Well, the computer worked for one blog post. Then it died again, Hmpf. So for now here are some pics from the Utah Olympic Park.
After skiing the other day we went to see the bobsled World Cup practice runs. It was pretty amazing!
Did you think I was kidding? Oh, no friends. When you turn this unexciting of an age and have nothing going on, you need to make your own party. This is a marathon. So my birthday (which was Monday) started last Thursday. I went shopping. At the outlets. And bought stuff. Shoes, a coat, a Coach purse (which I realized I had no need for and returned) and earrings and a headband. Really thrilling stuff. But it was fun just to be out. TB, current love of my life, took me out for Chinese. This will be a tradition.
Friday I skied with MK. It was a blast. I think this was when I figured it out. We came home and got ready for dinner, which we had at the Deer Valley Seafood Buffet, courtesy of my loving mommy. Lest Buffet sound cheesy, make no mistake, I enjoyed more delicious five star cuisine than the previous “X” years of my life. 😉 And, dude, TB (reason for love-of-life status) picked out the most amazing present in the world for me, wait until you see it.
We last minute just had to run out for some drinks, TB (again, love of my life) calling out for shots. Yeehaw. We met some silly LA’ers and had a giant phony one-upping contest. Giggles and more shots. Celebrity hunting.
We totally got catcalled - which is awesome even if it's not your birthday!
I had the funniest time the next morning – Saturday- feeling faintly hungover but somehow still on skis with TB. We were a sight. We also got to see (finally) someone famous here for Sundance. Kira fell right in front of me, and Kevin Bacon had to help her up. It kinda blew her cover. Sunday we skied with Bob. I had to show off. I totally came home and fell in to a coma. We went out for pizza (last junk food of the year…) at a new fantastic restaurant that we all loved. Thanks J!
Monday was this thing called my actual birthday. SKI BIRTHDAYS RULE! My legs were wiped out from the past two awesome days, but beer helped. TB and I were “first beer” at Empire Lodge. Quality. Then we went for round two at Silver Lake. By then, we were golden. I let go of trying to ‘do it right’ and just had fun. My mom AND DAD (MOSTLY DAD) sent me some beautiful flowers (MK got me some you can see in the background too):
MK took me out for drinks and made me a cake. We really had a great night. Yesterday was all about running errands and cleaning – KD And JC get here today! Let Week Two festivities begin!
We took a drive out of Park City yesterday and headed toward Heber and Sundance, the ski resort Robert Redford opened. It was really beautiful. We saw wild mountain goats. We drove to Provo and didn’t see anything even worth getting out of the car for. Then we headed back to SLC. The drive through Pleasant Grove, Alpine and Lehi was amazing. My pictures aren’t that great but wow, there were some super giant mansions out there and I’m pretty sure the deal is buy one, get a horse or three. The whole trip took maybe three hours with a stop to shop in SLC before we made it home. Fortunately we also got to see an amazing sunset.
We are so lucky to have so many great friends. They all came out (on a Sunday!) to say their goodbyes. Or maybe they heard we’d be giving away canned good door prizes. Not yet. MK’s doing the final puzzle of fitting our life in to the car, and we’re off first thing in the morning.
I can’t even tell you how long you’re going to miss me for – I guess it depends on if my hosts let me touch the internet. We spent the weekend saying goodbye to the beach and now all I can think about is snow!
For the record, because I “keep it real” – the clothes hangers aren’t going to make it.
Packing sucks. And it’s making me feel guilty. I hate feeling guilty. It appears by my rough estimations via google maps that there are clothes that have journeyed 3642 miles, and that I have never worn. I have lugged them, stuffing our car to the brink of collapse, and never put them on. So now I get to drive them another 1300 miles to store them.
The clothes get me to my biggest tirade: clothes hangers. We couldn’t take them all with us the first two times, and being a no wire hangers kind of girl, I am now in possession of an obnoxious amount of hangers. That I paid for. I’m not sure how they’re going to get anywhere, but no clothes hanger will be left behind! 😉
There are also now two sets of a lot of things in my possession, and three sets of some other things. We purchased more dishes when our needs weren’t met here. We purchased Christmas decorations when we were depressed to not have ours with us. There’s some leftover wrapping paper, spices I can’t bear to part with, and the gifts from various birthdays and holidays that we’ve accumulated (don’t think I don’t like gifts, that’s not a complaint!).
I’ve done fairly well without all the other stuff that we left the first time we moved – our furniture, family photos, scrapbooks, paintings. It was hard initially but I learned that whole “it’s just stuff” lesson. I’m trying to remind myself of that lesson now, but it doesn’t make the task at hand that much easier! We’re having to leave much earlier than we expected and it’s not going to be fun. I wish my Grandma, tight-roll packer extraordinaire were here- she could do it all in a day.
