Overdue updateyness!
Friday: Back into the city. Tom wnt to Virgin while I went to Britex and fell in love with a lovely green and brown silk brocade which I didn't buy!.
Once again, lunch was provided by the lovely people at the nice cafe in Union Square ("Teddy!" squealed on of the girls workingthe counter as I walked in. I think we made an impression), then we headed out to Downtown Berkely and spent and awful lot of time wandering around random streets in in case they were the one sstormwatch referred to in her directions to Lacis before finding an internet cafe and looking up the address and a map and discovering that her directions were accurate in every respect iexcept that they were from Avery BART stop, rather than Downtown Berkely.... That's the sort of thing I do all the time, so I had to laugh.
Anyhow, we also checked how to get to Stone Mountain and Daughter and spent some time and money there (by which point, Tom was shopped-out, so I left him in a nearby coffee-shop while I dashed along to pay a quick visit to Lacis before we were due to meet Seanan and Cat at Berkley BART. I only had 20 minutes there by the time I arrived (and stayed later, partly due to getting distracted and partly due tot he painfully slow service at the counter when I tried to pay for the doll patterns I had picked up (and this after I had told her I was in a hurry because I was really running late.....{sigh!})... so I went to Ashby BART, to take the train one stop and make up the time I'd lost.
Bad plan. There was no train for nine minutes (according to the platform display) and the last three minutes of that lasted for about nine or ten minutes by themselves.... As a result, I passed Seanan and Cat as I exited the Berkley BART, hastily explained (without stopping) that I needed to collect Tom who I had abandoned over an hour earlier and made the dash what seemed like half-way back down the road between Berkely and Ashby to find Tom (outside the coffee shop in, as I had expected, a panic about my being late and about us both being late meeting Seanan and Cat - honestly, he could get Olympic Gold in Worrying!).
After visiting a big comic shop, we went for Indian food (they did, I looked at doll patterns) and then on to a toyshop to admire the cudley dinosaurs, bacteria and ice-age creatures before heading to the cinema to see Forbidden Kingdom - Which is great, by the way. A lovely comedy martial-arts romp.
Then it was back tot he BART and the journey back to Concord.
Once again, lunch was provided by the lovely people at the nice cafe in Union Square ("Teddy!" squealed on of the girls workingthe counter as I walked in. I think we made an impression), then we headed out to Downtown Berkely and spent and awful lot of time wandering around random streets in in case they were the one sstormwatch referred to in her directions to Lacis before finding an internet cafe and looking up the address and a map and discovering that her directions were accurate in every respect iexcept that they were from Avery BART stop, rather than Downtown Berkely.... That's the sort of thing I do all the time, so I had to laugh.
Anyhow, we also checked how to get to Stone Mountain and Daughter and spent some time and money there (by which point, Tom was shopped-out, so I left him in a nearby coffee-shop while I dashed along to pay a quick visit to Lacis before we were due to meet Seanan and Cat at Berkley BART. I only had 20 minutes there by the time I arrived (and stayed later, partly due to getting distracted and partly due tot he painfully slow service at the counter when I tried to pay for the doll patterns I had picked up (and this after I had told her I was in a hurry because I was really running late.....{sigh!})... so I went to Ashby BART, to take the train one stop and make up the time I'd lost.
Bad plan. There was no train for nine minutes (according to the platform display) and the last three minutes of that lasted for about nine or ten minutes by themselves.... As a result, I passed Seanan and Cat as I exited the Berkley BART, hastily explained (without stopping) that I needed to collect Tom who I had abandoned over an hour earlier and made the dash what seemed like half-way back down the road between Berkely and Ashby to find Tom (outside the coffee shop in, as I had expected, a panic about my being late and about us both being late meeting Seanan and Cat - honestly, he could get Olympic Gold in Worrying!).
After visiting a big comic shop, we went for Indian food (they did, I looked at doll patterns) and then on to a toyshop to admire the cudley dinosaurs, bacteria and ice-age creatures before heading to the cinema to see Forbidden Kingdom - Which is great, by the way. A lovely comedy martial-arts romp.
Then it was back tot he BART and the journey back to Concord.