shannon_a

Yesterday I was writing so much that I lost track of a few things.

DUMPLING DINNER. When I met Kimberly in Berkeley, we had dinner at a new(ish?) restaurant on Durant called Dumpling Kitchen. We had long longed for some sort of dim sum in Berkeley, and this fit the definition. And it was tasty. Woe that it wasn't there in the long years we lived near Cal!

PERFORMATIVE PROGRESSIVISM. I define myself as a progressive, but Berkeley still drives me crazy sometimes and that's because of a lot of over-the-top crap. I often complain about progressive purism, where people like Mayor Arreguin knock down great progressive ideas (like an express bus line that would have better linked Berkeley and Oakland and also offered much safer bicycling as part of the street redesign) because they're not good enough. I don't complain about performative progressivism as much because it's hard to draw the line between that and conservative whining about "virtue signaling".

But we definitely saw a lot of performative progressivism when we were at Berkeley Rep last night.

The worst was the bathrooms. We headed there when we got in and stopped in deep puzzlement at the signage, which showed a cacophony of iconic people pointing toward both bathrooms. We finally puzzled out the signs which said something like "Everyone may use either bathroom." They'd both been turned into non-gendered restrooms. But one of the signs had a HINT for users: it said "urinals and toilets" where the other said "toilets only". Going in to the urinal bathroom, it was obvious that they screwed up the bathrooms because the urinals were now all encased in stalls, which means their number was halfed, more or less. So there was lots of milling around.

But, the true uselessness of this all became obvious when I went back outside afterward and waited for Kimberly. I saw maybe twenty people going into the bathrooms and every single man went into the side marked "urinals and toilets" and every single woman went into the side marked "toilets only".

Well, except Kimberly, who'd headed into the same bathroom that I did, "urinals and toilets". When she came out she said, "I just used the men's bathroom."

That's pretty much my definition of performative: a gesture toward progressivism that's clearly not desired or used by ... anyone.

CONCRETE CATASROPHE. I also didn't write about our recent cat sitter problems. Oh, our cat sitter has been great. She seems to be putting real effort into the cats. We've been stocking up on Trader Joe's gifts for her as thanks. But the night before last (I think) she ran into a major problem going to see the cats: there was a cement spill at Halfway Bridge (the problems are always at Halfway Bridge!) that totally blocked the only road between our main town where she lives and the smaller town where we live.

She was stuck in traffic for 3 hours to see our cats! (It should be a 15-20 minute trip!) We felt really bad that we'd missed her initial message about the spill, because we would have told her to turn back. But she stayed through it all, and our cats got their attention from her.

So Kimberly went and redoubled our Trader Joe's gift supply afterward. (It's all so CHEAP off island.)

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Anyway, that was other stuff I'd planned to write about yesterday. Today was a much quieter day, as Kimberly and I both recovered, and I went out to see Wicked, since it's not showing on island and won't be as far as I know.

WICKED! Fabulous! I loved it! I've loved the soundtrack for quite some time, but never seen the movie. So it was terrific to see how all the songs fit together into a narrative. And the effects and directing of Wicked were entirely gorgeous. Any critics who complains about them has no soul. This isn't the first musical that I've only seen after hearing the songs, and they always become more clear to me just when I can see who's singing. But there was a surprising amount of narrative between the songs that sometimes revealed entirely subplots that I hadn't realized where there. I also discovered that some character motivations weren't what I thought (especially Boq, which put "Dancing in Life" into a whole new perspective) and one big secret (which hasn't technically been revealed yet, but which was a thunderous surprise when it was obviously hinted at in "A Sentimental Man"). Much recommended! Would watch again! (And probably will!) Looking forward to the back half next year.

MILLENNIUM! Oh, and we ended our day with dinner at Millennium. Kimberly and I have been going to this fancy vegan restaurant for about 25 years, through three different locations. We were thrilled to enjoy a return visit. Appetizers, main courses, desserts, *and* drinks were had. Whew! (And it was still cheaper than a fancy Hawaiian meal.)

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Tomorrow I'd been thinking about hiking around Golden Gate Park, but I'm a little tired of being cold, so I might figure out an alternative. Then there's gaming at night. Then we return to our kitties, family, and the island on Friday.

My number of Saturdays in the Bay Area is rapidly diminishing. The next two will be spent in Prague, then summer will slowly ebb away, and there will only be rain and cold left.

