Saturday, November 10, 2012

Off to San Francisco and Pre-travel Ramblings

Bad Godzilla!  Drop that rhino, right now!

Greetings, all!  I'm sorry for the scarcity of posts as of late, but life has been busy and complicated.  Tomorrow, I get on the plane for San Francisco!  In looking for maps and background information, I ran across this unfortunate story on Google news.  It appears that an undersea earthquake caused the usual awaking of giant monsters.  Poor San Francisco!

Thank goodness local emergency management officials planned ahead and built up their inventory of giant robots!  The battle of the titans will no doubt cause much damage and chaos.  However, this is a near montly event in the Bay Area.  I have faith that the BART will still be running on time.

As for this beautiful city, I probably won't see a lot of it.  I am attending Greenbuild; the main event for everything related to sustainable buildings.  The sessions will be great along with four evening receptions and a day spent with the third-party laboratory and certifier I work with.  Yes, pity me.  I will be trapped inside a convention center from sunup to sundown.

There is supposed to be a really nice typewriter shop in Berkeley.  I'll be within a mile or two of it during some Monday meetings, but probably won't make it there.  <sigh>  I most likely will make it to the Super7 store!  It is home to many amazing vinyl monsters and is pretty much Nerdvana.

It will be a week or two before the next entry.  The recent event summary goes like this:  My oldest daughter has been down with a migraine for several days.  We tried to deal with the swirling vortex of leafpocalypse today.  The wind is not helping.  I did a major garage cleaning and organizing binge last weekend and now have some great rolling racks.  The garage work bench is once again clear and I can work on my latest acquisition.  I'll blog it later, but here is a little preview.  No, you should not be worried - much.


As Claire noted, it is extremely beige.  I'm thinking it will need to be repainted dark gray.  Isn't this a nice look?

Source
OK, time for some truth in advertising:  I did not get the full size leviathan Adler.  It is a 1966 Adler Standard.  The only information I have found on this particular model comes from Richard Polt's blog. As for the San Francisco backdrop, that was a bit of amazing timing.  When I went out for lunch on Friday I found this lovely piece of black velvet art at my favorite thrift store for $2.00.

I look forward to sharing some pics from San Francisco and the Greenbuild Expo.  My employer is exhibiting, but I stopped working the booth a couple years ago to immerse myself in the education and networking activities.  This year I get to check out the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Google's Green Team lair.  Nice.

6 comments:

  1. WooHoo! SanFran! One of my favoritest places on the planet. Hopefully it's awesome vibes will ooze through the walls of the conference center. Will send my own vibes for your dear daughter's headpains. I got cluster migraine in grad school and know how she must be hurting.

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  2. California Typewriter must be the Berkeley shop: I've never been, since they have the bad fortune to be open only during the week, when I'm at work. This could also be a good thing, though, since I'd be tempted to shop.

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  3. I remember that movie with the typewritten All Work... Jack Nicholson played a really good crazy in that one.

    If you're going to San Francisco be sure to wear a flower in your hair..... (oh my, I'm showing my age)

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  4. Have a wonderful time in the City by the Bay, even though it sounds like you'll be totally busy.

    You'll be so close, yet so far away...my home in The Woods is 166 miles northeast of where you'll be.

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  5. I made it! I had dinner and walked around a bit and now the Central Time Zone is catching up. The city has the vibe I remember from my last visit long ago. Random observations:
    There are few car horns going off. This is very unlike Chicago.
    There are a number of homeless people vocalizing one thing or another that make up for the lack of horns. The guy lurching around throwing firecrackers is a unique individual.
    I found some really amazing apple/cranberry pie this evening.
    I saw a Royal Grey Magic in a store window display.
    The expensive bottled water in the room goes by the name of "VOSS". Crazy world.

    Cameron: sorry a local type in was not in the cards this trip.

    I will catch up on more comments later.

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  6. I'm really looking forward to your next post, hopefully full of San Franciscan wonder and excitement. Love the way you write, and how you mix silly anecdotes with great facts about typewriters.

    Love your work!

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