The Vacation Draws to an End
Dec. 30th, 2025 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aWe are heading home *tomorrow*!
--
I haven't really written about our AirB&B.
Over the last few years I've shuttled back and forth between hotels and AirB&Bs. When I was in Köln for the last Rebooting the Web of Trust workshop, I had a particularly terrible AirB&B (no AC, big-south-facing windows, serious noise pollution from a biergarten downstairs, very tiny), followed by a great hotel in Frankfurt on my last night before I flew back. We'd had a disappointing AirB&B in Berkeley the year before (poor lighting, noise pollution from the other half of the duplex, Ayn Rand books on the shelves). So it was to hotels for a year or two. And that was of particular help when K. was still on her scooter, as most of the AirB&B's had also been handicap inaccessible. However, the Hotel Shattuck Plaza where we stayed was a bit rundown (poor heating, and just not in great shape), so last year we moved back to AirB&Bs again.
We had a very nice AirB&B in Rockridge last year and would have booked it again if it was available. (My experience staying holiday after holiday in Berkeley for five years now is that the same AirB&B is *never* available. Maybe if we made our reservations earlier, but nope.) So this year we found several options again in the Rockridge area and splurged a bit to choose one of the nicer ones. (Probably only $20 or $30 a night more expensive than the other one we were looking at it, and it looked so nice in the pictures that it seemed worth it.)
It's indeed very nicely decorated. Recently redone. Gorgeous bathroom. Large, well-lit living room. Two comfortable places to lounge. Tiny bedroom, but as big as it needs to be (e.g., space to walk around the bed). The neighborhood is also nice. It's the first block where the foothills start to rise up on the east side of Berkeley (or Oakland really, we're just over the border), and that's where the increasingly fancy/expensive houses are. That means it's safer and quieter than places just slightly more low-land.
But the downsides:
First, the owners seem like obsessive paranoids. The lock is what I believe is called a dimple lock: it has side pins rather than the normal pins that would be pushed down by the bottom of your key. The locks tend to be harder to pick because of their overall design, and the keys are also much harder and more expensive to duplicate, which I suspect is the goal.
Likely due to that, the owners only gave us a single key, and yes there are two of us here. Perhaps that's fine for most couples and most other people willing to share a single bed while visiting together, but K. and I have different friends to see and different places to be while we're here. So we have to go through this stupid dance of locking the key in an outside lockbox every time we leave. If we mess up: someone gets locked out in the cold, possibly for hours. (Or someone needs to cut one of their get-togethers short.)
The particular lock they choose also sucks. You have to do another weird dance here, of lifting up the handle before you twist the key around to lock it. You have to do similar on the inside with a knob, and afterward you CAN'T GET OUT unless you first unlock the door, which seems like a fire hazard and that it should be illegal. (Maybe it is.) I have to guess that it was more secure in some way or another, further feeding their paranoia at the risk of our safety.
Also evidence of the weird paranoia: buried in the house rules (not anywhere you'd see before renting, nor even if you just read what they message you when your arrival date is drawing near) is the statement that you have to OK with them anyone coming into the unit other than the registered guests. Not staying the night, just dropping in for coffee or a game. (To which I said: yeah, I think not, and though I considered having people over on Sunday to game, it never became necessary.)
(Frankly, if you're that fearful of what might be getting done to your unit, so you're obscuring keys, putting in unsafe doors, and trying to keep people out, then you probably shouldn't be renting, but I'm also totally unsurprised by the attitude here in the Oakland foothills.)
Second, the unit, which was likely originally a basement and/or storage space for the nice house atop, has SERIOUS noise pollution issues from upstairs. K. took a nap after we got here on Friday, before our play, and she was woken up multiple times by people talking upstairs. Then, while we ate dinner and got ready, we frequently heard the thundering of stuff being moved around upstairs. I had thought it might be a miserable stay, but as far as we can tell there's been no one upstairs since that first day. I have a suspicion that it's a rental too, and was being cleaned on the day we got here, and we got lucky and it's been empty since. But given the annoying noise on the first day, I would never rent this place again, just because you can't expect the rest of the house to be unoccupied when you're staying.
Anyway, that's our AirB&B. We'll probably still be on the AirB&B side of things next year, as the overall experience has been fine, even if that was apparently due to the luck of non-occupancy upstairs.
--
Sunday was gaming day #1, with a few members of the old Endgame crew.
