Vacation pictures, Part 1, San Diego

Okay, as long promised, here are a few vacation photos. The first batch is from last weekend in San Diego. After the misery of our Friday travel follies, courtesy of Northwest Airlines, we decided to skip the first day of the USA Sevens rugby tournament and to instead walk up and down Mission and Pacific Beaches in San Diego. The day was pretty cool for San Diego, temps in the mid-50s, but the sky was clear and beautiful.

Here we are on a beachside bench in Pacific Beach:

Our room at the Best Western on Mission Beach promised a "Partial Ocean View". Here's the view. I'd say "partial" is a pretty good description:

We really liked this hotel. It was right on the beach, the hot tub looked out at the surf, and we could hear and watch (partially) the waves whenever we wanted.

Later in the day we sat out on the beach to watch the sunset. This one guy was walking back and forth with a pair of beagles that cracked us up. They were baying and smelling stuff and just having a great old time:

Here's a picture of me enjoying a delicious Sierra Nevada Early Spring Beer. It is cleverly disguised as a travel-mug full of coffee. In the background the dude with the beagles is approaching a big pile of kelp. Katie the Beagle would be in heaven. I dare say she has never smelled anything quite so stinky, nor had such an enormous thing to potentially roll in.

Here's Monique against the seawall, watching the sunset.

As for the sunset? It was a good 'un:

The next day we did indeed go down to Petco Park to watch the final day of play at the rugby tourney. I discovered the real reason that rugby hasn't caught on entirely with kids in this country. It's because our national team's mascot is a scary-looking eagle, seen here about to drop a left hook on an innocent fan with a cute Welsh dragon hat:

Sheesh, why don't we just hire Freddy Krueger to go through the stands and make children cry? (Just kiddin', the eagle was actually very popular around the stadium all weekend.)

The stars of our vacation:

The U.S. team signed autographs while circling the stadium after they were eliminated in the semi-finals, the farthest they've ever made it in one of these international tournaments.

The U.S. barely lost a squeaker in the semifinals to the Argentines, who went on to beat England and win the whole tournament. Watching international rugby is going to be a whole different thing if the U.S. could actually beat somebody.

Here, by the way, are the Argentines, popping the cork on some well-earned champagne.

Next photo stop? Our drive up the coast....

The Oscar-Party Review, or lack thereof

Alas, there is no review of the Oscar party to which Monique and I were so generously invited. Why? Because I came down with some brutal intestinal virus late Saturday night and spent the entirety of Sunday laid out on the couch of the guest cottage. I shan't go into further detail, gentle reader, because with further detail you would move from "gentle reader" to "horrified by too-much-information reader."

Nonetheless, today I am now sitting upright and managed to hold down a plain bagel for breakfast and a scone for lunch, so with a return to solid food I seem to be on the mend. I will, however, stop for a moment to whine that getting sick while on vacation always seems a bit unfair. Ironically, I was planning to work today, so I have now called in sick from working while on my vacation.

As God is my witness I have no idea how that should go on my timecard.

I did manage to watch the Oscars themselves, though. I thought it was a good show with lots of glitz and glamour. Hugh Jackman made a surprisingly good host, funny in the right parts and filled with enough star-quality charisma to hold the stage in that setting. I also liked the new layout -- with the orchestra on stage and the stars all the way to the front of the orchestra pit. In fact, the only thing that I didn't like was the nauseating gush-fest of the various best actor/actress awards, where they had five previous winners going on-and-on about the greatness of this year's nominees. Not only did it ooze Hollywood phoniness, but its worst sin was that it was flat-out dull. I hope they kill it next year, but I fear it will live on. The only thing most actors and actresses love more than droning on about their own greatness is hearing other people drone on about their greatness.

The best bit of the evening was Ben Stiller doing his Whacked-Out-Joaquin-Phoenix impersonation. Tremendous stuff, and a great change of pace from the usual three-wisecracks banter that makes up most of the writing for the award presenters.

As for the winners, I'm happy for Slumdog and more determined than ever to catch Milk on DVD. After the broadcast Monique and I watched Man on Wire (the movie about the French tightrope artist who walked between the Twin Towers in 1974) which had just won the Best Documentary Oscar. It had been sitting at the top of our Netflix DVD queue, but I was in the mood to watch it, so we watched via Netflix instant streaming on the laptop. It was really good, a bit of a caper movie, really, with a lot of joie de vivre. And it was all the more poignant for being set at the start of the Twin Towers' career when nobody knew their terrible fate. It's well worth watching.

Quick late-night update

Sorry to have been a blog slacker the last few days. There was so much vacationing going on that I never had a good chance to sit down and catch folks up. Pictures still coming, soon. Maybe tomorrow if I get a chance.

