More Frisco, please

Tuesday was more San Francisco. We all slept in a little that day and made it to the city for the 12:30pm tour of AT&T Park--the boys anyway. Heather and I decided we needed to help the local economy by shopping. We rode the muni to Union Square, to yes, visit shops that we have back home. I helped the local Anthropologie and Heather helped the local Nordstrom.

From the pictures it looked like the boys had a great time at the stadium. Perhaps, Chris will add a bit more to the post later.

After their tour, the boys met us in Union Square and we all went to the nicest food court I've ever seen. Some of the restaurants had flat screen panel tvs displaying their menus and there was even a high-end grocery store there. We had to grab a quick bite if we wanted to make it to Muir Woods.



Muir Woods is a national park just outside of San Francisco that has great forest of redwoods. John Muir said it is the best tree-lovers monument. Our group decides to take another nature walk around the park and along the way we have some pretty memorable conversations. Doug, the consummate environmentalist, declares he wants to build a house entirely of redwood. Chris and I discuss his grouchiness. And we have an avid discussion as to whether or not the picture above is a deer or a donkey. I'll leave it up to you to decide.

The highlight of my day--no, not Anthropologie-- was going to a Filipino restaurant for dinner. I miss mom's Filipino food and unfortunately, the D.C. metro area doesn't have a Filipino restaurant for many miles. Our gracious friends indulged my craving by having dinner at Patio Filipino and meeting my newly engaged cousin Maya. We truly feasted on big portions of lechon, sinigang, adobo crispy pata, and pork sisig. I think everyone really liked it.

napa

Volvos. Braided leather belts. Penny loafers. Sweaters tied around the neck. This is pretty much what I thought of when picturing Napa Valley. For this reason I wasn't too excited to go. But my preconceptions were wrong and we had a great day.

Monday morning we loaded the family truckster and headed north to wine country. Today was a big day for Allen and Doug, who both enjoy their special juice. I believe we heard them say "this place is like heaven" a time or seven. This is a rough account of the day. And by the way, yes we had a designated driver - Ryan stepped up to the plate.

11am First stop, Domaine Caneros. The place was pretty posh with gardens and a huge chateau. I decided to take it easy and stuck with a pinot noir soda. Pretty much like a lightly carbonated, less sweet, and more expensive Welch's grape soda. Lelaine and others went for a flight of three sparkling wines, one of which we were told goes great with popcorn on a Friday night. Because when you live in Napa, you might as well chug a $50 bottle of booze when sitting on the couch watching a movie.

11:45am Second stop, Sequoia Grove. This was more my speed with no fountains or extravagant grounds. I decided to take the plunge and participate in the tasting. Allen and Doug sweet talked the nice woman working there and we ended up getting our tastings for free. This may have also had something to do with the fact that they spent some cash money and joined their wine club, to which they received complementary pens and they can look down on those of us who have not been invited into their exclusive club (and by not invited I mean haven't passed them a credit card). The wine was really good. Good enough that it made me rethink my opinion of the beverage as a whole. They definitely made a good decision to join this club, as it was probably the best of the day. Most of the group was pretty tipsy after we got back in the car to leave.

1pm lunch. To give the stomach something to absorb the wine, we thought eating lunch would probably be a good idea. We hit Taylor's Refresher, a hamburger stand that was excellent. Rarely do you find a place that excels in every aspect of the meal - burger, fries, and drinks, but they did. Nice lightly toasted bun with a buttery flavor. Meat a little pink in the inside and very juicy. Good fry options, including garlic and sweet potato. And the peanut butter and chocolate shake was one of the best I have ever had. Great way to celebrate Memorial Day.

2pm Third stop, Sterling. Dad recommended this place. It was one of the nicer ones and you took a gondola-like lift from the parking lot to get to the campus on top of a hill. I say campus because it was a series of buildings. The swill they offered for the tastings wasn't my favorite, but the overall experience was great due to the setting for the winery, including a massive terrace where you could relax and have a 270 degree view of the area. Particularly great after you had about forty fries too many and want to sit and take it easy while your stomach mixes and digests the sustenance of the day.

3:30pm Fourth stop, Alpha and Omega. We hit this based on a recommendation from someone at Carneros. The wine was decent, but the place was under construction. Nothing special, but enjoyable. A group of drunk girls on a wine bus - it seemed like they each had about two bottles too many - convinced our host to give us chocolates, which was a nice touch. At this point I had had more wine in the day than I have drank in the past year or so and while still fairly sober it was the last time I could differentiate between anything. Lelaine stayed in the car for this one. She had had a fair amount to drink and was fairly full, so she decided to sit a couple out.