There was a period of time there when I felt like I had a traveling job. We were flying so much I lived in an airport. We were pretty good at it. We recently changed that up for some road trips and so getting to the airport on time, parking, and checking in all had to be relearned.
We stayed at the Blackstone Hotel Thursday. I’ve never been to another hotel where they waited on us hand and foot. We ate and caught the VP debate. Friday MK traded a little from the hotel, which got us to a late start. BB and MB showed up and we met them at the Chairman’s Suite of the Sax Hotel. It ruled. There were a dozen TVs and a bar, dining room, living room, and enough hallway space for us all to try the moon walk. MB baked cookies and cakes and chex mix and brought all kinds of snacks. I decorated and covered the place in balloons and banners.
Three more friends of theirs and two of ours and it was a party. We almost didn’t want to leave! We checked out the bar scene and totally decided our room was more fun and went back.
The next day we enjoyed giant breakfast and some sightseeing, the Michigan Mile, Millennium Park, and had a drink at the top of the Hancock Tower. We went back for a little more drinking and football until we were starved enough to order pizza at Lou Malnati’s, then ate until we thought we might die. BB’s friends took off and we took MK out for birthday drinks. He got old at midnight and we went to our other not as big but still swank hotel room.
The next day was overcast but we ate and shopped and when the rain started went bowling. The hotel had a Microsoft Suite so we jammed a little Rock Band before MB and BB headed back home too. I took MK out for a birthday hamburger (his request) and we watched the end of the Red Sox game.
The next day we went to Navy Pier, then decided to challenge Lou Malnati’s with Giordano’s. It’s a tough call. Pretty much the only thing I learned about Chicago is the locals are overweight and I would be too if I lived there and ate Chicago stuffed pizza all the time…
So just like I told you here – we did enough but not too much. The idea was to be somewhere other than San Diego and to be with our close friends. We pulled that off and had a fun little break from reality. Now it’s back to work packing and planning. We’ll let my Daddy take us back to see all the good stuff we missed some time.
Don’t forget to read all my captions. They’re painstakingly there just for you.
Pictures Set One: Camera Phone pictures.
Pictures Set Two: Our Camera pictures.
Remember when I startled you with this announcement?
Then confounded you with this one?
Well, we’ve been in San Diego a year, which is longer than we thought at first, but at the same time, after seeing the winter we had to see it in summer, and what a difference there was (winter was better!). All the same, last winter we made so many ski trips that we decided it would be easier to spend a whole season skiing. Having great friends permanently residing there doesn’t hurt either. If you can believe it, they ran around looking for the perfect place for us. I am so blessed.
So at some point around the end of October, we will be moving to PARK CITY UTAH!
Good news for everyone around this site that knows me, you’ll have a free place to stay when you come on your winter ski trip! You know I’m expecting you all to come see me – and bring some good booze in your luggage…I’m not gonna be able to handle that watered down Mormon crap without you. 😉
I’m not gonna lie or sugar coat this situation. I in a moment of insanity forgot my friend’s birthday. Her 30th birthday. SB, my college roommate, had to go so far as to call me and remind me I missed it and I suck. To be fair, we were planning a Mexican getaway to honor the event, and its cancellation is what prompted my forgetfulness. It’s not like I didn’t have it written down. Also in my defense (ask my mom), not having anything to do all day makes them all blur together and oftentimes I just honestly don’t know what day (week, month) it is.
Anyway, to apologize, I got SB here to SD. Her arrival late Friday was pretty exciting, as I hadn’t seen her since our road trip through Denver to Seattle. We commenced celebratory drinking at the La Jolla Brewhouse, ran kicking and screaming from stupid old Jose’s, and did a little late night drive through La Jolla Cove, calling it an early night so we could make the most of the long weekend. Did we, and how.
Saturday morning we had some technical difficulties with the car, as in we had to have it jumped. We walked the Cove again, stopped in at Karl Strauss (another brewery, already)
Mmmmm
for a sampler and a Bloody Mary, and then meandered to Porkyland, our tourist coming armed with plans had suggested this place – it was great Mexican food.
Car fixed we drove to Balboa Park and paid 4$pp for the lamest Japanese Garden (it’s really 100ft. long) and wandered a bit taking pictures. When we were read to go, the car was not. Seriously, stupid car…so loving Super Husband let us cab it to Old Town while he waited (and waited) for the solution, which was determined to be a new car battery.
SB suggested the Jolly Boy Saloon in Old Town since she wanted absinthe. (She does not mess around). What I saw and we chose first was a sight which my eyes have never before been blessed with:
Great Inventions: Wheel, Fire, Beer-Margarita
Yes, a beer IN A GIANT MARGARITA. Or, a GIANT MARGARITA with A BEER in it. Whichever you prefer. It was AWESOME. Due to it’s size, we shared it responsibly. Then shared the absinthe. Then we were totally roasted. It was, maybe 2pm. We wolfed down some ice cream (yup, still gorging on that) then husband picked us up. We made it to Del Mar just in time to bet on the last two horse races before – seriously, she planned the whole trip, basically – we set off to the infield to attend the last concert of the summer Del Mar series that SB had discovered: DEVO.
