Thursday, August 30, 2007

Pixel Pushers and Hills

Monday night we arrived in Redding CA at about 11pm. We grabbed some food at a Denny's that the awesome GPS found for us. Next we found a Holiday Inn Express and checked in for the night. The Holiday Inn had the biggest bed I had ever seen. It took me 20 minutes to find Nancy when I got into bed, and that was with help from a Sherpa.

We woke up bright and early and took advantage of the first of many continental breakfasts at our hotel. We must have saved at least 40 bucks eating at the hotels in the morning. We just spent it on bullets later.

We hopped in the mighty KIA and made our way to Emmeryville, home to Pixar Studios. We had a lunch date with one of my old and good friends from DNA, Jason Johnston. This guy is awesome, and we used to get in a lot of trouble together back in the day. The craziest thing is Jason had a class in highschool with Nancy. OK it's not that crazy I guess.

After a 3 hour drive we make it to the Studio and have lunch at the Pixar cafeteria with some old friends from DNA and Blue Sky. The lunch participants included Jason and his awesome girlfriend Frederique, Everett Downing, Ian McGibbon with his wife and daughter, and Chris and Rena Fowler. I saw a couple people in the lunch room as well like John Collins and Amber. If I forgot anyone please forgive me, I'm old and incredibly self centered.

The Pixar compound is absolutely amazing. Every animation studio should visit and take notes. They had a delicious cafeteria, soccer field, gym, theater with literally the most high tech set up in the world, pool, and many other awesome things that made me want to kill everyone I had to, to get a job there.

I don't think they would have let us take pictures inside the Pixar compound, but I didn't ask. The only pictures we got were as we left.





After I cried for about an hour, because I wasn't employed at Pixar, we made our way across the Bay Bridge into San Fransisco.



This place was unfreakinbelievable! At one point we were driving straight up. The houses on every street are so cool looking.



Nancy was a tad winded after climbing up two of the streets.



Next stop was fisherman's wharf. I was excited because I thought we were going to see Michael Dorn in a fishing outfit. I misunderstood.



Here's my summer home. It's really hard to leave once you're there.



Here's the Ghirardelli Chocolate factory. I took my disguise kit and kept going into the store to get free samples.



This was a really cool outdoor mall thing where Nancy and I grabbed a margarita.



Just like in Seattle we kept finding post-apocolyptic firts person shooter enviornments.




I'm selling this picture to Motorola.



Nancy caught me taking a pee outside.



Thought this was a nice picture to end on.



Next time get ready for Sunnyvale and fun times with Nancy's Uncle!

2 comments:

M. E. Davis said...

I once tried to do a research on Data mining, but he was stuck in a hole and they couldn't get to him, so he was unavailable for interviews. Darn wacky robot! Always geting into trouble... tee hee.

Hey! What's Chewbacca's favorite state to visit on vacation?


Maine.

Nick Gibbons said...

Dats a Gud won!