Author Archives: Maria Langer

New Year’s Weekend

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How We Celebrated the New Year.

After several painfully boring New Year’s Eves spent in Wickenburg and one relatively interesting one spent in Prescott, we decided we wanted a more memorable New Year’s Eve.

So we left town.

We stuffed the trunk of my Honda S2000 with overnight bags, dress clothes, and two bottles of champagne, wedged ourselves into the passenger seats, buckled up, put the top down, and sped off to the west on Friday morning.

We went to La Jolla, CA, which is just north of San Diego. We booked a room at the Sea Lodge at La Jolla Shores. Our room featured a huge sliding glass door and private balcony that faced the ocean. All day long, we could watch the waves and the people and birds on the beach. We could listen to the rhythm of the ocean waves. We could watch the weather move in and the kayakers move out and the surfers just float around, waiting for the perfect wave.

On New Year’s Eve, we had reservations for the early seating at Nine Ten, the restaurant in La Jolla’s Grand Colonial Hotel. We chose dinner with a wine pairing. (For those of you who don’t know what that means, each course is served with a different wine that has been selected by someone knowledgeable about wines and foods.) Four courses, four wines. The food was exquisite. I had chestnut soup, sea bass, venison, and a chocolate desert. Everything was both beautifully prepared and delicious. It was the kind of meal you’d couldn’t get within 40 miles of Wickenburg. And I enjoyed every bite of it.

After dinner, we changed into regular clothes and went for a walk on the beach. It was a nice night and there were very few people out and about. Then we had some champagne on our balcony and listened to the waves to welcome in the new year.

On Saturday, New Year’s Day, we drove into San Diego. We spent some time walking around the popular Gaslight Quarter, which reeked of beer from the previous night’s celebrations. Most shops and restaurants were closed; we got there too early. We walked a total of about 20 blocks and saw three Starbucks coffee shops. In all three instances, the Starbucks had been placed near an existing coffee shop. I realized that Starbucks is trying to put all the other coffee shops out of business. This was a revelation to me. We went into one of those little coffee shops for some latte. It was quaint and had lots of character — much nicer than the cookie-cutter design of a Starbucks. And the person who took my order actually made my coffee — imagine that! I wondered how long the place would survive with Starbucks right across the street. So I decided then and there that I would no longer buy coffee (or anything else) in a Starbucks. I’d like to see some little coffee shop put a Starbucks shop out of business and I’ll do my part to help make it happen.

We drove over the big bridge to Coronado Island. We walked around the east side of the island for a while, admiring the view of San Diego, then headed west to the Coronado Hotel. I got an excellent parking spot on the street near the hotel entrance, saving the $5 per hour parking fee I’d have to pay to park on the hotel’s parking lot. We walked around the hotel for a while and I bought a gift for Lorna who, with John, was housesitting for us. The Coronado Hotel is a wonderful historic landmark that is magnificently maintained. We had lunch outdoors in the sunshine: sea bass prepared two different ways. Then a long walk around the town in search of just the right desert. We found a coffee/pastry shop (with a Starbucks right next door — the nerve!) but didn’t find just the right bit of chocolate to satisfy my after-lunch craving. We left town heading south on the long causeway that ends just three miles north of the Mexican border, then headed back north.

Our last stop for the day was Cabrillo National Monument, where the original Point Loma lighthouse stands on a hill overlooking the San Diego Bay. Magnificent views all around. I took lots of pictures and used the movie feature of my camera to create a panoramic movie of the bay and city beyond.

By this time, it was late afternoon and the warm sunshine we’d been enjoying all day was fading behind thin clouds on the horizon. We headed back to La Jolla Shores for a rest before dinner. We had dinner in La Jolla, at a place called Roppongi. The restaurant featured “Asian fusion” food. We ordered five different tapas dishes, all excellent, and a sake sampler. More food you can’t get at home.

