Megan and I went with the girls to the Maker Faire today. Only, we didn't quite make it. And Mark came along.

Our original plan was to head up around 10:30, head into the faire around 11, and leave around 1:30 or 2. The cost was $25 a person, but, well, two crafty women tooling around with two small kids in tow? Yeah, we'd see what we needed to see in those three hours, and boy, would it be worth the $25 a head, kids free!

Only, we didn't figure on the lines. The lines, the lines, the lines.

The first line was on 101 N to get onto 92 W. Megan pretty much said "screw this!" in a much nicer way, and went north on 101 to 3rd St. Megan's navigational abilities are impressive, as she turned left on Delaware after crossing 101, and voila! we were on our way to the fairgrounds, which were ON Delaware, about a mile south. We managed to bypass about a hour of sitting in traffic with the detour, and find a great parking space on the parking shuttle bus route, so we didn't have to walk to the fairgrounds.

We arrived, to discover two lines: the 45 minute credit card line, and the 30 minute cash line. Mirabelle and I jumped in one line, as Mark and Meter jumped in the other, and Megan went off to figure out which line we wanted to be in, and how long we would be in the line.

After looking at the line, seeing the next line inside, realizing it would be 12:30 before we managed to actually get into the fair, we gave up, and went off for a different adventure.

We ended up at Central Park in San Mateo, mostly because the park has a train for kids to ride around on, but also because it was close, and we were hungry and ready for lunch.

The great thing about parks is that they enable you to learn, without really trying. Take, for example, the cork tree that I learned about. I thought it was just a weird tree. Turns out, it's actually a weird, FUNCTIONAL tree. How's that for learning?

I also learned that, hey, you know what, people do go to the park for lunch and resting by a tree in the shade.

Who knew?

After lunch, the only appropriate thing for a two year old to do at a park is, well, you know, break the law.

So, with a little encouragement, Mirabelle did just that.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't "a little." It was, however, certainly appropriate. Civil disobedience at a young age! Ah, it warms the heart!

What? What did Mirabelle do?

Well, the sign behind her reads:

"It is unlawful to enter or use the elevated stage area at CENTRAL PARK without a CITY permit."

The sign is actually quoted like that, too.

Of course, Mirabelle was by far NOT the only person up on the stage, sharing it with a runner, an old dude and a dog, but she was the cutest. And! She was up for a continuing adventure. Like, battling the bathroom wind monsters. I tell you, Mirabelle's wind kung fu knows no limit!

Neither does how much she's able to impress me. Without hesitation, when we arrived at the playground, she wanted to go up! So, up she went to the top of the playground equipment. "Ladders? They're for climbing. Even if the rungs are slippery, and I have to hang on with one pinky while I manage to get my footing." That's what she was telling me.

Clearly she's done this before, as neither Mark nor Megan worried about her zooming up to the top. Me? I was a wreck during her climb.

One of the best parts of climbing up, is coming back down.

After the junglegym, we had to leave for other afternoon plans. We buzzed through the Japanese gardens, seeing the small japanese maple trees, the pagoda, a couple bridges and, of course, the fish.

All in all, a pretty wonderful day with the Smiths. Who needs a faire when you have a Mirabelle to keep you company?

Went up to the City tonight to have dinner and spend time with Elina. Elina had journeyed down south on Wednesday night to partake in communal dinner, so a journey back north was in order, if only to get my kitty fix.

The first thing I did (well, no, probably more like the fourteen hundredth thing, but, really, who's counting?), was, of course, step on the sign in her elevator that says, "Don't step."

Last time we went out to dinner, we walked back from the restaurant we ate at. After looking for a restaurant to go to, and coming up pretty much completely empty, we decided to walk over to that restaurant for dinner. Sure, we had eaten there before, but the food was good, and the menu was large enough to warrant another visit. So, off we went to Flippers for dinner.

On our walk back from dinner, we passed by the local federal building which has a small field/meadow of grass that appeared to be native grass, the kind that is all tufts. Elina commented that the grass looked really soft, so I wandered over to touch it. It was, indeed, soft.

