gmonkey42 | Entries tagged with travel

Oh man. I don't even have the words to describe it. During the intermissions and on the walk & ride back to her apartment, Nada and I were both mostly quiet. We were pretty tired but I think were also just processing what we'd seen.

Except I wish we'd been in the opposite seats: we were in the last row on the left for Part 1 and front row on the right for Part 2. The majority of Zach's scenes were on the right in Part 1 and the left in Part 2. Ah well. It was still really great. And I was about 8 feet from Bill Heck's naked butt so there's that.

The angel was scary, just as she was supposed to be. Christian Borle was AMAZING. As Nada said, he's very good at sweating & crying.

...I seriously can't think of what to say. I'm so glad I got to see it. I'm trying to resist feeling sad that I won't be able to see it a second time.

But on a happier note: ( PICTURES! )

I'm heeeeere! My feet are tired and I'm being lazy and sitting in the apartment right now. I did venture out to get coffee and a croissant. I think I annoyed East-Village-Independent-Coffee-Shop Guy; first I asked for half-caff, then I tried to pay with a credit card. All coffee shops are Starbucks, aren't they? But then I put a dollar in the tip jar!

I'm going to post this later. after I get my photos uploaded. I'll just type it for now. [ETA: ehh, I'll post this one now and then put up the post about Part 2 & the photos later tonight after I get home]

( Read more... )

ETA: Here's the second post, with pictures.

Looking for otters:

Some of the otters have radio tags and that antenna thing is to track them.

More of me looking for otters. And being silly.

( cutting the others to spare your f-list page )

We (the lab) had a weekend camping retreat at Big Creek. It was awesome. I'm tired. I brought my air mattress so I slept pretty well this time (unlike last time, when I forgot to bring anything to sleep on and it was just the tarp bottom of my tent and my sleeping bag between me and the hard, hard ground). We hiked to a waterfall, that was really pretty. And we did a little rock climbing there to get to the upper pool. It was one big waterfall, a pool, then another waterfall into a smaller pool then down into the creek. It was 2 miles each way, which doesn't sound far except we had to start on top of the ridge and go all the way down into the valley; it was pretty steep and there were a lot of switchbacks. So I'm pretty tired.

...I'm going to have a rest now.

[Error: unknown template qotd]Hawaii! Definitely Maui and probably also the Big Island, since I haven't been there before. I'd get a private plane to fly me around; no spending half the day driving to and from Hana! Luxury hotels. Plenty of diving. Spa treatments. Top restaurants. Sailing. And I'd bring all my friends. Because, hey, unlimited money!

I'm back. We ended up leaving last night instead of this morning. I went on: The Jungle Cruise, Tarzan's Tree House, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, Winnie the Pooh, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain, the Mark Twain River Boat, Tom Sawyer's Island, Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin, the Matterhorn, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, Space Mountain, Star Tours and the Disneyland Railroad. And we saw the parade and the fireworks. I got a Mickey Mouse ears hat with a pirate bandanna and earring on it! I got my picture taken with Tigger! Eeeee!

We also spent a little time in California Adventure. We all went on Soarin' over California, which was both of my parents' favorite, and my brother and I went on California Screamin'. That one was actually a little scary. We didn't go on Tower of Terror.

I'll have to get the pictures from my mum, they're all on her camera.

My favorites were Space Mountain, the Indiana Jones ride and Big Thunder Mountain. Tom Sawyer's Island was pretty awesome too, there were caves to explore. And crawl through because they're not really intended for big, tall people with Mickey Mouse ears on their heads. The Haunted Mansion was great, it was Nightmare Before Christmas instead of the usual stuff. We didn't go on It's a Small World because whenever we went over there, there were huge lines. But until evening, the lines were generally not bad at all. The longest wait we had was for California Screamin', that was maybe 30-40 minutes. There's cool stuff to look at while you're waiting for most of the rides.

Again, it's been a few days since I've updated. I guess one of the primary purposes of the LJ before was whining about work. I can't exactly whine about sitting around reading all day. Heh heh. But I have managed to do a few things since my last update:

Going to Lake Tahoe
I went to Lake Tahoe with some work-friends (except they're still stuck working there and I've escaped) for Labor Day weekend. It was tons of fun. We went kayaking, swimming and walking. Walking in the dark. It would've been cool to go when it was, y'know, light enough to see where we were going. But it was still fun. We tried to make up "yo' mama" jokes. And they taught me how to play Texas Holdem which, contrary to what

aimlesscoyote thought on AIM, is a poker game, not something vaguely sexual. Heh heh. We also did the one thing without which an awesome weekend would not be complete: ate lots of food.

