Pajama Pants Nation

Stephanie had a conference in Monterey, California. The Pre-Schooler Action and I tagged along. The conference was the Internet Librarian 2007 conference. The reason that is important is that I’ve been doing a bit with Web 2.0 lately and am getting feeds from library blogs, including that of The Shifted Librarian. When the blog invited us to a gaming demonstration, I thought it’d be great. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting that I’m only pretending to be a librarian. I’m not actually invited and, more importantly, didn’t pay registration to get in. I don’t know if they would have let me into the pre-conference gaming demonstration or not. But, by golly, I had interest.

Moot point, though. You see, my brother Jon dropped us off at the airport 2 hours before the flight to San Francisco was supposed to take off. 4 hours later, the flight took off. We missed our flight from San Francisco to Monterey, so we had to either stay overnight or drive down. We rented a car and drove to Monterey. It’s a really nice drive, especially if you’re the passenger. I highly recommend it. (Both the drive and being the passenger.) We stopped along the way to eat in Los Gatos. We also now know the way to San Jose. So many think that you just take 101 from San Francisco. Nope. You’ve got to get off 101 and (I can’t stress this enough) get on 85. So many people miss that part. We didn’t miss that part, but we missed the gaming demonstration.

So we got to Monterey. Getting lost on the way to the hotel was easy, but we found it. Once we got all of our stuff in the hotel, we decided to return the rental car. For a massive surcharge, they will allow you to, rather than return your car to the franchise from which you rented, return the car in the city of your destination, so we did–at the airport. While there, it was time to check on our checked baggage. They had the Seafarer of Action’s suitcase and stroller, but our suitcase had been deleted. Deleted. More than angry, we were surprised. How do you “delete” a suitcase? You know in you’re in a 2.0 world when real, tangible, 3-dimensional objects can be “deleted.” I bet that in Victorian times no airline told a passenger, “your luggage has been deleted.”

That was Sunday. On Monday was the first day of the conference. First we did the continental breakfast at the hotel. Not good. They had fresh(ish) fruit, which was good. But the baked goods were wrong. There are two must-haves in a continental breakfast, although that’s not entirely true as you only need have one of the two must-haves: doughnuts or danishes. You can have either or you can have both, but you must have at least one. This hotel had neither. And I’ll never forgive them.

After our “continental” breakfast, we walked down to the wharf. I looked out across the water, shaded my eyes from the sun as it rose, and saw … Wait a minute! Shaded my eyes from the sun? We’re on the West coast. The sun rises in the East! I should not need to shade my eyes from it. Turns out, Monterey is on the Monterey peninsula. The eastern side of the peninsula! You’re not looking toward the Pacific; you’re looking toward Nebraska. (A fine state, by the way. Just not what I would call “oceanic.”) Late flight? Okay. Missed flight? Fine. Lost luggage? We’ll smell funny for a while, but that’s survivable. Thinking you’re going to see the ocean but it’s actually an inlet? I DEMAND MY MONEY BACK! I love watching and hearing ocean waves crash upon one another. Slight water increases up the shoreline is not the same thing.

We walked around a bit and played in the Plaza near some aquatic museum. There was a big anchor there. While Stephanie went to her lectures, the Pre-schooler of Action hung out by the anchor, inking it. I’m not sure of the physics involved, but, near as I can tell, inking something entails holding onto the object and telling those nearby “I’m inking this.” And, you know, the anchor seemed no worse for the wear.

Steph’s morning lectures finished and we hightailed it to lunch. We went to a place called Crown & Anchor or something. It had and English theme and it took forever to get our food. So, I dubbed it, Slow & British. They had a bunch of model boats, so Pre-Schooler of Let-me-see-that loved it. This place is noteworthy in that this was, I believe, the first time since becoming vegetarian that I found nothing vegetarian to eat and actually ate a chunk of dead animal flesh. Good times.

Steph went back to lectures. The Inker of Action took a nap. I looked for my hotel key card. (Never did find it.) Soon it was time for dinner. We went to a restaurant Steph had planned to visit.

