{"id":180,"date":"2013-09-02T00:00:12","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T07:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4gi.wtf\/wp\/?p=180"},"modified":"2021-12-08T10:17:24","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T18:17:24","slug":"summer-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/?p=180","title":{"rendered":"Summer 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"
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We define summer three ways. There\u2019s the celestial season: from the summer solstice on June 21st to the autumnal equinox on September 22nd. There\u2019s the traditional vacation season, from Memorial Day on May 27th through Labor Day on September 2nd. Last, there\u2019s summer vacation from school which, for us, ran all too quickly from June 6th through August 14th.<\/div>\n

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Let\u2019s count our summer from Memorial Day through the autumnal equinox. That would make it as long as possible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Even before the Snowden revelations, Joshua, Matthew, and I were fiddling around with internet anonymity software. We installed Tor browsers on all our machines and created a Tor relay node on one of our servers. We equipped ourselves with Tails flash drives so we could operate anonymously from most computers. None of us need anonymous browsing, but it was fun and I believe that it\u2019s good to have such tools before<\/span> you actually need them. Joshua, in particular, was fond of the notion and even used Tails to mask his activities on XtraMath from surveillance by his teacher and school. \u201cParanoid\u201d before Snowden. \u201cPrudent\u201d now.<\/p>\n

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\"\"Eventually, our interest in anonymity led to Bitcoin, a decentralized, virtual electronic currency based on cryptographic algorithms. Matthew took a shine to Bitcoins and wanted me to buy a bunch, even though we didn\u2019t have any place we could spend them. Buying them, as it turns out, was quite a process even then. We were looking at spending $500-$1,000 on Bitcoins at about $20 each. Suddenly, Bitcoins went from obscurity to front-page news and the price of a Bitcoin skyrocketed to almost $250. Even after the bubble burst, they held their value and are now trading at around $140. I coulda been a contender.
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Matthew will never let me forget that I didn\u2019t make the investment which would have made us rich. Instead of buying Bitcoins, we ended up buying a high-end computer graphics card and mining our own. (You \u201cmine\u201d Bitcoins by solving complex cryptographic problems.) At the time, the processors on graphics cards could mine Bitcoins pretty efficiently, but people are now building custom chips to do the job. Since miners essentially compete for a limited pool of Bitcoins, we can now only mine about three thousandths of a Bitcoin per day.\"\"
\nWe started summer early by setting up the pool on May 18th. We started going in every day, even though Matthew was slammed by an insane amount of homework for the last two weeks of the school year.<\/p>\n

The impulse buy of the season was a Turkish hammock, which we relaxed in, or fought over, whenever we were out of the pool.\"\"<\/p>\n

While our Bitcoin riches were piling up, we took week-long trip to San Clemente, a little beach town where I misspent much of my youth. I found and rented a townhome a short walk from the pier. Then I began to try to figure out how to get there and back. It\u2019s about an eight hour drive, which is pushing it with children. In the past, when we\u2019ve gone to the Southland, we\u2019ve stopped halfway. The problem is that, unless Buttonwillow is your cup of tea, there isn\u2019t a whole lot to do on the trip if you take Interstate 5. The coast is cool, but takes a lot longer, and we have a limited amount of time for vacation.<\/p>\n

\"\"We had taken the train a couple of years ago, but that required that we get off the train in Bakersfield, take a bus to Los Angeles, and get on the southbound train from there. It wasn\u2019t a great experience. Could we take the train the whole way? I was poking around the Amtrak site and discovered that there is, indeed, a train (the Coast Starlight<\/span>) that runs once a week from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and it happened to come through Sacramento on the day our vacation started, and returned on the day it ended. Furthermore, it stopped in San Clemente a few steps <\/span>from our beach house. Perfect! Almost. The catch is that the train left Sacramento around 6:00am and arrived in San Clemente (after a transfer to the Pacific Surfliner<\/span> in Los Angeles)  at midnight. A long ride, but with beautiful scenery, a cafe, a dining car, and lots of room to wander around. I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll do it again, but it was a fine one-time experience.<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m used to visiting Orange County and being amazed at all that has changed. San Clemente was a surprise. It was like going back in time, even if my favorite taqueria now served an aioli wrap where once I could have gotten a bean-and-cheese burrito. I visited my grandfather\u2019s old office (now a boutique, but otherwise unchanged) and a triplex my grandparents used to own.\"\"
\nMy mom and dad came for a few hours each, and Joshua, Matthew, and I made 2-3 walks to the beach every day. Even more surprising was that my brother was visiting OC. We\u2019d spent countless hours surfing that beach when we were teens, and when he dropped in for a visit it was downright spooky to be walking the same beach and riding the same most-excellent waves forty years later.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I had planned to take the train up to Anaheim for a day at Disneyland, but missed the fine print on the schedule where it said the \u201cdaily\u201d Pacific Surfliner<\/span> only stopped at San Clemente on weekends. We ended up having to rent a car, but the drive wasn\u2019t too bad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

We got to Disneyland early. We were able to part with our $305 before we even boarded the tram from the parking lot, saving waiting in a line. Matthew wanted to ride Space Mountain first, so we thought we\u2019d head there before the crowds. Just as we got there, they closed the ride. They weren\u2019t even giving out Fastpasses. They said to come back in a few minutes, so we thought we\u2019d get Fastpasses for Star Tours. The line was only fifteen minutes, though, so we went ahead and rode. Even after we finished, Space Mountain was still closed.<\/p>\n

