bright orange vests with “EXPLAINER” on them in big letters. I want one.
And there was sangria, and the Venture Brothers, and Guillotine, and D&D 4th Ed., and 80’s retrospectives, and sunburn, and eating and hanging out. It was a good time.
And we (R:tAG and I; our guests had left by then (or so we thought… they were actually still at the airport but we didn’t know that)) also saw Igor which was pretty good but not a children’s movie yet not quite an adult movie either. Pretty, though.
* After a cancelled flight and a day delay. Yay airlines! ::sarcasm hand sign here::
** The pier is beside a small beach, and there are a lot of seals and otters just off shore. So I was glancing at the water, and I saw a seal head poking up (not unusual) and heading at a really high speed towards the beach, directly for some wading children (unusual). I was just about to call attention to what I thought would be a Fox headline (“When seals attack!”) when the “seal’s” shoulders and body came into view and I realized it was actually a dog playing fetch.
*** We’d decided to take the scenic route to the Exploratorium, up I-280 and through Golden Gate Park, but the Academy of Science opened that same day, in the park, and had 10,000 visitors and, well, we chose poorly.
Ok, it's been a month...post something or I call your mother and tell her you're pregnant.
Ok, I wouldn't do that. Not only wouldn't she believe me, but I risk having you kill me, your mother kill me, and then my mother kill me. Possibly not in that order...