parakkum

In about a week and change, I will be heading over to Tokyo for a friend's wedding. I'm poring through a guidebook now, but am open to suggestions for things to do or see in Tokyo.

At the moment, my plans involve becoming horribly, horribly lost if said friend ever decides to let us loose on our own, what with street names being uncommon and all. Hurrah for different cultures.

I'm listening to Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW, and the host just commented on how musicians he's talked to who played in Japan said that it was like a whole different world.

I may be missing something, but it seemed pretty darn comfortable and familiar while I was there. Sure, the signs are in a language I can't read, and almost everyone's Japanese (natch), but it was an urban area in the manner of many urban areas.

Not that there aren't deep cultural differences, but I felt distinctly in, rather than out of, place.

While everyone else has been off enjoying Japan, I've been spending the last couple days in Orange County.

No, the other one.

Though this one also has a Disneyland(world), Sea World, Universal Studios and many other fine attractions that one could enjoy without humidity in Southern California.

It's Orange County with swamps. There are a few highlights:

More pictures in the extended.

Last Thanksgiving, Littlestar, kwc and I had a fairly terrible time returning from SoCal on Interstate 5 on the Sunday following Thanksgiving. Although I'm used to the San Diego <--> Bay Area drive on 5, and have done it many, many times, that was my first attempt at that particular Sunday. I recall that San Diego to Los Angeles leg taking the usual 2 hours; it was the Los Angeles to Bay Area leg that stalled out horrendously, finally coming in at 10 terrible hours.

This year, facing the same Sunday drive back, Littlestar and I decided to try using 101 for the Los Angeles to Bay Area leg. Although this adds about 37 miles to the trip, it avoids the grapevine, that whole stretch of 5 through the Central Valley, and 152.

And it worked. Very, very well. 7.5 hours from Los Angeles to the Bay Area. And, as a bonus, instead of a landscape of dirt, fields and cattle, 101 affords views of the ocean, vineyards and rustic, coastal farmland. Even with some rain and a bit of a slowdown toward the very end, the ride on 101 was amazing compared to last year.

At the moment, I'm in Snowmass Village, Colorado. Right now, it's -6 Celcius outside -- where I just spent some time -- and snowing very lightly.

I realized that this is the third time I've ever been in snow, and the first time for that in fifteen years.

Yup. I grew up in Southern California.

So part of my mind, in a childlike voice, is saying: "Snow! Yay!"

Then there's the other part, that's saying something like: "Why is there frozen water everywhere? Who did this?"

I spent the last weekend in Snowmass, Colorado. The temperature hovered between -7 and -16 (Celcius).

It was a decent weekend. As I mentioned earlier, also my third time in snow, ever.

More pictures in the extended.

When I told Littlestar about all the snow, she charged me with the task of making and then photographing a snowman. In trying to do this, I hit one major technical limitation.

No gloves = crippling pain and risk of frostbite after maybe five seconds of work.

This limited me to short bursts of activity followed by a hasty attempt to de-ice my hands, then a rewarming period in my pockets. The end result of this pain is the snow figure pictured above. Its arms were made with one of my pens because there were no loose branches lying around, and I really didn't want to hurt any of the plants nearby (they already seemed pretty harassed by the weather).

More dynamic snow totem pics in the extended.

One of the benefits of the trip between here and my family being almost exactly five hundred miles (nearly to the mile!) is that I can chunk it into conceptual 50-mile, 10% increments.

In their book Mean Genes, Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan note that people rely heavily on trends and measurable progress. They use as an example of the latter case one author's profound mistake of having "Write Dissertation" on his daily to do list. The consequence of this misstep is having an incomplete task lurking on his list, day after day. Over time, this is a crushing thing. The alternate approach of breaking it down into achievable steps is much healthier. "Write draft of chapter one" might sit on the to do list for a short while, to be crossed out (done!) and replaced by "Revise draft of chapter one" and so forth.

