dennis yang dot com

greetings from van horn, texas.

I stayed at Lisa and Adam’s house in Tucson, and in the morning, Lisa and I went to check out Biosphere 2… Remember Biosphere 2?? It was that huge sealed greenhouse building built back in the 90’s that housed a bunch of scientists for 2 years.. All I remember was that there was one dude who was bald. Anyway, I don’t think anyone knows that it’s still around, so I figured I’d pay it a visit.

The biosphere 2 was rated as the #3 top engineering marvel as listed by some TLC special that they showed prior to us “going under the glass”.. It’s pretty cool, actually.. When we first walked in, we were in the rainforest section — it was SUPER humid and hot.. the camera lenses kept fogging up… we wandered around the place with the tour guides for a bit.. to the desert, the ocean, and then through these long tunnels into a huge rubber bladder filled room (freudian?).. the rubber bladder serves as the “lungs” for the biosphere so that in the summer, when it gets to be 110 degrees in Tucson, the biosphere 2 doesn’t explode. The tour guide, Claudio, was quite surly… He mentioned several times that the biosphere 2 is for sale in some sort of undistiguishably pompous european accent.. My favorite exchange was:

Pasty White Tourist: “So.. when you guys created this place…”
Claudio: Interrupting “Ahem… not created.. BUILT.”
Pasty White Tourist: “Oh.. um.. ok.. built…”

Afterwards, we had lunch at El Charro (in the RoadFood book) and I accompanied Lisa to go and sign some papers for the house that she and Adam just bought today (congrats!!!)..

One of my headlights burnt out, so we went to the auto parts store and I bought a pair of “superwhite” lights… Well.. I was originally going to just buy one replacement bulb, but then the sign in the store said:

“Remember to replace your headlights BEFORE they burn out and in PAIRS”.

Hmm.. I think I’ve been tricked by some clever marketing wonk.. who the hell replaces a light BEFORE it burns out?!?! Oh.. I guess that would be me. Marketing Guy: 1, Dennis: 0. I promise I’m not the one responding to the spam emails. Honest.

Anyway.. I hit the road again… I decided to skip Roswell cuz it’s too far, and since White Sands is closed for missile testing (though… on second thought.. maybe THAT would be fun to see)..

Once you get out of Tucson, there are a ton of billboards advertising “The Thing”… I had to stop. As korby texted me, “The Thing” is known as the Taj Mahal of Tackiness… And.. there was a nice amish family there to see “The Thing” too. So, I couldn’t justify not spending the dollar to see “The Thing”.. What is “The Thing”? Well.. that’s between me and the nice amish family… but yah.. it was only a dollar.

So, I’m somewhere in west Texas. I was going to stop in El Paso, but nothing looked really appealing, so I just kept on driving… and here I am.

AND.. I just crossed over the Central Timezone line so I lost another hour.. crap. I should get some sleep.. Tomorrow.. Austin.

Doug once claimed that san diego was THE place to have brunch. So, that’s exactly what we did. After playing a few rounds of Katamari Damacy (Doug is to blame for my PS2 purchase by introducing me to PS2 two years ago), Doug, Laura, AJ, Joann and I all piled into Laura’s new Prius and drove to a brunch place near mission beach… it was quite packed, so we put our name on the list and then drove to another place in some other San Diego neighborhood (Hillcrest?).. That place was also super crowded so we went back to the first place — by the time we got back, our table was ready, so really it all worked out quite well.

So we’re sitting at brunch, and i believe i made some statement like… “hmm… i think i like san diego, maybe i’ll move here.” and at THAT instant, this girl walked by the window… maybe it was an affirmation…

After brunch, I went and wasted time back at Doug & Laura’s playing that infernal game (which I will most likely end up buying when I get home — thanks Doug), and then hit the road for Tucson…

Oh.. and here are some more pics.. one of ozzie the cat (who I hope is feeling better after his fall) and one of the pug that was sitting in the stairwell near Jo’s apartment.