So I'm trying to take best advantage of the scant free Saturdays I have left.

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Last weekend I went to Coyote Hills, west of Fremont. It's been on my map to visit for years, but heading all the way down to Fremont is a bit of a trek, so I've usually visited closer places.

On the way, I forgot that Union City existed. Probably not the first time that's happened to someone. But I looked at the distance to Coyote Hills from South Hayward and then the distance from Fremont, and decided that Fremont was the closer BART station. So I watched South Hayward go by, then I jumped off at the next BART station. And I was confused, because it looked wrong: too fancy and high-tech and nice looking to be the Fremont BART station. And that's when I remembered that Union City existed and I'd gotten off there.

Close enough: have bike, will travel.

Funny story #1: I used to travel to the Union City BART station really regularly. Back when I worked for Sun in the mid '90s, that was where you got off to take the Sun shuttle across the Bay to Mountain View. But, that was like 25 years ago.

Funny story #2: Union City BART was actually the station closest to Coyote Hills, not South Hayward, and not Fremont.

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The trek to Coyote Hills is great, because it's almost entirely along the Alameda Creek Trail, which is a pleasant creek-side trail. (Well, creek undersells it. It's a big marshy waterway that's mostly dried up this time of year and where you often can't see that the water because of all the plants. But you get the idea.) Also, like those creek-side trails just a bit further south in San Jose, it ducks under all the road crossings. So you literally can bike without stop for miles and miles.

I've written elsewhere that Fremont's bikeways are pretty crappy going north-south, not picking up until you hit Milpitas. And that's true. But this east-west trail is great.

As you go along it, you see all kinds of neighborhoods. A lot look like the quiet, tree-covered suburban neighborhoods that remind me more of St. Louis than where I grew up. (Where I grew up in San Jose didn't have many trees, being a new subdivision, and no public areas, like some of the parks I spotted near the Creek Trail in Fremont.) But there were also condos nearer the highway that were clearly very expensive despite their tiny, soulless footprints. And then as I got quite near the Bay, everything turned more industrial, and I felt like I was biking through a wasteland.

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I'm pretty sure I've never been to Coyote Hills before. It was a very nice park.

That was obvious from the start due to its bike-friendliness. The Alameda Creek Trail took you to paths that took you straight across the park to its center, where the visitor center was. No having to bike up a car-filled main road to get there! And, it was clear that this easy, accessible route was well used. I saw large numbers of bicyclists on the Alameda Creek Trail and on these paths into the park itself.

The park had a lot more amenities than most East Bay Regional parks that I've visited. As I said, there was a visitor center. And right next to it a butterfly garden (that, truth to tell, didn't have a lot of butterflies). The visitor center also spent a lot of effort advertising the whole East Bay Regional park system. There was one map that showed them all and allowed you to flag what you liked about your "favorite". (There were no blank flags, but I probably would have been a Berkeley loyalist and said, "TILDEN, for quiet lunches at Jewel Lake and for connecting paths to all the nearby parks and trails." From Tilden you can literally walk to San Pablo, Pleasant Hill, or Castro Valley, never stepping off a park trail, except to cross an occasional street.) There was also a whole display of brochures with maps of various East Park parks. I looked in despair at how many I still hadn't visited. Ah well, I've seen a lot more than most East Bay residents, I expect. And I did grab maps for two parks I want to see near Castro Valley: one just north of the city and one just south.

That'll be one of my scant remaining Saturdays, maybe as it starts to chill, and I'm looking southward for warmer places.

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The park itself is an impressive and beautiful interface of marshland and hills. When I looked across parts of the park where I could see both, it was breathtaking.

I did a little bit of hiking while out there, just up to the top of the ridge overlooking the Bay and back. It was pretty, but a rare case where it was nicer looking back at the land on the near side of the Bay.

And after that I took my bike out to circle around the back of the hills by the Bayside trail. Also pretty, and probably a bit of the Bay Trail that I'd never done before, but I've long ago given up trying to circle the south bay on the trail: it's just all too far from public transit (though with my riding to and from San Jose in recent years, I've probably ridden most of the Bay Trail from the Guadalupe River in San Jose eastward, with other travels taking me all the way to Benicia and Martinez, but to the west I don't think I've ridden anything from the Guadalupe River up to SFO.

Overall, a park well worth visiting, though I enjoyed the ride along the Alameda Creek almost as much.

