Over Compensate Much?

     Let's say you live in an apartment and they've decided to ban in-window air-conditioning units. So this limits you to a portable A/C if you want one. Now let's say you live on the first floor, and the view from all your windows in the apartment is the parking lot that has night time lights on all night, and you have a husband that works night shift so he sleeps during the day. You've tried putting a fan in the window to help cool the room down but alas, it reminds you of those dingy underground hideouts where you see shadows of large fan blades moving across your walls. Not to mention the occasional flash of headlights. During the day you have typical apartment noises, but since your window is feet from a main walkway to the garbage and mail, there is constantly people going by.

    In addition to all this nonsense, your apartment is so oddly laid out that getting air moving from one room to another is nearly impossible. You have 1 sliding glass door in the living room (everything faces the parking lot), and a window in each bedroom. That's it. The airflow is basically non-existent. 

    So what do you do? You overcompensate! I want to firstly say that these blackout "blinds" are a lifesaver, as they're covering the entire bedroom window, in addition to the A/C's vent hose because it glows like a beacon in the middle of the night. We bought a portable A/C that is also a heat pump so that we can keep it in the window all year round. It's possible that as much as we try our best to seal the window, air still leaks in and it might be fighting against that, but it's better than a heater register that doesn't understand when to shut the f*ck off when it gets to a set temperature. And actually, as I write this in October, and probably well into November, we'll still be running the A/C on cool. It's such a waste of energy because it's most definitely colder outside than it is inside, and if A/C's could use the "Fan" function by bringing in cold air from outside that would solve this issue but alas, there are no other options if we want the room dark and quiet. We keep the bedroom door closed at all times and have a draft thingie under the door, but the room temp still rises (even in the middle of the night) despite the fact it's cold outside and the window is (essentially) open.

    So onto the A/C itself. I bought a Whynter 14000 BTU A/C (12,000 SACC/DOE, which basically means "real world usage") with heat pump. As you can see from the pic above, our bedroom is not that massive, it's 169 square feet, but we do have 9 ft ceilings which is pretty rare for apartments. I bought this unit for several reasons (our old one kicked the bucket recently and it was a typical cheap, dual hose unit, 10,000 BTUs)

    1. The Hose-n-hose feature. This is available only in the highest end units, and
I was getting so tired of our janky set up with the two hoses stretched off to the side. The exhaust hose was covered with an insulator to help avoid heat getting back into the room before it's exhausted out, while the intake hose had been wrapped in layers of aluminum tape to stop the light bleed.

    2. The inverter. Again, only the highest end units have this feature, as I'm sure it's expensive to produce. It allows the A/C to ramp the speed of the compressor up and down as needed, instead of cycling on and off constantly, which not only saves energy, but also extends the life of the compressor. As a bonus to this, it is also extremely quiet. (As an example, we briefly bought a Hisense dual hose portable A/C 8000 BTU unit - spoiler alert, it was DOA - and it has an energy star sticker on it of $169 a year to run. In comparison, this unit, even though it is 14000 BTUs, had a sticker of just $65 a year to run.)

    

I know it doesn't look bad from this photo [left] but all the jankyness was hidden behind the curtain

As a side note, I am well aware of the A/C rule of sizing your unit to your space. It's annoying when everything is listed in square footage, and they don't take into account the height of your ceilings. When you convert sq ft to cubic feet, that 169 turns into 1521 feet, and the unit is rated for 600 sq feet. Plus, like I already mentioned above, the things I wanted for my portable A/C were only available in their highest end model. So I'm hoping the inverter saves the compressor so that it won't die early from short cycling.

    3. Evaporative Drainage. This is a big one. Our old unit had to be placed on a stool with a hose running to a bucket to allow water to constantly drain. Not only was it unsightly, but sometimes we'd forget about the bucket and we'd have water overflowing onto the carpet. There was more than once I had to take my hair dryer to it. This unit doesn't need to be drained in A/C or Dry modes (unless it's super humid, but we don't live in a super humid environment), but it *does* need to be drained in Heat mode. Although, it has some kind of pump where we can drain it from the middle plug (instead of the one on closest to the floor) just when it needs it. I'm not sure how much it holds or how often it will need to be done, but it sounds pretty simple and we won't need to have the bucket around all the time.

