"Get Thee to a Sunset!"

Whenever I've been traveling in a location that has a western coast it has been an unspoken rule that at day's end, I'll position myself somewhere so that I can watch the sunset.

Nicole and I made our way to the beach almost nightly to walk for miles along the beaches of Costa Rica, sometimes speeding dangerously down the highway so that we wouldn't miss that last sliver of light. We learned to time it -- about an inch in the sky was ten minutes. In South Africa, they call it "sundowners" and most often Mineska and I would view it from blankets with wine at Llandudno Beach. When my friends and I visited Sarah in San Diego we made a fire at Oceanside and illegally drank wine from coffee mugs. In Hawaii, every night without exception I and my friends made a plan as to where we would be watching the sunset. 

Sometimes orange. Sometimes pink. Sometimes blue and even white. Every night it's different. It never gets old. There's no sense whatever that you can skip it because you've "been there done that". 

Costa Rica

Maui

South Africa

San Diego

And the location doesn't have to be exotic. Even in Roosevelt, Minnesota, at the lodge where I worked we had rows of west-facing windows that overlooked gigantic Lake of the Woods. I'd stop running for a few moments to join our guests and watch the sun silently slip below the horizon.

Minnesota, 9:20pm

You know what though? I don't do sunsets in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's not even on my radar here. Perhaps because there are too many trees and buildings to block it? I don't know. But that stops now. 

In my quest for post-vacation-similar-to-New-Year's-resolution-self-betterment, I vow this summer to make sunsets part of my day. I won't even have to go far. Here's the view right out of my apartment window:

Minneapolis

NOT TOO SHABBY, EH?

Fear of Getting Caught

In San Diego, it's illegal to drink alcohol on the beach.

"WHAT?!????" You might be thinking, and I agree.

What else is there to do at the beach in Southern California?  Besides drink alcohol and make a bonfire?

...Work out?

Click on the photo of sand on MM's body for credit.

Yah.  No.

Well, in 2008, my friends and I did all of that. But we were clandestine.  We put our wine in styrofoam cups.  Gross!  (Desperate times call for desperate measures.)  But that's not the point of this story.

The point of this story is how when you're doing something "ILLEGAL"...and you're normally a RULE FOLLOWER...like me...you freak out when the five-oh drive by and you could just be NORMAL but because you're doing something ILLEGAL you're afraid you might crack and blurt out something like,  "WE'RE DRINKING WINE!" 

But you restrain yourself.  Because.  You're COOL.

Us.  Wine.  Styrofoam cups.  Me.  Resisting the urge to OUT ourselves to the Po Po in the white truck.

Yah...  You're cool like that.

From Our Readers

I received the following email from one of my most faithful readers, and let me tell you, IT MADE MY DAY:

Kady- I walk by this pic (attached) everyday at work at the San Diego airport. I just realized today she could be an older version of Summer perhaps? -Davin

Summer in four years.

I forgot about San Diego

Here we are at Hotel del Coronado, having a nice little fire and a mojito for Marla, who wanted to come but didn't make it. She asked us to have a drink for her (we had many many drinks for her, and for Anna, and for ourselves, and for California, and for the sun, and flip flops, etc.)

This fire was quite the ordeal. First, we had to walk into the bar to get our mojitos, and ask if somebody could light the fire. Then we had to move all the cushions from another table (that didn't have such a nice view of the sundown and so we didn't want to sit there) and then they were a little damp and so whatever, but then the clouds came out and we really couldn't see the sundown anyways. So this guy comes to light the fire for us and we had to feel really bad about it. His name was Pedro and he was very weird about us learning his name and he repeated it several times and then finally we all said Pedro like 30 times. We even explained that our brother's name is Pedro and Andrea's husband's name is Pedro. (Well, Pete, but same thing.) A little later on that evening, we saw Pedro and another dude WALKING AROUND ON THE ROOF of the Hotel. So of course we screamed, "PEDRO!" and he waved. I don't know why San Diego decided to be so darned cold and rainy when we went there, but these outdoor fires were the cat's pajamas.


To Marla!

"OK Nancy, put your arms at your side."

More Coronado photos...

Some favorite photos of our day at Coronado Island. Please promise you'll enlarge the last photo and stare at my face for a really long time.