The meadow is a triangle meadow that starts at ground level, and is walled in with a slanting wall that grows four feet high, or so. I walked up the wall and, at Elina's encouragement, into the meadow and squatted. I had handed her my camera before I walked up, so she quickly snapped a few pictures.

Somehow she managed to take a number of good pictures of me. I'm sure it's her talent with the camera that ruined my usual "1 in 7 photos of me is good" ratio, because it certainly wasn't my charm.

Might have been the cold, though. San Francisco. Always cold.

The only downside of the evening was heading home early. I went to catch the 9:30 train (note to self: learn to catch taxis, take lessons from Elina, she has amazing taxi karma), so that I was home by 10:50. The 10:30 train wouldn't have me back to Mountain View until 11:40, and the 12:05 train? Ugh. So, I caught the 9:30 train. Made the evening much too short, and me much too distracted about watching the clock.

Kris and I went with Andy and Stacy to see Andy's dad perform in the musical Fame tonight. I wanted to go see it for the simple fact that Andy's dad was performing in it. Performing. Singing. You know, in a musical.

We showed up at the Sunnyvale Community Center at 7:21, to a near panic phone call from Andy. "Hurry! Hurry!" he said, so we ended up running up to the theatre, giggling and laughing, about a minute after he called, and with enough time to arrive, go in, use the restrooms, find seats, and sit in our seats.

And settle in for the show...

Now, Fame, as a musical, really isn't that good. The songs are disjointed, incoherent and not particularly well connected. I prefer musicals that tell stories, not ones that are a bunch of songs sung one after another with random bits of talking in between.

Doesn't matter how good the production is, if the basic musical is bad, the best singers and dancers and actors won't save it.

But, these people tried.

Oh, how they tried.

About half way through the first act, I realized that one of the performers had his family in the second row of the theatre. The theatre isn't very big to begin with, maybe 12 rows, fifty seats in a row, or so. So, there isn't very much space to look over the audience's head to project to the back of the theatre. As a result, when your family is in the second row, and are sitting about 10 feet away from where you're jumping, and singing, and, well, in this performance, groping a fellow performer, you kinda notice your family.

At least, this particular performer of note. And when he started singing to his family, and they started whooping back at him, well, I couldn't stop laughing. Kris thought I was crazy, because I couldn't stop. and was shaking the seats around me.

Eventually, I did manage to calm down, and stop laughing, but I still spent less time listening to the performance, and more time watching the performers and their particular mannerisms.

Most musical productions Kris and I go see are the big, travelling ones, coming into town for a limited performance: Wicked, Rent, the Phantom of the Opera, Les Miserables, (and some of the lesser big ones like Miss Saigon, Evita, Sunset Boulevard), etc. These productions are typically expensive ones, with top talent, and big names. However, even with the top talent and big names, the productions aren't necessarily very good. Sunset Blvd was attrocious when we saw it. Enough so that I told Kris it was a horrible musical. He claimed it was just a bad production.

Yes, I'm deliberately not including the Viking Operetta, and the various musicals the Smiths were in, in that statement.

So, watching the community theatre production of Fame tonight was very much like watching a bad production of some musical, except that it wasn't. Sure, the people performing may not be as talented as the people who perform on Broadway, but can you say they have less fun, or are less passionate doing it? I don't think you can. No, they can't project to the back of the theatre, and have problems looking the correct way when singing, or moving with big, demonstrative movements that translate well on stage, but the joy on their faces makes up for it in ways that are somewhat indescribable.

What is describable, however, is the moment of shock I experienced when the set started shaking, when the cast started climbing the stairs and finally (FINALLY!) gestured big enough to rock the framing. Maybe a little better structural work might have been good.

As Andy said, it was better than expected. I had a good time, and, based on the smile on Kris' face, I think he had a good time, too.

Still haven't figured out Stacy. I think she thinks I'm nuts. Even Andy looks at me funny when he's around her and we're with them. Maybe she gives off a crazy-inducing pheromone.

Yeah, that's it.