Very few members, it turned out, as E.V., who usually sets these things up for me, ended up sick. E.L. and S. and I got together instead, at E.L.'s place out in Concord. (Easy to get to from Rockridge BART!) It was a nice gaming day and we played three games that I do not believe are on BGA, and so we can't usually play when we're online: Railroad Tiles (because I continue to spread the gospel), Machi Koro, and Orléans: Invasion. The last was a particular treat because it's a favorite that I haven't played since 2019.
Orléans is a bag-building game with some pretty neat mechanics, while Invasion! is the co-op version of play. The Endgame crew all like the co-op much more than the original, whereas I'm totally good with either. It's the type of game that's too complex to play with the folks I'm gaming with in Kauai (K., my folks, and new friend M.), which is why I haven't seen it since we left. But maybe K. and I should give the co-op two play a try sometime. (When we have some time. Our three-player game took 2.5 hours, which by my memory is pretty standard for Orléans.)
--
Monday was a day of meals & theatre.
I had lunch with C&M. We went for a little walk in the Rockridge area afterward. That's pretty much our typical visit.
K. and I then had dinner with our financial advisor, A., who took over the business a few years ago and has slowly been meeting all of his clients in-person. (We talk via Zoom about three times a year, but that's of course not the same thing.) Apparently, when the business was founded by A's predecessor, all the clients were in the Bay Area, but there's been a gradual exodus since them, with people moving to the East Coast, Hawaii (we're not the only ones), and everywhere in between. A. has been making trips to see some people, but was able to meet with us because of our visit out here. We were apparently among the last people for him to see. (It's been a few years since he took over.) Obviously, we have a business relationship with A., but it's great to have a bit of personal interaction as well.
--
Before I write about the theatre, I should note that when I was at the Legion of Honor on Saturday, I not only saw the Manet/Morisot exhibit, but I also visiting with my favorite artwork in the museum's permanent collection. It's a small pointillist painting of the Eiffel Tower by Georges Seurat.
Which is a prelude to the fact that I had no idea that the play we were seeing Monday night, "Sunday in the Park with George", is all about Georges Seurat. And more so, about his painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte] (which is out in Chicago, not at the Legion of Honor).
It wasn't my favorite Sondheim (that's likely Into the Woods, which we saw on Friday). But it was thoughtful and it was an intriguing insight into the world of a post-impressionist painting (though from everything I've seen there wasn't a lot of attention given to historical veracity).
Appropriate for a play about Seurat, it was a pointillist play with a pointillist score and pointillist scenes. In fact, much of the play is spent introducing the various characters in the park (point-point-point-pont), so that we know who they are when they're all rearranged by Seurat into the actual painting (as the points resolve into the painting) as the act-one finale, which I found oddly moving.
I found the two-act structure weirdly similar to Into the Woods. In both plays the main action that's set up at the start of act one comes to a complete conclusion at the end of act one. In Into the Woods, it's the high point of the play, an inversion of the usual plot structure (where we'd instead expect a low point, where everything seems the worst). Maybe the same could be said for Sunday in the Park with George, as Seurat has completed his masterpiece(?), but it's fundamentally a more logistical conclusion. In Sunday in the Park with George, we then jump forward a hundred years to see some of how Seurat has been recognized, and also that his grandson (a made-up character) faces many of the same issues as him. It was a pretty surprising twist for the second half, but I hadn't realized that Seurat died at the very young age of 31, leaving just 7 major works behind (one of which I saw a few days ago, though as I said, it's a pretty small piece, unlike "Sunday Afternoon", which is 2x3m and took more than two years of work).
Overall, I loved the pointillist creation of the painting and also the idea that it embedded these people and their stories forever, so that they were all there 100 years later, when all but the youngest babe had passed on. The personal stories felt weaker to me and the more abstract discussions of art (create what you love, don't be afraid to do something new, etc.) were ... well abstract.
I admire Sondheim's consideration of the question, "How could I make a pointillist musical?" And I admire the fact that he mirrored the two Georges' take on modern-art with a modern-art musical. I'm thrilled to have seen it once. But I wouldn't feel the need to see it again, in part because of the distance that the story created from me overall, but also because I just didn't find the music that memorable. (I see people lauding "Finishing the Hat" and a few others, but none of them ear-wormed for me.)
--
Today is our last day. I'll be gaming with some of the folks who used to get together at my house on Thursday nights.
Then K. and I need to pack up, and we're off to the airport in the morning.