Fun with my new camera

Here's my "look longingly into the air with Hotel del Coronado in the background" project, starring Andrea, Nancy, Keri and me:

Lil' Italy -

I stole this photo from Andrea Schweikert. We ate at this restaurant for breakfast AND lunch that day, it was so good.

http://andreaschweikert.blogspot.com/

Little Italy

As I made reference to in an earlier post, our morning in Little Italy started with parking, and a dude yelling at what we think was a woman on his cell and not getting my Good Samaritan Quarter. Oh, and we also drove by a real-life Italian funeral just like in the Godfather. Women were wailing, men were hugging them, the whole sha-bang. Then we walked into a shoe store, (right after I stepped in dog poop) and this overly tan/overly friendly salesman started selling us those really ugly anti-gravity moon shoes with the rounded bottoms. And he kept saying stuff like, "they improve your posture." and "they even work while sitting". And so I go, "But, can they find you a man???" And then I walked on, looking at shoes. He followed me and asked if I had tried eHarmony.com. Honestly I don't know why I talk to strangers.

So he recommended this place for breakfast, and we disregarded his suggestion and went to a different place. Now, normally I am a master of the self-portrait. Most photos of myself were taken by me. (See my entire blog.) Here is a rare mishap. I think I may have been worried about dropping the camera?

p.s. I had lox on a bagel with red onion. YUM.

Old Town

This was our first morning in San Diego. We had spent the previous evening out too late having drinks at the fire table on a rooftob in La Jolla, and so I was tired. Plus you gain a coupla hours on the way out there so even though we were asleep by 1, it was more like 3am in my brain. And then Keri got up at 5:30 California time. ...Or 5:30 Specific Time. Pacific Time? Anyways, she was up flip-flopping around the room and the girls were like, Keri, we really can't go anywhere or do anything this early. And I was all mad and tired so I was like, Keri. Lay. Down. And then I dreamed that I screamed at her because she kept getting ready for the day and she was flip flopping around the room like crazy in my dream, and so I screamed about her flip flops and how it is socially unacceptable to get every body out of bed at 5:30 in the morning, when nothing opens until 9am anyways. And plus we're on vacation. But none of this happened, because she really did Lay. Down. when I told her to. So we got up for reals around 8am and went to Old Town for breakfast. I had some over-medium eggs over broiled pulled pork. It was awesome. Really Really Awesome. And we also saw a restaurant called O'Hungry's. Which I thought was an awesome name for a restaurant. And the coffee was good. Best breakfast ever. But that was the start of a really long day.

Then we went thrift store shopping in Encinidas and we all got a pair of jeans and Keri bought a dress. There was an ANCIENT old woman working at the thrift store. Literally must have been in her 70's, and she was wearing the outfit of a 15 year old. And her hair was done up like a 15 year old. She was wearing bumpers, like Chuck Taylors with low rider jeans and a polo. And she was on the phone with a friend and then hung up and told the other worker-lady that her friend needed to get out of this relationship because it wasn't working and blah blah blah, and then proceeded to tell us about her boyfriend. It was like super weird. Super weird. I regret heavily not taking her photo because it is impossible to describe her appearance and also the way she talked about boys like she was a teenager.

Then we strolled along the beach and saw some dudes wind surfing and also using some parachute things. It was cold and a teensy bit rainy. But we braved it. We musta walked a mile up and down the beach.

San Diego rental car

So we get to the rental car place and of course they want to sell you on every up-charge there is.





But we stayed strong and kept to the plan of getting a mid-sized car with no GPS, no extra driver, no extra insurance, blah blah blah.





So then the guy gives us the choice of a Grand Marquis or any other car. They had Chevy Malibus and Ford Focuses also. Well Keri thought it would be a great idea to get the Grand Marquis because it was huge and would be oh so comfortable. But I didn't wanna. I just didn't want to pull up in that thing. Ya know? So we went for this lovely maroon Ford Focus. Which apparently wasn't available becuase he walked us right by it and over to an ELECTRIC BLUE Ford Focus. ICK. So that's what we drove around San Diego in:

'

p.s. you can't see him, but behind this car was a man in a car with his window down SCREAMING at his wife. Before I took this photo, I was filling my meter and saw that the meter next to mine was out of time. I was going to be a Good Samaritan and fill it up for him, but then I saw that not only is there somebody in the car, but it's a guy and he's yelling at a woman. So I kept my 25 cents.

Jack's

So we rented a car in San Diego. I have never been the "driver" on a trip before. I got to be the driver! Such responsibility!!

