california trip, last part

Had breakfast with Andrew and Jeff at a restaurant called The Good Earth, where I also bought two cans of their famous Cinnamon Spice Blend tea (the best cinnamon tea I've ever had). After breakfast, we went to the store at Apple Computer Store where I bought a copy of DEADLOCK, a game Paul Kwinn worked on at Accolade. I had watched with morbid fascination as one friend after another had succumbed to this addictive game, and it's finally available for Macs! I've opened up the box but have been too afraid to install it. I also bought some Apple logo stuff (sweatshirt, cap, etc.). They even had a UNIBALL MICRO (the best pen in the entire universe, as everyone knows) with the Apple logo on it.

We met Paul at his work for lunch. Accolade is very cool; we got a brief tour. Paul's work cubicle was disappointingly neat, though. One of Paul's workmates had a much more interesting work area, a collection of a zillion (at least it looked that way) action figures. After the tour we went for lunch at a place called Chili's. Back to Accolade for some obligatory photos near the Accolade sign (David Goulden's Silicon Valley tour was an inspiration). I'll post some here, of course.

Said good-bye to Paul ( :-( ), then went off to the Monterey Aquarium. This place was amaaaaaaaaazing. I highly recommend it to anyone remotely near Monterey, but then again anyone living near Monterey will likely have a lifetime membership :-). Amazingly huge tanks (I recognized the one used in the Star Trek whale movie), stunning display of ocean life. I had to keep reminding myself I was actually watching REAL CREATURES, not a movie. Saw sharks, fish of all kinds (the giant sunfish was the most bizarre-looking), octopi, squid, sea birds, otters, crabs, etc. etc. The jellyfish exhibit was my favourite. Giant tank with a light blue screen that was lit in such a way to give it infinite depth, with huge orange jellyfish undulating in all directions. Airy atmospheric music piped over the loudspeakers. The overall effect was magical, and I know I'm doing an abysmal job at properly describing it. All I can say is that I could easily have spent an hour or more just staring at this exhibit. Feeding time in one of the tanks was also impressive...Jeff and I just expected food to be tossed into the water as the fish fought over it. Instead, a diver went down and distributed the food, miked so that she could answer questions from the gathered crowd; you could barely see her sometimes with the cloud of hungry fish swimming around her (sharks, too! but they seemed content with the bits of squid she gave them).

After the aquarium, we drove to Carmel to look for something to eat. The sun was just going down, so we stopped by one of the beaches to watch it set. Had seafood at a restaurant called Flaherty's, and I found some wine that I really liked (Monterey County Riesling 1996, very sweet). Got pleasantly buzzed, had creme caramel for dessert (my favourite dessert in the whole world, if you didn't know).

It was a nice ending to the trip. Packed when we got back to Santa Clara, left the next morning. Wow, was it cold when we stepped out of the Toronto International Airport. Anyway, many many thanks to our friend Andrew for putting us up (and putting up with us). Thanks also to the Consonance concom for organizing such a great convention! Lots of fun.

Back to reality now...