Transplanting a Seattleite

There’s a sleet / wind / ice storm in progress in the Northeast but our flight takes off more or less on time. I listened to some of _The Worry Trick_, which is a pretty good book, but has some issues. It’s mostly about learning to tolerate distressing feelings and pay attention to them instead of putting more energy into them by suppressing / distracting. In general, I’m in favor of problem solving, and to do that, you really need to know what is driving all those painful feelings so you can Fix It.

I’m also rereading (not while flying) Ilona Andrews the Inheritance, which is much more tolerable the second time around. Round one was a painful grind, lots of really scary feelings, mostly because our heroine is so besieged. It’s much easier when you know ahead of time about what she’s going to ultimately do to London. Among other things.

Lunch was at the rock n brews or whatever it is called at LAX near gate 12B. It was only okay, and the fried fish had allium in it so it messed with R.

The plane didn’t have any bourbon — caterer screwed up. But that’s fine; I only had one drink and called it quits. I forgot to download podcasts ahead of time. Oh well!

Everyone got home safely, altho we got home really late. Our driveway was a sheet of ice which was exciting in sandals with socks, but I made it in, put the ice bugs on, and went back to help A. out. R. actually got the ice bugs but I was halfway across the driveway already. Fortunately, T.’s car was there to grope my way along.

I mostly unpacked but did no laundry because it was late.

Another day of rain, which I resisted rescheduling because I didn’t want to lose tomorrow’s DTF reservation. The previous reschedule cost me a Carnation Cafe reservation that I did not GAF about. But I’m not losing my DTF reservation(s). BP’s shoes broke, so they went to Tilly’s in City Walk to acquire extremely styling van’s black sneakers with laces. A really great look all around. I had thought about further rescheduling the Toothsome reservation (had been 6 pm, moved to 5 pm when I booked the van to get us all to the park for park open, which was wildly successful), but with this added loss of time, I felt bad limiting their park time further.

I toured mostly with the LSs. We did the tram, went to the lower lot for Mario which we rode twice and Mummy, ditto. Mummy is a little different on this side. Mario is awesome. Theming is great. A. and I did Pets and Kung Fu Panda together. Correct use of the day would have involved staying up top for lunch and doing Pets and Kung Fu Panda, then spending the rest of the day doing Mario repetitively (we had unlimited express). Oh well! I bought bands for four of us (A., me, K. and C.) and we’ll reuse them in Orlando in March. I will do better research for that trip. Waterworld was closed; the LSs attempted it but failed, LOL.
A. and I gave up and went to City Walk in search of indoors, dry and warm. Lots of options; I picked NBC grill. I had an “aged manhattan” which was awesome. I ordered corn cakes, which showed up kinda late, so I only ate one. My sister had one and we took one to go. A. had the brownie sundae and I gave her a lactose but I should have given her two. She’d had a grilled cheese and a chicken tenders at lunch, and I think that put her a little too far over the top on lactose. I had the salad and churro bites at lunch (Minions Cafe, outdoor seating only). Florida Universal has way more indoor options than California Universal. After a while, R. showed up at NBC (I’d asked him to come early in case we moved Toothsome earlier). Then the LSs arrived and my sister ordered flatbread, but we had to switch restaurants shortly thereafter so that became takeout
Toothsome was fun. I got the vegan orange and cream which is a dreamsicle shake. It is very dreamsicle and good BUT I got the shakes from either the sugar or the cold, not sure which, and had to stop maybe a third of the way in. R. and others helped me out. Not sure but this one might be much colder than the others; N. did not get the shakes from his. I ordered the salad, which was good, and it became takeout with R.’s fries (from his club sandwich) and my sister grabbed it for a late night snack.

We slept in slightly (hotel breakfast is 630-930, so you can’t really push it too hard). We had lunch at Pitfire Pizza. It really is raining a ton. R.’s ambition was to see some water in the Santa Ana and conveniently Pitfire was in Orange on the other side of the river from us. The vegan caesar and the vegan margherita are fantastic. I had a taste of the chicken meatballs and they were good. I had the boozy cold brew, which was great. A. ate cheese pizza and some wings (wings were good).
Family zoom was next, and then dinner at a steak house chain I’ve never been to before: Flemings. I put some effort into making sure we did not overorder and we were mostly successful. I ordered too much asparagus and it had garlic and onion on it. It probably would have been the right amount if it had been plain.

Today was supposed to be the 4th park day, but the weather forecast was stable that it would pour today, so I swapped the park reservation to the 25th. I really should not attempt more than 3 park days in a row, if I’m doing consistently more than half days. It’s just a little much.

