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Central California

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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

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.

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Santa Barbara

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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.

Here are the pictures from Santa Barbara.

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Vacation From Vacation

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Usually you never know I’m gone, I know I’m going to be away and I throw some posts up. Couldn’t do that this time since my vacation was a surprise. MK decided we’d both (cough) been working so hard we needed to get away. We packed up and set off Friday morning.

MK booked us an amazing room at a great hotel right on Sunset Strip. We wandered up and down and shopped and ate and wandered some more. We got all fancied up and hit some clubs. We exhausted ourselves. We woke up and ate some more, pooled some, and set off for more adventure. We drove through Beverly Hills, Glen, and Mulholland, which we hadn’t taken the time to do before. There was a lot of “let’s live in that one” “oh my gosh did you see that?” “Is that all one house?”. The only (I don’t think this even counts) celebrity MK spotted was the guy that owns Sunset Tan, while we were eating at the awesomest diner ever that happens to be underneath it.

We failed on pictures – didn’t want to look like tourists! 🙂

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Trends These Days

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Somegosoftly’s new tag line: More real than the Olympics.

fives.jpg#57

Five Hilarious Features of THIS LINK:

1. deisgn apparel (wow)
2. Hulk burger king (also in apparel)
3. Rectifier – wtf? (jewelry)
4. Brecciated jasper sounds funny
5. Looking for ‘red coral earrings’ in electronics

eBay is hilarious.

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Not Enough Time

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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.

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Should Have Brought My Ray Gun: Comic Con 2008

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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"

"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.