The past weekend
Oct. 19th, 2006 05:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
notmattYeah, it's Wednesday night. What of it?
My parents came for a visit this weekend. Took them to the Monterey Aquarium on Sunday. Fortunately, our memberships came in the mail just the day before. That meant we didn't have to wait in the unusually large line. You have to be careful if you take my father to any museum or zoo type place, because he will look at everything there is to look at and read every sign in the place. Kate and I had been there before and my mother's tolerance exhibits is a little more human than my father's. So we left him there and took Mom to Cannery Row. Yes, Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Of course now it's just a tourist area rather than a cannery, but they got wine tasting and saltwater taffy. And we got some info on whale-watching tours.
On Monday, Kate and I had to work, so we let them putz around downtown Santa Cruz. The Boardwalk is pretty well deserted this time of year. We had dinner on the Wharf. You might expect restaurants on the waterfront to be lacking in quality, it's a tradeoff. But Carniglia's was excellent. If you like garlic that is. Which I do. I think all the savory dishes we had were garlicked up to the max. The dipping oil for the bread had so much slivered garlic in it, it was hardly even a liquid anymore. The calamari? Super-garlicky. The roasted garlic and goat cheese? You figure it out. I had the linguini and clams, which was not only highly garlicky but lemony as well. All this went very well with the wine, a Geyser Peak Sauvignon Blanc. It's a really good wine for not a lot of money. It does not contain garlic. Dessert was the Amaretto torte. Also sans garlic. When you order a coffee, you get a mini-french press. I assume you could request garlic with it, but that's a little too weird for me. All in all, it was far superior to Miramar Fish Grotto, the last place I ate on the wharf. That wasn't bad, but we were clearly paying for the view when we went there.
They've gone up to Sonoma County for visits with other relatives and wine. Sunday we're all gathering in San Francisco. As usual, at one meal, we discuss what we're doing for the next. It's a Hirsch (Mom's family) trait.
On a totally unrelated note, here is
Should have written this down earlier as I've forgotten the details. Anyways I'm at home. The house doesn't particularly resemble any place I've actually lived. I think it's a conglomerate of several. It is somehow simulatneously at the beach and in the midwest. I'd chalk it up to global warming, but there was snow on the ground. It was around Christmas, which is also odd since it was also August. It's a dream, whynot? So Karl Rove comes to the backyard and starts being an ass. I recall that it's legal to use "reasonable force" to defend oneself from intruders in ones home. In places like Texas, "reasonable force" includes the destruction of the entire universe, and an "intruder" is anyone you can drag back onto your property after they've fled. So I dare Karl Rove to set foot on my property. He does and then runs away. I grab a knife and start to chase him, but as it's snowing and I'm apparently nekkid as one usually is in a dream, I have to give it up. Then I woke up.
It's a bit disturbing, so it's behind a cut.
My parents came for a visit this weekend. Took them to the Monterey Aquarium on Sunday. Fortunately, our memberships came in the mail just the day before. That meant we didn't have to wait in the unusually large line. You have to be careful if you take my father to any museum or zoo type place, because he will look at everything there is to look at and read every sign in the place. Kate and I had been there before and my mother's tolerance exhibits is a little more human than my father's. So we left him there and took Mom to Cannery Row. Yes, Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Of course now it's just a tourist area rather than a cannery, but they got wine tasting and saltwater taffy. And we got some info on whale-watching tours.
On Monday, Kate and I had to work, so we let them putz around downtown Santa Cruz. The Boardwalk is pretty well deserted this time of year. We had dinner on the Wharf. You might expect restaurants on the waterfront to be lacking in quality, it's a tradeoff. But Carniglia's was excellent. If you like garlic that is. Which I do. I think all the savory dishes we had were garlicked up to the max. The dipping oil for the bread had so much slivered garlic in it, it was hardly even a liquid anymore. The calamari? Super-garlicky. The roasted garlic and goat cheese? You figure it out. I had the linguini and clams, which was not only highly garlicky but lemony as well. All this went very well with the wine, a Geyser Peak Sauvignon Blanc. It's a really good wine for not a lot of money. It does not contain garlic. Dessert was the Amaretto torte. Also sans garlic. When you order a coffee, you get a mini-french press. I assume you could request garlic with it, but that's a little too weird for me. All in all, it was far superior to Miramar Fish Grotto, the last place I ate on the wharf. That wasn't bad, but we were clearly paying for the view when we went there.
They've gone up to Sonoma County for visits with other relatives and wine. Sunday we're all gathering in San Francisco. As usual, at one meal, we discuss what we're doing for the next. It's a Hirsch (Mom's family) trait.
On a totally unrelated note, here is
Should have written this down earlier as I've forgotten the details. Anyways I'm at home. The house doesn't particularly resemble any place I've actually lived. I think it's a conglomerate of several. It is somehow simulatneously at the beach and in the midwest. I'd chalk it up to global warming, but there was snow on the ground. It was around Christmas, which is also odd since it was also August. It's a dream, whynot? So Karl Rove comes to the backyard and starts being an ass. I recall that it's legal to use "reasonable force" to defend oneself from intruders in ones home. In places like Texas, "reasonable force" includes the destruction of the entire universe, and an "intruder" is anyone you can drag back onto your property after they've fled. So I dare Karl Rove to set foot on my property. He does and then runs away. I grab a knife and start to chase him, but as it's snowing and I'm apparently nekkid as one usually is in a dream, I have to give it up. Then I woke up.
It's a bit disturbing, so it's behind a cut.
