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In Which We Labor to Beat the Heat
Sep. 5th, 2017 09:40 pmPoint Pinole (Saturday). I actually wasn't that good at beating the heat on Saturday. But, when I'm not gaming, it's the day I go out and adventure, and I didn't want to waste my adventure day. So, I headed out to Point Pinole on my bike. Actually, I was sort of beating the heat, because I wasn't hiking. A carefully paced bike ride can be pretty cool in comparison, and it was quite nice until I got to the hill leading up to Hilltop Mall. By then I was a bit overheated, so I stopped, rested, and drank. Then I walked up the hill with another stop in the middle. And then it was over to the mall, which is air-conditioned (or, on Saturday, sort of air-conditioned). Unfortunately that also meant that it was quite a shock coming out of the mall, now towards 1pm or so. By this point, it was clearly hot, in the 100 or so degree range. Point Pinole is downhill from Hilltop Mall, but it was still work. Fortunately, when I made it out to the point of the Point, and sat down in the shade, it was cool, as I expected: about -10 degrees for being out at the point, about -10 degrees for being in the shade. I was stunned by the heat while r for a while, but then I was able to enjoy myself reading and writing. The bike ride back, though, that was some real work, but I only went as far as Richmond, then took BART back.
The Bedroom (Saturday). Our upstairs cools poorly and that's a problem on a super-hot day. It was looking like it was going to be unsleepable, but then K. set a fan to blasting the bed. That worked, for me at least. K. unfortunately still found it unsleepable.
Legion of Honor (Sunday). Where's cooler than Point Pinole? How about The City! Not on Saturday, when it was over 100, but on Sunday it had cooled down to 80 or so: a tinge of hot with a breeze of cool. Our goal was the Legion of Honor museum, where they had a exhibit about Degas and the millinery trade. I'm always happy to see impressionists. It indeed was pictures of men with hats and women with hats and exhibits with hats. We laughed long and hard at a woman (with hat) riding a geese-mobile, which is a poster I've seen before. We were less bemused by entire dead birds mounted upon hats. (In fact, K. seemed quite disturbed by them.) Overall, it was a nice exhibit, other than the avian corpses. Some nice works by Degas, Manet, and others. Some nice works by more representational artists in the same period. Some nice hats. I've decided that I should add a straw boater hat to my collection. It's such a long trip out to the Legion of Honor just to see a single exhibit that we'd hoped to then walk over to Golden Gate Park, enjoy the park, and stop in at a 'zine show there, but K. was unfortunately feeling sick by the time we were done, and so we passed.
The Hills (Monday). A holiday monday! But I didn't feel much need to wander further after two busy days. I did hike up above Clark Kerr after lunch and wrote and read for a short time on the hillside. But then it started raining! I had to put my computer and book away, but I didn't mind meandering a bit more in the warm rain. It disappeared all too quickly.
Streaming (Weekend). Over the holiday weekend, we also watched some shows on streaming: Orphan Black and 11.22.63. I've always had a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with streaming. The first streaming show we ever watched was Pirate Master, back in 2007, and it was horrible. It was a frustrating challenge to watch every episode because of constant, long pauses. Then we got a Roku, and its streaming of Netflix was really bad too. We've been OK with Netflix in more recent years, through our Tivo, but then we hit Orphan Black on BBC America this weekend, and it became obvious that streaming is still a poorly understood (and poorly programmed) art form. Not only did the show frequently pause, often losing images and even dialogue, but multiple times it also died out and restarted at the beginning. At least six times over the course of three episodes. Fortunately, we've got the rest of the season, from episode four up on the Tivo, and fortunately 11.22.63 has been doing better after some jerkiness in the first episode. But streaming: I don't get why people are so eager to use such a substandard delivery method. Netflix is literally the only streaming service I've ever used that was reliably good ... and even that was ruined when we tried to use it on the Roku, a device built for streaming!
(Tuesday). It has cooled at last.
The Bedroom (Saturday). Our upstairs cools poorly and that's a problem on a super-hot day. It was looking like it was going to be unsleepable, but then K. set a fan to blasting the bed. That worked, for me at least. K. unfortunately still found it unsleepable.
Legion of Honor (Sunday). Where's cooler than Point Pinole? How about The City! Not on Saturday, when it was over 100, but on Sunday it had cooled down to 80 or so: a tinge of hot with a breeze of cool. Our goal was the Legion of Honor museum, where they had a exhibit about Degas and the millinery trade. I'm always happy to see impressionists. It indeed was pictures of men with hats and women with hats and exhibits with hats. We laughed long and hard at a woman (with hat) riding a geese-mobile, which is a poster I've seen before. We were less bemused by entire dead birds mounted upon hats. (In fact, K. seemed quite disturbed by them.) Overall, it was a nice exhibit, other than the avian corpses. Some nice works by Degas, Manet, and others. Some nice works by more representational artists in the same period. Some nice hats. I've decided that I should add a straw boater hat to my collection. It's such a long trip out to the Legion of Honor just to see a single exhibit that we'd hoped to then walk over to Golden Gate Park, enjoy the park, and stop in at a 'zine show there, but K. was unfortunately feeling sick by the time we were done, and so we passed.
The Hills (Monday). A holiday monday! But I didn't feel much need to wander further after two busy days. I did hike up above Clark Kerr after lunch and wrote and read for a short time on the hillside. But then it started raining! I had to put my computer and book away, but I didn't mind meandering a bit more in the warm rain. It disappeared all too quickly.
Streaming (Weekend). Over the holiday weekend, we also watched some shows on streaming: Orphan Black and 11.22.63. I've always had a somewhat uncomfortable relationship with streaming. The first streaming show we ever watched was Pirate Master, back in 2007, and it was horrible. It was a frustrating challenge to watch every episode because of constant, long pauses. Then we got a Roku, and its streaming of Netflix was really bad too. We've been OK with Netflix in more recent years, through our Tivo, but then we hit Orphan Black on BBC America this weekend, and it became obvious that streaming is still a poorly understood (and poorly programmed) art form. Not only did the show frequently pause, often losing images and even dialogue, but multiple times it also died out and restarted at the beginning. At least six times over the course of three episodes. Fortunately, we've got the rest of the season, from episode four up on the Tivo, and fortunately 11.22.63 has been doing better after some jerkiness in the first episode. But streaming: I don't get why people are so eager to use such a substandard delivery method. Netflix is literally the only streaming service I've ever used that was reliably good ... and even that was ruined when we tried to use it on the Roku, a device built for streaming!
(Tuesday). It has cooled at last.