Seriously. DEVO.
As you can imagine, it was pretty hilarious. We topped out at about 30 minutes of rediculousness and headed home to clean up to head to the Gaslamp District. We had some dinner, some more drinks, and gussied up. I know it was a holiday weekend, but I’d never seen the bars so busy. There were lines everywhere, except (thankfully) Mr. Tiki’s, our staple starter bar. From there we hit up The Field, staple number 2, and some super cool new bar I forgot the name of.
Sunday morning we headed up to Mt. Soledad, then found the SDSU library and Dr. Suess statue (that was mostly for me). We went to the Gliderport, where it was super windy and there were a ton of paragliders out. We tried to get to Lahaina’s in PB but again, the beach was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it, even more than 4th of July. We changed-of-plans it right to Cass St., who serves up 4$ rice vodka spicy Bloody Mary’s. Are you seeing the theme yet? Back to our pool for some more drinks at sunset, a fashion photo shoot, and then off to the Pink Elephant, a pretty great neighboorhood hipster theme bar.
Pink Elephant Bar
We got convinced by running club to meet up at Bourbon, where there was, no lie, a foam party. I tried my best to stay away from the madness, but we did have some fun dancing.We got home and totally ran through the parking garage, pool room, and etc. making messes like we were 19 again. Good times.
The next morning, hangover free, miraculously, we hit the Cove for snorkeling and the Shores for Body Boarding and Bahia Don Bravo’s for lunch all before getting SB on the plane ride home. We managed to squeeze quite a bit in.
Is the dumbest slogan of all time. That being said, MK and I were pretty excited to attend the Pacific Classic million dollar purse day at the Del Mar Race Track. We got ‘gussied up’ a bit and then went cheapo and got great parking and general admission tickets in spite of all the weird old lady protesters (yes, you were weird and old). And that was all we could accomplish.
Horse racing is apparently something you need to know about before just showing up. There were families of screaming babies, completely drunk (before noon) possibly homeless scary smelly people, and the richest old men I’ve ever seen, all jumbled up together placing bets. There were way fewer hats than I expected, apparently opening day is the big deal hat parade, grr. I was overwhelmed at the size of the place even though we’d been there before for the fair. There was the Turf Club, the jockey place, restaurants, betting stations, computers, tvs, and free shirts everywhere.
You got a little brochure thing that only had the names of the horses and when the races were. The tips for betting by the windows said “1. State track 2. State race 3. Pick your horses 4. Pay”. Huh? I knew from all the talk recently there were 30,000 ways to do things. The first few races we decided to share what our picks WOULD BE and see how we’d do. We didn’t get a single horse. So we watched. It was like going to Vegas and not gambling, it felt a little odd but was probably for the best. We are not good at that sort of thing.
Now we’re just working on our online crash courses (kidding). But the afternoon was a blast, even though we didn’t make it all day. We were toast halfway through. There’s a concert while SB’s here (that starts tomorrow!) so we might go back soon.
The day I got back from our big vacation trip I got some very important news. AS-H, the woman that introduced me to the love of my life, got me through college, and just generally rules was in town. Well, was in LA. I drove myself back up to Newport Beach and we ate some kick butt and actually healthy Mexican at Avila’s El Ranchito. The healthy was negated by the margarita but whatever! We drove over to Huntington for a little beach and shopping stroll and one more drink before she had to jet set back home. Being a giant super powered attorney rules.
Shortly thereafter(two days), MK got a call that one of his friends from high school was staying at her parents condo in Long Beach for the weekend. We’ve both known her forever too and couldn’t say no. We drove BACK up the good old I-5 again and partied at a couple really random places. Who would have thought we could end up at a karaoke bar, in LONG BEACH? It was rather surreal. When I think surreal, I think RB. So I phoned him and he came from LA to hang out with us. Wonder of wonders, there was a ROSCOE’S CHICKEN AND WAFFLES again, so of course we had to have some 3AM breakfast goodness.
Brief aside: I didn’t go into detail last time, but Roscoe’s might be the best place on earth to eat fried chicken. Seriously. The secret is to mix the tabasco into the syrup and eat the chicken and the waffle and that mix. Holy cow. It sounds odd, but if you’re ever out this way, I’ll show you. Plus, there’s always something crazy going on there. I mean, we did eat in COMPTON and the LBC, so it’s to be expected. It’s living on the edge I tell you.
So, to total that all up, we went up to LA and back to San Diego in three whole separate trips in less than a week. It was a lot of driving. But it was totally worth it. I’m giving thought to living in the OC though, it might make it easier!
Cat Killfoil 