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This Saturday was supposed to be gaming, but D. and M. both had other plans, so instead it was a bonus free-day. Which isn't a bad thing when I'm going to Prague in less than a week.

I'd been thinking about Point Richmond lately, I think because I'd been reading about work on the trails leading to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, so I decided to go up there, and also to visit the nice little hamburger place in Point Richmond which is the closest I've found to Oscar's since they sold out.

I rode the Ohlone and Richmond Greenways, and wondered if it might be my last bikeride along them. Maybe not: there are four months left. But that's not the sort of thing I'm likely to do when I'm back in town visiting, as the Ford GoBikes annoying limit you to 30 or 45 minute trips, making you swap out bikes a few times if you want to do a longer ride. (The one place that I felt had a reasonable bike share was Berlin, which used DonkeyRepublic and allowed you to rent a bike for a day, not the ridiculous $12/hour of the GoBikes if you go past the 30 or 45 minutes. Maybe other places will catch up with them.)

As usual, the Ohlone Greenway was pleasant and under construction. (Currently, the construction is at the El Cerrito Del Norte BART station, and doesn't actually impact the Greenway at the moment, though there are fences up against it.) As usual, the Richmond Greenway travels through a post-apocalyptic urban wasteland. Most of that continues to be on the eastern half, where the Greenway was actual clean today, but there was knee-high rubbish adjacent to the Greenway everywhere. The western half, meanwhile, continues to try and become a true community resource with even more parks and benches going in thanks to the new construction of an apartment complex ... but most of the actual people on the Greenway continue to be homeless.

And I was shocked when I left the Richmond Greenway east of the Richmond Parkway to find that there was indeed new bicycle infrastructure. It used to just dump you out into the street, because they'd never been able to get access to the unused last few blocks of old railway right-of-way. But now that street had a bollard-protected cycle way. It was never too bad a street to ride on, but nonetheless yay! Even more importantly, there's a new crosswalk linked to the cycleway on the north side of the Richmond Parkway. This used to be a critical gap in the biking infrastructure, because you had to cross three sides of a busy street with a very slow light to get into Point Richmond. No more! The cycleway leads right to a walk button, and then on the other side continues all the way into Point Richmond. Amazing!

I had my lunch, and it was an acceptable Oscar's substitute, and then I followed the signs promising access to the Richmond-Point Rafael bridge.

The bridge was supposed to open to bicyclists this Spring. It of course, did not, because CalTrans never met a schedule that they didn't miss. The newest date is fall, which could mean as late as 10 days before we leave, but I actually suspect will be later and thus going on the (personal) trash heap of things that opened too late in the Bay Area for us to enjoy, right alongside Berryessa BART (which I think is hitting a year late, after they said it was going to open *early*).

Anywho, I knew I wasn't going to get on the bridge, but I hoped I might get to see the path up there and maybe get over to Point Molate, an otherwise inaccessible bit of Bay Area land.

No love! I could see the paths that go under the highway to Point Molate, and they looked done, but they were all still closed off. I also got my closest view of Point Molate from bike, and I hadn't realized what an industrial wasteland it was. (On the maps it looks just like a big empty space.)

Ah well. The industrial wasteland was probably sour.

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So after that I biked back to Knox Miller Regional Shore, which is on the backside of Point Richmond. It's a nice little park with a lake and views of the Bay and lots of tables. I've enjoyed working out here many a time, though I have to ask if this is a last too.

I'm typing and posting this from one of those picnic tables.

RPGnet. I hate doing big upgrades on RPGnet. I'm currently working on what I think is the third, after vB2->3, vB3->4, and now vB4->XF2. The problem is that the forum is huge, so when any changes are made to the table of posts (which was somewhere north of 10M posts last time I converted and is now closer to 20M), it takes a long time. The last conversion I did was awful because there was at least one "ALTER TABLE" which took 12 or 14 hours to do all on its own, with no milestones or save points along the way. Ayyyy.

This time around I testbedded our conversion and it ran 32-33 hours on that test machine. It was also a much better conversion, constantly saving its state. So, you could see it crawl along, but you knew if it halted at any point (and it did here and there), it could just restart.

But now that we're onto the REAL conversion, which I started Saturday night, things are going slower, likely because of the difference in the machine setups between my testbed and my real setup. We're almost 40 hours in, and the post table is likely to be about 64% when we hit that milestone. It could easily run into Tuesday night, which is much longer than planned.

