Sleeping in and getting up

I thought I had this great Lifehack, which if you aren't familiar with the term, is an improvement that used to be called Hints From Heloise but once white men started to get in on the act, it needed a more hip name. But this one I think is probably too specialized. It works brilliantly, but the target demographic is a bit small.

Unless I need to catch a plane or get up before 5, I haven't used an alarm clock in at least 20 years. Some of this has to do with the luck of being in a job with a flexible start time, but most of it has to do with going to bed around 10pm and having a natural tendency to wake up at the same time every day. I'm quite awful at sleeping in.

A long time ago, when I had less to worry about I guess, I loved the quiet of my partner's bedroom. There were no windows, no door to the outside, and it was so very quiet. Maybe not "corn farm on 200 acres" quiet, but for being in a city it felt absolutely silent to me. 

Then, maybe due to stress, maybe due to little noises of an old house, my partner brought a white noise machine in to the bedroom. I hated it. I wanted to be able to hear if something went wrong in another part of the house. But I got used to it, and it did kind of cover up his snoring. I have even started to miss it when I travel. It might even be helping me sleep.

More recently, my partner started to use an alarm clock. It was jarring, and pointless; a horrible combination. It would wake both of us up, but then he'd go back to sleep and I couldn't. And there were always those times where I'd peer at the clock wondering if we had missed the alarm.

So I suggested we turn the white noise machine into a negative sound alarm.

Now the white noise machine turns off at a set time. It's a subtle change, and sometimes I do wake up immediately, but more often than not I wake up a few minutes after it turns off. It's much more relaxing than waking up to a sound, even a soft sound.

But the best part is, once it turns off, it's always off. So if he drifts off or if I wonder if I overslept, I can always hear whether the white noise machine is off or on. It's kind of brilliant. The only catch is to make sure to turn it off on weekends, so that I have a chance of sleeping a little later. I love how much this works for us, but I'm not sure it would work for many other people.

Well there goes that plan

I created an account here so that I could upload photos easier with the Blogger app, and because I trust Google slightly more than I trust the Russians.

But now Google only supports the app for Android, not iPhones.

Getting photos into a blog easily is one of the biggest hurdles to me posting.

That and not thinking of anything to say after ranting on Twitter and Facebook.

Maybe I can use Flickr to post a picture with a rambling story under it. Does Yahoo! still own them?

Not sure what else is out there and worth trying. I guess all the cool kids use Tumblr.

Up up and away to City Hall

One thing that keeps me from writing more posts is the time it takes to select photos. I know I take too many and delete too few, but in the interest of getting this up, that's what I've got and what you're getting.

I've been lucky enough to walk to the top of the TransAmerica Pyramid (not from the bottom... just from the top public floor.... soooooo many ladders....) and to the top of the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge (which also has an elevator) so when I received an invitation to hike to the top of SF's City Hall, how could I resist?



Really, who could say no to that?



It doesn't even look that far to the top.



You could be sad that signs like this have to go up or impressed that signs like this haven't been torn down in 2 months.



Spiral stairs are hard to go up or down quickly but at this point we were only going up.



This is a peek behind the scenes at the retrofit work.

City Hall was closed from 1989 to 1999 to accomplish some majorly impressive seismic work.



The whole building can sway now. It even has a moat.



More steps up.

This is what the dome looks like from the inside.



There are actually 2 parts, and you can sort of see it below, that the top of the dome does not connect at all with the lower half of the dome.



Looks beautiful though.

Maybe that's why there are so many parties and weddings inside.



City Hall was lit red and green for Christmas, so many of my shots look accidentally demonic.



Even the green looks creepy.

Below is some of the most impressive part in my mind. The entire inner dome is built with an early version of plaster of Paris and is connected to the steel with horsehair. It's definitely creepy, in addition to being impressive.



Felt as weird as it looked.



Time to go up further!



There are 2 sections to the outer dome.



A big round area where you can walk all around and enjoy the views.



There's even a polite rail.



And then the tippy top where we had to climb a ladder to get to and wasn't big enough for everyone on the tour at once.



There was puddled rain water and I was scared to go down the ladder. It was the metal kind that is part of a building, not something temporary. I didn't fall though - no one did!



Davies Symphony Hall below.



o hai!



More views



And I guess I liked this artsy thing.















This light is visible from the street. Above it is a hole we did not go through.



The lights for lighting City Hall for Xmas made it hard to look around (and walk around) at times.



That's the Bill Graham Center in red and green and it has a web cam of City Hall so we had fun trying to look at ourselves. I'd like to go back sometime during the day.



This is the ladder. Maybe it looks less scary than I felt at the time.



I love how the door to get to the behind the scenes tour looks like a completely normal door from the outside but from inside the construction team was like yeah whatever.




City Hall Christmas Tree



Covered in origami cranes. Probably made by children or something.



Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Washington DC Botanical Garden Winter Display

The National Botanical Garden has a holiday winter train exhibit every year, and this year's theme was National Parks and Historic Places.

I was super lucky to have a late enough flight home that I had time to visit.



Even the bananas were exciting. I wonder if my kid even knows how bananas grow.



The Supreme Court.



Statue of Liberty



Curling cat tunnel and Thomas



John Muir Home



Covered bridge and ladybug train



The Grand Canyon. While all the buildings are made out of plant materials, seeing the layers in this canyon was one of the most amazing parts to me.



Mount Rushmore




Suitcases over  tree tunnel



The snow is fungus!



Everything was so beautiful and amazingly impressive.



Back of the Yellowstone Lodge



Check out that fireplace



Front of Yellowstone Lodge



And Old Faithful!



Even a Bison and Arrowhead



Exquisitely accomplished!



Well worth the trip and traffic



The only downside was that there was no gift shop. But we were next to the Museum of the American Indian, and I recalled they have a really nice cafe. We went there for some chai before heading to the airport. Several museums were participating in a marshmallow dessert event. Why? I cannot say.



There was a special NPS passport stamp at the botanical garden! If I only had time to do one thing in DC this trip, I think I chose wisely.