    This thing is so darned efficient that it cools the room in less than 10 minutes. Granted, it *is* colder outside than it is inside, so it's not fighting the heat, but I can't imagine it having a hard time. The only issue I feel we will run across is in the summer months, once it gets above 85 degrees, we like to open the bedroom door and add a fan so we can try to get that cold air to the rest of the apartment. But the way our bedroom/window is set up, its not at all facing the door like the old one was, and we can't make it due to the way the hose works. It was already hard enough, because as you can see from the schematics, there is a 90 degree bend outside of the door. So getting air out is already a chore, and the old 10,000 BTU unit worked it's butt off for not much payoff [our whole apartment is 1100 sq ft though!] We'll see if this 14000 BTU unit can do better. We're counting on you, Whynter!  

Time to Zip!

     For our one year wedding anniversary (June 2024), I decided that a Canada do-over was in order. The reason for this was because we had a $300 credit for Ziptrek Ecotours burning in my pocket that I needed to use. The plan was to be fairly quick about it. I had decided that if we drove up to Whistler and did the zip almost immediately, maybe I would miss the brain-cold-fuzzies (for context on this, please read Honeymoon Part 3). 

    In addition, there was no LTX this year (The timing wouldn't be right anyhow). So I didn't need to plan around that at all. We were going to completely avoid downtown Vancouver this time, which was definitely okay by Patrick since he's the one driving. I found a hotel in North Vancouver on the bay (Ocean Promenade Hotel) that looked really nice that we would stay in on Day 1, and then stay at a hotel in Whistler proper on Day 2 (Evolution Whistler). Whistler in the summer, not on a Saturday night, is actually quite cheap and definitely worth it.

    Once we reached Canada, we had one stop to make before checking into our hotel on the bay. The farmhouse on Smallville. Yeah, that's right. Smallville was filmed in Canada and they used a house right on the Canadian border with Washington for some outdoor shots, I guess. A farm next door was having a
wedding, so we sneakily used their parking and walked to the house. Obviously we didn't bother them. There was an equestrian trail next to the house where I
got a couple of shots of the windmill and where they had the "Kent Farm" sign. After that, we checked into our hotel. The weather was going to be pretty great so we were lucky. All the rooms at this hotel were pretty sweet and I loved ours. Every room had a large balcony with a view of the bay, right on the downtown street where you can walk to restaurants and such. It reminded me a lot of Alki Beach in Seattle. 

    We walked to a long boardwalk that lead into the bay, and then walked to dinner from there. We watched the sunset also, which was quite nice. The weather overnight was going to be partly cloudy, but because the beach was facing south, I wanted to give myself a chance to take photos of the milky way. Turns out it was much too bright for something like that, which was unfortunate. 

    Our reservation for the zipline wasn't until 12:30pm, so we lazily made our way up to Whistler. I was not going to have a repeat of last year where I booked ourselves like crazy and we had to rush from place to place and feel stressed. No stress allowed this time!

    We were too early to check into our hotel, so we parked at Whistler Village and walked around until it was time to check in. Patrick and I were both nervous. Neither one of us had ziplined in 10-15 years, and my zipline was babyish compared to what we were doing this time. You see, when I went to book our times, the credit didn't match up with the pricing. If I bought the Bear line, which is what we had originally booked last year (and was the "beginner" course), we would have $20 left over that we couldn't use. So I booked the Eagle course, for the "people who knew what this was all about", for $20 extra instead. We basically drove half way up Blackcomb mountain to start, and zipped our way back down to Whistler Village. Patrick hates heights, but from what he had told me about zipping in Mexico, where you have to break yourself by hand (??!!), this was going to be much better. It was still very hard to take that first step off of each platform, and even by the end I never got 100% used to it. Was it worth it? Sure. Would I ever do it again? No thank you. I have the Gopro video so that's good enough for me, thanks! lol

    We immediately went to check into our hotel after, and I specially chose this place for one reason: It had a dry sauna. That's why I loved Scandinave Spa so much. That smell of cedar while sitting in a hot, dry room was heaven. And the hotel was freaking amazing. It had a split bedroom and living room thing with a gas fireplace in the center. A massive bathroom with the biggest soaking tub I had ever seen, a really nice kitchen, and it was backed up to a forest with a balcony and a view of a mountain. I'd say the only downside was that these hotels were built for winter activities, so it had features like a heated floor (which was definitely not needed right now- it was around 78 degrees outside), but that also meant the minisplit that cooled the room only went down to 65, which wasn't nearly cold enough for sleeping. (And unfortunately, the fireplace kicked out some heat too so I couldn't even leave it on! We had to leave the balcony door open most of the night, which was certainly a risk as we were backed up to a forest, but I couldn't sleep otherwise.) I immediately jumped into the bath and soaked for a good 30 minutes and Patrick took a nap before we headed back to Whistler Village for dinner. We had made reservations at a fairly fancy Italian restaurant for our anniversary dinner called Quattro. My dinner was delicious but Patrick absolutely loved his spicy pasta. After dinner we headed back to the hotel to check out the hot tub and sauna as the sun set before heading to bed.