On Sunday, we checked out early and headed back down to San Diego’s Balboa Park. Many people know the park as the home of the San Diego Zoo, but the park also features many museums. We visited the Air and Space Museum there, which was surprisingly good. There were many airplanes and spacecraft on display, including the Apollo 9 Space Capsule and an actual GPS satellite. Exhibits were arranged historically, with early aviation exhibits near the entrance of the building and space exhibits near the exit. The building is round, so you walk in a circle to see all of the exhibits. A courtyard in the middle of the building has a glass ceiling and, since the building is in the flight path for San Diego Airport, jets fly right over the roof just a few thousand feet up. It reminded Mike of growing up in Flushing, NY, in the flight path for La Guardia.

Lunch was at Ole Madrid, a restaurant in the Gaslight Quarter that was supposed to offer Sunday Brunch. They called it brunch, but it wasn’t the buffet style meal we expected. Instead, we ordered tapas from a menu. Everything was good.

We left the city soon after that and headed east on I-8. We made one stop: in the town of Alpine where there’s an Indian Casino and large outlet mall. The mall was beautifully designed and landscaped with lots of statues, fountains, and vegetation. It was a pleasure to walk through it. After picking up a few things we can’t get in Wickenburg, we hit the road again. The day was cloudy and we drove with the top up to keep warm. (We’d had the top down all weekend long.) After coming through the mountains on I-8, we turned off, following the road toward Mexicali. The drive along the border was mildly interesting — certainly more interesting than the drive along I-8. We joined up with I-8 just west of the sand dunes and followed that to Yuma. Then 95 to Quartzsite, I-10 to SR 60, and SR 60 to Wickenburg. We got in just after 8 PM.

It had been a nice trip away, made possible, in part, by our friends John and Lorna, who stayed at our house and watched the menagerie (Alex the Bird, Jack the Dog, Jake and Cherokee (horses), and the chickens).

Now it’s back to reality in Wickenburg.

The Silence is Broken

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Why I haven’t written a blog entry in over a week.

My last blog entry was dated 12/22. It’s now 1/4. Where have I been?

First of all, you need to understand that I do my blogging in the morning, while having breakfast with my bird. I’m normally awake sometime before 4:30 AM and, while Mike continues to sleep and then gets up to do his morning thing, I’m downstairs at the kitchen table with my PowerBook, typing away. Like this morning. Alex the Bird has his breakfast and is eating quietly, dropping scrambled eggs all over the floor by his cage. In a while, Jack the Dog will come by to clean it up. Meanwhile, I just type away.

Trouble is, I don’t always finish before Mike comes down for breakfast. That means I’m still typing away while he’s sitting across the table from me. And he doesn’t like that. He wants my full attention.

He deserves most of my attention. (I don’t think too many people deserve all of it; there’s really not enough to spend on any one person.) So I’ve stopped blogging in the morning. And since I don’t do it then, I don’t do it at all.

I’m not too happy about that. You see, I like writing these blog entries. It gives me a chance to write what’s on my mind and what’s going on in my life. It’s like a diary that just happens to be public. It’s not the public part that I like so much. It’s the discipline of writing on a schedule, of regularly documenting things that are part of me. The benefit: looking back over these pages, I have a record of what’s been going on in my life.

So this morning, I’m at it again. It’s 5:15 AM and Alex the Bird is asking me if I want to go upside-down. (He’s also calling me a goober and asking if I’m a duck.) Mike is upstairs doing his morning thing. Jack the Dog is somewhere, avoiding being turned out in the rain. Life goes on.

Dining Out Can Be Stressful

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We try to enjoy a dinner out but are foiled by bad service.

My friends John and Lorna, who spend their summers in Maine and winters in Arizona, were extremely helpful today. So helpful, in fact, that I wanted to buy them dinner.

We decided to go to a local restaurant called Sangini’s. I happen to be very fond of Sangini’s pizza. They make a thick crust pizza and the crust is good. Other pizza places in town make thin crust pizza. That’s fine, if you like thin crust. I don’t.

