Catherine and Karen Visit California

This week, my friends Catherine and Karen came to visit.  It was great seeing them again.  I've come to realize there are in life a few people you can completely be yourself with, and Catherine and Karen are two of mine.

On their first full day I thought we should take advantage of the warm weather and visit Half Moon Bay.

Since it was Half Moon Bay it was in the 50s and Catherine and Karen froze but I think they had fun.






On the way back, we stopped at a glass art shop in the back of a winery and Karen did the demo to make a glass pumpkin.


























We tried to visit the tidepools at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve but it was too high a tide to see anything.  Since low tide was at 1 am that wasn't going to ever happen, so instead we climbed to the top of the bluff and took pictures of the interesting trees and scenery.

















The next day I took Catherine and Karen on a driving tour of SF.  It was mostly the 49 Mile Drive but we made detours to see the painted ladies at Alamo Square (aka "the Full House houses") and the Victorian on Broderick that was used for the Full House exteriors.


























We also walked up and down Lombard, which let us take lots of pictures and (the main point) meant I didn't have to drive down the curviest street in the world (or US, or city, or whatever Lombard is known for).







Near the end of the drive, we rounded the corner and I uttered a large understatement that  Catherine and Karen mocked for the rest of the trip: "Well, there's something."











Yes, turns out the Palace of Fine Arts really is something. With the palisades and the lake it was very beautiful.  I attribute my complete ignorance of its existence to locals' apathy.











Catherine and Karen tried to get a shot of Catherine holding one of the egg things.
















With moderate success.










The last thing we saw on the tour was the Sutros Bath ruins.  Here are Catherine and Karen looking out to the Pacific.












The next day we headed over the Golden Gate to see the Bay Model and Muir Woods.

We tried to take pictures at the northern side of the Golden Gate bridge but it was too windy.  My hair got remarkable mileage, though.








Muir Woods was calm and shady beneath the redwoods.  We walked on an easy trail and played "spot the hipster" and "guess the ethnicity of these children".

































On their last day we could have gone to Santa Cruz but instead decided to hang around home.  Mostly we lazed around, watched TV, and ate things, but we also went to Smart and Final because Catherine hadn't been to a restaurant supply store before, and went for a walk on the Bay Trail.  Because we're all engineers we detoured off the trail to see if a large structure across the street was the capture plant for the landfill's methane, but we couldn't tell.

What better way to end a trip than watching the sunset over the Bay?

Oil for Your Oil

In the most counter-intuitive move in my lifetime skincare regimen, I've been smearing cooking oil on my face for a week and have the least acne in recent memory.

It was my sister's doing.  She suggested I try the oil cleansing method, which I guess she had read about when deviating from nail polish research.  I found the relevant websites, but couldn't find the relevant castor oil for the life of me.  Or for the special ordering of me -- if I couldn't find it at CVS or Walgreens it wasn't going to happen.  So I just used olive oil.  Instead of washing my face at night I just smeared my face with olive oil, briefly steamed my face in a hot towel, and then rubbed the oil off with the towel.  Then I rinsed and dried my face for good measure (having forgotten the Internet instructions at that point).

And it works!  At the moment I don't have any active zits and the redness on my chin has calmed down some.  I also think I'm not as greasy at the end of the day.  So overall I'm a fan.

Maybe if this works I can decrease some of the rest of my regimen, since right now I used the oil to replace my night cleanser but I still am using Retin-A at night, benzoyl peroxide soap in the morning, and apricot scrub a few times a week.

My friends Catherine and Karen from Georgia Tech are coming to visit this week, which will be Catherine's first visit out.  I've planned lots of things for us to do and also anticipate plenty of sit around and watch TV time, which we always enjoy.  Like my friends Bonnie and Allison from high school, no matter how long it's been we always have plenty to talk about.  They're people I can just talk with.

Accurate Prejudice

I have a system for finding the quickest checkout line at Target. 

It bears a lot of resemblance to my method for finding the quickest security line at the airport.  At the airport, the ideal line to get it is the one with the most English-speaking businessmen traveling alone.  At Target, there are rarely many recognizable businessmen, so my preference is for men over women, English-speaking over non-, young over old, and for heavens' sake, avoid children.  It might not be politically correct, but that doesn't mean I'm not right.

Today, most of the lines broke the English and children guidelines, so I got behind a middle-aged woman who had a very full cart which can sometimes be a bad sign but it was full of several bulky things like a bedding set and large watering can.

However, she was placing on the conveyer belt six (SIX!) bottles of diet cranberry pomegranate juice drink.

"Wow," I thought to myself.  "She seems like a high-maintenance witch."

That sounded ungenerous even inside my own head, so I hastily revised my opinion.  "Well, maybe she has a UTI."  Though buying diet and therefore diluted cranberry juice drink for that would be silly.  Having to revise my opinion to infected and stupid isn't much better than high maintenance.

But that inner dialogue didn't last long.  Because that woman ended up being the most high maintenance witch I've ever had the misfortune to be behind in line. 

First she wanted a price check on a toy lantern, then she had to decide whether she wanted it.  Then she wanted a price check on an opened and manhandled sheer curtain.  Then she decided she didn't want it.  Then she let the cashier scan a few more items, then decided she wanted the opened sheer curtain but didn't want the sheer curtain the cashier had already scanned. But at least she knew how to swipe a credit card, so after that her transaction cleared quickly.

However, she didn't know how to load the bags into her cart, so the cashier handed every single one of my 20-odd items to me over the counter, which I put into my own bags and loaded into my own cart while the woman blocked the exit.  She was frustrated that the Target carts did not have a lower shelf beneath the basket, and querulously asked the clerk twice why the cart lacked it.  Then she asked the clerk what she was supposed to do, since all her purchases wouldn't fit back in the cart.  Since clearly all her items had fit in the cart before she got in line I have no idea what she was thinking. 

The clerk was calmer and much more polite than I would have been, and suggested the woman get a second cart, and also asked if she wanted help out.  After refusing each offer once, the woman finally acquiesced to have someone help her out, and as I left the clerk was trying to flag down another Target employee for assistance.

Turns out my instincts about what six bottles of diet cranberry pomegranate juice drink means were spot-on.