Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Episode 6.09 of Better Call Saul, "Fun and Games", is not the last episode in the series. There are 4 more after it. But it completes a story arc I've been wondering about since the start of the series: How does Kim's story end?

We've known since the start that Kim's story has got to end somewhere in this series. That's because of what I've repeatedly referred to as The Star Wars: Rogue One Rule. A major character in a prequel who doesn't appear in the original series— Kim is not mentioned at all by name in Breaking Bad— is doomed. The writers had to get rid of her to maintain continuity with the original series.

( Spoilers! )

It was a quiet weekend at home for us. No, not in the "Let's spend hours sitting by the pool on a warm day!" fun kind of way. Though I did get out for a soak in the hot tub Sunday morning. Our around-the-house weekend was a mostly in-the-house weekend as we are still dealing with being sick and didn't have much energy for getting out and about.

For me, I'm mostly over my cold. The worst days were Wednesday and Thursday last week, thanks in no small part to allergies combining with the cold. But a hacking cough has stuck with me since then. Oddly, OTC cough medicines (guaifenesin and dextromethorphan) don't help this cough but nasal decongestant pseudephedrine does. We're going to need to hunt for more of that since drugstores no longer stock it regularly thanks to the government cracking down on a real or perceived drug epidemic.

Hawk has the same bug I've had but is a few days behind where I am on the curve. That means while Wed-Thu were my worst days, hers were this weekend. Thus she didn't have energy or desire to go out anywhere, not even for a short hike like we'd hoped as of Friday.

Two years ago I bought a straw hat. It's well made and looks great. I liked it so much I signed up for the hat maker's mailing list. That was fine for two years... until recently. Recently they've been emailing me with hat updates, like every day.

And these aren't even earth-shattering "Check out this crazy new hat!" type announcements; they're "Hey, have you ever seen a plain fucking standard ballcap in black?" Like, OMG, yes, a billion times. Then the next day: "Stand out from the crowd in this gray ballcap!!1!"

WTF is with a hat company spamming me every day to buy a hat? Especially a completely generic hat? Why do companies abuse communications like this? If they were still sending me one message a month, I'd read it. Now I've unsubscribed and they've lost a customer.

Well, there was one benefit to day 2 of our all-day training session starting 2 hours early today. We finished early. We broke just after 2, and I headed to the airport.

I kind of figured wanting to finish early was why the exec "called an audible" at dinner last night and said let's start 2 hours early. Every time we have multi-day seminar the execs' admin assistants tell us in finger-wagging fashion that the session goes until 5pm and we must not book flights home before 7pm— because they don't want people disappearing a few hours early on the excuse of "Oh, I have to catch a flight." Except half the execs then book early flights. Heaven forbid they should get home at midnight or on a redeye! 🙄

I even shared a ride to the airport with the exec who'd booked a 3:30pm flight. On a training day that was originally scheduled 9a-5p. Because apparently he didn't want to miss dinner with his family, even though it's his admin who sanctimoniously told the rest of us not to book flights departing before 7pm.

Why did I hop a ride to the airport at 2:15 when my flight wasn't 'til 7:30? Because as soon as it was clear the seminar was going to be done-done at 2pm I opened my Southwest Airlines app and booked a same-day confirmed change to the 4:30pm flight.

We got to the airport quickly— it was just a few minutes away as we were meeting at an airport hotel, not a beach boondoggle— and passed through security quickly. As I was consulting a map of places inside the airport, thinking "What can I do to kill 2 hours until my flight?" it occurred to me, Wait, there's an even earlier flight I can catch! I pulled out my phone another time, opened the app, and rebooked to the 3:30pm flight. Changing flights twice in 30 minutes... I felt like such a baller!

The upshot of all of it was I got home, as in home-home, at 5:15pm. With my original schedule it would've been 9:30. Hooray for being able to roll with the changes.

The cold I've got is following a somewhat familiar path of symptoms. It started with a few days of chest congestion, then turned into a head cold (sinus congestion) with worse chest congestion. Then yesterday the sinus congestion turned into a runny nose... and my irritated nasal passages welcomed in an old friend, allergies. 😳

It didn't help that there were scents— air "freshener" shit— in the room where I was attending all day training. Then, a person who'd smelled like he'd taken a fucking bath in cologne sat next to me. I held it together until lunch but then.... 🤯 I was a mess of sneezing all afternoon.

