Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

My Granddad Allen liked telling the story about his Hollywood debut.  I don’t recall the movie or the year but he WAS in a movie nonetheless!  Whatever the film was, they needed cars from a certain time period and Granddad was happy to oblige.

Who knows?  Maybe Hollywood is in our genes.  We all thought that Big Sis was the actor in the family but directors, movie stars, and the like seem to gravitate towards me these days.

Just a couple of months ago, we saw a Cadillac commercial being filmed outside of our apartment.

A couple of weeks later, I saw this show up on YouTube.  “Yikes” is all that I have to say about this.  My section of the commercial is from 0:30 – 0:34.  Can you recognize the surrounding buildings?

Just recently Ali and I noticed the movie crew setting at the top of Nob Hill.  On the dog walk that night, we sat and watched as they filmed a short scene for the upcoming release of Need for Speed.  After noticing the film crew setup for a couple of days, here was the main event!

The next day I got a close-up of the set car.  Pretty cool, eh?

All Bee It

There are all sorts of opportunities waiting to be had by fellow Gilt City junkies.  Ali and I cruised over to the local Methodist church today to brush-up on our bee keeping skills.  Well, technically, we are rookies…but we were among some serious bee enthusiasts.  Unsurprisingly, most of them hailed from the Berkeley area.  We held our own, though, and interjected a sprinkling of questions regarding monetization, profitability, and global production.

We spent about an hour on the rooftop where the beehives are kept.  I learned that the drones travel up to 2 miles away from the hive to gather nectar.  More importantly, I learned how to survive a bee attack!  Hint: it does not involve jumping into a body of water.

As you can see, the bee suits were both functional and fashionable.  They resemble something between an Oompa Loompa and the Hamburglar.  Thankfully, the bees didn’t pay much attention to us.  

Califooled-ya

Locations often have a brand image that’s communicated to the outside world.  Until recently, my mental image of California was, “Sunny California”: year-round warm temperatures, blue skies, shining sun, and (yes) happy cows.  It turns out that a rather large portion of California, notably San Francisco, is a far cry from my hyped expectation. 

BUT the hype does exist! It’s called Southern California and it is spectacular.  Ali, Jake, and I spent the weekend in San Diego.  We arrived Saturday morning and promptly headed straight for the beach.  The white sand beaches went on for miles.  Jake had plenty of new friends to sniff and surf to keep him cool.  If it weren’t for our growling stomachs, we may never had left.

We stayed in a part of town known as the Gaslamp district, which has grown-up around the new Padres ballpark.  Our first hotel room had a nice view of home plate but we traded up for a view of the harbor and Navy ships docked at the San Diego Naval Base.  The hotel was on one end of Market Street and a long strip of restaurants, shops, and other goodies.  We were never board.  We had awesome bagel sandwiches for breakfast, fresh fish tacos for lunch, and small plates for dinner.

Living in a city can be a challenge for people with large dogs but in San Diego, Petco owns the baseball stadium and has a convenient park in the stadium that is open daily for visitors (and their pets).

We’re not 100% sure yet but San Diego might dethrone Napa/Sonoma as our #1 weekend getaway destination!

(Travel) Agent Ali

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Ali’s missed her calling.  She is, without a doubt, the best vacation planner I’ve ever known.  We had planned a quick daytrip to Napa to pick up the wine from this month’s wine club.  To my surprise, she handed me a sort of two-day Napa scavenger hunt.  There were nearly a dozen items and about 36 hours to get ‘er done but that’s not all!  The theme was, “A Weekend of Firsts.”

 We started with a California staple, In-N-Out Burger (Double Double and a Milk Shake).  Excellent burger, terrible fries, good milkshake.  We will go again. 

 Shortly thereafter we proceeded to a new Napa dog park (even the dog park has vines), checked-in at the new temporary domicile (Beazley House), visited three new tasting rooms (Grgich, Girard, and Corley Farms), and then had dinner at a new restaurant in downtown Napa.

 The “Weekend of Firsts” continued on Sunday with a trip to the Old Faithful Geyser of California, Buster’s BBQ, and reached a glorious crescendo with an afternoon viewing of Top Gun in 3D at the SF Imax Theatre (!!).  I didn’t get a picture of us in our 3D glasses but I did get this!

The Impenetrable Mist

One of the complexities of a family genealogy project is the reality that information sought is often difficult or impossible to obtain. Since leaving Sharpsburg, I stumbled on a might-be-relative (Dr. Lemuel Line) who similarly documented his ancestry...except he did it during the 1893. At the beginning of the document, he writes better of the difficulties which I find.

"It is difficult to write a history of ones ancestry when every thing that he has to rely upon is so enveloped in a mist that is impenetrable and no matter how one may yearn, to look into that realm of the unwritten past his effort will almost prove useless, as the record is only written upon the minds of those who slumber in the grave. What an age has passed we of this latter day can fully appreciate, and yet our lives are like dying embers at first a flicker, then another and with a mighty effort to survive, it flashes up only to go out as those who have gone before- we sit and muse and wish that the ashes of the past, might once again, assume their ruddy glow, and tell the tales that oft they had heard - yet we in our progression can not give the inanimate speech nor portray with an adequate justice, the many scenes in wood and field-Their deeds and actions can only cast their reflection through the generation of the present, and as we labor on in our daily avocation our lives displaying many of the traits of the forgotten dead-The restless spirit of man although limited by the laws of the body is yet as boundless as the universe-In his curiosity he is adventuresome and fears no restraints that may seemingly be in the way-The heat of a tropic zone or the rigors of an arctic winter did not quench the desire for adventure among those sturdy yeomanry of a century ago, and although many heroes have their names enrolled in the archives of history, yet many, who have performed heroic deeds have moldered in the dust and are forgotten these many years ago."

I wish I wrote like this!

Thirty Six Thousand Feet

What would you guess is the the air temperature at 36,000' above Earth's surface at mid-day on February 24th?

Well! I feel a little bit smarter today and I'd like to bestow this knowledge upon you. For the record, the temperature at 36,006' above Nebraska registered a bone chilling -73 degrees fahrenheit! Whaaaa!?

On our way East, we saw temps drop below -90 degrees in the middle of the night.

Snowy Sweet Tooth

A kid in a candy store was I this Monday past. Or, as it may be, a former Bostonian and current San Francisco dweller in a snowstorm. I've been glued to the New England weather of late. Reports of blizzard conditions and near zero temperatures conjure nostalgia in me. My California friends and colleagues think I'm crazy but I always enjoyed the sense of bravado and perseverance that came from being able to enjoy and thrive in a New England winter.

You can imagine my excitement when I woke to falling snowflakes on Tuesday morning in the Pennsylvania mountains. The snow started to accumulate in the morning and finished in the afternoon. All told, we got a respectable 8" of snow. Watching a snow storm come and go is one of my great pleasures. Before long I was shoveling the walkway and shuttling firewood from the woodbox back to the house.

The only thing that was missing was Jake the Wunderdog, my partner in crime. I don't feel too bad for him though. He's been living it up for the past week with his new buddy Mr. Carlton in Santa Cruz!