Oh, and note to self: send an email to Ben D'Angelo, who works at Google, and invite him out to lunch. He reminds me a lot of Mark Rubin. Though, since he works at Google, he probably has little desire to head off-campus for lunch. Ask anyway.

I went to the DMV today for a replacement title for the S2000. Kris and I are selling it to Doyle, which means finding the title to complete the transfer. Some part of me believes I lost the title on purpose, because selling this car is much, much, much harder than selling the CRX, and selling that car was hard.

Selling this one is going to be fucking hard.

Sorry, Megan, Mom, but the curse word needed to be said. Cover Mirabelle's and Sam's eyes, please, because it's going to be that hard.

The car was the first big purchase Kris and I made together. The whole purchase was an adventure, and a story I certainly enjoy telling. We drove that car on various other adventures, including top down when we were looking for places for our wedding weekend. There are enough memories with the car that parting with it will be painful. Kris says he's okay with selling it: neither of us drives it much, we could use the money for the front yard landscaping, we'd have space in the garage again, Doyle would drive the car as it's meant to be driven. All good reasons for selling it, and yet the thought of selling it makes me cry.

It's one of those decisions I've made where I know it's the right decision intellectually, but emotionally it feels wrong. I keep going through the actions, bringing the decision closer with each step, but every step hurts.

Like going to the DMV today for the title.

I made an appointment, because that's the only way to deal with the DMV. Now, each time I've gone to the DMV, I've brought the printout of the appointment confirmation. And not once has the person behind the counter ever asked to see the print out. Not once, in years.

So, I didn't take the printout, or any documentation that said I had an appointment. I just showed up with the S2000's VIN in hand, on the insurance card.

As I was standing in line, a short fat man in an security uniform approached the line, and asked the woman in front of me if she had an appointment, the two of us standing in the appointment only line, right next to the completely empty non-appointment line. Yes, yes, she had an appointment, and lifted some piece of paper that proved beyond any shadow of a doubt with the officer-wanna-be that, yes, she had an appointment.

So, then the guy turned to me. "Do you have an appointment?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Where's your confirmation number?" he asked, noticing I had nothing in my hands.

"I didn't bring it," I stated, letting a little more annoyance out than I intended.

"You didn't bring your confirmation number?"

"No, I didn't bring my confirmation number," thinking, go away, small man, and bother someone else.

"Well, you need my confirmation number," he continued, all stern and gruff.

"No, I don't," I answered back.

He looked up at me for a moment, then, oh, wasn't he so funny, burst into a big smile and reached out to touch my arm, as I stepped away from him. "Oh, I'm just playing with you. They can look up your appointment information right there."

I didn't smile. If they really needed to look up my information, sure, they could. But they wouldn't look it up, because they never do. They don't need that information, they don't use it. Anyone can go up and say, why, yes, they do have an appointment, and the DMV will take that statement at face value. I knew this. The annoying man next to me knew this, too. Why waste the paper or brain cells with a meaningless number? Right. Don't.

So, the annoying doofus finally walked away, to harass the person standing behind me, as the woman in front of me walked away from the counter and I walked forward to talk to the person behind the counter.

But not before I saw her jam her finger into her ear, dig around for a moment, looking up at the ceiling not unlike the way Bella jams her whole back foot into her ear to dig around. She pulled her finger out, looked at it, and, oh, was this a defining moment in this adventure, decided NOT to put her finger in her mouth.

I'm not sure if the look of disgust swayed her in that decision.

I received the title request form to fill out and the number F92 from the ear lady, using the wrong hand, I might add, and went off to sit for a bit to wait.

Between annoying man and ear lady, I'm not sure this was exactly one of the better DMV I've had. Oh wait, yes, it is. At least this time the DMV didn't lose $550 of mine.

In the end, I guess annoyance trumps sadness. Kris told me I'm allowed to be sad about selling the car. I wish my new car actually felt like my car, and not still Katie's car. If it did, maybe selling the S2000 wouldn't be so hard.

Lost and found at communal dinner:

Couldn't quite get a good shot of Thomas' friend: