Last week, I went to Anaheim, to learn how to use an air quality dispersion modeling software package produced by Lakes Environmental. The class was taught by Dr. The and Russell Lee. Lee has written much of the ISCST3 and AERMOD source code, and it was nice to see him again (last I saw him was January 1998, at the AMS Phoenix convention).
The class was held in a glass box office building called New Horizons that appears dedicated solely to providing short classes for business applications computer instruction. I thought it strange that the class was not held at a college or university, since these institutions have been very pro-active in trying to attract exactly this kind of high-profit business-oriented business. I guess the computing business evolved too rapidly for sclerotic universities to keep up. Or maybe there are other reasons. In any event, I thought New Horizons had excellent groundskeeping.
I wanted to take a bit of time to look up Reva Renee Renz when I was in Anaheim. Renz was one of the gubernatorial candidates who ran in the 2003 California Recall election, and she runs a bar called Deva's in Tustin. When I flew in on Wednesday evening, May 12th, to John Wayne Airport, I passed by the bar just to establish where the place was. We had arranged to meet at 9:00 p.m. on Thursday.
On Thursday night, I got to Deva's early, about 8:30 p.m., or maybe even earlier. The bar was small, but busy: I inadvertently walked in front of a dartboard when I entered through the door, which could have been a real problem had the dart patrons been less careful. I had a beer, but I wandered off to do some exploring and perhaps some shopping. I thought it was after 9:00 p.m., but since I didn't have a watch with me, I was likely wrong. Apparently Renz arrived at the bar minutes after I left.
Instead of staying at Deva's, I wandered a few doors down into Elizabeth Howard's Curtain Call Dinner Theater. I was very curious about this new place I had never heard of before. Even though their box office had just closed, I more or less pushed my way in (I learned to be pushier in general during the recall campaign), had a few strawberry daiquiris, and saw Acts 2 & 3 of "The Sound of Music." The half-full Thursday-night dinner theater was about the size of Sacramento's 24th Street Theater. It was all very congenial, and right up my alley, given my association with DMTC. Even though I'd never wandered around Tustin before, I had somehow quickly located my proper niche.
I had wondered whether LA-area semi-professional theater might be of pretty-high quality, given the surfeit of high-quality talent in the area. Captain von Trapp Kurt Howard) looked like (Sacramento-area actors) John Coin but sounded like Roger McDonald. Elsa Schraeder (Mary Murphy Nelson) was very professional. Both were excellent. Maria (Stephanie Baldwin), Max Detweiler (Mark Rydzynski) and the Mother Superior (Karen Joy Smith) were fine as well. The woman who played Liesl (Jill Morrison) was a phenomenal dancer and singer, and therefore a good choice, but noticeably older than 16. When she tells Maria "when I said I no longer needed a governess, I was wrong," I thought to myself, 'no, you're exactly right!' A minor quibble: Brigitta (Madison Mitchell) had just a bit of a California accent that clashed with the Austrian theme. Overall, an excellent show that succeeded on many levels!
After the show, I went back to Deva's around 11 p.m. and learned that Renz had indeed come and waited. How embarrassing! I left Anaheim on Friday evening, but I wasn't able to get back to Deva's: class interfered.
Here are several photos from the trip:
The Spectrum Health and Fitness Club, near where I stayed at the Marriott Townehouse in Anaheim. I just liked the look: not at all like gym chic, and more like a vision of Timeless LA.
The Metroliner, flying like a proverbial bat out of hell.
An excellent-looking tree at New Horizons.
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