Good sleep makes me happy. Waking up next to Mark on a rainy morning after good sleep made me very happy. We made noise, as planned, and heard even more disturbing noise from the neighbors. At one point, it sounded like they were trying to come through the adjoining room door.
When Mark was in the shower and I stepped outside for a cigarette, I was a little freaked out to see that one of the occupants of the room next door was a kid about 10 or 11. I chose not to think about whether he was a participant in the noisy sex or was just forced to watch and/or listen. His dad, or the adult with him at least, was a real redneck shitbag so I figured it could have gone either way.
After breakfast at the Armory Cafe, which we’d discovered the previous night, we strolled Main Street and the downtown area. Mark took pictures of lots of intact theatre buildings. I was fascinated by Hubert’s Shoes.
Then we ventured into the spiffy new National Steinbeck Center. It’s a great idea for a museum, and Steinbeck’s is some of the only fiction I actually read. Mark has even more of an obsession than I do. Unfortunately, it was one of that disturbing new breed of museum which seems to have a graphic designer as its curator rather than a historian. There were lots of gimmicks (too many of them child-intensive) and not nearly enough in the way of actual artifacts or information. The best part of the tour was a 13-minute documentary which wasn’t available for purchase in the gift shop, even though they had plenty of room for cookbooks which were unrelated to John Steinbeck in any way.
The afternoon concluded with a Watsonville drive-through. Interesting town, and a pretty lively one at that. There was some sort of immigrant protest going on, but we never figured out what it was about. Note to protesters: if your signs are illegible, it’s sort of hard to make your point.
At about 4;30, we both needed to get to our respective homes. I always hate this part of the weekend, and today was no exception. But it was a damned good weekend. And I think our weeklong trip to the Northwest next month will be a big success. I’ve found my travelling companion…