4pm Fifth stop, Beaulieu. Despite the building looking like a Ponderosa, we stopped in. Before committing to the tasting they had a free sample of something that was worse than anything Boone's Farm could come up with. We all shared the sentiment and immediately left. Interestingly we have been told that BV is normally pretty good, so maybe we didn't give it a fair chance.

4:15pm Sixth stop, Peju. The guy running our tasting made this one of the highlights of the day. When we were introduced to him and told he was a rock star, I didn't have high hopes. However, after a couple pretty good jokes I thought he might be ok. Then he won over the group by rapping. When you have been drinking for several hours and a white guy in his 50s wearing a tie begins to rap, including dancing and sound affects to mimic turn tables, you laugh...a lot...then you laugh some more. The guy threw out words like "homeslice" and several others I haven't heard in a long time. Watch the video, particularly around the 1:50 mark, and you will understand. He even tries to sell you his CD after the tasting. There is a decent chance this guy inspires Allen and Doug to quit their jobs, move to wine country, and start their very own tasting show (now that they are members of an exclusive club they can do things like this).

5pm Seventh and final stop, Napa Cellers. This was a different type of winery. Instead of the new age stuff playing at a lot of the places we saw, Napa Cellers, also known as the Wal Mart of Napa, was playing Jimmy Page and the Black Crows. The music was neat. The wine...not so much. I was pretty much wined out but decided to have a few sips anyway. Maybe we should have realized it by the $5 price tag for five pours, but this stuff was bad. Maybe it was as bad as BV, but for whatever reason we stayed. Doug even bought a bottle - and this is after he did 10 different tastings there. He claims it was a mercy buy. I would rather drink hot Mad Dog 20/20 than the stuff they were selling.

6pm On the road. After seven stops, and no sightings of sweaters tied across someone's shoulders, we decided it was time to call quits to another great day in California.

big sur

Sunday we got up and headed south down the coast. This was our first big trip in the minivan Ryan and Kari graciously rented to haul all of us. While it lacked some of the handling features of Ryan's beamer, the van managed the twists and turns well as we made it to Big Sur. This was probably our favorite day of the trip. The coast line and the mountains were great. We ended up reaching Pfeiffer State Park and went on a short hike that led to a waterfall. Neither of us had seen redwoods before and we were astonished by how large they are. Doug, not quite the greatest friend of the environment, determined that his next house will be made of California Redwood. The area, particularly the smell of the fresh air, reminded me a lot of Colorado in the summer.

After our not-so-strenuous hike we stopped for lunch at a fancy spa on top of a large hill that looked out over the water. It was a nice relaxing meal, particular their "Ultimate Refresher", lemon sorbet floated in a hefeweizen. Not quite as rich as the Tiger Stripe/Porter beer floats from Flatbranch in Columbia, but a lot more refreshing.

On the way down and back we made several stops along Big Sur to stretch our legs and look out over the cliffs, including the famous Bixby Bridge. This would also be a good time to mention the lovely music we had the pleasure of hearing. Doug decided to make a mix CD comprised of songs with 'California' in the title. He put a lot of work into it, including nice pictures for the jewel cases and the CD labels as well as mailing us all copies in advance. If only he had put as much work into song selection. He ignored a few suggestions from Kari and I. After Lelaine and I listened to his "Westward Ho" and "B-Sides" before the trip, I decided to make a competing mix, "Sea-Sides", so we had something a little better than the dreck he incorporated on his gem of a compilation. I think we found a lot of the stuff by hanging out at a roller rink and asking the fifth graders what they are listening to these days. Doug took a lot of crap for his effort, a good chunk of it by me, but at least he tried.

Next came 17 Mile Drive at Pebble Beach. I was really looking forward to this. The sites along the drive were nice, including the famous lone cyprus, but the highlight was definitely seeing the Links course. At the pro shop I bought a flipping sweet hat that everyone made fun of. After walking out of the pro shop I was a little disappointed as the only part of the course I had seen was the putting green. After finding the clubhouse - not as easy as you would think since the complex is like a little village - I stopped in my tracks as I realized that on the other side of the giant glass window was the 18th fairway and green. It was one of those feelings when you know you what you are looking at will stand out for the rest of your life. We watched a group pitch and putt on 18, two of the three seemed very good while the third guy was either having a terrible finishing hole or as Ryan thought, wanted to get the most out of his $475 greens fee by taking as many strokes as possible.

