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nosrednaydujI went to the International Gay Square Dance Convention over Fourth of July weekend. They had over 800 attendees! Not all of them were gay; many were allies or some other form of queer. And many of them were excellent dancers (not all, but enough). And I had an awesome time. Next year's is in Montréal. I'm sad about the timing of this convention, because it interferes with seeing Fourth of July fireworks. (Third of July in my town.) I did not go see fireworks in San Francisco, because it would've been quite the trek, taking a bus up to pier 39. So instead, before I left I discovered that there were some July 2 fireworks near my house, but the place you viewed them from was an extremely well lit parking lot, which kind of washed them out. I took a couple of pictures but they are pretty lame. And next year's convention is July 1-5, so I don't know. Maybe there will be fireworks for Canada Day? (Maybe I should decide that fireworks are bad for the planet?)
San Francisco has gotten to be as expensive as New York! I was glad I had brought little instant oatmeal packets and an immersion heater; it torques me to pay $20 for breakfast.
Today I rented a car and drove down to San Jose to hang out with some people from work. That was fun, meeting people who I only ever seen over WebEx. I didn't actually do any work; there had been some thought that I would, but it didn't happen.
The car rental is kind of annoying; I had reserved an electric car, but when I got there "they are all being charged". I was like "okay, how fully charged are they? Because I don't need them to be 100% charged today". So the agent called back, but was told to call a different station, and nobody answered at that different station and we waited a little while, meanwhile he went ahead and completed the rental process for a gas car; I had said I wanted the smallest one possible, and I got a Nissan Versa, which isn't exactly tiny, and my guess is it will get the usual 30 mpg that pretty much every car gets these days. Anyway, at some point I decided to stop waiting, so I could proceed down to San Jose and have my lunch date. The agent had said "we are required to provide electric cars", which must mean there's some California law about that. But I guess they don't need to provide them in a timely fashion, or at the time that your reservation starts.
After I was done in San Jose, I drove back up to Millbrae for my next hotel reservation, and as I was passing signs for Page Mill Road in Palo Alto, I decided on a lark to drive up it, since that had been the access road to our house in Los Altos Hills. And then I continued up it and drove down Skyline Boulevard and looked at the view of the ocean and the bay from the crest. So I wasted some gas, because it wasn't exactly efficient, driving up a 2000 foot elevation gain. It's hard to believe that I used to bicycle up that hill. I don't know if I could do it today. 2000 feet gain in 11 miles.
Pretty, though, and I got to drive through some microclimate bits where there were tall pine trees that got good foggy watering and various other different vegetation things that must happen with different amounts of water, being a nice contrast from the brown hills dotted with live oaks.
Now that I am in a much cheaper accommodation, of course they provide free breakfast. And free Internet. (The convention had arranged for free Internet, but it's not the default in those expensive hotels.)
