Results tagged “julie”

This past weekend Jeff and I went to Santa Cruz, where I was planning to attend a UC systemwide computing services conference from Sunday evening through Tuesday afternoon. I had never been to Santa Cruz, so we drove down together Saturday morning to do some sightseeing ahead of time.

We went to the boardwalk, rode a few rides, ate hot dogs, and walked on the beach. That evening we picked up some paninis, popcorn and sodas and went to the local drive-in, where The Simpsons Movie and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix were playing as a double-feature. I think the last time I was at a drive-in before last Saturday was in 1978 or 1979, when I saw Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings in a triple feature with “Worst Movie Ever Made” candidates Plan 9 from Outer Space and the truly execrable Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, along with my high school (platonic) girlfriend and two high school teachers—a married couple—with whom we were close. These same teachers were responsible for introducing me to Leonard Bernstein’s Mass and the work of Peter Shickele and P.D.Q. Bach.

But I digress.

We had a great time at the drive-in, which seems a popular place to be in Santa Cruz on Saturday night. And the entrance fee was just $6 each for the double-feature; you can’t see even one movie most places these days for $6, and both of these were brand-new (in fact, The Simpsons Movie had opened just the previous night).

Sunday morning we went to the UCSC Arboretum, where we saw a hawk, several hummingbirds, and many bees… and a sign warning of mountain lion sightings. Fortunately, we saw only the sign. Afterwards, we had a veggie brunch with Julie and Ziggy, then walked around and visited some cool little shops, and had tea at a tea-house before Julie and Jeff (and their luggage) swapped cars: Jeff rode back to Daly City with Ziggy, and Julie came with me to the conference.

The conference itself was mixed. The UCSC campus is breathtakingly beautiful, bordering redwood forests on a hill high above the Monterey Bay. A doe and her two fawns grazed outside a dorm, less than five feet from us, as we carried our luggage from the car. Monday night a huge raccoon walked out of the undergrowth two feet away from me, looked up at me briefly, and continued on his way, unconcernedly. The windows of the “apartment” (read, dorm room) in which I was staying opened onto a grove of redwoods. The nights and mornings were cool and foggy, but the fog burned off by 11:00 most mornings, leaving clear blue skies and temperatures in the low 80s. Truly, I think I could fairly happily live in Santa Cruz.

Tuesday, however, stayed cool and foggy for longer, clearing up only as Julie and I left to drive up the Pacific Coast around 12:45. That day was also my 45th birthday (though Jeff and I had celebrated a kind of joint birthday/anniversary/solstice/housewarming party the previous month), and I arrived home in Daly City to a beautiful bamboo plant my mom had sent, a DVD of the fourth season of Family Guy from Sheldon and Gretchyn, and a card from Craig, Heidi and their two boys. Jeff’s mom insisted on taking us out to dinner to celebrate. All in all, it was a relatively low-key birthday, which suits me quite fine.

Oh, July 31 was also the birthday of Deval Patrick, the current governor of Massachusetts (he turned 51) and William Weld, a former governor of Massachusetts (62), J.K. Rowling (42), Wesley Snipes (45), Dean Cain (41), Ben Chaplin (38), and Primo Levi (born 1919, died 1987). The 31st is also the day in 1981 that Rowling purported for Harry Potter’s birth, so he would be 26 this year.

Last Thursday I wasn’t feeling all that well, which was unfortunate given 1) there were meetings scheduled from 11 to 12:30 and NERT training from 1:30 to 4:30, and 2) Jeff and I had agreed to go to karaoke at The Mint (warning: sound) with Julie and Michael from work. I felt really distracted throughout the day, and had to get up and walk out of the NERT training at one point when I started to feel especially light-headed.

I made it through the day, though, and even to dinner (sushi) and karaoke. I didn’t sing, but I did have a really fun time (with the exception of discovering that my camera wasn’t working; it turns out that my 6Gb microdisk has failed), and both Julie and Michael were fantastic. I told Julie I’d sing something next time.

Friday morning arrived strange and unsettling. Around 6:30 the phone rang once, enough to wake us, but then fell silent. Only a few minutes later, the new smoke detector we’d just installed the previous weekend beeped three times and then stopped; the manual notes a number of scenarios in which it might beep once or multiple times, but nothing for a set of three beeps followed by silence. (I tested it afterwards, though, and once more since, and the alarm still works, so I’m hoping it’s okay. ) Then, when I left for work a little later, the backdoor into our garage was standing open. It looks like it just didn’t latch properly the previous night, and it only leads into the garage rather than directly into the house (there’s another locked door from the garage into the house), but still, unsettling.

This coming Sunday, Jeff and I are participating in the 10K San Francisco AIDS Walk in Golden Gate Park with some of my UCSF colleagues; we just did the one in DC less than a year ago, so I’m not aggressively hitting up anyone for donations. If you are inclined to donate via my participation anyway, you can do so online.

Julie will be videotaping the walk along the way, and sometime later this month we’ll edit and post a multimedia piece about the walk on the UCSF web site.