We then continued north to Monterey, which has three things: John Steinbeck, pirates, and stores that sell pirate souvenirs. We ate dinner at the famous Phil's Fish Market between Monterey and Santa Cruz. Lelaine had their cioppino in a sourdough bread bowl featured on the Food Network's show Road Tasted with the Deen brothers. I expanded my horizons and had a chicken sammich...with bacon and cheese.

Made it back to Chez Palmer and had an early night. Had to prepare for the next day's drive to Napa.

bay area

We spent an extended Memorial Day weekend with a group of my friends from college. Two of them, Ryan and Kari, moved to the Bay Area last year. We were joined by Doug, Allen, and Heather for a great five day trip. A huge thank you to Ryan and Kari for being such great hosts.


When we arrived on Saturday, Ryan and Kari picked us up from the airport and we hit In n Out. We then picked up the others and headed into San Francisco. Had a snack at Fisherman's Wharf and went on the Alcatraz tour. None of us were expecting much from the tour but both of us ended up enjoying it. It gave me flashbacks of one of the best episodes of Unsolved Mysteries from back in the day on the escape, including some guy who volunteered to swim from the island to a strip of land (its been too long since I have seen the Robert Stack show - can't remember where the guy swam). After watching the movie The Rock last week, Lelaine was a bit disappointed that there was no hostage situation involving disillusioned Marines, vx gas, and a dopey FBI scientist who becomes a super agent overnight, but still pretty neat stuff.


After prison we decided it was time for some fresh air and went to look at the Golden Gate Bridge. This was the site of round one of Lelaine vs. Chris. I wanted to hike up the hill. Lelaine wanted to view the bridge from the comforts of the parking lot. In a very rare occurrence my side prevailed and we went for a nice stroll. It had been cloudy all day, but as we approached the bridge the sun made its first appearance of the day. The view was great and offered a postcard-like view of San Francisco. We then continued the Palmer van tour, including down Lombard Street and ended up at a good pan-Asian restaurant for dinner. After dinner we hiked up a hill that seemed a lot more like a mountain to get to the minivan. While the walk, particularly after a big meal, pretty much stunk, we got to see the city lit up when we got to the car.

Who needs Indiana Jones?

Sunday Lelaine, Sam, Alison, and I participated in the Post Hunt. It is a big scavenger hunt involving brain teasers created by Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten, and Tom Schroder. They started it in Miami in the 80s and decided to do it in DC for the first time this year. Several thousand people participated, including several teams who came from Miami just to play. Although we did not finish among the winning teams, and although I was really excited for it but ended up not helping the team very much, it was great. Lelaine, Sam, and Alison were great. Me...not so much.

It began with answering five questions in the Sunday paper. The answers to those questions were combined with five clues to give the locations of the five puzzles. You then had to go the five puzzles and determine the answers, which are numbers. You are given a sheet of 100+ possible answers. Each of the possible answers have an additional clue associated with it to be used in the final puzzle. After trying to solve the five puzzles in three hours, Dave, Gene, and Tom provided the final clue that helps make sense of the additional five clues. This probably makes no sense, but if you are really interested this gives you a run down of the entire game.

I was able to answer the first five questions that helped us identify the locations of the five puzzles, but after that I was pretty much dead weight.

Puzzle 1 - Fortune Cookie
For our first puzzle we received a fortune cookie with the fortune reading "He who has discerning taste will know success". The cookie supposedly tasted like coconut. In the Post Sunday Magazine, there was an ad for a fake movie theater with a movie "Coconut" playing at 11am. Thus, the answer was 11. This was the only of the five puzzles we missed. We were on the right track - we thought the answer was hidden in the Sunday Magazine - but we guessed it was a highlighted number in a review of a Chinese restaurant.

Puzzle 2 - President's Race
For the second puzzle, we came across a park with the four President's from Nats games in a race with a "mature hooved male ruminant" (we thought it was a reindeer). The name of the race was "A Time for Change." Each time the mature hooved male ruminant finished first, then Washington, then Lincoln. We watched a few races without any clue and involving theories involving the sum of the number of reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh or the number of points on his head (10) and the President's: Washington (1), Jefferson (3), Lincoln (16), and Teddy Roosevelt (24 or 26?). Then I realized - or maybe it was Alison or Sam...or all of us at the same time - that the race involved the word "change", several of the participants are on money, and the announcer kept talking about who would finish "in the money." The answer was 126, as in "a buck twenty-six". The mature hooved male ruminant is a buck, Washington is on the quarter...even though I insisted it was Jefferson... and Lincoln is on the penny.

