It was the third night in a row sleeping on Anna's (Dragondazd's) dorm room floor, which basically had enough space for me to stretch out, but not quite enough to roll over. Sleeping on floors isn't really recommended either. I'd pretty much overstayed my welcome anyway, I think, I've not been very good company the past few days (for obvious reasons) and I must have bored her and Wy both to tears. Regardless, they were really good hosts, and I thank them both for rescuing me at such short notice.
We drove down to lunch in (I think, my knowledge of geography isn't particularly good) San Jose - Dim Sum with Aeto, Skandranon, Kyreeth and Worf from IRC. I'm not sure I said very much during lunch, it was a bit overwhelming to be at a lunch with six people who already knew each other and were talking about things I was entirely peripheral to, but I got a few laughs anyway.
After lunch, Skan, Kyreeth and Aeto went home, and Worf, Dazd, Wy and myself went down to the Monterey Aquarium, where we spent an inordinate amount of time looking at fish. And really cool octopuses. And jellyfish that blew your mind. It was funky. Danna: I didn't pick up anything for you at the gift shop because I'm probably not coming back through Santa Barbara, but I did spot an octopus bookmark that you'd have liked. We finally got kicked out of the aquarium at 6pm when it closed.
On the way back from Monterey, we dropped in on Athelind and Quelonzia, who are now entirely unable to move through their house because it is packed from floor to ceiling with dragon-related memorabilia. One day, I will see those two on a documentary. We had a very loud discussion about Star Trek. Apparently, Janeway can kick Kirk's ass, and Enterprise sucks because the scriptwriters are stupid.
We then drove back up to San Jose (again, I think I got that name right) for an Italian dinner. I was assured that this dinner was cheap, but the cost was exactly the same as I would have expected to pay in Australia, except in US currency, not Australian. I would say that I'm heammoraging money, but I can't spell the word.
By now, it was about 11:30pm. We drove up to drop in on Myopic_Dragon, who was at work trying to get a product out the door by tomorrow morning. We were distracting in the extreme. They had a rather crappy pool table and ping-pong table downstairs, and I discovered that it's been way, way too long since I played ping-pong. I have reverted to being crap. It was about 1:30am by the time we got out - Wy and Dazd went home, and Worf took me to see his office down the road.
There, we played more ping-pong (I won, mainly due to the fact I serve well), and I met tale, God of Usenet. Well, I didn't so much meet him, as be introduced and have him grunt in my general direction. I've never met a Usenet God before. I really should have looked up Fluffy (whose real name I forget, but he used to be on one of the aol-sucks social mailing lists years ago) before I came over too, but I never really planned this as a "meet lots of people" holiday. It was supposed to be a "meet two people" holiday, but it was rather exploded by circumstances.
After that, Worf drove me back into San Francisco, where I had booked myself into a Youth Hostel. He gave me a great deal of good advice about what I should be seeing while I'm here as we drove in, but it being way late at night, it passed entirely through my head without taking any root at all. Except for the bit about the all-garlic restaurant.
It's now past 3am. My goals for the next few days include finally getting in touch with my travel agent (since as of tomorrow afternoon, it's Not Weekend in Australia) and changing my flight out so I don't have to train back to LA, finding out where JWZ's club is so I can say I've been there, wandering around doing touristy things, and stuff. Mucho stuff.
If I keep busy, I don't think about things. Not thinking is very good right now. Just keep moving and leave all the nasty things chasing behind me.