Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Here’s the story of our family vacation at Lake Tahoe this summer. I have links to some of the photos here, but if you want to see all the photos, they are here.

Saturday, August 20

We decided to do something a bit different this year, and fly out of Ontario airport instead of LAX. It turns out it’s actually a bit closer to our house, and Southwest Airlines has a one-stop, no-plane-change flight to Reno from there. And they were running a special, so it was cheaper than LAX.

In the airport gift shop, we saw a romance novel, Gone with the Nerd. Yikes. When did nerds become characters in romance novel, and why wasn’t I notified of this?

After a brief stop in San Jose, we took the short hop over the Sierras and landed in Reno. We stopped for dinner at Carrow’s near the airport, and then we drove over the mountains to South Lake Tahoe. We got to Grandpa’s house there at about 8:00. I made a quick run to Raley’s to get food for breakfast and that was the end of our day.

Sunday, August 21

We woke up this morning and had to take another trip to Raley’s to get some Orajel. Lucinda’s six-year molars are coming in, and she needed some help. Also, we had realized that we had forgotten to bring books for her bedtime stories, so we had to find a few of them, too.

After that, we went to do our favorite hike up to Cascade Falls. As always, Lucinda didn’t really get interested in it until we got to the part of the trail that was on the rocks. But she enjoyed it after that.

The chipmunks came around while we were sitting up at the falls, but we made sure that they couldn’t get into the pack this time. Last year, they got into the pack and ate our chocolate chip cookies.

When we were starting back down, my phone rang. Turns out Sprint has a good signal up there on the mountain, so Lucinda got to talk to Aunt Maggi while we were hiking back from the falls.

After the hike, we went to the pool, and Lucinda showed us what she had learned in her swimming lessons this summer.

That evening, we had dinner at The Broiler Room at Caesar’s. The food was good, as always, and they had the usual flourish at the end with the chocolate-covered strawberries and dry ice.

Monday, August 22

Today we made a trip to the Attic, which is the local hospital thrift store. We cleaned up the owner’s closet a bit and donated some old clothes and other items. Then we had lunch at Carrow’s. The staff at this particular restaurant seemed really quite lax for some reason. But it was all right. We were on vacation, after all.

After that, we went to the K-Mart to buy some new bathroom rugs and other furnishings for the house. While we were there, we heard The Cure, and we reflected on how strange it was that a band that was considered so alternative and edgy when we were young was now being played at K-Mart. And we felt a bit old. Then we went back home and went to the pool for some more swimming.

Dinner tonight was at The Horizon casino’s Josh’s restaurant. We remembered this restaurant as having a great dessert cart, but they didn’t have the cart this time. The desserts were still good, but we missed getting to see them before ordering. Also, while we were there, we noticed that the music in the restaurant was almost completely easy-listening versions of ’60s standards. Again, we felt a bit old.

On the way out of the casino, I had a look around the blackjack tables. The last time we were there, they didn’t have anything for less than $10 a hand, which is just too much for my taste. This time, they had several single-deck tables for $5 a hand. They’d even loosened up the rules a bit by allowing double-downs on hard 8 and 9. But then I noticed that they also changed the rules and only pay 6-5 for blackjack. Years ago, I wrote a program to play blackjack and figure out how the game works. Turns out the player who uses basic strategy wins something like 42% of the time, the house wins about 56%, and 2% are ties. If the house pays 3-2 for when the player gets blackjack, it all works out that then the player is almost even with the house. By changing the blackjack payout, they take a big bite out of the player’s expectation value. So I didn’t play this trip.

Tuesday, August 23

This morning, Cathy did some more cleanup in the owner’s closet in the house, and we made another stop at The Attic.

We also did some exploring around the house. The neighbor’s house had a bird’s nest built underneath the deck. Lucinda also found a lizard on one of the rocks.

Next, we went to Anderson’s Bike Rentals and rented some bikes for a ride along the lake. We got a little trailer for Lucinda to ride in. The bikes were worn, but well-maintained, and they provided helmets, a map, and a lock. Normally, Cathy and I don’t ride bikes together, since I tend to go a bit faster than she does, but having 50 pounds of trailer and kid attached to my bike slowed me down a bit, so we were almost evenly matched.

We rode the bike path north along the lake, stopping at the Stream Profile Chamber for a look at the fish. Then we took the path south through town. This part went through the auto-body ghetto. Every town needs to have wrecking yards and auto-body shops, but they are usually pretty well-hidden in tourist towns. We even passed the very smelly refuse recycling building and an apartment with a warning sign about a hazard we don’t have at home in L.A. The bike route went past all of this stuff, and it was actually pretty entertaining. In all, it was about a 20 mile ride.

