New Place, Good Things, Oh, and I LOVE Planes
So, yeah, I've been missing much longer than I had planned ... but there *is* a story behind that!
So, I paid my first month's rent and signed my renter's agreement on November 5. I called everyone I needed to, including the electric company, gas company, water and phone so that I could have everything moved and transferred over within the week. Things are supposed to run smoothly, right?
Well, I get to the new place by the 7th and it turns out the gas wasn't working and my Internet is all screwy. Also, there's no water pressure in the bathroom sink. At this point, I can't go back and stay at the old house, because there's not electricity there and so I have to make do. To make matters worse, I had less than a week to work on these problems because I was going to be leaving for California on the 12th AND the people w
ho were supposed to help me move only managed to help me move one load of my stuff in a pick up truck. Fortunately, I had two space heaters and was able to message Addy and tell him of my unfortunate dilemma. The next day, I called all the appropriate people to get my utilities straightened out. On November 11th, my utilities were fixed, but I had 
to get ready to leave and would be gone for the next 8 days, in California. I still didn't have my stuff from the old house.
So, on the 12th, I boarded a plane to get to California. I would take two planes and have three stops on the way there. I am going to say right now, I really love flying. I mean, of course, flying is still very much a novelty to me, but it is amazing as well. As my friend said, "you're suspended in the air, held up by just thin strips of metal." I like it. I also love the sensation of the plane lifting me up into the air and watching the ground fall away from me. It kind of brings elements of Relativity into a more personal realm.
You can learn a lot from a simple plane trip, but you can also learn a lot from the airports. In fact, airports are great people watching locations. The second airport I landed at was Seattle (I didn't get off the plane at the other airport). So, of course, while I was there, I played voyeur. The very first thing I noticed about this airport was ... damn, there was a lot of people. 
In fact, as you can see to the left, I tried to take a picture of the amazing masses of people ... and I failed. It seems I have elite powers regarding taking pictures of masses of people where I manage to get the 
*only* place where there doesn't happen to be many people. And I don't know who the blurry chick is in that picture, but she didn't seem too sociable when I said 'hi' to her as she passed me. And, yes, that is my ear in the picture, I was taking a picture of what was behind me and managed to get a lovely picture of my earlobe. Please tell me my earlobes are sexy, I need to know if they are, really. I just hope someone around has an earlobe fetish so that the picture is not wasted.
Anyhow, once I got into the airport, I was still quite amazed by the masses of people. Ever want to verify that humans are herd animals, go to a large airport. We walk in herds even when we don't know people. The herd may not communicate with other members, but people just managed to crowd around each other and move en masse through the airport. You'd have a gap with no people, but would look around and see blobs of people wandering about. I really needed a cattle prod.
Another thing I noticed would probably be a bit more disturbing to other people than it really was to me. This is 
because I'm sick and twisted and other people are apparently not. Turns out that the Seattle Airport reminded me a lot of the scene in Soylent Green where that guy goes for assisted suicide. You know, where Heston goes to try to stop him and there's all those boxy windows and the sterile appearance. Mostly, though, the reminder is in the architecture at the Seattle Airport. The Airport isn't so much a replica of the place, but it simply has a similar style - a similar structure and feel.
Once I got past all that, I was back to people watching. I did most of my people watching close to the gate I was going to depart from on my way to CA. I had to stick around in Seattle Airport for two 
hours and while I had a book, I found the people were too distracting anyway and were quite the entertainers without even knowing it. See the two pictures here of my feet? I wasn't trying for a horribly angled image of my ankle ... instead, I was trying to take a picture of the guys on the other side of the terminal screens. Guess what they're doing? Yep, they're messing around with their packages. I just happened to sit right behind the terminal screen because it seemed like a good place to sit. In the time I was there, about an hour to an hour and a half, two men decided that was a good place to diddle. They apparently thought that if they walked up reeeaaaallly close to the screen, they'd not be noticed sticking their fingers into their pants. Now, it is quite possible that they were merely adjusting their Johnsons ... but if that is the case, they just took their own sweet time. To be fair, neither showed obvious signs of reaching a sexual climax, so perhaps they just decided it was time to adjust themselves for five minutes or maybe just relax and stroke a few times as they checked (from very close up) their departure times and gates.