Puzzle 3 - Chinatown Gate
Next we went to 7th and H to the Chinatown arch. Volunteers handed out sheets of paper with translations of Chinese characters and kept saying that you had to see the entire thing. We identified three characters on the arch that appeared on the sheet, but that translated into "too small / think / vastly bigger". I was stumped and went to walk through the crowd to see if I could overhear a smarter team shout out the answer in a Eureka! moment. This didn't happen, but by the time I got back one of my three teammates had figured out that there was a character on the sheet of paper that looked like the entire arch. The translation for it was "Angry Men". The answer to this was 12, as in the play.

Puzzle 4 - City Museum
Outside of the City Museum were three signs reading "13_?", "14_?", and "15_?". The City Museum also happened to be in the Sunday Magazine that day in the section where there are two nearly identical pictures and you must identify the what is different about each. In yesterday's there were 12 differences. Lelaine figured it out quickly that the answer would be three differences between both pictures and the museum. After looking very closely, it was apparent that both pictures in the Magazine used the letter "U" in its proper place in writing on the museum whereas the actual museum has "V's" instead of "U's". Thus the differences were V, V, and V, or in numerical terms 555.

Puzzle 5 - Comics
I missed most of this one. While walking to it a bird decided to relieve itself directly over me. Luckily it was raining out, so I had on a jacket. While I found a hotel to clean up, they rest of the team solved this one. It involved comedians telling jokes with words revealing a hidden code in the comics page of the day's paper.

At this time we thought we had solved all five - remember we were wrong on question 1 but didn't realize it - we decided to go get lunch until the final clue would be announced at 3pm. We thought the five clues were "seek letters that end with a PS", "the 1st letter is the 14th letter and the 3rd letter is the 13th", "all the cardinals are present and accounted for, pontiff (but which ordinal is missing?)", "the answer for you begins with me", and "if the second comes after the first, what comes after the third."

Turns out the pontiff clue was wrong. In its place should have been "All you need to do is remove eds from the middle, and the solution is right in front of you!"

Final Puzzle
Dave, Gene, and Tom took the stage to a great deal of excitement. Three winning teams would win a trip to Florida, and we thought we had a shot. The final clue was simply this: a large pair of crossed swords, assembled on the stage for our contemplation. This, combined with the "remove eds from the middle and the solution is right in front of you" clue was supposed to tell you the answer was in the crossword, which just so happens to be in the Sunday Magazine. We figured this out after about ten minutes. But because we didn't have the correct five initial clues, we thought the answer was in Sunday's crossword, not the solution to last week's ("the solution is right in front of you!").

Long story short, we figured out part of the puzzle, likely involving Caps and home. What we didn't realize were the other clues were 'former' and 'name'. We got to the Verizon Center and found a sign saying "Think Like a Roman". This is where the game ended for us. This is Gene's explanation for what happened to those who knew what was going on:

Anyway: The former name of the Washington Capitols' arena was the MCI Center.

What help can "MCI" give you? Well, it's a Roman numeral. As a Roman numeral, it becomes 1,101.

And the really, really clever noticed there was a building address on the map of 1101 K Street.

At this point, all but about 10 teams were out of contention. (We had spies at various critical places.)

In front of 1101 K Street was a sign. It had gone up just minutes before. It said, "For Opportunities in the District, Call TODAY. And a phone number was given.

If you called the number, you heard a recording. Tom told you: "No, we said call TODAY."

No matter how many times you called that number, that's the message you got.

What you had to figure out that by "call today" we meant call today's date, in the district, namely: 202-518-2008. If you called that number, you got Tom again. A recording. And he told you to write your name on a slip of paper, along with your cell phone number and the Roman Numerals that got you to that site (that would be "MCI") and bring it to the man in a Red Sox cap standing at the intersection of Maple and Elm.

No, the Hunt was not over yet.

There IS no intersection of Maple and Elm in Washington. But there was on the "Solution to Last Week's Puzzle" grid on the crossword page. The answers "Elm" and "Maple" intersected in the lower left, just as we'd asked Merle Reagle to do. If you superimposed that grid on our map, you saw that we pinpointed the spot for you, with a little L, which actually was the letter of intersection in the crossword puzzle. If you ran there and found the man in the Red Sox Cap first, you won The Hunt.


If you are still reading this, you are probably confused. Kind of like me during the game. But it also means that you found this somewhat entertaining. If you think this is at all fun, then you should join us next year for the second Post Hunt. Or in Miami in October for this year's Tropic Hunt.

rain down, rain down, come on rain down on me

Sunday night I went to see Radiohead with a friend from work. Long time fan, first show. It was fantastic. The type of event that you can't stop thinking about the entire next day. They played a nice mix of old and new - Just, Fake Plastic Trees, Planet Telex, and all of In Rainbows - and had one of the best stage shows I have seen. If only the weather had cooperated.

