A nice, if rainy, weekend
Feb. 26th, 2007 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lyornOf course, the weather didn't hold. Saturday was grey and threatening rain, so, after a phone call from Tiassa at 9 am I just went back to bed and slept for another four hours, went shopping for groceries and ended up in the bookstore. There's a hardcover I did not want to buy, so I thought I could read it while drinking coffee, and put it back afterwards, and if I accidentally spilled coffee on it and had to buy it... well, that'd just be my subconsciousness telling me something, wasn't it?
Only, when the coffee was finished and chapter 4 wasn't yet, my subconscious said, "Stop clowning around" and had me march straight up to the counter and buy the book, while my super-ego was babbling something about "shelf space" in the background.
For dinner, I had some spicy freezer-to-microwave rice, and a small steak. I'm getting more skilled with the kitchenette and hardly made a mess this time.
Sunday the sky was chequered with blue, and I decided to finally tackle a walk I had wanted to do for weeks, on the side of Mount Diablo. My guide book called it "moderate" in difficulty and said it would take three hours, so I hoped to be able to do it in four and a half.
I did it in three, but I wished that I had my heavy walking boots instead of the light ones: The fire roads were seriously muddy. The mud had perfect cat tracks (bobcat, I guess: too big for housecat, no visible claws). There was a small brook to cross, which I managed, glad that no one was looking, half-crawling over some stones and a fallen tree. After the brook, the path went seriously uphill, the view became great: waterfalls over the whole hillside, reddish stone in lengthwise layers, like tree bark, and downhill over green and grey grass and bushes and lichen-covered oaks, over towns to the north-eastern part of the bay. I took a few pictures and generally took my time. Everything was very green, and looked familiar in colour, if not in detail. I still do not know any of the plants. There's one with thick oval green-white leaves and a dark red bark. And some with tiny pinkish blooms. Pine trees looking like the ones on Tenerife, with needles longer than my hand, but more silvery than green, with giant cones. Once the path had reached the height it wanted to be, it levelled and became very narrow, and wound along the hillside, crossed trickles of water, (more waterfalls!), went through some thick shrubs in which birds that sounded like small owls hooted melancholic. Some time in between it started to rain (the shrubs stretched that moment), and when I walked back down to the level of the fire-road, the whole muddy thing had become an extremely slippery muddy thing. I managed not to fall, but I still came out of it looking like a mud racer. And while I tried to arrange my wet and muddy things in the rental car with as little mess as possible, the car alarm went off. So now I've got mud on the driver's seat.
Back in the hotel I put my clothes in the washing machine (the mud went out OK), had no idea what to do about my shoes (still haven't), had a long shower and decided that this was the day to go to the steak house down the street which I had eyed hungrily for months, but I had always been either too late, too tired, or not hungry enough to try it out. The steak house was Australian-themed and had a very impressive bar. I'd have loved a drink or three, but with the amounts of meds I've been taking recently, my liver deserves every break it can get. So I had a completely insane non-alcoholic drink made from (in order of volume) ice, Sprite, cherry juice and lime, and a giant steak (I can never remember how many grams to the ounce), mashed potatoes with garlic (great!) and chocolate cake for dessert. Imagine this piece of chocolate cake as a largish piece of Sachertorte cut into horizontal slices and filled up to twice its height with the heaviest mousse au chocolate you ever had, and crowned with a Belgian chocolate truffle. I couldn't finish it.
The rest of the evening I spent reading and getting into arguments on LJ. I managed to sleep before 2 am, and dreamed only moderately weird stuff.
Only, when the coffee was finished and chapter 4 wasn't yet, my subconscious said, "Stop clowning around" and had me march straight up to the counter and buy the book, while my super-ego was babbling something about "shelf space" in the background.
For dinner, I had some spicy freezer-to-microwave rice, and a small steak. I'm getting more skilled with the kitchenette and hardly made a mess this time.
Sunday the sky was chequered with blue, and I decided to finally tackle a walk I had wanted to do for weeks, on the side of Mount Diablo. My guide book called it "moderate" in difficulty and said it would take three hours, so I hoped to be able to do it in four and a half.
I did it in three, but I wished that I had my heavy walking boots instead of the light ones: The fire roads were seriously muddy. The mud had perfect cat tracks (bobcat, I guess: too big for housecat, no visible claws). There was a small brook to cross, which I managed, glad that no one was looking, half-crawling over some stones and a fallen tree. After the brook, the path went seriously uphill, the view became great: waterfalls over the whole hillside, reddish stone in lengthwise layers, like tree bark, and downhill over green and grey grass and bushes and lichen-covered oaks, over towns to the north-eastern part of the bay. I took a few pictures and generally took my time. Everything was very green, and looked familiar in colour, if not in detail. I still do not know any of the plants. There's one with thick oval green-white leaves and a dark red bark. And some with tiny pinkish blooms. Pine trees looking like the ones on Tenerife, with needles longer than my hand, but more silvery than green, with giant cones. Once the path had reached the height it wanted to be, it levelled and became very narrow, and wound along the hillside, crossed trickles of water, (more waterfalls!), went through some thick shrubs in which birds that sounded like small owls hooted melancholic. Some time in between it started to rain (the shrubs stretched that moment), and when I walked back down to the level of the fire-road, the whole muddy thing had become an extremely slippery muddy thing. I managed not to fall, but I still came out of it looking like a mud racer. And while I tried to arrange my wet and muddy things in the rental car with as little mess as possible, the car alarm went off. So now I've got mud on the driver's seat.
Back in the hotel I put my clothes in the washing machine (the mud went out OK), had no idea what to do about my shoes (still haven't), had a long shower and decided that this was the day to go to the steak house down the street which I had eyed hungrily for months, but I had always been either too late, too tired, or not hungry enough to try it out. The steak house was Australian-themed and had a very impressive bar. I'd have loved a drink or three, but with the amounts of meds I've been taking recently, my liver deserves every break it can get. So I had a completely insane non-alcoholic drink made from (in order of volume) ice, Sprite, cherry juice and lime, and a giant steak (I can never remember how many grams to the ounce), mashed potatoes with garlic (great!) and chocolate cake for dessert. Imagine this piece of chocolate cake as a largish piece of Sachertorte cut into horizontal slices and filled up to twice its height with the heaviest mousse au chocolate you ever had, and crowned with a Belgian chocolate truffle. I couldn't finish it.
The rest of the evening I spent reading and getting into arguments on LJ. I managed to sleep before 2 am, and dreamed only moderately weird stuff.