The next afternoon, she vomited and felt much better. Unfortunately, she missed all but 1.5 of her “2.0″ lectures. She had planned a lot for that day, including for us. Well, we did our part. We went to the Museum for the Youth. It’s actually a play area with words like “Imagine,” and “Create” painted on the wall. Great for us, as the Player of Action got some toy time, but not really what I would call a museum. Worth the entrance money, though. And I got my exercise just finding the place on its block. Back and forth; back and forth. For those of you trying to find it, look for the parking ramp with the MY banner on the side. The “museum” is in suite 100 of the parking ramp. On the second floor (where they always put suite 100). Again, worth the money and a good time. Just a little off.

The next day Steph got back to her lectures. And we got back to walking around. You know those rides at the store where you throw in 50 cents and the kid bounces around for 38 seconds. We found one of those which was a boat–and it played the theme to Miami Vice. The Inker of Action loved it. He rode it a couple of times. I’ll tell you this: 10 AM is a little early for the theme to Miami Vice. You end up telling yourself all those things good parents tell themselves: “He’s enjoying it so it’s worth it,” “I’ll survive,” and “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”

Early lunch at some restaurant. Early nap for the boy. Stephanie finishes her afternoon lectures and it’s off to the aquarium. It’s a good aquarium. We enjoyed it. We saw sharks and a weird thing called a California Sunfish. We left, and went to eat. Ah, there’s a deli! Closed. At 6:00 PM. What gives? “It’s 6 AM somewhere”?

The next day, driving the coastline. Nice. But foggy in a lot of places.

Wait! I forgot! The Dennis the Menace park. It’s an otherwise above average city park: climbers, bridges, slides. That alone makes the park one of the best I’ve seen. However, it has something making it extraordinary. It has a big old-fashioned train engine. A must-see with a three-year-old. The rest of the park was fun, too. But a train engine is a train engine. And this was a train engine you could climb on! Kudos to the Dennis the Menace park.

And back we go, driving the coastline. By the way, if you’re at the Big Sur and you want to climb way up past the waterfall (which wasn’t too impressive at this time of year) to the valley view and you don’t want to carry your 3-year-old of Action all the way up, you can, for most of the way, use an umbrella stroller. I was surprised, too. It worked pretty well; better than a regular stroller. We finally found the valley view. Mountain climbing never seemed so easy. Next year, we’re going to try to take the little guy up to the top of Everest. In a stroller. After a quick bite to eat, we went back up the coast to Monterey.

Wait! I forgot something else! The earthquake. We were in an earthquake one of the first evenings we were there. Or so the news reports said. It’s “epicenter” was about “9″ miles north of “San” Jose, but was “felt” in Monterey. Unfortunately, we were “asleep” during the thing. That makes two earthquakes I’ve been in but didn’t notice. Not that I mind. The scientists thought this earthquake was interesting because instead of getting its energy from its own fault, it transferred energy from other faults. I, on the other hand, thought it was interesting because even earthquakes, apparently, do not know the way to San Jose.

Anyway, back to the hotel. Get back to sleep. Wake up. Miss the flight to San Francisco. End up flying through Denver. Spend $3.00 on the Internet informing Jon of the change of plans, giving him the incorrect landing time. And home we are.

I can’t believe they didn’t have doughnuts!

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© 2007, Mark Wentz

Since I started gainful employment, I’ve always considered my birthday to be a holiday. It’s a day to–if nothing else–take time off from work. I’ve often thought about promoting it to a national holiday. There’s one negative to that, though. What do all national holidays based on birthdates have in common? The person born on that day is dead (although, one guy was resurrected) and, quite often, died early at the hands of someone else. I have no desire to go that route. I’m not sure how many global holidays there are. The closest would probably be New Year’s, Christmas, and Easter. There’s still that death cloud dimming my view on those. What about galactic holidays? I don’t even know that there are any. Maybe I’ll nominate myself for one of those.
Of course, we run into the problem that I haven’t done anything to deserve such an honor. I could try the route of suggesting it’s the holiday to celebrate the “common person.” However, that would make me the typical common person and I’m not sure persons commonly suggest having a galactic holiday in their honor. So we’ll work on the holiday part now. The rest of it will take care of itself with the mythology which usually accompanies major holidays. (I’m hoping I had single-handedly defeated the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl, but I’m not going to suggest that as I don’t want to influence history.) But it’s not really about my greatness. It’s more about celebrating that I have a birthday and don’t want to work on said day. And, be honest, wouldn’t you all really rather not work on July 14?