Similarly, I've experimented over the years with different ways of chunking my trip along the length of California in psychologically useful ways. I've learned that I can't rely on physical landmarks -- I consistently misgauge where certain things are, and then my sense of progress is off, which can be discouraging. I initially tried looking at quarters -- that would be 125-mile increments -- but that's so long as to also be discouraging.

I finally settled on fifty-mile increments. Fifty miles goes fast enough that I'm not likely to find myself checking the trip odometer repeatedly, yet it's still a meaningful chunk of the trip -- 10%.

That, along with caffeine and sugar, maintains trip sanity.

I had Littlestar's bunnies as my traveling companions this time, as I took care of them with great help from my parents for the past two weeks. They were excellent travelers this time, taking a day-long car trip in stride, happily munching on hay and seagrass mats whenever we stopped for an extended break.

So says the Business section of the Chronicle.

Southwest will resume SFO service in the fall

This last week marked the second time in two years I've gone to Madison, Wisconsin for a scientific conference. Lest this seem odd, I should point out that UW Madison is an excellent center of biology research, especially in fields related to microbiology. Add to that some really top-notch conference services folks, and it's no surprise at all that the conferences flock to Madison.

As summertime locations go, Madison is quite nice. It feels a bit like a midwestern version of Berkeley, with State Street standing in for Telegraph Avenue.

As I didn't feel like lugging around a real camera, I just have a handful of pics from my phone. Here's my defining image for my Madison experience:

Explanation and additional photos in the extended.

Littlestar and I spent the last weekend going to and from Orange County, where we spent a day for a good friend's wedding (which is another, and altogether more beautiful, story). Outside of the fun of the wedding, it was a trip well-laden with quirks, starting with the hotel parking garage for the ostensibly 3.5-star Anaheim Hilton (reserved blind via the wonders of Hotwire).

We parked our car in front, gave the keys for safekeeping to one of the valets (at her request), and then after checking in had to get them to track down said valet, who'd just held onto the keys rather than handing them into the office. After that very mild adventure, we pulled into the Hilton parking garage proper, which had a few immediate quirks.

First, it was arranged somewhat backwards, a trait it shares with the parking in downtown San Jose.

Second, it was arranged very oddly, such that signs for (for example) the handicapped parking actually looped you completely around the periphery of the third level, only to direct you up to the fourth level (rather than just directing you immediately to the fourth level). Truly exciting, however, were the fracture marks everywhere:

The pictures don't do justice to the rolling ups and downs of the floor, either. It looked and felt as if, perhaps, the entire hotel were slowly subsiding in bits and pieces. It altogether looked like it wouldn't survive the next good-sized earthquake...which seems as if it would be a concern in Orange County.

But you see, it's okay, because there's a massive network of jury-rigged metal supports undergirding the floors in this place:

What's especially exciting, and unfortunately not captured in pictures, is how some of the structural pillars in this place are obviously being tugged inward by the nearest jury-rigged crossbeams. It makes me glad that the chance of an earthquake while you're actually in the place is pretty low.

Signs of subsidence, unfortunately, continued into the hotel proper:

The angle obscures it quite a bit, but the bed itself is sloping away from the center of the room, following the downward slope of the floor as it moves toward the headboard.

This door (actually a suite door connecting the room to the neighboring room) was also subsiding, torquing the lock you see there quite a bit.

The trip back from Orange county was not without its own quirks.

Don't buy the gas here.

Don't drink the water, either.

But do laud these nice folks for conserving it.

It was a good trip for a worthy cause, and when the Anaheim Hilton finally collapses, at least we'll know why.

Today, I observed Good Friday by joining a precession that began in front of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and ended up in a service at the Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, several blocks away.

The service was in Italian, so I mostly stood when everyone else did and just listened. Most fascinating to me is that this wasn't a special city event, but rather the normal Good Friday service for the congregation at Santa Maria Maddalena. I think the last church in which I attended Good Friday was maybe thirty years old. In contrast, Santa Maria Maddalena is about five hundred years old.

There will be pictures and perhaps some more notes on my current trip when I return.