When training ended a few minutes after 5pm (yay, on time!) I whispered to my boss that I needed to skip out on the group dinner. I went up to my room, showered, and put on fresh clothes— clothes that hadn't been in the room of "Why the fuck do people call adding atmospheric irritants air freshener?" scents. I spent 90 minutes just trying to recenter myself and feel presentable enough to go back out in public. ...For even small values of "public", like n=1 people.

And n=1 was what I did for dinner. I sat at the hotel bar and ordered a small meal. There was nobody else there, just me and the bartender. That was perfect because I didn't have to worry about sitting far away from people in case another sneezing fit hit me. Fortunately none did anyway.

The downside of an empty bar is that it's boring. And I just wanted to stretch out anyway, not sit up on a stool. After I finished my meal I took most of my second glass of beer back up to the room with me. I nursed it for almost 2 hours as I stretched out in bed with my computer. I weighed going downstairs to the hot tub. I was sure the hot water and steam would make me feel better. But at that point I just didn't have the energy for it. I got to sleep at the completely reasonable hour of 10:30.

I slept fitfully the first half of the night. I wasn't sneezing but my head was stuffed. I awoke every hour, drank water, and took more pills as necessary. But then after my 1:30am-ish wakeup I slept all the way through until just after 6, with the brightening sky out my balcony window waking me up naturally. Yay, small victories!

Today I'm feeling better than yesterday. ....Well, I'm feeling better than yesterday afternoon. I am not felling better than yesterday morning. Meaning, things could go completely south on me when boxed up in the room of goddammit-stop-spraying-that-shit-around. We'll see.

I'm in Newport Beach, California for a few days of intensive sales training. The training hasn't even started yet— it's on Wednesday and Thursday— but the partying has. ...I know, I wrote yesterday that this trip is not a boondoggle. But last night we went out to a fancy-ish restaurant on the coast, Javier's. The valet parking was full of high end luxury and sports cars. The restaurant was full of people in their see-and-be-seen attire; a style I only see in certain places where wealth and vanity collide like in Southern California.

I was hoping for a not-late night last night. I even seriously considered blowing off the group dinner. But I decided to go because the group seemed small enough. There were just 12 of us. Well, dinner was languidly paced at the packed, fancy restaurant. We had drinks. Then simple appetizers. Then bigger appetizers. Then full dinner plates. I estimate my end would've been $175 all-in if I were paying my own bill. And we didn't get back to the hotel until almost 11pm. So much for my idea of a not-late night. I had been hoping we might be done with dinner early enough for me to take a dip in the hot tub before 10!

Getting back to my room at 11pm was bad enough— considering I was up, sick half the night the night before— but then, because it's a business trip and I'm in an unfamiliar bed, or possibly because I'd eaten too much food too late, I couldn't get to sleep right away. I tossed and turned until about 12:30. And this morning I was up at 5:30 for a 6:30am meeting before the all-day training sessions. Ugh.

Last night my cold took a turn for the worse. I've had a cough and body aches/tiredness since Friday. Monday night I got sinus congestion, too, and my cough got a lot worse. I took more OTC meds to combat the symptoms but, still, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep, most of the night.

This morning I took a Covid-19 test. I'd been telling myself for a few days that if the symptoms got worse than a mild cold, I'd test. Well, last night was when they got sufficiently worse. Oddly, though, by this morning the symptoms had abated. There's something about colds being worse at night and lighter in the morning. Anyway, I took the test this morning. Negative.

I was actually kind of hoping for a positive test. That at least would put a specific name to what I'm suffering and open up a clear course of action better than, "Take these at best semi-effective OTC cold remedies and let the virus run its course." Plus, "I can't. Covid," shuts down colleagues at work asking if I can't just join these 3 Zoom meetings way better than, "I have a cold" does. 😷

On Sunday it wasn't just "Screw being sick, I'm going to the hot tub". After a week of being too tired from jetlag and busy-ness at work to do anything relaxing other than sleep I was getting stir-crazy; stir-crazy in a way that just going to the pool wasn't enough to rectify. For a few weekends before our trip to Italy I was yearning to get outside for a hike locally. Alas, one or both of us was always too tired then, too. And now this weekend I'm sick? Screw being sick, I'm going hiking!

Hawk, mindful of the fact I'm struggling through being sick with a cold, suggested we could hike at Byxbee Park, a nearby favorite at the edge of the bay that's flat and has plenty of options for short hikes. I countered that No, I've been yearning for something further afield. So we headed up into the mountains for another regional favorite, Russian Ridge in the Mid-Peninsula Open Space District ("Mr. OSD")



As always, I like Russian Ridge because of the sweeping views it provides from atop a ridge in the coast range mountains. From the east side of the ridge (not quite pictured above 😂) you can see all around the San Francisco Bay, from San Francisco itself in the north to San Jose in the south, to Mt. Diablo and Mt. Hamilton in the mountains on the other side of the bay.