--
I haven't really written about our AirB&B.
Over the last few years I've shuttled back and forth between hotels and AirB&Bs. When I was in Köln for the last Rebooting the Web of Trust workshop, I had a particularly terrible AirB&B (no AC, big-south-facing windows, serious noise pollution from a biergarten downstairs, very tiny), followed by a great hotel in Frankfurt on my last night before I flew back. We'd had a disappointing AirB&B in Berkeley the year before (poor lighting, noise pollution from the other half of the duplex, Ayn Rand books on the shelves). So it was to hotels for a year or two. And that was of particular help when K. was still on her scooter, as most of the AirB&B's had also been handicap inaccessible. However, the Hotel Shattuck Plaza where we stayed was a bit rundown (poor heating, and just not in great shape), so last year we moved back to AirB&Bs again.
We had a very nice AirB&B in Rockridge last year and would have booked it again if it was available. (My experience staying holiday after holiday in Berkeley for five years now is that the same AirB&B is *never* available. Maybe if we made our reservations earlier, but nope.) So this year we found several options again in the Rockridge area and splurged a bit to choose one of the nicer ones. (Probably only $20 or $30 a night more expensive than the other one we were looking at it, and it looked so nice in the pictures that it seemed worth it.)
It's indeed very nicely decorated. Recently redone. Gorgeous bathroom. Large, well-lit living room. Two comfortable places to lounge. Tiny bedroom, but as big as it needs to be (e.g., space to walk around the bed). The neighborhood is also nice. It's the first block where the foothills start to rise up on the east side of Berkeley (or Oakland really, we're just over the border), and that's where the increasingly fancy/expensive houses are. That means it's safer and quieter than places just slightly more low-land.
But the downsides:
First, the owners seem like obsessive paranoids. The lock is what I believe is called a dimple lock: it has side pins rather than the normal pins that would be pushed down by the bottom of your key. The locks tend to be harder to pick because of their overall design, and the keys are also much harder and more expensive to duplicate, which I suspect is the goal.
Likely due to that, the owners only gave us a single key, and yes there are two of us here. Perhaps that's fine for most couples and most other people willing to share a single bed while visiting together, but K. and I have different friends to see and different places to be while we're here. So we have to go through this stupid dance of locking the key in an outside lockbox every time we leave. If we mess up: someone gets locked out in the cold, possibly for hours. (Or someone needs to cut one of their get-togethers short.)
The particular lock they choose also sucks. You have to do another weird dance here, of lifting up the handle before you twist the key around to lock it. You have to do similar on the inside with a knob, and afterward you CAN'T GET OUT unless you first unlock the door, which seems like a fire hazard and that it should be illegal. (Maybe it is.) I have to guess that it was more secure in some way or another, further feeding their paranoia at the risk of our safety.
Also evidence of the weird paranoia: buried in the house rules (not anywhere you'd see before renting, nor even if you just read what they message you when your arrival date is drawing near) is the statement that you have to OK with them anyone coming into the unit other than the registered guests. Not staying the night, just dropping in for coffee or a game. (To which I said: yeah, I think not, and though I considered having people over on Sunday to game, it never became necessary.)
(Frankly, if you're that fearful of what might be getting done to your unit, so you're obscuring keys, putting in unsafe doors, and trying to keep people out, then you probably shouldn't be renting, but I'm also totally unsurprised by the attitude here in the Oakland foothills.)
Second, the unit, which was likely originally a basement and/or storage space for the nice house atop, has SERIOUS noise pollution issues from upstairs. K. took a nap after we got here on Friday, before our play, and she was woken up multiple times by people talking upstairs. Then, while we ate dinner and got ready, we frequently heard the thundering of stuff being moved around upstairs. I had thought it might be a miserable stay, but as far as we can tell there's been no one upstairs since that first day. I have a suspicion that it's a rental too, and was being cleaned on the day we got here, and we got lucky and it's been empty since. But given the annoying noise on the first day, I would never rent this place again, just because you can't expect the rest of the house to be unoccupied when you're staying.
Anyway, that's our AirB&B. We'll probably still be on the AirB&B side of things next year, as the overall experience has been fine, even if that was apparently due to the luck of non-occupancy upstairs.
--
Sunday was gaming day #1, with a few members of the old Endgame crew.