I have one weird story to tell and I don't think I can adequately describe what happened to us. So our car was in an underground parking garage with a gated entrance. Patrick had parked our car around a corner in the garage when we checked in. And when we came back to drive to our dinner reservation, our car was nowhere to be found. I began to panic, wondering if it had somehow been stolen, which would have been nearly impossible - it was a gated garage! We walked in, walked out, went back to the lobby, walked back out to the gate... nothing was making sense. We had no one to ask because Evolution didn't have a front desk (their sister hotel had checked us in). Turns out, the garage had two identical levels, and when we had used the elevator to go to like, P1, it was the lower level. We had parked on the "lobby level" of the garage, I guess. It was surreal, though. We thought we had entered an alternate dimension. And the time we wasted trying to figure it out almost made us late for our reservation!

We had a decision to make today: we needed to either leave early to avoid afternoon traffic on south I-5 (and in Vancouver as well), or leave late to hopefully skip all of the backup. In the end, we decided to leave late so we could spend more time in Whistler being lazy. We grabbed an easy breakfast at a nearby coffee house and took it back to our balcony to enjoy it before we checked out. We spent much of the morning shopping at Whistler Village before we headed back towards home. We caught the very tail end of Vancouver traffic, but completely skipped south I-5 traffic and made it home by 10pm. All in all, a very nice and relaxing anniversary. 

San Diego Day 3

     Well, my sleep was definitely piss-poor due to my injury so I had decided to make an appointment with a local urgent care to get checked out. Was able to get in and out quickly when they opened. They barely did any kind of exam, told me to RICE, gave me a neoprene knee brace and a Toradol (like advil only a bit stronger) shot. Okay well, GG I guess?

    After that, we went to breakfast at Breakfast Republic, and that was some of the yummiest food I'd had in awhile. I ordered the Oreo Pancakes and they did not disappoint. Patrick had ordered the banana split pancakes with ice cream and he really liked those as well. Dessert for breakfast, just my kind of place! After breakfast I wanted to find a gift shop that sold comfy hoodies (I'd ran into a few before and almost bought one but finally decided I really wanted one), so we visited Old Town. It was like stepping into an old Western but was Mexican inspired with gift shops selling ponchos and sugar skulls. I found a super soft hoodie that I could snuggle up in, but we didn't stay long because we needed to make our way to Patrick's old stomping grounds - El Cajon. We drove around and he showed me some old places he used to frequent. We also stopped at a local mall so that he could find a new jersey and hat for the Padres.

    His friend Ruth had rented out a space at an RV park she worked at and was throwing a get together starting at 2, so before we left to go back to San Diego for that, we stopped by one of Patrick's favorite Mexican restaurants call Victoria's. I had a trio of street tacos and they were delicious. And Patrick was right about the best Carne Asada burritos being in San Diego - theirs were very tasty. 

    Then it was time to finally meet the fam. Unfortunately my face was scratched up after the incident and I had quite a limp - a memorable first impression for sure. I really didn't interact with them much at all; Ruth had her family with her, and Josh had brought his wife and kids as well, so I kind of just... didn't talk much. I feel bad about it, because generally when I'm uncomfortable I don't participate in any conversations; I even prefer not to sit with others in order to make my quietness less awkward, and I don't accept any accommodations like food or drink nor do I ever ask for any, even if I'm hungry or thirsty. I feel like I'm imposing. I prefer to make myself invisible - it's just easier for me. But I probably came off as standoffish or rude. Anyway, they were all very nice and accommodating. They tried to make me feel welcome even though I didn't really join in. It's definitely nothing on them.     

    We played 1975 trivia, ate pizza and tons of candy, the kids went swimming in the pool while Patrick chatted with his friends. There was cake, and a very moving speech by Ruth about how close they were and how they would always be friends and it really made me wish I had friends like Ruth and Josh.

