APE 09 wrap up

I’ll start at the top of the trip and tell the tale chronologically. I tell you one thing: the habit of leaving a clean house is a REALLY good one. Nothing like coming home to everything in order when you’ve spent x number of days in chaos!

So, we left out of here on Friday. AirTran regularly screws people who don’t know you have to pay extra to book your seats together (I never remember!). So we were booked with seats 20 rows apart going out. I was already stressed out and cranky, so this did NOT please me. We were on a plane with a group of women going to a marathon and another group that really screwed up the seating. After begging and whining, I managed to get us in adjoining rows, then by some miracle, a nice lady switched seats and we sat together. We also got to try out the AirTran wifi. It’s slow, but we got a free trial so it was GREAT!

The flight to SFO was smooth and we arrived to Greg and Kelly picking us up in his classic ’73 big ass Benz. (Pix soon!). They schlepped us to the Mission where we had Mexican and did some shopping. Good Vibrations is there, you know… Yes there was a purchase! :-D After some more shopping (and walking, of course), they dropped us at Good Hotel for check in. We really like the hotel, but Friday was quite warm and the room was HOT. There is rarely A/C in San Francisco or anywhere else in CA, believe it or not. They apparently did not get the memo about it. Friday night we had Pho at the little shop next to the Hotel – it was not as good as my Pho shop here, but doable.

Saturday we grabbed a cab to the show (APE *Which I think is gone now [Jun 16]) and managed to see every table. It was a fairly large show, smaller than Heroes. We had lunch with Ted, Kelly and Greg at Rocco’s (more walking, of course). They’ve been on Diners Drive Ins and Dives and let me tell you: it is a great place! I had a dinner sized portion of Chicken Scallopini with a brown marinara based sauce that was to die for and it was $10.95 (CHEAP for SFO standards).

After lunch we finished the show and finally spoke to Serena. She is such a sweet sweet girl! <3 There was the big APE party Sat night at Isotope, but we were tired from walking around 3 miles (more about that in a sec) so we opted to go to the Cartoon Art Museum for their little party instead. THAT was a good idea! Thanks to Becky, James and Ilana for telling us about it! They had a collection of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty production art from Ron Dias who was an in betweener at the time. Once Upon A Dream is a wonderful exhibit and I’m really happy to have seen it. They also let us take photos of it, which is technically not allowed, but we are grateful to have! One of the curators also told us about the Walt Disney Museum, which we decided to see on Sunday then go to APE…

Sunday, we get up early (we’re still on E Coast time, yanno) and trundle up to Sam’s Diner for breakfast with the Hickses. We were late, of course, due to transportation issues.

I’ll now break from the story to totally rant about the SHITTY cab service in San Francisco. I’ve been there several times, but I’ve either had my car (THANK GOD) or been staying with friends, or not really needed to be anywhere on a schedule so I took BART or MUNI. But this time, we had places to be and my knee decided to act up, so we were trying to not walk as much. Calling a cab from the hotel was not a problem – they will come when you call (they’ll whine about it first, natch), but just TRY to get a cab from anywhere else. What ends up happening is you take a cab to a destination and then you are stranded.

The cabbies’ excuse across the board was “people call then aren’t there”. Well, I posit that it could be because if you’re not at a hotel it will be 30+ minutes for the damn cab to show and who will wait that long? It’s a self fulfilling prophecy: they don’t show up in a timely fashion and people WALK AWAY, which is the dispatcher’s fault, NOT the client’s! We waited about 35 mins for the supposed cab to come to Concourse then we fucking WALKED.

Apparently the Concourse (a big ass convention center) is a no-go for all the cab companies as is anywhere that’s not a hotel or residence. WTF? There was much aggravation and gnashing of teeth about this, especially since the LOCALS seemed to have no idea that this situation exists. Cabs also will NOT stop when flagged. Yellow Cab was especially rude, don’t use them!

After bitching at several dispatchers and cabbies, I find the key to getting a cab is to find a hotel near your destination and call for a return from there. This doesn’t help with Concourse which is about half a mile from the nearest hotel – OURS. We walked.