Making web sites
One of the former bosses - who left shortly before I did, to take a faculty position at a university - asked me to help make the web site for his new lab. That's cool because I still love making web sites and this gives me something productive to do. Until I figure out some productive things to do on my own. Like setting up the site for my consulting business. I'm going to get a day job too but it'll be cool if I can find small companies that need web sites and/or databases and make some extra money. Mostly databases; a ton of people already make web sites better than I do (though they charge a lot, which I won't do) but I can make good databases.

Reading fanfic
Those of you who've known me since my earliest participation in the fandom know I've always been kind of against Snape/Hermione on general principle. The whole teacher/student vibe just creeps me out (unless it's Draco. Because, come on, it's Draco!) I saw someone's rec (no idea whose, I read recs all over the place and often bookmark them then read them much later) for a Snapemione which involved them accidentally swithcing bodies and thereby coming to a better understanding of each other.

I normally wouldn't have given it a second thought except I had the exact same idea, a fic where some mysterious artifact causes them to swap bodies and they have to figure out how to get back (in the rec'ed fic, it was Neville screwing up a potion instead of an artifact). Except in mine, there wasn't any romance, it was more of a comedy where Snape is forced to realize he ought to respect women more (not that we see much of him relating to women one way or another in canon but him being thoughtlessly male-priveleged is one quite plausible interpretation). So I had to read it just to see what happened. And it was good. Dammit, I can't like Snape/Hermione!

Here they are. I'm about half-way through part 2.
Part 1
Part 2

Sandman
After some postal screw-ups, I finally got the Little Endless Storybook, along with the Sandman Companion. I like them both. The summaries in the Companion are unnecessary but I guess they'd be helpful if I hadn't read the comics recently. The interviews with Neil are super awesome. And I was right, Alianora and Eleanora are the same person.

OK, time for dinner.

I'm staying with some friends in Brooklyn, therefore I had to take the subway to get to Manhattan. It's actually easier than using the MUNI Metro. BART is the easiest of all but that's because it has fewer lines and stations. Anyway. New York is nicer than I expected. The weather is pretty good considering it's the East Coast and I can't tolerate any humidity at all.

Today I went to the Natural History Museum with J. and we saw the plane_arium show. That was fun. We saw a ton of stuffed animal carcasses and some nifty gems and minerals. Before that, I had lunch with J. and A.: Korean dumplings. After the museum, J. and I went to the Empire State Building. It wasn't really worth the long wait in line, nor the $16, but at least I can say I've been, you know? And the view was good. We'd planned on going to the botanical gardens this afternoon but we were enjoying the museum so much we decided to leave the gardens for another day.

Tomorrow, we're going on the Circle Line to see the Statue of Liberty. And dinner with the whole group. And maybe the gardens in between, or some shopping or something.

I'm really tired now so I had some pizza for dinner and I'm sitting around watching DVDs of Chapelle Show.

I am so glad I don't have to wash the dishes today. In the Coromandel, we had four-person dinner teams and each team would, on its given night, have to cook and wash up. Now that we're back in Wellington we have two-person teams. On one night the team cooks and then on the next night they wash up. Meaning you can dirty as many dishes as you want while preparing dinner because you won't have to clean them. We made mashed potatoes/sweet potatoes, carrots, broccoli, corn, peas, lamb chops and veggie sausages. We used all the pots in the cupboard and there's all the sheep bones to throw away.

On the down side, I'll have to wash up tomorrow. I think we're having baked potatoes so that's not too bad.

We went to Kapiti Island today and saw some very rare birds. It was good but I could've done with a little less strenuous hiking on our day off, after all the killer hiking in the Cormandel.

I have to go to the bathroom.

I've come back to civilization. ...well, Wellington. So could everyone just give me a brief update of what's been happening for the past two weeks or so? Thanks.

I was in Alaska last week and Hawaii this week and now I'm back. Damn. But the job situation is pretty much worked out now so that's good.

Hawaii was amazing. I'd been to Kauai before and that was good but Maui was better. Here's what I did:
* snorkeling, where I saw green sea turtles, urchins, sea cucumbers, lots of fish and a moray eel
* riding on a boat with the Pacific Whale Foundation and dolphins swam along in front of the boat
* riding on jet skis, which wasn't my idea because it pollutes but my mum didn't want my brother to go by himself and I probably won't do it again but I have to confess it was wicked awesome
* kyaking, where I also saw sea turtles
* swimming in pools fed by waterfalls that pour into the ocean
* also climbing the rocks by the waterfalls
* eating very expensive food

The waterfall-pools were amazing. It was like in a movie. I couldn't believe we could just go to a place like that, you know? It's a national park so anyone can go. It wasn't even too crowded. It's quite out of the way: the hotels are mostly on the west side and the waterfalls were on the south-east side (near Hana, for those who know Maui geography) and it was about 3 hours' drive on narrow, twisty roads. The view from the roads was awesome, though.