    We left right after cake because we needed to rush to Sunset Cliffs and catch the sunset. Well, as best as we could. Despite our best efforts the whole trip, the clouds refused to let up during the evening and I never caught a good sunset. The cliffs were gorgeous though, I could just imagine how they would look when the golden hue of a spectacular sunset would light them up. I'll probably have to add it to my spite list!

    We had an early flight to catch but we had to make one more stop tonight; we drove out of our way to find the closest In-N-Out for a late dinner. He promised me it would be better than Oregon (our closest location, which has lines 1+ hour long constantly) because In-N-Out was everywhere so it should be fine. Yeah, no. It was packed, the drive thru line took up the entire parking area, and we waited at least 30 minutes for our food. Sigh.

    After that, it was bedtime and our flight back home was uneventful. Despite my injury and lack of good sunsets, I had a good time. I would definitely like to return some day. 

San Diego Day 2

     We started off the day innocently enough. With two options in mind for breakfast, we ended up driving past Breakfast Republic because the line was out the door. We drove to Morning Glory, the other spot on my list, because they have the Japanese Souffle Pancakes that I really wanted to try. Unfortunately, or fortunately as you'll see in a moment, they had a farmers market going on in the same area so cars were parked everywhere and streets were blocked off. We chose to park in a parking garage (with a $35 charge for only 2 hours!) and when we got in the elevator to head up, floor two said "Morning Glory". Well there ya go lol. We actually wanted the first floor though. W had to stand in line in order to add our names to the waitlist. This place was popular as f. So, with about a 40 minute wait, we checked out the farmers market until it was our turn.

    This place was very interesting to say the least. Check out the link above to see it. The restaurant was open air so we actually had pigeons flying in occasionally. The souffle pancakes were... not what I was expecting, I guess. The texture felt off to me, like I expected them to be light and airy, and they were still pretty dense. I dunno, everyone that eats the pancakes really likes them, but I prefer the originals. Patrick really liked his egg chorizo hash thing; it was very tasty if not a tad spicy for my liking.

    After breakfast, it was time to visit the place I was the most excited for: La Jolla. It was still pretty cloudy out and it was taking its sweet time to warm up, (too early for swimming) so we decided to walk around the shore a bit before doing some window shopping up the main two streets on Prospect and Girard. As I began to walk past a gallery, which I would normally never enter, we decided to take a peak. The artist, Ian Elly, was a wonderful photographer and had a lot of gorgeous pieces on display. Patrick really liked this one of the moon, but the one that caught my eye was his gorgeous shot off a dock looking at a storm, bolts of lightning, and even a piece of the galaxy of stars in the corner. It was incredible; all of these things in one shot. The lady who worked there hooked us in, began talking about the pieces, and thought to bring us into a small room where we can see different lighting conditions on the piece (it's crazy how much light can bounce off the whitest parts with hardly anything shining directly on it).

    She told me that if we were interested in the piece, the smallest size was 20x60, and was $5500. That made us pause, of course. We/I had never spent that much on a piece of art! Apparently, and I should have figured this but never really thought about it, digital artists need to create scarcity in their pieces, you know? They have the original file, and can make copies as often as they want, but they choose to limit the amount sold and once they're gone never bring them back. So when she said this was only 1 of 500 pieces, that's what creates the price and makes them limited edition. She then mentioned free shipping, which is normally about $800 because it's crated and has an insurance policy on it. And then also said there was no sales tax if shipping outside of California (for some reason). It got me a lot closer to saying yes but I still wasn't sure if that was enough. She also said that the piece included his coffee book, which I guess sells for 1k (like, why??), and mentioned this piece was shot in Washington. That peaked my interest, I asked if she knew where, because that would be cool to tell people it was shot in my state. She said she'd be right back and when she returned she was followed by Ian Elly himself! He had stopped by and generally wasn't around as he didn't live locally, but was doing some work there. He said it was shot in the Seattle area but wouldn't disclose exactly where because he didn't want to ruin it in case he wanted to return. Fair enough, I get it. Seattle was close enough to say anyway. But how cool to meet the artist! And knowing it was a piece shot in WA kind of sold it for us. We celebrated with some champagne (well, Patrick did) and he told us that he would sign and dedicate the coffee book to us, which was so cool.