John and Lorna like Sangini’s Hawaiian pizza. For those of you unfamiliar with this culinary delight, it’s pizza with ham and pineapple on it. Yes, I did say pineapple. I haven’t tried it yet. I’m afraid to. Where I’m from, the words pineapple and pizza are never used in the same sentence, let alone put together on a menu or in your mouth. Hawaiian pizza is a west coast thing.

Anyway, we all met in Sangini’s at 6 pm. The main dining room had a few people in it and, as we waited to eat, it filled up. Business was pretty good for a Wednesday night.

I examined the menu. I usually eat pizza or perhaps a calzone. But I decided to try something different. I wanted to think of Sangini’s as something other than a pizza place. The only way I could do that was to order something other than pizza — and like it. I decided on the chicken scaloppine.

Trouble started when Mike, my significant other, asked for vinegar and oil on his salad. The waitress, who was probably about 19 years old, looked at him as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“What did you want on your salad?” she asked.

“Vinegar and oil.”

“I don’t think we have that,” she said.

“I’m sure you do,” Mike replied.

She went away looking doubtful.

The whole thing reminded me about a breakfast we’d had in a small town restaurant one day. Mike says the restaurant was in Wickenburg, but I don’t remember it that way. Anyway, blueberry pancakes were on the menu. Mike asked the waitress, who was probably still in high school, how they were. “Very good,” she replied. “The blueberries are fresh. We just opened the can today.”

(To those of you who don’t get it, fresh blueberries don’t come in a can.)

Oddly enough, I had just told that story to John and Lorna earlier in the day. I repeated the punchline: “The blueberries are fresh. We just opened the can today.” Then our conversation turned to young people who grew up in Wickenburg and had no idea of anything other than what they saw in town. And how limited that was. And then about young people in general. We were sounding like a bunch of old folks, which is very discouraging when you’re still well under 55.

The waitress came back. “We have balsamic vinegar,” she reported.

“That’s fine,” Mike replied.

When she returned with the salads, mine came with bleu cheese dressing, as requested. Mike’s came with a little plastic container filled with what looked like balsamic vinegar. There was no oil. But before he could ask, the waitress disappeared. She then somehow imagined to avoid making eye contact for the next five minutes. Finally, Mike got up and went to the kitchen. He came back a moment later to tell us how crazy he was. He’d asked for olive oil to go with his vinegar and they’d told him they didn’t have any.

Now this pissed me off. I’d read the menu and I distinctly remember reading a description that included olive oil. Virgin olive oil, if I remember correctly. So either they were lying about not having any olive oil or the menu was misrepresenting one of the dishes.

Mike poked at his salad, but didn’t eat much of it.

Then came the very long wait. I’d say that we waited for at least 45 minutes from the time we placed our order until the time the food finally appeared. Meanwhile, the restaurant filled up and just about everyone else was fed. Some people who came in after us got their checks. We couldn’t decide whether we’d been blacklisted because Mike had asked for vinegar and oil or whether ordering something other than pizza was a mistake.

The food came. It was interesting. Although mine was good and it met the description of what I’d ordered, it wasn’t what I expected. Still, it was good. And although the plate was cold, the food was hot. So I was happy.

Mike’s on the other hand, was nothing like any of us expected. He’d ordered sole parmesan. What came was some fried fish filets with the same lemon sauce that was on my dish, along with some grated parmesan cheese. Parmesan — at least the parmesan I know from being half Italian and from New York — means the meat or fish is covered with a tomato-based sauce, melted mozzarella cheese, and a sprinkle of parmesan. Still, it must have tasted okay because he ate it all.

John and Lorna had Hawaiian pizza. They were happy.

We waited a long time to get the check. And then, once we had the check, the waitress neglected to come by to take my credit card. Finally, Mike, John, and Lorna got tired of waiting. They left and I went to the cash register to pay.

