I didn't sleep at the hotel last night: Dave's bed was altogether more welcoming, the transportation more available, and the neighborhood a damn sight better. After a late night working on this site (for all you Constant Readers out there) with the benefit of Dave's broadband, I woke slowly and showered. Unfortunately, Dave had a lot of meetings today and wasn't available, but his fiancée, Linnea, had no classes today and a car of her own, so that didn't preclude the two of us from going anywhere!
After showering and dressing, Linnea and I took a short walk up Wilshire Boulevard to a restaurant I simply had to visit once I heard the name.
The domain you're visiting right now, snugharbor.com, is also the name of my house, and both derive from Robert Heinlein's book, The Number of the Beast. It's not really typical as names go, so imagine my surprise when, while driving to last night's sushi, Dave mentioned that there was a breakfast place en route named... Snug Harbor.
Now, I don't have anything whatsoever linking this restaurant to Heinlein, except that I know he was stationed in the area in his Navy days, so it's possible he might have visited. The restaurant has been in that location and with that name since World War II, so this may well have been the source of the name. I'll probably never know. For the record, however, it's a competently-run diner and a good example of the genre. Linnea had some sort of omelet, and I enjoyed a meatloaf melt. Unfortunately, the manager wasn't in the office that day, so I couldn't buy a hat, and I forgot to bring the camera, so no pictures. Linnea and Dave promise to e-mail me some, which I'll probably use on the main snugharbor.com site.
After we got back to the apartment, Linnea and I jaunted to Best Buy, where I picked up a cheap Palm m100 for my dad as a host/Christmas/birthday/I forgot present. I unfortunately had to unpack it from the original carton to get everything into my suitcase, but the empty box did provide a convient way to send home books I'd already read. After Best Buy, we stopped by a bank. Inside, there was a woman delivering a box of Girl Scout Cookies to one of the employees. I stopped her, and motioned her over to where I was in line.
"Hey. Got any more boxes in the car?" This exchange had all the earmarks of bad camp.
She laughed, "Sure."
I pondered, "Got any Thin Mints?" She nodded. Thin Mints are always the best sellers, she couldn't not have them. I pressed on, "Which bakery? USA or Little Brownie?"
Ah! A mild stumper! The cookie pusher frowned a moment and replied, "Little Brownie -- uh, I didn't know there were two?"
Now it was my turn to nod knowledgeably, "Yeah. The Little Brownie Thin Mints are more minty, the USA ones are more chocolatey. How much is it per box this year?" Of course, the Little Brownie ones were the ones I had been pushing, back in my cookie-pushing days. I had to push 'em personally, too, door-to-door, as Dad refused to take the form to work, but that's another story.
"Oh," the Scouting Mom said blankly to my statement about comparative baking. But she knew the price well enough, "Three dollars."
I nodded vaguely -- they'd been holding around there for several years now, although my mom could hold forth for quite awhile about how they used to be a dime when she was a Scout (for me, they'd been two bucks). I plucked a twenty from my pocket, "I'll take one -- no, two." I could take one on the train, I figured, and carry one to Mom.
She ducked out to her car, and halfway there I realised that if I were sending a box home anyway, I could surprise my husband by slipping a box of Thin Mints into it. So, when the Scout Mom came back with her two boxes and started making change for my twenty, I said quietly, "Actually, could I have a third one?"
She'd only brought two from the car, so I offered to go back with her to get the third one. I finally just couldn't help myself anymore, and lapsed into a rather Cheech-and-Chongy patter: "Choo got the stuff, man? Izzit in yo car, man? Yo, man, I need the stuff!" Happily, she took it in the good humor I nad intended, and I got my third box.
Linnea dropped me off to fence with her professors about homework, leaving me with a couple hours to repack my back, work on this site, and do e-mail. I started off by calling Mom in Cleveland to wish her happy birthday -- apparently I was the only one of her wayward children who had remembered at all, and even that was a day late. When Dave and Linnea came home, Dave suggested dinner at Versailles, a Cuban restaurant (no, that name in that context doesn't make sense to me, either) that specializes in a rather potent garlic chicken, which I ordered at Dave's behest.
After a solid fifteen minutes of slient eating (all three entrées were that good), I mention to Dave, "While I found the dark meat perfectly done and beautifully executed, I thought the white meat was a little overdone."
Dave tilted his head to the side, listening to something far away. "I think I just heard Laurel sighing about that overdone chicken. From five hundred miles away."
You know, i think I did, too.
After that, we had to fix the greivous personal difficulty that I had no more books left to read. Dave took us to Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, a former street that'd been closed off to traffic and turned into an open-air mall. For bookstores, it had two of the usual chains that I shan't mention, and a store called "Midnight Special" that Dave would only describe as "consciousness raising." As this was the first one we saw, I tried this one first.
Okay, so I have to admit when I heard the term "consciousness-raising," I was expecting fluffy New Age or perhaps Eastern Philosophy Lite. No, but what I saw made me briefly curious as to who had set up the teleportal to Berkeley and forgotten to tell me, because everything other than the sci-fi ghetto (which was in front, for a change) was consciousness-raising, all right -- of the socialist variety. They even had copies of The Communist Manifesto for sale at the checkout. The main thing in their favor, though, in my mind, was that they had one of those neat library ladders with the overhead rails that could roll around the store. Unlike the few other instances of this I've seen, customers were actually allowed to use this one, which was fortunate because without it one couldn't reach the top half of the sci-fi ghetto.
I left with five new books, including an Amber omnibus from Zelazny and the Alfred Bester classic, The Stars My Destination. Next, it was time to find the train station.
Los Angeles's Union Station is a triumph of art deco architecture. Here's a shot I took from inside the main lobby.
Unbeknownst to me, though, my fellow strandees from the Coast Starlight had bonded together (but I expected that), and had missed me when I wasn't present (I hadn't expected that). So these people were all pretty happy to see me and make sure I wasn't dead -- apparently my manner of leaving led some to believe I was stepping out with some local talent for the evening! While I'm sure Dave and Linnea are quite flattered, I don't think that's what the rumour mill had in mind. Here are some of them after we'd all re-gotten our tickets:
With newly issued tickets in hand, we milled around waiting for our train to be announced. Meanwhile, the Wilberforce University Choir had arrived en masse, also bound for our train. When queueing for boarding was announced, the line was mighty, indeed, giving us another chance to peer around the waiting area of the station. It's pretty good-looking, really, another reflection of Art Deco. Here I'm looking toward the information desk.
Amazingly given the fiasco of the last couple days, the Sunset Limited left pretty much on time. They had us queue up in one of the long hallways: and marched us toward the gate. Unlike boarding in Oakland, which had been downright laid-back, here they had to be more organized, if for no other reason than because this train would split in two in San Antonio: one half would ride through Texas, bound for Chicago, whereas my half would wind up in Orlando, Florida. So, they had to sort our seats by destination. My tickets still read that I had a coach seat to Deming, and a sleeper the rest of the way, so I was in cattle class for one night more, or at least until an attendant approved my promotion. Happily, Deming isn't what you'd call a high-traffic stop, so I had the whole side of the aisle to myself. Also bound for Deming were a mother and her child, Rowan, who I took on a tour of the train's accomodations once we were underway.
The hour was already late, so there wasn't much to do after that. Not many train miles were clocked today: the train didn't depart until 10:30PM (which is proper) and only has time to get to Ontario before the day rolls over. Tomorrow's mileage number, barring mishap, will be much more exciting, I promise.
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