Splash Mountain is another favorite with traditionally long waits, but is clear across the park. We dashed over there (living in OC for years turned me into an expert high-speed Disneyland navigator) with the intention of getting Fastpasses, but the line was only ten minutes. So we rode that, too. On the way back to Space Mountain, we discovered that the Haunted Mansion had no wait, so we rode that. Pirates of the Caribbean had a ten minute wait (less, actually) so we rode that. Then back to Space Mountain where we were finally able to get a Fastpass.<\/p>\n

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While waiting for our assigned time, we rode the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Indiana Jones. Big Thunder Mountain was closed for maintenance, or we would have ridden that, too. We ate some lunch, then finally rode Space Mountain. By lunchtime, we had ridden most every major ride in Disneyland and hardly waited in line at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Can you say \u201ckarma\u201d? One of our traditions is Grizzly River Run, which is over in California Adventure. We crossed over (one of the reasons our admission was so expensive is that it included both parks). When we\u2019ve ridden Grizzly River Run in the past, it\u2019s been a breeze because we rode at night. It\u2019s a fabulous night ride, and there\u2019s seldom a line because people are afraid of being wet at night. Unfortunately, we had to get the car back to San Clemente by five. The line said 75 minutes, but it ended up being over two hours. We ended up paying big bucks and waiting two hours to ride one single ride in California Adventure. We barely made it back to SC before the car rental agency closed.<\/p>\n

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We got on the train before 7am the next morning and took the long ride back, made a bit longer because the Coast Starlight<\/span> was full and I was placed next to the Seatmate from Hell. She talked nonstop from Los Angeles to Emeryville. If I tried to read a book, she poked me until I was listening to her again. She was loudly breaking up with her boyfriend by telephone, and kept trying to include me in the conversation. I thought I\u2019d get some relief when she put on her headphones, but she then began singing aloud to her music.<\/span> Emphasis on the \u201cloud.\u201d I was never so happy to accompany Matthew and Joshua on trips to the bathroom and caf\u00e9 car.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We arrived safely back in Sacramento in the middle of the night, but they were up early the next day for biscuits, gravy, and Minecraft.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There were formal events: Camp Kindness at the local SPCA, and clay camp at a local ceramics studio. There were trips to\"\"
\nSix Flags Discovery Kingdom and to Fairytale Town and Funderland.\"\"
\nWe spent a day at the California State Fair (retro arcade video game exhibit!) with Joshua\u2019s friend Cole. We had friends over, and even a couple of sleepovers (misnamed, as there was very little sleeping) with friend Gavin.
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\nThere was a Nerf war with a bunch of Matthew\u2019s friends at his school. We had fireworks in the back yard on July 3rd.\"\"<\/p>\n

Elizabeth was reassigned to Woodland UMC and had to leave St. Andrew\u2019s after 13 years. I left my day job at TCORE after 6 years. Mostly, though, there were late breakfasts, Minecraft on our family servers and on public servers (where Joshua became fascinated with donating to get ranks), alone or with as many as eight friends at a time, a smattering of other games, various anime shows and Joshua\u2019s Johnny Test<\/span> cartoons. We swam in the morning, played games together in the high-UV afternoon, then we\u2019d pick and eat figs and berries, make Joshua\u2019s special-recipe \u201cmint drink,\u201d swim in the evening, eat shaved ice (lime, chocolate, raspberry, and root beer Torani syrup beats that red, blue, and purple stuff), and have dinner, and read, and eat dessert, and read, and sleep.In between, we managed to grow a<\/span>\"\"
\ncantaloupe vine and avocado tree from seed. We continued to mint milli-Bitcoins. Joshua rode his tractor. We got an Apple TV and rebuilt the media center\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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to accommodate it\u2014and the WiiU and the PS3 and the XBox. Matthew and Joshua each got a Raspberry Pi (a $35 computer that runs Linux, designed to help youth learn to program) and a funky USB-powered glitter-filled lava lamp.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

School happened way too soon, but we\u2019ve clung tenaciously to some of the feel of summer. We continued to swim daily until Labor Day, when it was too cool to swim. Today and tomorrow, though, it\u2019s in the upper 90\u2019s so we\u2019ll do a last swim or two. Alas, the solar pool cover tore in three or four places when I took it off today. The crepe myrtle tree has quit shedding its pink blossoms into the pool. There are no more figs, and the raspberry crop is thin. Two of the three pool toys don\u2019t hold air anymore. The days are getting short, even if they\u2019re still warm. Though we still, officially, have almost two weeks before the lastest-end-of-summer, I think it\u2019s time to reluctantly concede that summer is coming to an end.<\/p>\n

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We define summer three ways. There\u2019s the celestial season: from the summer solstice on June 21st to the autumnal equinox on September 22nd. There\u2019s the traditional vacation season, from Memorial Day on May 27th through Labor Day on September 2nd. Last, there\u2019s summer vacation from school which, for us, ran all too quickly from June … Continue reading Summer 2013<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":474,"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/looseassociations.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}