Overheard in Berkeley

Homeless man, laying on the street, yelling: You are all my beautiful rainbows. I love you all. You are all my creation.

You'd think he'd have more to show for himself if he single-handedly created the universe.

Jim and I were dining al fresco when I homeless man came up and demanded that Jim fist-bump him, which he did.

Jim saw a homeless kid drop kick someone's car today.

It's genuinely difficult to tell who is homeless and who is tragically hip. Sir, are you wearing a skirt because you are of scottish heritage and couldn't find your usual kilt, or is that all they had left at the thrift store?

A group of kids were standing near our building today and one of them said "I talked to my cousin from New York today. They have hella different words there." Indeed they do. They hella do.

I was reading in the park today when I heard a homeless guy ask a couple near me if he could tell them a joke. Then he asked for money, so I was already leery when he started approaching me and called out "hey fine cat!" He then recommended I read the time-traveler's wife. So is he just a drugged out Cal student or what the hell is going on?

Every day brings a new mystery in Berkeley.

It's Been An Interesting Few Days

First of all, I apologize that this blog promised to be much more than it turned out to be. Driving all day and crashing at low-budget hotels didn't leave as much time for writing as I anticipated. But we're in Berkeley now so I'll let you all know what occurred.

I should preface this update with the fact that there is currently gallons of water gushing out of our shower. Jim has called 2 emergency plumbers. We met the neighbors by asking for help while soaked in water with blood shot eyes. Welcome to the building, right?

We moved in to find that there was no apparent way to switch the function from bath to shower, so I opted for a bath. Baths are creepy, but they're better than the alternative: not bathing, or flooding your new apartment complex. Jim, on the other hand, decided to "fiddle." At first, when I heard rushing water, I thought he fixed it. Then I looked again and saw that the hot or cold selector was now a water feature. More a geyser really. Yosemite style. We'll let you know how that turns out.

So we drove from Topeka to Denver without a hitch really. Just a lot of long, boring stretches. We stayed at a Best Western PLUS - so you know it offered something special. Namely, a Mexican restaurant next door. We decided why the hell not, and before Jim finished saying "chimichanga" we both had a slop of brown placed in front of us. It was pretty damn awful. But at least the service was bad.

So we left for Utah, home to the Mormons and the Winter Games. FYI: Wyoming sells a lot of fireworks. Park City is pretty cool but it's really small from what we could tell. Salt Lake City is gorgeous. The backdrop of the mountains is truly breathtaking. I couldn't get any reasonably good photos with my iPhone though. Use google images or something and then just picture us in the front. We checked into the Holiday Inn Express, which was pretty nice. We decided to go to an Olive Garden, and I guess maybe I was frazzled because when the waitress asked if we'd be ordering wine, I may have been overzealous in my response. Yesssss please. "Geez, I'm not used to people saying yes." OK, then I remembered I was in Salt Lake City and saw that no one within a mile radius was drinking an alcoholic beverage, and the family at the table next to us was staring. But ya know what? We just drove 8 hours and I'm not going to let a bunch of Sister Wives intimidate me. So yes, ma'am, I will have a cab sauv-pinot gris hybrid.

Next day we drove to Berkeley. We knew it was going to be a long haul: a projected 11.5 hours.