Berkeley: Day One

_A full day in Berkeley._

THE HEAT IS ON: We finally figured out the heaters in our hotel suite before we went to bed Tuesday night. The one in the living room comes on in heater mode but the one in the bedroom comes on in fan mode. So when I finally took off my glasses so I could see the very, very teeny heat/cool/fan icon I was able to switch that over, and our room was perfectly warm Tuesday night. Wednesday night we even turned the bedroom heater off because it's so loud and clattering, and the whole suite stayed fairly warm. I think it had just been shut up and allowed to freeze for a day or more before our arrival and the heaters are weak enough that it took long hours to remedy that temperature.

TAKING A LA NOTE. We had a fairly early morning on Wednesday because we were meeting K. + M. for breakfast at La Note. It was a place I often avoided while we were in Berkeley because of the long lines and lack of reservations, but we got there at 9 and were #1 on the waiting list, which meant we just waited a few minutes. It was Kimberly's first day out with her scooter, and that went well, other than a struggle to get over the threshold into La Note (it was sloped and there was a transition). Anyway, nice breakfast.

THERE IS POLICE ACTIVITY AT WEST OAKLAND STATION: BART seems to be continuing down its route that I saw in my last year or two in the Bay Area, which is to say becoming increasingly unreliable. I took it out to Lafayette to see C. yesterday and we stalled out for five or more minutes in Ashby due to police activity at West Oakland. Then all the trains were off schedule when I hit MacArthur for my transfer. Similarly, on my way back I had to wait 15 minutes in Lafayette for a train that kept not showing up and not showing up and then another 25(!) at MacArthur for a transfer. Clearly something was _way_ off there.

Interesting to see that BART now (finally) calls its lines by their map colors. I don't know why it took them so long, as it was getting annoying to recognize the ever-changing endpoints of the lines. (Now they say the colors, but also tell you the endpoints as some trains don't go to the end of the line.)

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE. I met C. + M. out at Lafayette BART and we did a hike around Lafayette reservoir. Good to see them both, of course, and the reservoir is a lovely walk, much of it tree-lined. Right at the start it tried to pour down rain on us, but after that it was pretty mellow (and we all had rain gear, besides, having known what we were getting into). Afterward we had a lunch at a nice little cafe and talked for quite a while. It was a good day, and after the long BART ride I was definitely ready to call it a night when I hit Berkeley.

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS. We've had very quiet evenings here in Berkeley. Kimberly & I don't usually watch any TV or movies together when we're on vacation on our own, and I've largely been avoiding my computer (which means avoiding actual work, though I do have two things I want to get edited before the 1st). So I've mostly been sitting around reading. I've got comics on my Galaxy. But I also got some books for Christmas. I immediately picked up _Penric's Travels_ by Lois McMaster Bujold when I hit Berkeley and thought I might make it through the first of three novellas over the course of our days in Berkeley, but in actually I'm already almost done with the second. Good book! Great to see how Penric has been doing since last I visited with them.

What's left for the trip? Mostly gaming! And on my free Friday I'm thinking about going out to the Asian Art museum in San Francisco, as I don't *think* I've ever been there before. (We'll see how the weather is. If the rain holds off, I may hike instead, but the forecast looks dreary.)

Berkeley: Day Two

(Berkeley Day Two)

THE MISSING CAT (NOT MISSING). We always ask our cat sitter to send us pictures of our cats when they visit. That way we get regular updates without having to bug our cat sitter and we never have to stress. But Kimberly got her daily update today and noticed for the second day in a row that all of the pictures were of Mango, none of Elmer.

So we're paranoid, and we checked with our cat sitter that she sees Elmer every day, expecting to get back a "yes" and that she didn't even realize that she was sending all pictures of the same cat, or something like that. And we get back a response that starts out totally comforting: yes, she sees the cats everyday, but Elmer just doesn't like his photo taken.

Except, she continued, he was hiding somewhere today and she didn't see him. And she'd somehow misinterpreted something we said as, "Hey, if you don't see Elmer, don't worry, he likes to hide." I mean, aside from the fact that that defeats the whole purpose of having a cat sitter, as she's there to make sure he gets attention, doesn't get locked up somewhere, and is doing OK, she was sending reports through the Rover app including not just the pictures, but ALSO AFFIRMING THAT SHE'D SEEN THE CATS and that they were eating, drinking, etc.

So we asked my dad to check-in, and fortunately caught him just before his walk in the golf course behind our house, which meant he could park at our house, check in, and then do his walk, and it was barely out of his way. He found Elmer hanging out under the dining room table, but he might have been somewhere else earlier. (He hadn't seen him when he came in and hunted for a while and then *poof* there he was.) He's apparently being quite skittish, which he does. But seems OK.

So, whew. And my most kindly dad is going to go spend some time with him tomorrow morning.

And Kimberly is going to talk to our cat sitter to make sure she SEES BOTH CATS on each visit.

OTHER THINGS GO AWRY. Both of our Roombas have managed to get themselves jammed up while we are gone. Our house is slowly descending into chaos.

VISITING HOME. But aside from that bit of stress in the evening, today was mainly a gaming day. So I headed south for that, and since I was running early made a detour to our old homestead. It looks about the same, as it has every year. It's increasingly weird to see things like the locked mailbox that I installed (due to theft) still there. But I was most pleased to see that the landscaping that we had done to help sell the house is not only still there, but really thriving. I'm so happy that effort wasn't wasted. Even though our landscaper works to make more houses presentable, she obviously does a great job at creating sustainable work.

GAMING DAY I. The actual gaming was MB's house at noon, where I met up with my old Thursday Night group (and my continuing Thursday Night group online) and we played through until 4pm.

First game was Pathfinder ACG: Curse of the Crimson Throne. Pathfinder ACG was a pretty serious game for us over the years, as we walked through all of the first edition scenarios, but we just got to play with second edition a little bit before I left. So, it was great to return to it, even for a one-off. (And it's *so* much nicer to play in person than online. A lot of games run faster and more efficiently online; Pathfinder ACG is the opposite, in large part because we have to play it on Tabletop Simulator.)

After that we played two games of Ready, Set, Bet, which is a simple horse-racing betting game. It was quite well-done. The betting occurs in real-time as the horses race forward (one die roll at a time) and it's very exciting. Not a deep game, but a good design, and a fun play.

After those games, we had BBQ, which was an old tradition at my game nights thanks to EL pushing for them. That was terrific too. I'm not sure I'd had corn-on-the-cob since we moved to Kauai.

And on the walk home I got to enjoy Christmas lights on the street. (Being in Berkeley I had to decide between the safest streets or the best Christmas lights, and came up with a compromise.)

So, a good day other than the evening Elmer stress.