Wedding Anniversary Vacation

Hello, Fire Enthusiasts. I hope you’re enjoying the summer, for those of you in the northern hemisphere. For the rest of you, you’ve had your summer. As soon as we’re finished with it we’ll give it back. We promise!

My wife and I just returned home from an extended 23^rd wedding anniversary weekend that we spent in beautiful San Diego, California. We live in the central valley, so it’s a bit of a drive – about 5 hours – but well worth it. If you haven’t been, San Diego is something close to paradise. It’s warm in the summer, but not terribly hot.

We left on Thursday morning at about 9 am, once we had taken the youngest to his summer school class. He’ll be a sophomore next fall. He and his nearly 19 year old brother stayed home. More on them later…

We pulled into San Diego in mid-afternoon and got ourselves checked in. We then headed for the Glass Lamp district. It’s a great section of shops and restaurants. We visited there twice during the weekend. At night the area comes alive with people pouring in for dinner, drinks, entertainment – or all of the above. We stopped at the Hard Rock. There’s a large mall there where we got some shopping in. I actually came across a real book store! I picked up Joe Hill’s Horns and had that sucker finished as we pulled back home on Sunday. We checked out this dueling piano bar that my wife had heard about. I had been to the famous Savannah Smiles in Georgia, so I knew what to expect. It was really fun, and my wife got a kick out of the music and the hi-jinks.

On Friday, we headed for Coronado Island and the famous Del Coronado Hotel. Neither of us had been there before. The place was built in about 1888, if memory serves. The film Some like It Hot was filmed there, and it was the real inspiration behind the novel Bid Time Return – which in turn beget the film Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. It is one of my all time favorite movies. We took a ferry to the island, rented bicycles and stayed for the afternoon, catching some sun (too much for me as you’ll see in later photos) and some great food. Speaking of great food, we were back at the Gas Lamp for dinner that night. I had a big steak, paid entirely too much for it, but it was worth every morsel. *smacks lips* So good!

On Saturday we headed inland to meet my wife’s niece and her husband and young son. They live there and were kind enough to take us out for lunch. Okay, you see the beer, but I swear there was pizza, too. Later that day we hunted for a restaurant I had seen on Diner, Drive-Ins and Dives.

It was a fantastic weekend. As many of you know, I have spent far too much time being glued to this laptop, so it was great to get away – just us. I plan to spend more time away from these keys than I have in the past. I’m not quitting this crazy indie business; however, you won’t find me here quite as often. I meant to take a photo of the large television we had in our room, but forgot to. We never turned it on once during our four days there. We did read, but the rest of the time we just bonded…

Now, back to the kids: Although my boys and I have the house alarm app on our iPhones, my youngest opened the sliding glass door without turning it off first, causing the alarm company to call in. Neither one of them knew our password, so the alarm folks had to call the police. *slaps head* It was only the second hour that we were away. We were happily on the road, blasting the tunes and enjoying our break. My oldest had to show them their photos hanging on the wall in order to get them to leave. My oldest sent text messages, and was pretty pissed off that we didn’t answer our cells. *grins* Then…. They both left Saturday morning for northern California to the Van’s Warped Tour. We had warned them they we were going to be gone, and the care of the house and the cat was their responsibility. They gave my mother the clicker for the garage, but (the youngest again) had locked the door, causing my mother to be locked out and unable to check on poor Jones. Jones survived, of course, but it was the second strike against them. *laughs* Perhaps we’ll need to wait another decade before trusting them again, huh? ;) #fail

We’ll talk again soon.