Not too many words, just my favorite non relative cutest kid ever on the entire planet, in a Christmas Dora tent, Christmas dress up jewels, and the awesomest Longhorn shirt ever.
Category Archives: Photos
Where Do I Start?
How about some pictures? Click to enlarge!
The house before the first snowfall. The day we moved in.
The Canyons before snow. Our first day out tour.
Deer Valley before snow. Ditto.
How the B’s let us trash their home. For two weeks.
BB’s super sweet new ride.
The mall in DT SLC. Actually pretty nice.
Super cute Longhorn fans.
Teaching SB “Hook ‘Em!” Gotta start ’em early.
The B’s backyard light show. Epic sunsets where ever we go…
Visiting family in Austin.
That family’s amazing new home.
Back from 76 degrees in Austin to snow on the car at the airport.
How the snow looked that night.
And the next morning.
The backyard view after the first snowfall.
Our first drinks on a night out in DT SLC.
Fog early Sunday morning.
Making Friends
With the local wildlife. How cool is it that the B’s have their own pet owl?
San Diego Street Scene 2008
There are a lot of music festivals out there. I haven’t really been to that many. But of course, ACL is a great example of a streamlined successful one. People tell me Jazzfest is the same. And SXSW is the best thing that has happened to so many people for years. We tried Sasquatch. Meh. I’ll see Lollapalooza someday. I’ll never go to the desert for Cochella.
I hadn’t seen hardly any live music in San Diego so I decided to pop over to Street Scene. If you’ve lived here longer than I have you care a lot about the fact it was returning to the streets of downtown for the first time in a long time and whether or not this was good or bad. I just had a free Friday night.
The ticket price for what you get was a little iffy (75$/day pass), since the days are only 4-12, and the four stages are maybe two blocks from each other. I saw Diplo, TV on the Radio, Spoon, Vampire Weekend, and Beck. I have already seen all of those bands except for Beck. Beck was not very good.
If there was one word I had to use to describe it, I’d go with ‘cute’. Seriously. It was like a little miniature attempt at a music festival that really turned out more like a block party.The one great feature was a beer garden portion of the CROWD in front of the STAGE. If you follow me, this great invention means I kicked it with my 21 and up brethren and didn’t have to watch my step, unlike outside the beer garden, where the ground was literally littered with unwashed raver children. Yuck.
We went to the 94.9 after show at the House of Blues, which I’ve always wanted to check out. The surprise band was NOT MGMT like I had been praying since I missed them, but the acceptable reggae beats of Michael Franti and Spearhead.
So I ended up not going back for Day Two. Literally no one I knew wanted to go back. And besides Ghostland Observatory, who I can never tire of seeing, I’d seen all those bands too. Am I getting too much music at SXSW? I sure feel spoiled when I’ve seen all the bands I want to. Here’s a funny review from someone who didn’t even make it. I’m not old -yet I hope- but I get what he’s saying.
Collegiate Memory Inspired Antics
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.
Central California
After Santa Barbara we drove north and found more interesting places. We had lunch in the city of Solvang, a crazy Danish inspired village. We were expecting Santa Ynez to be bigger but Solvang made up for it. We ate an awesome meal and tried our first Aebleskivers, shown here:
Aebleskivers
The best dessert I’ve had in a while. After walking the shopping area a bit we kept heading north and saw Pismo Beach and San Luis Obispo, where we spent the night, at a normal hotel even though we were tempted to check out the Madonna Inn.
I’m putting up two separate links for pictures, here’s one of the drive and random stops,
and the other is the Hearst Castle, in San Simeon. (On these you couldn’t use flash so they aren’t perfect)
Make sure to read that captions I painstakingly add so you know what you’re looking at…
We took so many pictures there it’s easier to see them separately. The main building itself is some 70,000sq.ft. but we saw maybe 10 of that, the outbuildings, and the indoor and outdoor pools on the main tour. We were there 9-12 and some people would go back down to the Visitor Center and take the other tours offered in the same day. The views were amazing, as was the art and architecture. I for one can’t say I’ve ever even heard of this place but was super impressed.
I can’t lie when I admit Mom and Grandma wanted us to see the Ronald Regan library but we skipped it. We did, more importantly, find and drive by Neverland Ranch, because we are giant freaking dorks. We also saw The Hitching Post, where they filmed Sideways. Priorities, ladies…
Amazingly we finished our visit with one last stop in Santa Barbara and made it all the way home in just under 4 hours, which I think is awesome. There is so much to do on the California coast and it pretty much rules that it’s all doable in a day, weekend, or as much time as you want to take.