So, what have I been doing that was so vital that I couldn't blog for the last 72 hours? Here's a list:

• Drove up to Sonoma to see the HGTV Dream Home with Monique, her friend Kelly, my aunt Carol, and my cousin Laura.
• Ate an entirely delcisious lunch at a really nice restaurant in Sonoma called The Girl and the Fig, or something like that. Believe it or not, I wasn't the one who suggested we eat at the joint that had all the nudie pictures on the wall and was named after a girl playing with a "fig".
• Wandered with the wimmin-folk through a lot of stores on the downtown Sonoma Square. In all fairness to the wimmin-folk, that was a known hazard before the expedition set out.
• Ate Mexican food for dinner. Yummy!
• Watched "Slumdog Millionaire." Quick review: I liked it very much, but be forewarned that the first half-hour or 45 minutes has a lot of brutal scenes of what happens to children who grow up parentless in a brutal slum.
• Slept in and lazed about Friday morning.
• Ran some errands.
• Went over to Tim and Jennifer Kardos's place in San Mateo where they hosted an entirely excellent dinner party. Played croquet, drank too much Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, had a delicious dinner, and caught up with a lot of folks I hadn't seen in too long. An excellent time.
• Slept in and lazed about Saturday morning.
• Went for a longish walk with Monique, my aunt Carol, and her dog Rosie up on one of the fire trails in the Berkeley hills.
• Ran some more errands.
• Ate a late lunch. (Two bologna and cheddar sandwiches on rye.)
• Watched "Frost/Nixon." Quick Review: I liked it much more than I expected to. I feared that it would be a two-hour wallow in Watergate, but it was really an excellent character study with great storytelling. I'll probably be the only one, but tomorrow I'll be rooting for Frank Langella to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, not Heath Ledger. (Sorry, Bat-fans.) I'm not sure, but of the two Best-Movie nominees that I've seen this year, I think I might give the nod to "Frost/Nixon" over "Slumdog Millionaire". (Sorry, plucky-indie-flick fans.)
• Delicious dinner and fun chit-chat with Monique, Carol, and Joe.

Wow, when I write it up like that it sounds quite busy. In reality, it's been a completely relaxing three days. But I hope this list at least provides a good excuse for my non-blogginess.

Oh, and I forgot to add it in to my list of "accomplishments," but I did write another haiku in response to my sister's comment regarding the photo with me and the elephant seals. You can see it by clicking on this link. I mention this haiku not because it is the best poem I have ever written in any form. (Although it is.) I mention it because it should be a good reminder to all that much of the value-add of this content-centric customer-enabling information solution can be found in the comments.

So, um, write some comments, folks.

Last item: preview of coming attractions for tomorrow. We are going to an Oscar party that is being hosted by a friend of my cousin Laura. The Oscars were a bit of a California tradition for me when I lived out here because just about every year I would pick up a pizza and watch the Oscars with my grandmother. We would also sometimes try to see at least one of the contenders in the week or two beforehand; but whether we made it to any of the contenders or not, she never lacked for opinions on the Oscar winners and losers. We had a lot of fun just watching the show and chit-chatting.

So, I still like to watch the Oscars with a pizza, usually with Monique these days. When I mentioned to Laura that maybe all three of us should grab a pizza and watch the show, she told us that her friend Jen hosts this little Oscar shindig every year and that it's "totally low-key and laid back." I thought this sounded like potential fun along the lines of my usual pizza and Oscar-viewing kind of evening, and Laura wrangled us an invite.

So then I ask what I should bring: pizza? bag o' chips? bottle o' wine? And Laura says, "Oh, we won't need any food, Jen always has it catered. Oh, and she usually gets this great chocolate fountain...."

I now remind you, gentle reader, of that moment just two paragraphs ago in which Laura used the words "totally low-key and laid back" to describe the shindig. Methinks this might not be my traditional take-out pizza Oscar affair. It could be that I'm moving up in the world of Oscar parties. I think I might wear the slacks instead of the beat-up shorts I've worn the last week, just to be safe.

Non-Travel Haiku

The digital John:
Laptop improvements today,
Pictures tomorrow.

It was a nice, restful day for me. I spent it mostly finishing up some setup issues with my new laptop: straigtening out my wi-fi problem (I hope!), installing Microsoft Office, setting up the portable disk drive, and downloading some photos from the first few days of our trip.

I'm calling it a night before I post 'em, but here's a preview of coming attractions. In this photo I realize that on most days the thin line that separates my lifestyle from that of an elephant seal is about the thickness of a cubicle wall:

More Travel Haiku

Fragments of rainbows
Lighting green hills and grey seas
In black clouds, black rain.

The rocks on the road
Worried me not. I dreaded
The boulders above.

Monique's now asleep
Sitting in a leather chair,
Waiting for e-mail.

Am I too tired to write longer, more coherent sentences? Or am I a poetic haiku genius of the road, burst into full flower at midnight? The smart money is on the former.

Travel Haiku

On scenic Route One
Rocks and mud fall from the sky
With the winter rains.

P.S. Having a fabulous time. But definitely not taking down the roof on the convertible!

All's reasonably well that end's reasonably well...

I wrote a really long, whiny blog about all of our travel woes today. You may all thank me later for the hitting the "delete" button. Eventually I'm sure we'll grow to appreciate the two $300 vouchers for two future tickets that Northwest forked over as an apology.

What really matters is that Monique and I eventually got out here to San Diego, safe and sound. (Well, mostly sound. Monique is definitely fighting off the cold that beat me down earlier this week. But safe matters on a day when every airport screen we were stuck in front of was filled with video of that plane that crashed in Buffalo last night.)

So, enough of my whining. On to the good stuff. And how is the weather here in sunny San Diego? As I type, I am staring at a TV weatherman on the late news in a ski hat, parka, and thick gloves. Is he in some location that I can gloat about, like Detroit, Glens Falls, Gettysburg, or Wyoming?

No, he's standing on the Mission Beach boardwalk about two blocks from our hotel using phrases like "fierce cold front" and "San Diegans just aren't ready for this sort of weather."

I'm guessing we might not use the convertible quite as much as I had thought. Oh well, it'll be great weather to drink beer and watch rugby in tomorrow. So we've got that going for us!