I looked for the owner in the bar on my way out. The place was surprisingly full of young people. In fact, I think everyone in town between the ages of 21 and 28 were in that bar. There may have been some imports, too. I didn’t even know we had that many young people in town. But the owner wasn’t among them.

It’s hard to get good help in Wickenburg. The labor force simply isn’t very good. Mature, was the way someone I know put it. The young people have no work ethic, no experience, and a poor attitude. The older people don’t really need the job so they’re not reliable. Employee problems are what drove me out of the airport fuel business back in April. Employee problems have hurt quite a few local businesses. They certainly didn’t help Sangini’s today.

The way I see it, dinner out is made up of four components: atmosphere, service, food quality, and value for your money. Once you’ve lowered your standards enough to deal with the limited choices in a small town, you don’t mind going out to eat in a place that’s only going to score high on three of these four components. But when a place scores poorly on two or three components, you simply can’t go there anymore.

I’ll still eat Sangini’s pizza. But until the service problem is resolved, I’ll take it to go.

And for the record, Mike and I eat at home more now than we ever did in our lives.

January 4, 2009 Update: This restaurant went out of business at least 6 months ago. A “For Sale” sign is on the building, but no seems interested in reopening it.

Anticipation

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I feel like an expectant father.

Those of you who have been following these blogs closely (I’m impressed but somewhat concerned about you) know that back at the end of June 2004 — on my birthday, to be exact — I placed an order for a brand new Robinson R44 Raven II helicopter.

The great thing about ordering a helicopter from the factory is that it’ll be exactly what you want when it arrives. You get your choice of everything: exterior color (red), interior (beige leather), type of windows (bubble observation), instruments (vertical compass, artificial horizon w/slip-skid indicator, digital clock), avionics (Garmin 420 GPS, Garmin 330 Mode S Transponder), cockpit cover (yes), fire extinguisher (yes), Bose headsets (yes) — well, you get the idea. Heck, you can even pick your own N-number (N630ML). You load it up the way you want it and the helicopter sales guy does some fancy calculations to tell you that it’ll only cost a small fortune (rather than a large one). You sign on the dotted line, give them a check for $25K, and you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

You see, Robinson is the top-selling helicopter manufacturer in the world. Robinson, in fact, makes more helicopters than all the other helicopter manufacturers combined. It has a factory in Torrance, CA that was recently almost doubled in size just to handle the volume. But despite this increase in capacity, there is still a five to seven month wait for a helicopter from the moment it is ordered to the moment it is ready for delivery at the factory.

A few weeks after placing my order, I was given an estimated delivery date of mid-December. At first, I thought that was great. Then, as December got closer and I realized that some property I needed to sell probably wouldn’t sell in time, I went into panic mode. Where would the money come from? I had already arranged for a loan, but I didn’t want to borrow any more than I absolutely had to. I hate being in debt. My goal was to keep my monthly loan payments about the same as they were for the R22.

I sold the R22 in October and delivered it to its new owner on November 1. I got almost as much as I wanted for it. I took the offer because I didn’t want to be stressed out worrying about selling it. It’s a good thing I sold it when I did. The other day, I got a letter in the mail from Robinson stating that all main rotor blades of a certain series (the series installed on Three-Niner-Lima) were being recalled. The blades had to be replaced by June 30, 2005. The cost of this recall: approximately $25K. Ouch. I feel really bad for the new owner; the one reason he hesitated to buy the helicopter was because there was only five years left on the blades. Now there’s only six months. But although I’m sure he’ll be very unhappy about the situation with his new helicopter, I also think he can afford an expense like that more than I can. Heck, he paid cash for the darn thing. Didn’t even need a loan!

The bad part about selling Three-Niner-Lima is that I haven’t flown since November 1. But I cover that frustration in another blog entry.