A really fascinating aspect of these men and their behavior is ... there was a bathroom only about ten yards away. I know this, because in between the men's and women's bathroom was an extremely annoying drinking fountain that played noises like an echoing sewer every time someone drank from it. I 
think the noise was supposed to sound like a waterfall or creek or something ... the advantage was, though, you couldn't miss where the water was and you couldn't miss where the bathroom was. Every few minutes someone would discover the water fountain, touch the button, laugh, drink, show a friend and some family and maybe their dog that the water fountain made noise, laugh again, press the button five more times, laugh yet again, and be on their merry way. I'm guessing the noise was to lead the blind to the water fountain, but for someone sitting near it and seeing this happen repeatedly, well, it was both fascinating and slightly annoying at the same time.
Soon, though, I was back on the plane and unable to watch the diddlers. I am a little curious as to how many people would adjust themselves at those screens per day, though. One thing about flying is that it is awesome to watch things under the plane while you are in it. When I was on my way to Seattle, there was a mild rainstorm going on in the area most of the way there. However, the plane was above the clouds and I got to see an awesome sunset. I tried to take some nice pictures, but was only able to really get the one shown on the left, just as the sun started to sink below the clouds. By the time I got to Seattle, it was dark and it got even darker by the time I reached the Bay Area. Landing in both areas at dark was amazing, I loved descending into the sea of city lights.
California was an amazing adventure and I was nearly overwhelmed by all the cool things to se
e and learn. I was visiting my best friend and he showed me all around the bay area. We got great pictures, which, if he manages to locate his camera usb cable, I can share some with you later ... I went to several restaurants and ate lots of yummy foods that I had never tried before. We had Japanese, Italian, Chinese, and Afghani. It was all quite yummy. I also got to meet with some other skeptics from an online community I'm involved with at a bar and we went for a couple long drives so that I could see some of the awesome parts of the Bay Area. I saw the Golden Gate bridge and got to go across it a few times, I saw the old fort on top of one of the hills on one end of the bridge, and I saw Alcatraz from a distance (and decided someday I will have to visit the island).
I also, for some reason, became greatly fascinated with palm trees. I can't remember ever having seen a real palm tree in person before. This may not seem very novel to most people, but to me it was very interesting. I'm used to large pine trees, junipers, Oaks and other such things and I always thought of palms as a unique tree that grew in places where people attached hammocks to them to lounge on. I hadn't really imagined them much as being trees that just kinda were scattered around the neighborhood like token front yard cherry trees. The thing that really interested me, though, is why do palm trees look like they are either furry or have scales? I didn't get to get close to examine the trunk of a palm tree until about my fourth day in California, but on my third day, I asked my friend about the scale like appearance of the trunk and how some palms looked like they had dead branches hanging down and if the two things were related. He seemed to think it was possible, but said he hadn't thought about it. Thus, I created a hypothesis that the scale-ish look was due to the branches falling and went on a journey through the internet in search of information that night. I was quite happy to discover that I was right but was then, the next day, slightly less proud of myself when I was able to examine some trunks up close and realised it would have been very obvious had I just been closer to the palm tree. The scales are actually scars left behind after the palm tree drops a branch. It looks a lot like a very flattened scar you might find on a tree that has had a branch cut off. Turns out, though, that there is some sort of pattern to the branch shedding cycle of the palm tree and that if you know the rate at which a species drops its branches, you can figure out the age of that palm tree by counting the scars on it.
I also got to climb a small mountain. It was tiny, so it didn't take a long time, we only made a day trip, but the view on Mt. Tamalpais was gorgeous and I now like that I can tell people I've climbed a mountain. The trip, though, was an adventure within my adventure. We got to the place we were going to start hiking from and because of my sensitive skin, I had to apply sunscreen. It doesn't take long for me to start burning from the sun and that tends to hurt as it happens. For some reason, the sun will just start making my skin sting and then I know it won't be long before it starts baking me. Thus, I asked my friend to help me get my face covered in sunscreen after having applied it to my arms - and, well, I had gotten the spray kind. So, my brilliant idea was to close my eyes and just have him spray. This led to me getting sunscreen in my eyes. Because I am a genius. The climb up the Mountain included me squinting one of my eyes the entire way as it provided itself with ample amounts of water, which streamed down my cheek and caused me to look as if I was miserable a fair portion of the way. Fortunately, by the time we got to the top, the eye stopped stinging, I was able to open it and enjoy the amazing view and even managed to spot a black chipmunk on the way back down.
The eight days I spent in California went by way too fast. There's actually much more that I could talk about, but this blog post is getting incredibly long and I know some of you have stuff to do. I will continue the story of my misadventures later. I'll leave this post with an image of the people at the airport as I was leaving ... Why is it that people at airports look so unenthused?