Disneyland day. We ran into my sister’s family and did Mr. Toad, Toon Town Spin (very high priority!), Gadget Coaster (really fond memories from the 2012 trip, IIRC, standing in that line watching kiddos play with bubbles), Star Tours and Buzz Lightyear. We had lunch with J.’s family at Blue Bayou. We rode Jungle Cruise. Dinner was at Nova Kitchen and Bar — mostly small plate, good drinks. The Bs never got a clear cue to order entrees and were hungry waiting, which was sad but we got it figured out eventually.

The flight was a little over an hour late departing. We were flying Mint, so at least we got some naps — all of us, even A. There were mechanical issues, but fortunately no weather issues, which is remarkable for our trips to California.

I had known the rest of the group would arrive before us, and they did, and the system that Residence Inn has for authorizing a credit card ahead of time is no longer paper based, which is delightful. It’s a little confusing if you are trying to authorize for multiple named persons, because they only wanted one form for both, so I had to do it twice to wedge the various names and addresses and so forth in. But it worked great, and that’s amazing, because it was going to be hard to do while inflight, and I sure would not want to make them all wait to check in because we checked in after 1 am. Rooms all seem fine; I think we have the exact same one we had last time, but it might just be in the same stack.

I finally got around to fixing the JetBlue trip later this year that got changed from a nonstop to a JFK connection. Ugh. J. from the builder sent over the paint selection document for me to review at the beginning of the trip. I finally got around to doing it, and she returned the corrections I asked for and I confirmed so we are good to go with that.

We’re on Yet Another Possible Front Door vendor. We’re now looking at sapele with a bronze threshold and S.’s artwork on top of it. We’ll see.

The three of us went to Mcmenamin’s on Market Street. The Dutch street signs are all from Rotterdam — fun looking them all up. The museum is being renovated, so not many people there, which meant we really got to stare at the massive Monet. I think I’ve figured it out — this isn’t about getting far enough back. It’s about figuring out where Monet wanted you to focus, in this case some of the little circles in the water.

Later R. and I met J. at the Rose Garden, which I’ve never been to. A. declined; she’d had enough excitement apparently. After that, we went down to Life of Pie. I had a vegan pie, and took a quarter of it back to the hotel. The seasonal mushrooms are awesome, and they didn’t go too heavy on the cheese. Yay! A. had some leftovers (chicken tender from Screen Door), a steak that R. got her from QFC, and some fruit and veg. R. and I drank the beer.

I’ll be happy to go home. It’s been a very busy trip.

R. and I went to Domaine Drouhin (I’d made a reservation the night before) to do some wine tasting. We bought some for SIL, since she’s asked. We ordered more for ourselves, to be shipped in the fall. On their recommendation, we had lunch at Trellis. It was excellent, altho we froze to death, because the AC is working to keep the wine cool and the wall of wine is close to the kitchen. We then went to Woodshed (also recommend by our host at DD), which was hilarious and awesome.

I’ve told this story so many times, I’ve probably also blogged it, but here it is again. Some time in the early 2000s or possibly 1999(pre 2003) I went to the Palace Kitchen and ordered the house red. It was the best wine I’d ever had, so I asked what it was, and they told me and suggested I go down to Willamette Valley and visit Tony. At the time, they did not have a tasting room (that was built later), but it was at the same place that R. and I went today. The view is just as great as ever. Anyway, Tony was awesome and I bought some wine, and then I went over to a place that had a restaurant and a tasting bar where you could try a lot of the smaller makers (doesn’t exist any more as near as I can tell). A lot of the smaller makers. I was young and stupid and did not know you weren’t supposed to just keep tasting. I was picking as I went so I wasn’t trying to keep straight which one tasted like what (impossible past the first dozen in a sitting, imo) and I was not swallowing anything at all so I wasn’t getting drunk or losing the ability to taste. But by the time I was done, I’d bought a few hundred dollars worth of wine and when I had lunch, I was a hard no on wine pairing and only wanted iced tea with my salad. I told this story at dinner to SIL, saying, “a lot of wine”, and she asked how many different wines and I lowballed as hard as I thought I could get away with and said (30-50) (it was over 50 and not by a little). She was surprised and said, oh, I thought maybe more like 15. And I was like, we had 16 today, because we had 6 at each winery and R. got a flight of 4 at Trellis (this was an error, because those were 2 oz pours).