Fortunately we were staying right in the thick of San Diego and it was just exits away from everything! The night we arrived, we got our car, went to the hotel and then texted Sarah. We ended up going to Jack's in La Jolla. It was so nice! Drinks, amazing food, and a fire pit at our table! Look at this thing:

And there was a live Flamenco-style band, and they were awesome. Keri and I shared Opakapaka fish over broccoli puree with Truffle-oil mashed potatoes. First we had a spinach salad. All amazing. Topped off with Chocolate cake. There was a waterfall in our table. All stuff I did NOT get pictures of. sarah met up with us and then we went for drinks a few doors down. Check out the table with the fire right in the middle! Minnesota needs to figure this out. We'd have a few more months of eating outside for sure:

In addition to the 'fire tables' they had big huge warmers by every table too. What fun!

And just look at Sarah's cute hair!!

The first of many

Here we are at the airport, getting ready to leave for San Diego. Incidentally, we were a little late boarding (wonder why?) and all of us except Andrea had to check our carry-on luggage because there was no room for it.
p.s. That Vodka tonic tasted kinda crappy and was $12. WHADDYAGONNADO?

Bathroom incident

So, I will try to describe this incident as hilariously as it happened in real life. Keri, Nancy, Andrea and I had dinner at The Fish Market in San Diego. We had a great time. Believe me. We ordered a bottle of wine, there were Bloody Marys, Gin and Tonics, sushi, Wahoo, incorrectly placed plastic trees that tickled my hair all night, the works. Everything you need for the perfect dinner out. So we leave our table, happy and smiling and ready to pee our pants. We head single file up to the restrooms. I'm in the lead and Keri is behind me. Andrea is behind her and Nancy is in the rear. As we approach the bathroom door, another woman comes up from a different direction, and looks as though she may split our group by going in behind me in line. And so I say, "After You!" She looked at me a little strangely and said, "Thank you!" a little too much like I was doing her some big favor. So I said, "Well there are four of us...hahahahaha HAHAHAA HHAAA!!! AHAH!" Like I do with strangers. And so she went into the bathroom and I went in behind her, followed closely by Keri and Andrea. Nancy was yelling "NO!" in the back and then I saw why. The three of us were SMACK DAB behind this woman, almost pushing her into a ONE. STALL. BATH. ROOM. As soon as I saw the toilet, sink and garbage, and realized this was not a multiple stall room I looked at her in horror. She looks at us like we are crazy and then says,

"I'll just be two minutes."

Bonfire on the Beach

I'll start my San Diego post with one of my favorite moments. Sarah Basset was gracious enough to arrange a bonfire on the beach for Nancy, Andrea, Keri and me. We went to the grocery store and got salami, blackberries, cheese, bread, olives, pistashios, and WINE, which is completely illegal on the beach in California. We chose to ignore that ridiculous rule and filled up some coffee mugs with wine. Here are a few photos of Sarah and I building our amazing bonfire: (I was a little nervous for a minute there, it was SO windy, I didn't think it was going to start.) Notice the "wind break" I built with the logs on the side. ha!

And here is the difference between a California girl and a Minnesota girl. In 65 degree weather, we see the Minnesota girl (on the left) is wearing flip flops, a short sleeved shirt and a light jacket. The California girl (on the right) is wearing Ugg boots, a scarf, sweater and hoodie:

Every once in a while, just in case anybody was listening, we would say things like, "good coffee" or "ooh, hot". And pretend it was burning our tongues.





Such a fun wonderful amazing night.

Well, we're off!

I'm still not done packing and we're leaving in about 20 minutes. haha

Be back on Monday! (With hopefully lots of hilarious posts about my awesome trip.)

Where's your SUN San Diego??

Wednesday Night...Partly cloudy. Lows 50 to 59. Light winds.

Thursday...Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers. Highs 61 to 66. Winds southeast 15 mph in the morning becoming light. Chance of measurable precipitation 40 percent.

Thursday Night...Showers likely in the evening...then chance of showers overnight. Lows 49 to 56. Light winds. Chance of measurable precipitation 60 percent.

Friday...Showers likely. Highs 58 to 63.

Friday Night...Showers likely and slight chance of thunderstorms. Lows 48 to 53.

Saturday...Showers likely and slight chance of thunderstorms. Highs 58 to 63.

Saturday Night...Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers. Lows 43 to 51.

Sunday...Partly cloudy with a slight chance of showers. Highs 59 to 64.

Sunday Night...Partly cloudy. Lows 43 to 50.

You stay classy, San Diego

This is where I'm going this weekend (I stole this photo from Sarah Basset's facebook page):



And no amount of refinances or FHA or VA files or foreclosure purchases is going to stop me.