    After blowing our budget for the entire trip (and then some lol) it was time to head back up to the car and switch into our swimming stuff. We stopped by Bobbi Gelato for some delicious ice cream and got ready to go swimming. La Jolla is one of the prettiest places I have ever seen. The ruggedness of the west coast always takes my breath away. The colors of the water are striking, and my pictures definitely don't do it justice (in order to keep us to a carry-on, I left my camera gear at home). I wanted to swim in La Jolla Cove, so we headed down there. The air temp was about 75, the clouds were finally parting, and the water temp was between 65-70. The tide was going out but was still very high, and I was not expecting the waves to be so strong. I wasn't used to the huge undercurrent. The way that the beach was, there was a large dip close to shore, and that's where all the waves formed. A large wave would come in and hit us pretty hard even at knee or waist high, and pull back so strongly that I had to hold onto Patrick most of the time.

    Then, the worst happened. Patrick and I were standing probably 6 feet in front of the concrete entrance stairs. This is a pic to show you how high off the ground they are. An incoming wave swept me off my feet, and threw me right into the stairs. The side of my face hit them as well as both of my knees pretty badly. I got pushed into them twice before I was able to stand up. Luckily the undercurrent didn't take me back out to sea, as I was able to grab onto the railing in order to stay put. There were several lifeguards on duty and one of them got to me quickly, though. I am okay, but my face is pretty scratched up, my right leg is all bruised, and my left knee was injured in some way, like maybe a bruised MCL. It hurts to extend or bend my knee at all, and I was limping for the rest of the trip.

    Obviously after that accident, we headed back to the car and went to the hotel to shower and make sure I was really okay. I did not hit my head on the concrete luckily, so no concussion. Just banged up, and hoping the knee heals up quickly. We decided to eat in at the resort, and spent the evening at their many fire pits on their private beach along the bay. It was a nice way to end the night.

San Diego Day 1

    For Patrick's 50th Birthday, we decided to travel down to San Diego and celebrate with his longtime friends, Ruth and Josh (and their families, as they were also turning 50 this year). He would show me all the sights and try to convince me to move back down there with him. (Spoiler, no thank you. It's beautiful, but I think the heat would kill me!)

    We decided to buy a package through Costco Travel that included the flight, 3 nights in Kona Kai resort, and a rental car (small upcharge for the premium model). However, I don't think I would do a rental car through a typical company anymore. The website for Budget said "Toyota Crown or similar", which is the exact car I wanted, as it's on my spite list for not being able to get it from Turo in Texas, but they don't guarantee the model (the guy that showed us to the car said that they "hardly have any of those", which makes me think that their website is very misleading and I am upset about it.) I mean, the other issue was the cars that were offered, which were a Toyota 4-Runner or a Hyundai Tucson, weren't even hybrids, so no, it's not a "Toyota Crown or similar"! Similar would be a hybrid at the very least! We decided on the Tucson, as much as I dislike Hyundai for several reasons that I won't get into here, because it had better gas milage. When I think of premium, I think of a class of car, not a size. The Tucson is very much an SUV, which we didn't really need, but I digress. 

    Since we were too early to check into our hotel, we did a little exploring. We had to stop by a grocery store first to pick up some things we couldn't take on our carry-on, and grabbed some coffee as well as we had had an early flight. After that, we grabbed lunch as Shawarma Guys. This was our first time eating Shawarma and this was voted one of the best places so we checked it out - but it was a food truck so we didn't eat there. We drove to Cabrillo National Monument in order to get some stellar views and eat up there at the same time. You could see Mexico from our viewpoint. The food was also very good, but I don't think I'll ever seek out Shawarma again.

    It was time to check into our hotel and although the grounds were impressive, the hotel itself left a bit to be desired. The bed was certainly comfortable, and the room was clean, but the "Bay View" was more parking lot than bay, which was very disappointing. The shower was also gross and was completely busted. I mean, it worked, but leaks were spraying water everywhere. We were tuckered out so we took a short nap before we headed to the one place we booked tickets for: The San Diego Sunset Cruise. 

    The cruise itself was nice, but they only circled Mission Bay. I was hoping they would kind of cruise along the cliffs but I realized later that probably wouldn't have been possible and I was expecting too much. And unfortunately, the sunset was pretty much nil. It was the same for the whole trip actually, which was super lame. I was glad of the clouds though, as when the sun is beating down on your as far south as San Diego it's pretty intense, and any temp the gauge says, add 10 degrees when it hits your skin. 

