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In Which Our Birthday Celebrations Begin
Mar. 27th, 2019 11:57 pmYardwork (Tuesday). The birthday celebrations began last Tuesday evening with yardwork after work. Eric L. had suggested a Thursday-night BBQ to celebrate mine, Kimberly, and Mike B's birthday, so I got to clear brush from the backyard until I could see the sidewalk and the grill. I'd hoped that I wouldn't be repeating this experience, that we could get our new gardener to begin his back-yard work when we were ready for the year's grilling, but Eric caught be my surprise with the early start.
PACG (Wednesday). Although it wasn't technically a birthday celebration, I did get to enjoy our "Wrath of the Unrighteous" Pathfinder ACG campaign on Wednesday night. Terrific, getting to play one of my favorite games just before my birthday. We actually succeed twice this time, despite our greedy nature!
BBQ (Thursday). And so Thursday was our BBQ. Eric has happily been suggesting these BBQs for several years now, and this was another enjoyable get-together with too much food and (never too-much) gaming afterward. We played our next episode of Betrayal Legacy ... and we may need to think about that particular BBQ+Betrayal combo more carefully in the future because after our late post-BBQ start, it went quite late. But, we had fun and chalked up another win.
Family (Saturday). Skip ahead to Saturday. I was actually feeling sick to my stomach in the morning, perhaps from the excess of food on Wednesday and Thursday. (The BBQ equipment which I cleaned that morning smelled particularly vile to me because of Beyond Burger residue!) But by the afternoon I was able to get out and bike about campus a bit, and then in the evening my mom and Bob came up for dinner and cake. Kimberly and I had been stuck on where to go. We'd been thinking about Le Cheval but I was worried about the neighborhood, which is right next to the former Endgame, as I'm well aware of how many cars are broken into there. But we eventually went and just parked in the overpriced convention-center parking garage. The food was great. I've long been thinking that I'd like to go back there with Kimberly, but it's been largely outside of her dining range in recent years (ironically, as her physical therapy is just a few blocks a way). We had great company and a good time and good cake afterward.
Museum (Sunday). And finally we came to my main birthday thing. I often mostly ignore my birthday, but with it being on a Sunday, I came up with stuff to do: to be precise, a trip to the DeYoung Museum, as there was an overlap of Gaugin and Monet exhibitions on my birthday! We agreed to take ParaTransit out and some form of public transit back, since Kimberly is still hard set to get around with her foot problems. Fortunately, ParaTransit is pretty efficient for a long, early trip into SF on Sundays (as opposed to some of the slow, late, and horribly inefficient trips that Kimberly has during the week). We got to the Music Pavillon a bit after 11, with our only delay being the horrible, horrible traffic in the park itself.
I'd picked up sandwiches at Safeway the previous day, and we had a great early afternoon enjoying them, then just hanging around the Pavillon, people watching and sunshine enjoying. There was guy-who-couldn't-figure-out-how-to-get-his-bicycle-up-out-of-the-pavillion and cool-skateboarding-kid and cool-mom-who-was-totally-ready-to-take-her-kid-to-the-ER-if-need-beafter-his-skateboarding-hijinks (there was no need be).
Inside the museum, we had two exhibitions to see.
First up was the Gaugin exhibition, which we had tickets to at 2pm. Neither Kimberly nor I has particularly loved Gaugin, so we were surprised to see that his bright-colored Tahiti stuff was just a portion of his output. In fact, he did some quite nice impressionism before he decided to go his own way. Also interesting to see: he did hand sculpting of pottery before his Tahiti phase. Overall, it was neat to see his breadth, rather than the one Tahiti painting that you usually see in any impressionism exhibit.
Second up was the Monet exhibition. This was "The Late Money", a companion to "The Early Monet" which we saw some years ago. It was fascinating, because it was all about his garden, which we learned that he hand-fashioned, in part to give himself great scenery that he could then turn into art. We saw lots of water lilies and lot of bridges (well, all the same bridge) and other plants. What was most fascinating was learning that he struggled with cataracts which eventually left him all but blind (he had 10% sight left in one eye). You could see his artwork getting more and more blobby and abstract during this period, and also turning to bizarre colors until he finally had surgery to restore vision to one eye. Yet some of this later stuff also looks quite experimental too.
Afterward we walked about .2 miles to a bus that took us to Civic Center, just a short block from BART. Sadly that short block was as scummy as Civic Center ever is. We were at one point blocked by a man urinating right in front of us, and afterward he couldn't get his d**k put away. Yeah, that was the low point of an otherwise beautiful birthday day.