Overall, I’d say San Francisco has the laziest, whiniest most useless taxi drivers/dispatchers I’ve ever seen. It’s shameful for such a nice city to have such horrible taxi service. The last driver we had whined about us wanting to use a CC THEN whined when he had to break a $10!!! I actually called him a whiney bitch to his face. Why not? It’s TRUE! He didn’t protest, so I guess he agreed. Whatever, just take my word for it and if you have to get a cab in SF, just find a hotel to call it from. /end rant

Where was I? Yes, Sunday. We did finally get to Sam’s and have breakfast with the Hickses, then we were going to head to the Disney Family Museum. Well, Google maps is a little confused about where Montgomery St is IN THE PRESIDIO. I looked at the various maps and they seemed off, but we were in a hurry, so I took Google’s word for it… Um no. We ended up at the Montgomery St downtown rather than the Presidio and when I called for BART/MUNI directions to get to the Presidio, they were so convoluted that we decided to pass. The good news is that we were standing right next to a toy and comic shop, so we went shopping instead! Yay! Jeffrey’s is a great little shop with a huge selection of board and card games and a nice little comic shop tucked in the back. We bought a few comics and decided to head back to the hotel. There was a hotel right around the corner, so getting a cab was a snap.

Once back to the hotel, we collapsed to comics and movies. We were tired, cranky and over it, so we did exactly what we pleased, which involved wine and not moving much. We did not attend APE and we did not care. Sunday night, Ted and Kelly were trying to get ready for their Thailand trip (they had a 1am flight) so Ted kindly picked us up from the hotel and we went to his place for Indian delivery and hanging out. Karl was staying with Ted, so we got to catch up with him. Kelly and Greg walked over from their place, so we had Ted, Nina, Kelly, Greg, Karl, Azmeer and us. We had a terrific time! I got a replacement original art piece for the one STOLEN at DragonCon and Ted also hooked me up with the French versions of Polly and Courtney! COOL! BIG thank you to Ted for that! ::lurves:: We cabbed back to the hotel and crashed.

Monday was a visit to East Bay (Walnut Creek) to see Nick’s uncle, aunt and grandparents. We took BART over and had a wonderful visit. I wish my grandmother was as spry as Norma Stone! Wow! She’s 89 and gets around fine! Herb Stone is a bit more frail, but hey, they eat and have a beer with the best of ’em. They are truly my heroes for being married for 70 years and being in good shape at their advanced age. I hope Nick and I are as lucky!

We had dinner with the lovely Nina Monday night. We tried out Basil Thai restaurant, which was very good. I had lamb curry, Nick had a crunchy tofu and Nina had salmon with winter melon and they were all outstanding. They were also reasonably priced (cheap for SF) at around $12 per entree. After Nina took off for an appointment, we wanted to have a drink or three but that neighborhood is not really a party place so we ended up going to the granola grocery a couple of blocks away for wine. Harvest Urban Market is the place. Nice!

And we had lunch one last time at Sam’s Diner before we took BART to SFO Tuesday. The trip started off pretty rough, but ended on a pretty good note. The asswipe TSA wanker that was on a “CHECK EVERYONE’S BAGS!!! TERROR!! TERROR!!” binge was annoying. He spotted my wine opener (which I’ve had in my bag for YEARS) and of course my bag had to be hand searched and it was some big fucking deal to take out the $2 fucking wine opener and toss it. I fucking HATE the TSA. The prohibited list does not specify wine openers, so it depends on how big the dick of your screener is, apparently. Small dick = more harassment. He pulled like 5 ppl right after me, all old women, which created and massive logjam and his coworkers were NOT happy. I think the overall consensus was THIS GUY IS A DICK! I said as much and the girl trying to wrangle my bag and all the women smiled, so yah. Thanks again for your harassment, TSA.

Big shout out to Stormy and Jim who looked after the varmints. The kittehs have put on a pound from all the stress eating, but they are fine. DJ is VERY clogged, so I’ve got to get him back on his meds. And thanks to Emily for helping out, too!

Overall, this trip was just what we needed. We didn’t do as much convention stuff as we’d anticipated, but we did exactly what we felt like, so it worked out well. I don’t know about Nick, but my head is a bit clearer and I’ve got a good, long list of stuff I plan to get accomplished by year’s end.