I mean, there's nothing I can do about it, and this far in, it's best to let it finish, but I hate sitting here, knowing our very popular forums are down, and not being able to do anything about it. At least it's still the (long) Veteran's Day holiday.

Oh, and that's not even speaking of how I woke up at 2.30 last night certain that something was wrong. I stumbled into my office, logged into my computer ... and found the upgrade process had died! (Is it really paranoia when they are out to get you?) For some mysterious reason, it had created a duplicate post and gotten stuck. I fumbled with it for several minutes and managed to get it going again, but the rest of the night I slept somewhat fitfully. Now I just hope that nothing is corrupted. I just need to test that the forwards from the old forums line up correctly when we're (finally) done. (Boy, that would suck if after all of this, the conversion didn't work right.)

Dark Skies. We continue to have crap out in the air for the fourth day running. Yeah, things are clearly worse north of here, where the worst fire in recorded Californian history continues to burn, but I'm going stir crazy. I feel stuck in the house, and even here I'm aware that we're breathing crap because about half of our windows are old and don't seal as well as modern windows. Today the AQI is still 175, which is square middle of the "unhealthy" range.

Endgame. And it's now been three days since I learned about Endgame closing. I wrote about it in Mechanics & Meeples today, but it's wasn't particularly cathartic, as I'd hoped it would be. Really, I think, I need to talk with friends there and see if there are any alternatives to see folks from that community and to get in my day of most freeform board gaming, where I'm most likely to play new and interesting and strategic stuff. But I can't do that until Wednesday, so for that moment it looms.

Really, this should all be looking better by the end of the week, and none of it's horrible for me, but you put it all together and it's a dark cloud looming over the new week.

So we've been back from Hawaii for a week now. Life goes on.

How About that Weather? Somewhat surprisingly, it was warmer in the Bay Area when we got back than in Kauai when we left. Our return was on a shockingly balmy Monday night, then we experienced quite a warm weekend.

Games. I've now been to Wednesday night gaming twice and had people over last Thursday, so that's definitely a sign that life is going on.

Work. Work continues to. Chris and I did some terrific writing related to our Touched comic book that I was quite pleased with. I've also been continuing the work to get Skotos back into the black. It's looking like we're at least 75% of the way there, so the stress is lessened a fair amount. I'm hoping that April will bring us home, and allow me to start working a little less reactively.

In recent years, I've usually spent my evenings doing work for my own projects like Designers & Dragons or DnDClassics or board game reviews, but I've actually had a bit of a hard time getting myself to do that since our return. Laziness after a week in paradise, or just a resistance to taking on too much again? Probably some of both. However, I have projects and deadlines, so I need to get back on that horse. (This weekend: start of another article for WotC and a few histories and I really need to finish some cleanup for Designers ... and I need to do taxes soon.)

The Weekend. This weekend I got to enjoy the Bay Area some. On Saturday I unfortunately woke to a dead Skotos machine, which nixed my plans for a long bike ride to somewhere I hadn't been before. Fortunately I just had to restore a disk to get things going, and was on the road again in a couple of hours. Afterward, I visited the Emeryville Marina and enjoyed the Bay. Then on Sunday K. and I spontaneously headed out to Contra Costa County to ride the Canal trail west of Pleasant Hill. It was beautiful weather (almost 80, but cooler thanks to the breeze of riding) and overall a great trip.

Doctors. It is also a time of much doctoring. I picked up some new glasses last week and pretty quickly came to the conclusion that they weren't right. However, it's such a visceral thing that I've had problems convincing myself of that conclusion. Looking at them from another angle this evening, I think I figured out that the right lens is made wrong. Very frustrating. In any case, I have a follow-up appointment tomorrow.

And then on Friday I have a first meeting with a new doctor (a change required by my new insurance, but not awful because the administrative side of my old doctor's office, Berkeley Family Practice, has gotten really bad in recent years). I basically need to talk with the new Doc about my one prescription (for blood pressure) and also talk about my ongoing problems with headaches, throataches, and congestion. When I first complained about headaches, I got sent to an ENT and a neurologist, neither of which was much help (though the neurologist gave me a drug to mask the symptoms that I took for a few years). I'm thinking an allergist would make sense at this point, but I want to talk with the doctor (or really NP) about that.

And that has been life back in Berkeley. I've lost some of my extreme calm that I got back from Hawaii, but I've mostly been able to keep my stress down. I'm going to try to keep working on that ...