Oh, and from this side of the ridge...



...You can see out across the Pacific Ocean. Which is all socked in with fog today, as it often is. That's one reason why we're rarely like, "Let's go to the ocean!" when we live less than an hour away. Most days the view's better up here in the mountains.

BTW, that mountain near the middle of the frame above is Mindego Hill. After seeing it in this vista from Russian Ridge for years we figured out how to hike it a few years ago. Seeing it this weekend reminds me that we should plan another trek out there.



Most of our past several trips to Russian Ridge we've come up here earlier in the spring, or even in the winter. That's because it can be hot in the summer, and the grasses are all brown. We were surprised it wasn't all brown already here in June. And there are wildflowers, too. Not a lot, but definitely patches here and there. We thought they'd all have burned off by now.



Even when we aren't gazing at far-off views from the trail, Russian Ridge is just such a mellow place to hike. Partly that's because there are a lot of rules here. Dogs are prohibited and there are speed limits for bikes, for example. Rangers enforce the rules. We met a ranger at the start of the hike and chatted about things. No, he doesn't spend his whole day writing speeding tickets for dogs and cyclists. Sadly his most common trouble call is some speeding dipshit wrecking their car or motorcycle on the highway outside the preserve. It's technically outside his jurisdiction as a ranger, but when there's an accident and an injured person up in the mountains, the closest emergency responders answer the call. FWIW, I own a sports car, and on a beautiful day like this I think it's lovely to drive the speed limit and enjoy the beauty all around me.



I began this hike with a particular route in mind, one that traverses many of the highlights of the area without being too long or having too much climbing. Partway into the hike I was feeling bullish and thought maybe I'd extend the loop. That's another one of the great things about Russian Ridge— there are a bunch of connected trails here, making it easy to hike a longer route or cut it short.

Alas, though I was feeling bullish partway into the trail, by the time I got to the bottom of the hill I realized there was no way I was going manage the long version today. It'd take my remaining energy just to get back to the trailhead via the shortest route. That's not bad, though. I did 2+ miles and several hundred feet of ascent while sick with a cold!

In beauty I walk. Even if I'm achy and coughing up phlegm.

A local pizzeria, A Slice of New York, has had a sign out for months that they're closing soon. Now they have a sign showing a date: Next Saturday.



This restaurant has been circling the drain for several years. The pandemic was tough on many restaurants, but this one did the WTF coming out of the pandemic of reducing their hours in late 2023 to just one and two-half days a week. At the time I mused they wouldn't make it a year by cutting their own revenue so badly. Somehow they held on for 18 months. (I wonder if the landlord had given them a sweetheart deal and it took them this long to raise the rent to market rates. Or for an eviction to work its way through the courts.)

I have mixed feelings about seeing this pizzeria go under. I used to love this pizzeria. When their pizza's good, it's great. But for the past few years now, more often than not their pizza has been left sitting out too long. It's usually dried out and sad looking. Half the time I've gone in there recently I've turned around and walked out after seeing the choices. It's become an in-joke between Hawk and me; I've got to have a "Plan B" for where else to eat any time I try to go to this pizzeria.

Earlier today I posted about bringing home a bit of money from Italy as a souvenir. Sadly, no, it's not ancient denarii or sesterces... though that would be awesome if we did! It's just a few dollars worth of modern coins. They're not even particular to Italy because they're Euro. There are 20 countries that use Euro.

I'm not much into souvenirs from foreign countries. So many of the things sold as souvenirs are stupid crap— and just make the house look junky when displayed. Hawk and I will often buy one thing we agree on as a physical memento, something that means something to us and represents the place we visited. For example, we brought back from our Panama trip a painted wood carving of a harpy eagle. This trip, though, we forgot to shop for a souvenir. 😱

How did we forget? First of all, like I just said, it's not a huge reflex on our part to buy ready-made-for-tourists stuff. Second, there surprisingly weren't gift shops scattered all around Rome prompting us to buy stuff. I mean, that's awesome. It's awesome that a city filled with so much history doesn't have junk peddlers every 3 meters trying to monetize the tourist experience.

Sure, we have all our memories of the trip. But no unique souvenir means that we have nothing physical in the house to remind us of a great trip.