For dinner, we went to Harvey’s casino. They have a restaurant on the top floor called “19”, which is their ‘nice’ restaurant. When we got up there, the view was impressive. And I realized that I’d forgotten the camera. D’oh! The menu was a bit odd. It was high-priced, but they had things like french fries and macaroni and cheese as side dishes. The dessert menu included “warm doughnuts with two sauces”. For their after-dinner flourish, they brought out a ball of pink cotton candy big as your head. I hate cotton candy. The smell of it makes me nauseous, but Cathy and Lucinda chowed down on it, and I once again was infinitely irritated that I’d forgotten the camera.

Wednesday, August 24

Today’s adventure was over the hill in Carson City. We went to the Nevada Railroad Museum, where we got to try riding and pumping an actual railroad hand car, as well as seeing the preserved trains there. We also saw an exhibit about the role of the Chinese in building the railroads in the west.

Lunch was at Applebee’s in Carson City, and after that we went and did some more shopping for new items for the house. We got some long wood screws so I could repair the front deck railing, as well as a new stereo for the house.

After that, we went back home and went to the pool. Dinner was at Evans, which is easily our pick for the best restaurant in South Lake Tahoe. I had the Grilled tenderloin of beef on gratin potato cake with garlic compound butter, sauteed spinach and port wine sauce. Yum. Lucinda and I shared a dessert. We even came in under-budget this time, with a bill of $99.99. It was good.

Thursday, August 24

Today I did the repair on the deck railing. It wasn’t too hard to do, but it was still a bit of an adventure, since I was using unfamiliar tools.

We did another hike today. The Hawley Grade Trail follows the route of a wagon road from the days of the ’49ers. The hike was 3.8 miles, which was a bit long for Lucinda, but I functioned well as a mule for her to ride most of the way.

As always, after the hike, we went to the pool. Lucinda is finally able to swim on her own with her pool noodle or kickboard. She was also able to swim almost all the way across the pool by herself with no floatation devices. So the swimming lessons were a Good Thing.

Dinner was at the Four Seasons at The Horizon. The sign in the lobby has a picture of a nice prime rib dinner, but guess what wasn’t on the menu. D’oh!

After dinner, we went back to the house and watched “Racing Stripes”. I had noticed that one of the couches was coming apart, so I got out the little sewing kit and sewed it back together.

Friday, August 25

Lucinda said that she didn’t want to do another hike today, so we rented bikes again. This time we went to Lakeview Sports. Their bikes were not as well-maintained as at Anderson’s, and the counter guy was kind of a doofus. I had to oil the chains on both bikes, adjust the brakes, and tighten up the pedal cages before we could ride. Then we did basically the same ride as Tuesday, but in the opposite direction. We went past the lumber yard, where some graffiti tells us a bit about what the locals in Tahoe do for fun. We passed the Moose Lodge and also saw a coyote. This time, I brought along my little GPS unit and measured the ride, which turned out to be 19 miles. When we got back, the manager gave us a good discount on the rental, since I’d had to fix the bikes for them. He was apologetic about it, saying that their bike mechanic had been taken ill. Since their season only runs through the summer, they were having a hard time hiring a mechanic for just a few weeks.

We always have our last night’s dinner at Evans, and this trip was no exception. We picked different items from the menu, and as always, it was all good. Lucinda and I also shared the same dessert.

Our final bit of house maintenance involved rearranging the couches in the living room.

Saturday, August 26

This morning, we all got up early for the trip home. We drove over the mountains to Reno. Along the way, I collected a picture of a new sign for my Animal Crossings collection.

When we got to the airport, we had just enough time to check in and get on the plane. The trip home stopped in Las Vegas, so the plane was full of rowdy people on their way to a weekend of debauchery. I also got to do a bit of atomic tourism on the way. We got a view out the plane window of Frenchman Flat at the Nevada Test Site. This was the site of the 1957 “Priscilla” test, where the AEC built a town out on the dry lake bed and then nuked it with a 37kiloton bomb.

After the stop on Las Vegas, we continued on to Ontario, passing over the Solar One power plant near Barstow. It didn’t look like it was operating at the time.

Finally, we stopped off at the kennel on the way home to spring the dogs.

All in all, it was a fun trip.

Today we took the train down to San Diego to visit Grandpa Schwarz. Riding the train is a pleasant way to go there, and it’s an arduous trip by car. The only bad thing(s) that happened were that we missed the first two trains. When we got to the Gold Line station in Pasadena, the train left just as we were coming down the stairs. We had to wait for the next train, and then when we got to Union Station, we looked out the window and saw the Amtrak Surfliner leaving for San Diego. So we had to wait for the next one.

Once we got there, we had a nice time. Grandpa picked us up at the train station and we all went to lunch. After that, we went back to his apartment. He played computer games and music with Lucinda, while Cathy and I looked through piles of old photos. I found a lot of pictures from my bike racing days back in the late ’70s, which was fun. I’ve scanned some of them for my photo album already, and I’m going to see about getting the slides scanned.

After a fun and relaxing afternoon, we got back on the train for the trip home. The train was crowded, so we ended up in the front car, which turned out to be entertaining. The engineer had the door to the cab open, so we could look out the front window. He also let Lucinda blow the train horn. So we had a fun trip back.

When we got home, we were all tired, but it was a fun day.

This weekend is the big Body Art Expo at the L.A. County Fairgrounds. This is billed as “The World’s Largest Tattoo and Piercing Convention”. I don’t doubt that. They spend a lot on promotion to make it so that pretty much everyone in Los Angeles knows about it. So the sheer size of it is impressive. Still, perhaps I’m getting jaded in my old age. It’s just not as much fun as it seems like it should be.

I got there around 3:30 or so. I stayed until about 9:00. I had an acceptably fun time. Highlights included the girl with the corset piercing. She had one of the best outfits there. I also enjoyed seeing my friend Rick at The Mermaid’s Tale booth.

There was a barbershop booth there that was doing a brisk business with hot towel shaves. That was a bit odd. One funny bit was the massage booth with the big banner announcing “MASSAGE CONFORFAblE”. That looked like something straight out of engrish.com. And call me old-fashioned, but I still think The Jerky Hut looks strange at a tattoo convention.

Anyway, it was an amusing afternoon and evening.

I went to the Queen Mary Tattoo Convention today. Overall, it was a pretty fun time, even if there were some annoying aspects about it. The sources of annoyance were tripartite:

• They stopped selling the online advance tickets when the doors opened. And they only took cash at the door.
• The parking was full, and they didn’t have clear signs of where we should go.
• They charged us $12 for parking, even when it was two miles away.

So by the time I actually got in the door, I was kind of annoyed. But all that dissipated once I got inside. I got to see several of my tattoo convention friends there. They had three levels of booths set up, along with a stage on the bottom level. The marching band was pretty funny. My friend won a raffle or something for a gift certificate for a tattoo at one of the booths, so I got to watch her get tattooed. She also got a bunch of free stuff handed out from the stage. They were giving out Jägermeister hats and shirts, and she decided that she was going to get one. So she flashed the MC. This brought a cheer from the crowd, and got her both a shirt and a hat. Then they announced that they had some other shirts that they would give to any girl willing to change into them onstage. So she got up on the stage. This delighted the crowd even more. Of course, I got pictures.

It was a fun time.

So here are my pictures from the day. Note that they are not entirely work-safe, thanks to my very dear and at the time somewhat inebriated friend.

One of the great things about living in L.A. is that we can just go out and play tourist any time we want. So today was the day.

We went over to West Hollywood and had lunch at the French Quarter, which is one of the big gay hangouts for Sunday brunch. The food is pretty good, too. And for us, it’s a chance to see what it’s like to be in the minority.

Next, we went to the Hustler Hollywood store. I got a DVD player for my 10th anniversary at my job, so we wanted to get something to play in it. Outside the store, we saw Ron Jeremy’s hand prints in the concrete. They had several others, but he was the one we are most familiar with.

After that, we went back to Hollywood Boulevard. Along the way, we passed Rock-n-Roll Ralphs on Sunset. We used to shop there sometimes when we lived in Hollywood, and it was always an adventure. When we parked, we saw the to the Skooby’s Hot Dogs car, as well as the dancing shoes on the parking structure. Then we went to the Erotic Museum for the Hollywood Sex Gods exhibit. It was interesting, giving the history of movie censorship from the Hays Code up through the establishment of the present ratings system, as well as a little bit of history of the association of porn and Los Angeles. We also saw some original Vargas Girls, Hugh Hefner’s robe, slippers, and pipe, and the inside of a Real Doll. Yikes. It looked kind of like the Terminator’s love-doll fantasy, with the metal skeleton exposed.

When we left to come home, we passed the former Pussycat Theater on Hollywood Boulvard. I find it immensely amusing that the former smut palace, done in by the invention of the VCR, has found new life as a church.

On Saturday night, we went to the opening party for the new exhibit at the Museum of Neon Art in downtown Los Angeles. This year is the 24th anniversary of the museum, and we’ve been going there for almost all of that time. It’s still our favorite art museum.

There was a pretty good crowd there, and lots of nice neon on display. We saw the dancing devil from last time, as well as some new pieces. And they had food there, too. Lucinda and I chowed down on the chocolate chip cookies. After riding 66 miles that morning, I figured I’d earned some.

There were a number of religious-themed pieces. There was Jesus on a cross decorated with neon and peeps. There was also Jesus painted on beer-bottle caps. There were also some animal pieces. One had a neon frog leaping into a pond, another had a neon frog skeleton, and a third had an animal skull with neon antlers. It was fun.

We went to see “Downfall” today. This is the story of the last 12 days in Hitler’s bunker, and it’s my nominee for the ‘feel-bad-movie of the year’. But at the same time, it was very interesting. Bruno Ganz was great in the role of Hitler. He was very believable, which is often difficult for actors to pull off when playing a very famous person. This film also makes a good companion piece with “Blind Spot – Hitler’s Secretary”, which we saw a couple of years ago. This film was told largely from the viewpoint of Traudl Junge, the aforementioned secretary. She also appears briefly in the film, speaking at the beginning and the end about her personal feelings of guilt for having been a part of such a monstrous evil.

“I realized that she [Sophie Scholl] was the same age as me, and I realized that she was executed the same year I started working for Hitler. At that moment, I really sensed that it is no excuse to be young.”

Since Lucinda is off school this week, we made arrangements to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Cathy scored some free tickets a while back, so the conditions were perfect. We went with Heather and Jacob from up the street, as well as their mom.

When we got there, we wanted to see the otter feeding, but the tank was empty for cleaning. I guess the otters were in a motel somewhere. So instead we went outside so that Heather and Lucinda could pet the rays and touch the starfish and anemones. Then it was feeding time for the sharks in the touch tank. That was entertaining, even if they are all fairly docile sharks.

We also saw a diver in one of the tanks, cleaning the kelp leaves. I wonder how they put that into a job description.

We went into the Lorikeet Forest, and Lucinda managed to persuade one of the birds to land on her arm, so she was happy.

They had one exhibit of shark eggs with little windows in them. We could see the little sharks wriggling around inside. Very Alien-esque.

Later on, we went back inside and saw feeding time at the South Pacific exhibit. They had three divers in the tank handing out food and being mobbed by the fish. One of the divers had a microphone and she talked to us and described what was happening. That was an interesting addition to the show.

When it was time to leave, we took a moment to see the driver’s-eye view of a bit of the Long Beach Grand Prix course, since we had to cross the street to get back to the parking structure. Then we headed home, getting immediately stuck in traffic on the freeway. Have I mentioned recently that I love living in L.A.?

There are also a few more pictures in Lucinda’s photo album.

We went to the Museum of Neon Art today. This is the last weekend for the current exhibit, so we wanted to see it before it went away. And we were not disappointed.

The exhibit had two parts. One part was neon beer signs and old neon business signs from the ’50s. There were some great old signs there, although sadly, the ceiling was too low for some. So we had to make do with the neon sign for “Al’s LIQ”, because that was all that would fit. The other part of the exhibit was neon and other electric sculptures. One piece we particularly liked was “A Dime a Dance”. This was a four-foot-tall Satan puppet on strings. He was standing on top of a lucite box with a neon sign inside it. The card said, “Insert a quarter to activate the Devil”. We just couldn’t resist that. The speakers began to play “Pipeline”, and the Devil danced for us. It was great fun.

After dancing with the Devil, we went outside and Lucinda played in the park next to the museum. Then we went to Chinatown and had Dim Sum at Empress Pavillion.. We’ve been going there since it opened in 1989 or so. It’s always packed, even though I think the food is a bit overrated. The restaurants in San Gabriel are just as good or better. But Empress Pavillion is still one of the best-known Dim Sum places in L.A. And it was good.

Today we went to see the second Body Worlds exhibit at the science museum. The big attraction here was the “Suicide by Fat: Obesity Revealed” exhibit. Lucinda and Daddy went to the museum and met Aunt Maggi there. We had a quick lunch at the McDonald’s in the museum, since there’s nothing like having a Big Mac and fries before seeing an exhibit on the horrors of obesity. I also made a point of eating at McDonald’s before going to see “Super Size Me”, so there is a pattern here.

The new exhibit was as big as the first one, but with different specimens. They even had a camel, which was kind of novel. The human specimens showed a range of different things, from the muscles used for skateboarding to various horrible diseases. It was all quite gruesome and also quite interesting.

Afterwards, we went outside and Lucinda played on the “Big Lever” exhibit outside. She wasn’t quite able to lift the truck by herself, but she did it with the help of another little girl.