Yesterday
Well, we didn't get to see "A Night at the Museum".
I made lunch for the kids and asked the younger two to clean up a game they'd been playing while I cleaned up and got dressed. Oddly, Child Three complied and Child Two procrastinated. She and Child One wrestled or something.
The movie was scheduled to start at 2:00. At 1:45, I noticed that the game was still out. We waited for Child Two to clean up. The theatre (AMC Saratoga) is about a ten minute drive from here in Santa Clara.
Child Two put the game away and we were off. We lost five minutes to traffic. Then we lost another five minutes trying to find the theatre, and five more looking for parking. It was 2:05 by the time I parked the minivan.
We ran to the theatre, only to find a long line of people waiting to buy tickets. Sigh.
There was no other movie that appealed to us in terms of content and start time, so I thought we'd drive and look for cool stuff to do. We left the Westgate Mall area (the mall's across the street) and drove south on Saratoga. I though D&J Hobby was down this way, but I didn't know exactly where. (My 12-year-old memories were very, very close, but not quite good enough - the theatre is roughly where Hamilton and Campbell join.)
I drove down dull Saratoga to 85, then headed over to take 17 north, but changed my mind and took Bascom, which was a street that I liked to shop on when I lived here. It has a Cosentino and a Trader Joe. As I drove by the Pruneyard, I noticed another movie theatre, so we stopped to check the show times. No dice.
I drove up Bascom to 280, then east to the Bird exit. I showed the kids the Willow Glen we lived in on Fuller. Child One, the only one to really live in that house, was the only one who was even mildly interested. The house looked the same, but had considerably more Christmas decorations on it than we ever put up.
I headed north to show Child Three the Shark Tank (a.k.a. the HP Pavilion these days). It was 3:15 by now, so I figured the crowd and parking lot at Valley Fair would be subsiding.
Nope. Not even close. We spent a nervous half-hour in the Valley Fair parking lot looking for a parking spot. I say nervous because Child Three had to pee so badly that we considered having him use an empty water bottle. There was no place even to pull over and let him go outside.
I somehow found myself in an exit-only lane, so I exited. I spotted a strip mall with the Train Store and figured that was as good a place to pee as any.
Child Three's moan of relief could be heard from down the hall. All four of us went.
The kids voted 2-1 to walk around a mall rather than go home, so I drove back to Westgate Mall, thus completing a circuit of Campbell, more or less.
We window-shopped, mostly (Child One bought a game) then came home.
Late at night, Elvi and I watched "Hellboy". No plot holes there....
I made lunch for the kids and asked the younger two to clean up a game they'd been playing while I cleaned up and got dressed. Oddly, Child Three complied and Child Two procrastinated. She and Child One wrestled or something.
The movie was scheduled to start at 2:00. At 1:45, I noticed that the game was still out. We waited for Child Two to clean up. The theatre (AMC Saratoga) is about a ten minute drive from here in Santa Clara.
Child Two put the game away and we were off. We lost five minutes to traffic. Then we lost another five minutes trying to find the theatre, and five more looking for parking. It was 2:05 by the time I parked the minivan.
We ran to the theatre, only to find a long line of people waiting to buy tickets. Sigh.
There was no other movie that appealed to us in terms of content and start time, so I thought we'd drive and look for cool stuff to do. We left the Westgate Mall area (the mall's across the street) and drove south on Saratoga. I though D&J Hobby was down this way, but I didn't know exactly where. (My 12-year-old memories were very, very close, but not quite good enough - the theatre is roughly where Hamilton and Campbell join.)
I drove down dull Saratoga to 85, then headed over to take 17 north, but changed my mind and took Bascom, which was a street that I liked to shop on when I lived here. It has a Cosentino and a Trader Joe. As I drove by the Pruneyard, I noticed another movie theatre, so we stopped to check the show times. No dice.
I drove up Bascom to 280, then east to the Bird exit. I showed the kids the Willow Glen we lived in on Fuller. Child One, the only one to really live in that house, was the only one who was even mildly interested. The house looked the same, but had considerably more Christmas decorations on it than we ever put up.
I headed north to show Child Three the Shark Tank (a.k.a. the HP Pavilion these days). It was 3:15 by now, so I figured the crowd and parking lot at Valley Fair would be subsiding.
Nope. Not even close. We spent a nervous half-hour in the Valley Fair parking lot looking for a parking spot. I say nervous because Child Three had to pee so badly that we considered having him use an empty water bottle. There was no place even to pull over and let him go outside.
I somehow found myself in an exit-only lane, so I exited. I spotted a strip mall with the Train Store and figured that was as good a place to pee as any.
Child Three's moan of relief could be heard from down the hall. All four of us went.
The kids voted 2-1 to walk around a mall rather than go home, so I drove back to Westgate Mall, thus completing a circuit of Campbell, more or less.
We window-shopped, mostly (Child One bought a game) then came home.
Late at night, Elvi and I watched "Hellboy". No plot holes there....
posted by Webs at
7:45 PM
3 Comments:
Ha Ha! You did the entire "shopping" and "movie" circuit I used to do when I lived in Santa Clara. I really like the Pruneyard theaters. I think they (re-)opened in like 2003.
Oh, here's one for you... Take the kids to the Falafel Drive-In on Stevens Creek. Have you been there? It's an institution. They have great banana shakes.
I've soooo been there done that trying to make a day of it with the kids and fates conspiring against us...good stuff. We used to always just pop over the mountain to hang out on Zuma Beach...made it all better all the time.
I liked 'Hellboy'...
We and our friends Kelly and Leo used to pick up Felafel Drive-In all the time. Banana shakes were an essential part of our traditional post-partum meals.
Will, I loved the characters in "Hellboy", but that Samael.... Was it a single demon or a species? Why did it/they lay eggs? If they resurrect and multiply after death, why did they not do so after being cooked by Elizabeth? Because it was convenient to end the story there? If that lipless, clockwork Nazi could animate without his heart valve, why does he need it in the first place? Et cetera.
Bah, humbug.
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