Very few members, it turned out, as E.V., who usually sets these things up for me, ended up sick. E.L. and S. and I got together instead, at E.L.'s place out in Concord. (Easy to get to from Rockridge BART!) It was a nice gaming day and we played three games that I do not believe are on BGA, and so we can't usually play when we're online: Railroad Tiles (because I continue to spread the gospel), Machi Koro, and Orléans: Invasion. The last was a particular treat because it's a favorite that I haven't played since 2019.
Orléans is a bag-building game with some pretty neat mechanics, while Invasion! is the co-op version of play. The Endgame crew all like the co-op much more than the original, whereas I'm totally good with either. It's the type of game that's too complex to play with the folks I'm gaming with in Kauai (K., my folks, and new friend M.), which is why I haven't seen it since we left. But maybe K. and I should give the co-op two play a try sometime. (When we have some time. Our three-player game took 2.5 hours, which by my memory is pretty standard for Orléans.)
--
Monday was a day of meals & theatre.
I had lunch with C&M. We went for a little walk in the Rockridge area afterward. That's pretty much our typical visit.
K. and I then had dinner with our financial advisor, A., who took over the business a few years ago and has slowly been meeting all of his clients in-person. (We talk via Zoom about three times a year, but that's of course not the same thing.) Apparently, when the business was founded by A's predecessor, all the clients were in the Bay Area, but there's been a gradual exodus since them, with people moving to the East Coast, Hawaii (we're not the only ones), and everywhere in between. A. has been making trips to see some people, but was able to meet with us because of our visit out here. We were apparently among the last people for him to see. (It's been a few years since he took over.) Obviously, we have a business relationship with A., but it's great to have a bit of personal interaction as well.
--
Before I write about the theatre, I should note that when I was at the Legion of Honor on Saturday, I not only saw the Manet/Morisot exhibit, but I also visiting with my favorite artwork in the museum's permanent collection. It's a small pointillist painting of the Eiffel Tower by Georges Seurat.
Which is a prelude to the fact that I had no idea that the play we were seeing Monday night, "Sunday in the Park with George", is all about Georges Seurat. And more so, about his painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sunday_Afternoon_on_the_Island_of_La_Grande_Jatte] (which is out in Chicago, not at the Legion of Honor).
It wasn't my favorite Sondheim (that's likely Into the Woods, which we saw on Friday). But it was thoughtful and it was an intriguing insight into the world of a post-impressionist painting (though from everything I've seen there wasn't a lot of attention given to historical veracity).
Appropriate for a play about Seurat, it was a pointillist play with a pointillist score and pointillist scenes. In fact, much of the play is spent introducing the various characters in the park (point-point-point-pont), so that we know who they are when they're all rearranged by Seurat into the actual painting (as the points resolve into the painting) as the act-one finale, which I found oddly moving.
I found the two-act structure weirdly similar to Into the Woods. In both plays the main action that's set up at the start of act one comes to a complete conclusion at the end of act one. In Into the Woods, it's the high point of the play, an inversion of the usual plot structure (where we'd instead expect a low point, where everything seems the worst). Maybe the same could be said for Sunday in the Park with George, as Seurat has completed his masterpiece(?), but it's fundamentally a more logistical conclusion. In Sunday in the Park with George, we then jump forward a hundred years to see some of how Seurat has been recognized, and also that his grandson (a made-up character) faces many of the same issues as him. It was a pretty surprising twist for the second half, but I hadn't realized that Seurat died at the very young age of 31, leaving just 7 major works behind (one of which I saw a few days ago, though as I said, it's a pretty small piece, unlike "Sunday Afternoon", which is 2x3m and took more than two years of work).
Overall, I loved the pointillist creation of the painting and also the idea that it embedded these people and their stories forever, so that they were all there 100 years later, when all but the youngest babe had passed on. The personal stories felt weaker to me and the more abstract discussions of art (create what you love, don't be afraid to do something new, etc.) were ... well abstract.
I admire Sondheim's consideration of the question, "How could I make a pointillist musical?" And I admire the fact that he mirrored the two Georges' take on modern-art with a modern-art musical. I'm thrilled to have seen it once. But I wouldn't feel the need to see it again, in part because of the distance that the story created from me overall, but also because I just didn't find the music that memorable. (I see people lauding "Finishing the Hat" and a few others, but none of them ear-wormed for me.)
--
Today is our last day. I'll be gaming with some of the folks who used to get together at my house on Thursday nights.
Then K. and I need to pack up, and we're off to the airport in the morning.