It poured. And then poured some more. I think I saw Noah and a couple giraffes. It took 4+ hours to go the 30 miles to the Nissan Pavillion, aka the worst venue ever, and another 3 to get home. Eventually made it home a little after 2am, three hours after the show ended and nine hours after I left. However that was better than 1-friends who were stuck in the parking lot until 3am and didn't get home until 4am (almost hit rush hour traffic for the next day!) or 2-a lot of poor folks who sat in traffic for hours and then were denied entry by parking attendants who said the show was over even when they could hear the band still playing. Ridiculous. And the kicker is that at the worst venue ever, this is a normal event. The rain made things a little worse, but this sort of thing has happened every time I've been. If it weren't for the Live Nation monopoly (would have something worse to say if it weren't for the remote chance my grandparents might read this) no one would ever step foot in that place.

Fortunately it was that great of a show that it was worth it. Got to see a band that has been one of my favorites (PJ exempted) since college. If things work out I may head up I-95 to picturesque Camden NJ to see them in August. It will probably take the same amount of time to get to and from Philly as it did to go to the DC-area show!

By the way, the title of the post comes from their song Paranoid Android. It was quite appropriate that they played it last night. And thanks to whoever took these pictures.

Another Wii-injury

This story starts off with our friend Sam, newly free from B-school finals, coming over to play the Wii and bringing his new toy, Mario Kart. It ends with another Wii-injury for Lelaine.

For those of you who do not know, the game that started my so-called "gamer lifestyle" was Burnout Revenge, pretty much the best racing game out there. I had a few days off of work in 2005 and we had just gotten the new flat screen, so I bought Chris the nice (and expensive) cables for the Xbox to get HD quality like picture and a few games that I saw sold well on Amazon. One of them happened to be Burnout Revenge and I was overdosing on hurricane coverage so I decided to try playing the racing game. A few hours later I realized that I hadn't moved positions and my arms and legs were stiff and the rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward to 2008 and my preview of Mario Kart. It's best features are that you get to hit people in order to win and there is a turbo acceleration feature just like Burnout. So, yesterday when I was in the vicinity of Best Buy I had to buy it for myself. In a bit of deja vu, a few hours later, the same stiff and sore arms except a cooler name called a Wii-injury.

I made it!

The 5K run was today and I made it the entire way through! Here's a play by play of my thought process (times are approximate).

6:40am - Alarm Clock rings. What is going on? OH...I have to run this morning...I guess I am not sick and I have to do this...five more minutes

6:42am - How mad would Chris be if I "forgot" to set alarm?

6:43 - Urghhhhhh...just get up now or else.

6:48 - Om, downward dog, triangle pose, half moon pose

7:10 - I thought yoga was supposed to make me feel better? I am having an adverse reaction to this run. Wake up Chris.

7:25 - I am staring at bacon and eggs and I don't want to eat it. There is definitely a problem here. Chris is being annoying perky and supportive. I don't him to be supportive. I want him to say let's go back to sleep.

7:30 - Going to the bathroom for the 8th time. I will not have to go when we get to the place.

7:45 - Get on metro

8:10 - Get to Freedom Plaza. Have to go pee. I knew I shouldn't have had any water.

8:25 - Meet other Fleet Feet runners. We warm up and get pinned.

8:50 - Start to line up. Big sigh of relief. There are a lot of people here I couldn't possibly be the absolute last person. I vow to run no matter what at the end if there is going to be a tie for last.

9:00 - Runners off. I am somewhere in the middle.

9:07 - This is it. Running and trying not hit people. Bobbing and weaving was not a part of the training.

9:11 - Tired. I should have run more outside. Mental note: treadmills are awesome.

9:22 - Near mile one and the "runners" have already cycled back. I can't tell if that motivation or not.

9:23 - Not. Walking. Where is the water?

9:24 - 9:35 - Walking. Cheating is wrong. Cheating is wrong. How embarrassed would you be if someone caught you.

9:40 - Yay...I am back on Pennsylvania Avenue. I can run now. I've seen the police car and the very last people on the other side. I am definitely not last!

9:46 - Tired. Almost there. Do other people have strawberry Popsicles?

9:58 - DONE! Absolutely no desire to do a repeat.

10:05 - Strawberry Popsicles are the best reward ever! Perhaps that should be a part of their marketing campaign.