Santa Barbara
We drove up from LA to Santa Barbara and immediately began running around. We checked out quite a bit of the area by simply driving through neighborhoods. There were some really stunning properties, and with the mountains as a backdrop, many of them have front yard ocean views. You can tell a little from my pictures just how green it is, but I was too busy looking to take really great ones. The whole place feels tropical and lush like somewhere other then the US, some tropical destination.
The city itself had a distinctive college town and feel, and reminded me a little of so much about what liked about Austin. It was easy to navigate, and we went down to the water and walked the pier sharing an ice cream. We strolled through an artwalk and down State Street, through California’s first mall, and through the many restaurants and shops. There’s a definite tourist vibe (it’s called the American Riviera) but it wasn’t overwhelming like I feel La Jolla is right now. There was certainly less beach but it’s relatively a small place so it wasn’t overcrowded.
We saw the mission and stayed the night at a great hotel called the Best Western Pepper Tree Inn. For some reason this quaint and unique hotel had the highest ratings on my phone’s suggestions so we decided to see what it was all about. For how cheap it was it spoiled us with a giant bathroom, giant living room, view of the pool, deck, and amenities everywhere. It was just what we needed to recuperate to head further up the coast.
Not Enough Time
After the Comic Con excitement wore down (more pictures, click here! – I totally forgot to say I ran into my buddy Brian Posehn again) MK’s little bro, my little Brother-In-Law, took one of those 48 hour flights from FL to check out the West Coast.
Reuniting the brothers is a little like having twins of hilarious not funny around. Add BB to the picture, and well, there was a paper airplane contest. And a punching bag contest. Beach day after beach day. Surfing, snorkeling, boogie boarding, eating, drinking, dancing and clubbing. For the short trip BIL had, he did just about everything. There are a ton of pics up here and here that I think you can see if you have Facebook (correct me if I’m wrong, but I really don’t want to put them all up…)
We played volleyball too. And went to the hardest to get in to night club downtown. And we all thought it was super lame, which was hilarious. We partied at the Hard Rock hotel and stayed up later than I have in forever! We saw a band and did the Farmer’s Market and had some great wine.
After BIL left, we also had to say goodbye to our close friends BB and MB, who are moving on to bigger and better things but still broke our hearts by moving away. We had a giant dinner out and got sent home with all the stuff they refused to take with them, which it was hilarious to be on the receiving end of for the first time.
Should Have Brought My Ray Gun: Comic Con 2008
The weekend was full of crazy fun, in spite of our Comic Con being a little weak. I could have done the convention for three whole days. We waited too long (since we didn’t know the power of the nerds) and the tickets were sold out every day but Sunday. It was fine though, even if the crowd wasn’t at its height it was overwhelming, even after a giant preparatory breakfast at the Broken Yolk. We just missed the cast of It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, but we did get to see tons of hilarious costumes and people freaking out over free stuff. Best costumes: Bender and Marvin the Martian, methinks.
My favorite moments were trying to get on a unicorn, yelling at MK to take more pictures, and meeting the writers of my favorite web comic: Cyanide & Happiness. You’ve surely seen them in posts here before. Well, they drew me my very own (FREE!) comic:
"It's the alcohol that's addicted to me"
That makes me cooler than anyone that I know. Don’t be surprised to see it framed and mounted and lit up on the most important wall of my house soon. If you make fun of my glasses, I will punch you in the throat.
As a casual observer that knew very little about a lot of the things going on there, I was expecting to see nothing I knew anything about. But if you’re into Lost or Heroes or any regular TV junk there’s just as many people like you as there are in Battlestar Galactica costumes. No, not as many. But some. My point is it’s not just Star Wars fans, only mostly.
There were traditional newspaper comic writers there (being completely ignored) and people that write graphic novels and rows and rows of people I’m pretty sure are just good at drawing but never drew for the company that makes the characters they draw (walking there was totally awkward).
Here’s a link to the rest of the pictures. SB, this Jabba the Hut is for you.
Why I Haven’t Called You
There’s not much to say besides that the last few weeks were right back in our style: party-company-mode. After getting back from our trip JM came and we did everything there was to do. As in, all of San Diego. We saw the fireworks. We went to the beach. As I mentioned here we shopped every mall. We snorkeled every cove. We tried some surfing. We lounged. We ate more ice cream than I’ve ever eaten. I didn’t even know I liked ice cream. We saw a yacht. We saw some sky-advertising? We counted a dozen weddings. We not exactly legally got as close to planes landing as we knew how…
RD and JML came for Comic Con, which gets it’s own full review, but I mention it since we had some great dinners and were all together one night to play UNO all night and get a great pic of JM in a cage. Priceless, really.
Here’s the link to the pictures, which I’m pretty sure say more than my words even can. Really.
Leopard Sharks La Jolla Cove
Cat Killfoil 