About two weeks ago, I was given a revised delivery date of January 7. (Robinson is closed for a week for the Christmas holiday.) But last Tuesday, Tristan called to tell me he saw my helicopter flying at the factory. A few frantic calls later got me the information that there was a lot of test flying and inspecting to do and that the January 7 date was still the safe date. Lots of apologies from my helicopter sales guy. But apologies don’t fly.

Still, I had high hopes of being able to pick it up before the factory closed for the holiday. All I had to do was get the insurance and money in place.

So that’s how I spent the last five business days. Wiring money to the insurance company, giving them an insurance effective date that would satisfy the lender. Signing loan papers and FedExing them to the lender. Wiring my own money, scraped together after jumping a few financial hurdles, to the helicopter dealer. Faxing ferry qualification forms to Robinson and my helicopter dealer. Getting and receiving phone calls. Trying to understand how things would flow. Trying to coordinate, like an orchestra conductor, the actions of people all over the country — and beyond.

Today is the day. It’s Wednesday, the day before the last day the factory is open before the Christmas holiday. Today’s the day I could get the phone call that says: Your helicopter is ready. Can you come pick it up tomorrow?

I’m ready to go get it. I’ll hitch a ride down to Sky Harbor with Mike and we’ll hop on a Southwest flight to LAX. Robinson will send a helicopter to LAX to pick us up and take us to the factory. Then we’ll look things over, sign some papers, and take off. Two and a half hours later, we’ll be in Wickenburg. With luck, we’ll get home in time for dinner.

That’s my fantasy, anyway. Reality may differ. For example, the phone might not ring today. Or the weather tomorrow might be so bad that visibility makes it impossible to fly away from the factory. Or we might not be able to hop on a flight to LAX at all. (We do have plan B, which calls for some friends of ours to fly us to Torrance in their Mooney.)

Meanwhile, I can’t think of anything else. Work is impossible. I’m mentally pacing, rubbing my hands together, looking at a clock. Like a soon-to-be father in a waiting room. (Yes, I know fathers wait in the delivery room these days, but I don’t think Robinson would let me camp out on the ramp near the factory door.)

And it doesn’t feel at all like Christmas.

What will happen? Stay tuned to this blog and see.

Writing about Tiger

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I begin work on my Mac OS X book revision.

I started working on my Tiger book this week.

So far, I have three of the 21 chapters done. I skipped Chapter 1, which is about installation and configuration. I always do that one last. Instead, I dove right into the Finder chapters: Finder Basics, File Management, Advanced Finder Techniques.

I added some new information to the File Management chapter about a new and undocumented feature called burnable folders. This was a challenge. Although I could figure out how to use this feature and write sufficiently about it, there wasn’t a single mention of it anywhere in online help or Apple’s Tiger Web pages.

What burns me up about this is that although I couldn’t find any official documentation about the feature, there was an article, with screen shots, on someone else’s Web site. Why does that burn me up? Because I had to sign a nondisclosure and swear up and down that I wouldn’t share anything about Tiger — especially screen shots — with anyone until the software was released. Technically, if my husband looks over my shoulder while I’m writing, I’d be in violation of this agreement. So that prevents me from giving my readers a sneak preview of the software and getting them all fired up for what’s to come. Yet someone else can publish articles on the Web, for the world to see, without getting in trouble. Does that sound fair?

Anyway, about burnable folders, to make matters worse, since I’m working with pre-release software, the feature isn’t perfected yet and is a bit buggy. Or perhaps it just set up conflicts with my screen shot software. In any case, my eMac was acting up and had to be restarted periodically. So it took me the better part of an afternoon to write two new pages and rewrite two others.

The Advanced Finder Techniques chapter was completely reworked. I pulled a lot of material out of this chapter to make a new chapter (Chapter 6) about customizing the Finder. This required complete renumbering of all figures throughout the chapter. A tedious task, but someone has to do it.

Next week, I continue writing with a brand new chapter about Apple’s new Spotlight and Smart Folders features. I hope to be able to knock that one off in two days.