Kimberly was also unfortunately quite peopled out and finding all the activity very trying.
But we got back to Berkeley on BART, had some good Veggie Grill, and that was the end of my birthday.
Though some of these early celebrations were really for both of us, Kimberly's birthday proper begins momentarily, and she's also having a party on Saturday.
PACG (Wednesday). Although it wasn't technically a birthday celebration, I did get to enjoy our "Wrath of the Unrighteous" Pathfinder ACG campaign on Wednesday night. Terrific, getting to play one of my favorite games just before my birthday. We actually succeed twice this time, despite our greedy nature!
BBQ (Thursday). And so Thursday was our BBQ. Eric has happily been suggesting these BBQs for several years now, and this was another enjoyable get-together with too much food and (never too-much) gaming afterward. We played our next episode of Betrayal Legacy ... and we may need to think about that particular BBQ+Betrayal combo more carefully in the future because after our late post-BBQ start, it went quite late. But, we had fun and chalked up another win.
Family (Saturday). Skip ahead to Saturday. I was actually feeling sick to my stomach in the morning, perhaps from the excess of food on Wednesday and Thursday. (The BBQ equipment which I cleaned that morning smelled particularly vile to me because of Beyond Burger residue!) But by the afternoon I was able to get out and bike about campus a bit, and then in the evening my mom and Bob came up for dinner and cake. Kimberly and I had been stuck on where to go. We'd been thinking about Le Cheval but I was worried about the neighborhood, which is right next to the former Endgame, as I'm well aware of how many cars are broken into there. But we eventually went and just parked in the overpriced convention-center parking garage. The food was great. I've long been thinking that I'd like to go back there with Kimberly, but it's been largely outside of her dining range in recent years (ironically, as her physical therapy is just a few blocks a way). We had great company and a good time and good cake afterward.
Museum (Sunday). And finally we came to my main birthday thing. I often mostly ignore my birthday, but with it being on a Sunday, I came up with stuff to do: to be precise, a trip to the DeYoung Museum, as there was an overlap of Gaugin and Monet exhibitions on my birthday! We agreed to take ParaTransit out and some form of public transit back, since Kimberly is still hard set to get around with her foot problems. Fortunately, ParaTransit is pretty efficient for a long, early trip into SF on Sundays (as opposed to some of the slow, late, and horribly inefficient trips that Kimberly has during the week). We got to the Music Pavillon a bit after 11, with our only delay being the horrible, horrible traffic in the park itself.
I'd picked up sandwiches at Safeway the previous day, and we had a great early afternoon enjoying them, then just hanging around the Pavillon, people watching and sunshine enjoying. There was guy-who-couldn't-figure-out-how-to-get-his-bicycle-up-out-of-the-pavillion and cool-skateboarding-kid and cool-mom-who-was-totally-ready-to-take-her-kid-to-the-ER-if-need-beafter-his-skateboarding-hijinks (there was no need be).
Inside the museum, we had two exhibitions to see.
First up was the Gaugin exhibition, which we had tickets to at 2pm. Neither Kimberly nor I has particularly loved Gaugin, so we were surprised to see that his bright-colored Tahiti stuff was just a portion of his output. In fact, he did some quite nice impressionism before he decided to go his own way. Also interesting to see: he did hand sculpting of pottery before his Tahiti phase. Overall, it was neat to see his breadth, rather than the one Tahiti painting that you usually see in any impressionism exhibit.
Second up was the Monet exhibition. This was "The Late Money", a companion to "The Early Monet" which we saw some years ago. It was fascinating, because it was all about his garden, which we learned that he hand-fashioned, in part to give himself great scenery that he could then turn into art. We saw lots of water lilies and lot of bridges (well, all the same bridge) and other plants. What was most fascinating was learning that he struggled with cataracts which eventually left him all but blind (he had 10% sight left in one eye). You could see his artwork getting more and more blobby and abstract during this period, and also turning to bizarre colors until he finally had surgery to restore vision to one eye. Yet some of this later stuff also looks quite experimental too.
Afterward we walked about .2 miles to a bus that took us to Civic Center, just a short block from BART. Sadly that short block was as scummy as Civic Center ever is. We were at one point blocked by a man urinating right in front of us, and afterward he couldn't get his d**k put away. Yeah, that was the low point of an otherwise beautiful birthday day.
Kimberly was also unfortunately quite peopled out and finding all the activity very trying.
But we got back to Berkeley on BART, had some good Veggie Grill, and that was the end of my birthday.
Though some of these early celebrations were really for both of us, Kimberly's birthday proper begins momentarily, and she's also having a party on Saturday.