Let’s start off by declaring which day on which the holiday falls. We could go with the first Friday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox after the new year after the old year. Or we could go with July 14. That’d work great, too, because I was born on July 14. July 14th, it is!

Hear ye! Hear ye! On this day, by the authority of some guy who has an infrequently-visited web site, let it be known that from hence forth July 14 shall be recognized as the galactic holiday know as Mark Wentz’s Birthday. Hear ye! Hear ye!
There are three parts to holidays: food, decorations, and traditions. Family, also, but I can’t really help you there.

Food
An important part of any holiday is food. Pretty important in non-holidays, too. Breakfast on this holiday consists of doughnuts. The midday meal doesn’t really exist for this holiday. It’s more like grazing. Get some good finger foods (chips, nuts, chocolates, etc.) and nibble away while doing other activities. Supper is easy: pizza. Some holidays have their wassail, some have their beer, and others have a wine. This one has generic (store brand) soda. Strawberry and grape work best. Orange and root beer in a pinch. Cans and 20-ounce (or less) bottles. You do not–I repeat, DO NOT–put generic or store brand soda in a glass. First, it’ll eat through the container, the table, the floor, etc. Second, it’s horribly couth to use a glass.

Decorations
Blank walls are fine. Pictures and portraits of me would be pretentious. No, there is only one decoration that will do for this holiday: bumper stickers (read: bumper snickers) about me. That should be about it. However, if you really need a centerpiece for the dining room table during the Mark Wentz’s Birthday feast . . . er . . . graze and a bag of Doritos doesn’t float your boat, you may use a football. (The classier lot of you will probably use a tee, but it is okay to set the football directly on the table–held in place by a wad of gum, if necessary.)

Traditions
Read and sing the Mark Wentz’s Birthday carols. Especially those with the patron saint, St. Luxbell, whose job it is to, at 0430 hours, supply all the grocery stores throughout the world with doughnuts made by stoners in a little bakery in what they believe is Shangri La–although it’s actually just outside Hunfratoon, Pennsylvania. And don’t forget the carol about Henry Streator, the stoner who was a misunderstood outcast until he saved the 14th of July holiday one year when he defeated the terrorists by bowling a 900 series during an unusually heavy cloudburst. Because of this, a traditional activity for the holiday is bowling.

We have happy holidays: Happy Halloween, Happy New Year, etc. We have merry holidays…well, one merry holiday: Christmas. Given the activities and foods of our new holiday, there is only one appropriate salutation for this holiday: deathfree. “If I don’t see you, have a Deathfree Mark Wentz’s Birthday.” “Yes, and to you and yours, as well.” Avoiding cardiac infarction on Mark Wentz’s Birthday ranks right up there in difficulty with avoiding a stroke on the 14th of July.

I nearly forgot about the gift exchange. Feel free to exchange gifts. However, none of this picking a Friday after a major holiday and trying to pack everyone possible into all of the stores (I’m looking at you, day after Thanksgiving). There’s no official start to the gift purchasing part of the holiday. Only an end date: June 23. If you don’t have your gifts purchased by June 23, just send a note to your friends and family telling them you no longer love them. Those of you partaking in the Secret Luxbell gift exchange, get your names in now before it is too late.

For those of you whose refuse, because of dignity and good taste, to embrace a self-appointed galactic holiday, I have a solution. Celebrate my sister Pat’s birthday. It’s on . . . well, what do you know? It’s on July 14th, too. What a coincidence! Remember, the important part is that I don’t want to work on my birthday.

So enjoy the festival that is the Mark Wentz’s Birthday galactic holiday. Get your You’ll Log and take inventory of all the fun you’re having . . . celebrating me and my birthday. Stay home and eat. Nobody wants a skinny bowler.

To you and yours: have a Deathfree July 14th!

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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not neccessarily reflect those of the rest of the family.

© 2007, Mark Wentz