Northern California Notes

This is a different world up here north of San Francisco. A couple of things I noticed today - there seem to be a lot more women who look like men, and a lot more men with hyphenated last names. Women with butch haircuts are pretty common, and when you see an Italian guy with a last name that's Japanese *dash* Italian, you know who wears the pants in that family.

We also had a panel of five students who told us what student life is like at SSU, and the last student was the vice president of Queer/Straight Alliance (back home they call it Gay/Straight Alliance, but up here they drop all pretensions). It's a different world.

It's a very beautiful area with lots of nice bike paths and shade trees. The whole are is also very environwacko as you would expect. I personally am an environmental capitalist. If you can show me the economic advantages of the environmentalism you request of me, I'll do it. For instance, the hotel has a sign in the bathroom that practically begs me to reuse my towels in order to save "millions" of gallons of water that are used to wash them. That's a fine idea, but what's in it for me? My room rate doesn't go down if I use dirty towels.

How about this - wave my $9.95 high speed internet access fee if I reuse my towels. I'll keep them until they're brown if it saves me some bucks. Make it worth my while.

At lunch today another dad suggested that when my daughter comes home, she'll be an environmentalist after hanging around up here for awhile. I don't think so. The apple doesn't fall that far from the tree.