We had dinner with SIL at Screen Door. This is a southern restaurant that I’d worried about whether I could eat, but the online menu had vegan cole slaw and bean fritters, which were both excellent. A. was fine — they had chicken and waffles. But R. was kinda screwed; they marinade the fish in garlic. What the actual fuck. Also, they were the most rude restaurant I’ve encountered in a very long time. We walked in and were actively ignored. Apparently they were full, and they thought they had seated everyone; I later checked messages and saw that we had one from SIL who told us where she was seated. But I’d been driving, and I don’t walk into a restaurant staring at my phone if I can help it. No worries, I was patient, but when R. explained his allium thing — which we know is a problem, but which restaurants consistently work very hard and patiently with us on — and the response was, well, that’s not going to work here. It was fine — the chicken tenders apparently don’t have much if any allium, so I don’t know why the rude? They had an easy solution? I hesitate to say, Never Go There, because the cole slaw was good and the bean fritters were really excellent. On the other hand, there’s a lot of great food and good service in Portland so nearly anywhere else, IMO.

I had lunch with Priestess at Alder and Ash. That was extremely worthy.

I walked around the art show with H.

I attended a fan fiction panel, that was really fun, and a writing resistance panel that was okay. We had an in person Friday with Friends / Cocktail Zoom at E.’s house. The food was wonderful and the company even better. After, I ubered over to the Bottleneck Lounge and had drinks with I. Also very very fun. I forgot to hand over the room key to R., so A. got stuck in his room until I ubered back to the Sheraton. First uber abandoned me — I saw them turn away and watched them keep going on the app and gave up after they were over a mile away and no sign of returning. The second uber dropped me on one of the wrong sides of the Sheraton. Oh well!

I got partially packed up, since we take the train to Portland tomorrow.

Duo often has funny alternative options when giving three possible responses to something. They raise questions in my mind!

Like: the correct answer is NOT the fairies are athletic. But do fairies play sports? What sports?
Or, the cave does NOT have a donjon (which sounds like dungeon but is apparently instead a castle tower). I think a cave COULD have a tower tho? For suitable definitions of tower. Chimney, for sure.

In Seattle today, it is foggy, and difficult to see the difference between the water and the sky. I love it so much.

ETA:

Today I completed the sidequest by arranging to meet the woman who lost her fan. Turns out she was in my hotel for a breakfast — the SFWA pros breakfast. We met in the hall outside and took photos and chatted and Catherine Asaro walked by which was super exciting for us. I think I saw the guy from the panel I went to for Casey Blair through the door, too (conan adjacent person who would ordinarily be at a comic con, but who was very chill — we ran into him later when doing room parties in the evening).

After that, I walked over to Cafe Flora to have brunch with K. Yay! Super tasty. I had the veggie burger and it was really good. I also got to see her husband K. briefly and hugs all around. So. Much. Fun.!! I ubered back because I was very tired. On the long walk over, someone complimented me on all the purple, and said the cranberry color last season was fantastic and he almost wore his jacket today and we would have been twinsies. Best compliment exchange ever.

We went to dinner at the Yard Cafe, because jr finally responded and we canceled on Emory’s and moved it closer to us and the baby. Lovely to meet the new cousin! I think this is the first first cousin twice removed that I remember meeting in person, but I’m probably wrong because there must have been some at various family things when I was visiting Canada as a teen.

A. and I walked around the hotel and did con parties, trivia (came in second to last as part of team Soup which was gracious enough to let us join 2/3rds of the way through), filk (briefly) and Scalzi’s Dance Party (we did a couple passes through it when A. was willing to try it for a few minutes).

I got breakfast in the club lounge. Really good! I got a plate for A. and left it in the room and put apple juice in the mini fridge for her.

I walked over to registration with saudi film / writer guy (door story), Kayla (who I think E. has told me about) and another woman who was the main person I talked to but whose name I have forgotten. The door story is for the first time since I got divorced (pre-kids, pre-blog), I had a standoff over door opening and holding. Saudi holds the door, fine, I walk through and hold the next one. Other folks go through, fine, he refuses, makes a big deal, and then goes over through another door. I walk through and he comes back and grabs it and says, “Ha ha I tricked you.” 100% his Saudi mom did NOT intend for him to do this. He’s a bad man.

Lots of great con stories from the two women. They were all presenters and registered, but I had to stand in a very long line at registration. H. was ahead of me and it took her most of an hour to get through. I had a great conversation with Ache, who is contemplating getting an MFA. Priestess showed up right when I got to the head of the line, so I was able to pick up everyone’s badges at once. (Including J., N. and B.’s!) Woot!

Priestess and I had lunch at Solo splitting a salad and mediterranean platter.

Later in the day, R., A. and I met up with my cousin S. and his wife R. and went to Din Tai Fong. Super yummy!

[I really should update this with the panels I went to.]