    We figured we could squeeze in one more thing before heading back to the hotel for the night, and that was to check out the free Mission Bay Park where they have fair stuff and a path along the beach. I liked that we went after sunset as the fair lights were nice, and of course the temperature was perfect. The fair part was pretty small but hey, it was free so I can't complain. We walked along the beachwalk for a while and checked out the houses on the shore. One of them had a QR code to book a stay (they were probably all Air B&Bs) and it was I believe, $2700 a night - in October. Yup, that's San Diego for you!

    After that we called it a night. We had some great plans for the next day!

    

Virtuosity

It's Review Wednesday again! We're in for a treat, this time. Patrick and I have been doing a lot of "what movie is this?" Youtube quizzes, and we discovered an interesting movie to watch. It's from 1995, and stars a quite young Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. I've loved a bunch of movies they've been in so I wanted to check this one out, called 'Virtuosity'. 

Here is the synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

"A former cop who has been imprisoned for murdering the psychopath who killed his family, Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington) is recruited to test out a new virtual-reality program where the goal is to apprehend a computer-generated being called SID 6.7 (Russell Crowe), who has been modeled on hundreds of deranged criminals. When SID manages to escape into the real world, Barnes must capture or destroy him before the soulless entity can go on a killing spree"

The premise seems simple enough, and this movie was WAY ahead of its time. I mean, it kind of bombed on Rotten Tomatoes, and probably because in 1995 none of this stuff existed yet so it was hard to write about and make it seem legit. I mean, this movie was released the same year as the Virtual Boy for goodness sakes. VR was not a thing yet. So obviously, real AI was also still 20 years away. The CGI visuals... left a lot to be desired. It's hard to say if the budget was enough or if it was just that bad in 1995, but I have to remember that Jurassic Park came out in 1993, and Terminator 2 came out in 1991, so like, it seems like it could have been better.

The plot was kind of awful lol The guy that invented SID decides to release him into the wild to see how he does because he's batshit crazy, obviously, and it feels so Terminator 2 that SID is basically unstoppable with his silicon body that can regenerate if it "soaks up" glass shards. It also seems to pull a lot of ideas from Demolition Man as well, and apparently was the inspiration for The Matrix (??).

I feel like they directly ripped the idea of SID from the Star Trek: TNG episode called "Ship in a Bottle" (released in 1993), where Sherlock Holmes nemesis, Professor Moriarty, becomes sentient and takes over the Enterprise to force them to figure out how to release him from the holodeck so he can go live his life. I won't spoil the ending to Virtuosity if you wish to watch it, but suffice it to say the endings were not that different. 

I just feel as if this movie could have been SO much better. The plot felt disjointed as if it were missing pieces or we had to assume a bunch of information, and important parts that could have been fleshed out were skipped. Making Parker the "only" person who "understood" SID because he hunted him once in VR is silly. Even if the creator of SID wasn't available to ask (which he wasn't when he disappeared after letting SID out) there are Behavior Analysis specialists in the real world who would do a better job than Parker, in theory. The things Parker assumed about SID and his motives/location I believe anybody could have gotten.

It's so unfortunate, and I believe strongly that this movie would do amazingly well if rebooted for today. With VR being much more realistic and AI beginning to scare people with its abilities, now would be the perfect time to rewrite this crazy plot and make it something worth seeing. I even think that the writers kind of knew what they were doing when they wrote SID 6.7 in the beginning. AI needs data to work off of, and in the end, it's still only programming, no matter how "real" it seems. The AI of today just pulls its info from the internet or data dumps and adds code for "fluff language" so that it answers you like a real person instead of like a machine. It is not sentient, it can just act like it is. 

It makes me wish Tony Scott the director was still alive today. Unstoppable is one of my favorite movies of his, starring Denzel, and his movies just have a way about them that make the action gripping. He directed the Taking of Pelham 123 (also starring Denzel) and you could tell it was the same guy. He also directed Top Gun, Enemy of the State, Deja Vu and Man of Fire. He would have fit in perfectly directing this as a reboot. 

Let's do it, bring it on! And I will be in line to see it.

