Tied House

Posted on by

Tied House Tasters

Tied House Tasters

After all that book browsing, Bill and I walked around Mountain View and gravitated to the Tied House, home of some wonderful hoppy brews. Fortunately they have a good selection, since their Hoptopia was “out”. Brew houses seem to run out of the good stuff as we approach. But their Athenum was a hoppy delight.

We tried small tastes of 7 of their beers, from Alpine Gold to a wonderful Stout. A great addition to our beer tasting tour. The food was quite nice and the restaurant comfortable and pleasant.

Music on a Sunny Day

Posted on by

Sadza - Playing for the Zimbabwe Run for Orphans

Sadza - Playing for the Zimbabwe Run for Orphans

On Sunday I went to see my friend Betty and her Sadza Marimba Band play for the benefit of the Zimbabwe Run for Orphans in Mountain View, CA. It was a wonderfully sunny day, although a bit windy. Their music is so lively and joyful it makes you want to sing and dance! Check out their website, they have great CDs of their music.

Afterwards Betty and I had coffee at Books, Inc., a wonderful bookstore with a great cafe. We haven’t seen each other in years, so it was lovely to catch up. This was my second independent bookstore this trip, such great browsing. Next door was another fabulous bookstore, BookBuyers, full of second hand books including some obscure out-of-print mysteries I’ve been looking for by Margaret Millar and Joseph Hansen.

Rock Bottom

Posted on by

We hit Rock Bottom after the weird stuff, a wonderful restaurant and brewery in Campbell. We were in luck, their IPA was available, delicious! And a very nice Fire Chief Ale that we both enjoyed. I had two favorites: Caesar Salad and macaroni & cheese. Bill had chili and wings. All very satisfying.

We are still on NY time so head to bed very early here.

Weird Stuff

Posted on by

Weird Stuff Warehouse

Weird Stuff Warehouse, Sunnyvale, CA

Weird Stuff power supplies

Weird Stuff power supplies

Weird Stuff industrial circuit breaker

Weird Stuff industrial circuit breaker

Helen and books, Bill and weird stuff, hand and glove. We set our GPS to the Weird Stuff address and off we went. It’s in the middle of a rather nice industrial park, which on the weekends is dead, except for the crowd at Weird Stuff. It’s a cavernous place full of old computer parts, electric boxes big and giant, cables, lockers, an old Bunn-O-Matic with 5 hot plates for a morning-size dose of coffee, international phone and power adapters, and a few weird folks. A very nice young man, a customer, with a large bushy beard and red spike patent leather heels, explained some of the adapters we were looking at.

We were first here almost a decade ago, and wonder if the same copy of the Word ’97 manual we saw this time was on the bookshelf back then. Most of the stuff is old, and if you are fixing old computers or electronics, this place is heaven. Wish it were nearby so we didn’t have to make our house look like Weird Stuff East :-)

Bill bought a few small things for about $7. The really interesting things require a a large truck. Maybe next time?