Texas Trip Day 1

4/4/24    

    Strap in folks... this is going to be a long one. This is the longest vacation I've ever had, and it's not often I leave the state at all. The whole reason for this vacation (which was being planned if not physically, but mentally since the day after the Aug 2017 total eclipse) was the total eclipse that was going to hit the central/eastern coast of the US on 4/8/24. But the reason I chose Texas as my destination over anywhere else was because of my friend, Matty. This was someone who I had met over Twitter while bonding over our mutual obsession with Alton Brown nearly 12 years ago. We had never met in person, and he lived near Houston, Texas. I figured Texas was going to have the best weather in April anyway.

    As I began to plan this out, I knew it was going to be close to my 40th birthday so I figured I had time to save up a bunch of money and make this trip into a celebration for myself as well. I wanted a vacation where I wouldn't have to worry about how much money was being spent, and I could do basically whatever I wanted and not have to be concerned about finances. In the meantime, I met my partner, Patrick, and got married, so he became a part of the plan as well. Which I'm super glad for because while I was willing to do this trip on my own, I was extremely trepidatious about it.

    As I began to plan it physically, I secured my hotel for San Antonio because Fredericksburg (the town) was freaking out. When we called them to inquire about getting a hotel for the eclipse, they said that the town was planning on imposing a 4-night minimum stay at about $500 a night. I do hope they lost out on a ton of business. While the hotel I chose was still in the path of totality (it was a basic Days Inn with a 2 night stay of a whopping $180 since I got it well in advance), it wasn't near the center line so I could still get closer. The only difference would be the length of totality. While (west) San Antonio was roughly 2 minutes long, the center line would last over 4 minutes. For picture-taking, that's pretty significant. 

    After making my reservations for San Antonio, I would now be able to plan everything else around it. I ended up tacking on 2 days in Houston prior and flying there instead of SA because the airline tickets were getting a bit crazy flying to anywhere near the path of totality. Spend two days in SA, two days in Corpus Christi, and two days in Galveston before flying out of Houston on 4/12. I made plans to do a lot of cool stuff so if for some reason we couldn't see the eclipse, at least we would have a bunch of other things planned that were exciting.

[I'm going to go ahead and tell you now so you're not in suspense. No, we didn't get to see the eclipse. We had considered going to Uvalde, right on the center line, but the Texas weather was changing (I swear) every 20 minutes. I didn't actually decide not to drive down there until the night before. It was going to be completely cloudy both in SA and Uvalde, but SA had a slightly better chance of clearing, plus we would save $50 for a parking spot, and an extra hour of driving to Corpus Christi after the event. Not to mention the potential for heavy traffic. Only places further north saw clearer skies, including my co-worker Dora who was currently in Dallas. We were just unlucky.]

    So anyway, 4/4 was basically a travel day. We used the Premier Van Shuttle service, which turned out to be pretty cool. They pick you up right at your residence and drop you off at your gate and visa versa on the way back. The flight out was a 2pm. The only downsides to the flight was my window being mostly over the wing, and a crying baby directly behind me for probably 50% of it. The noise-cancelling earbuds helped with that somewhat. 

    We arrived after dark thanks to the 2 hour time change, and this was our first experience using the Turo rental car app service. Because we were going to be road-tripping, I wanted to be able to, you know, choose what vehicle I wanted to drive, which is hard to do with a typical rental car agency. Plus, who wants to wait in a long line at the airport just to be hounded by reps trying to scare you into buying all that extra insurance, and tacking on fees? (FYI, State Farm offers UNOC coverage - and no I don't know what that stands for - but basically it's an add-on to your own car insurance. As long as you have full coverage, your rental will be covered in an accident, however it doesn't cover any profit loss from damage to a vehicle taken out of service to be fixed and stuff like that. Plus I had charged it to my Costco card, which can cover as a secondary to the State Farm if the car got damaged in some way.) 

    Anyway, I digress. It was an interesting process getting the vehicle. We took a shuttle to the ecopark and found it in the parking spot provided by the owner. It was a 2024 Buick Envista Avenir, which I chose (after the vehicle I had initially wanted, a 2023 Toyota Crown, was damaged and unavailable for the trip) due to its comfortable ride and advanced safety features like adaptive cruise control. We had to take several interior and exterior shots of the vehicle, including any prior damage we found so the owner couldn't pin it on us if it came back that way. (Another FYI - this is a good practice to have with rental car agencies as well, as they're even more likely to pin you with damage you didn't actually cause). Setup with google maps was a breeze and we were quickly on our way to the hotel after that - to get some sleep because it was past 9:30pm local time by that point.

Day 2