Puerto Vallarta Day 7: I’ve Already Been Here A Week??

Ah, how time does fly!

Today was very nice and laid back. I slugged around the condo until well after lunch, working on yesterday’s blog (ssh, I didn’t really write it yesterday – don’t tell!) and finishing one of my books. I’ve nearly run out of books to read. I only brought four, which I was sure would be enough, but I’ve been gobbling them up. I found a whole stash of Abandoned Vacation Reading under the TV, though, and plucked up a copy of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Timequake. It could be one of the strangest things I’ve ever read, but it’s fast reading, so I’ll keep at it.

The grand victory of the day was spotting some sea-life in the ocean. When we arrived, Bonnie told us we could see sting rays and pointy-nosed fish and schools of crazy little fish all from the balcony, using the binoculars. She also told us we would see whales. Seven days of looking later and we’d seen nothing. Today was nearly a bingo, though. Dustin started us off by spotting crazy little schools of jumping fish, then, a bit later, the pointy-nosed fish. We decided these must be needle fish. A bit after that, I spotted a couple dark blobs that turned out to be a pair of sting rays. Success! Now we just need to spot some whales before we go. I don’t even know what sort of whales.

We went into town for dinner at a place called Cafe de Olla which turned out to be super delicious. I got beef enchalladas which I could hardly finish because I also got an apatizer of “tamal” (not sure why they weren’t “tamales”) which was so good I ate nearly the whole thing all by myself. But now I have leftovers for lunch tomorrow, which is really good news, since I’m a little tired of our regular options.

And now here I am, writing another blog. No great Tales of Interest for the day, but that’s not such a bad thing. Be back tomorrow!

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Puerto Vallarta Day 6: Creepy Spiders & Breakfast Burritos

(Don’t worry – no spiders IN the breakfast burritos.)

It is amazing how quickly you can run out of groceries when you can only bring home as much as you can carry on the bus. So today we went into town for groceries and lunch.

Before completing either of these tasks, we did a bit of wandering about. The walk along the beach in Puerto Vallarta is quite nice, and then if you turn inland at the river, there is a whole long island full of tacky tourist shops where you get heckled and heckled. Dustin likes to be heckled, so I just let him deal with them while I wander all moon-eyed through the booths. There’s no danger of me accidentally buying anything, because we came without any checked luggage, and there is NO place to shove any souvenirs on our trip back. Besides which, I’m all scroogey with our money.

There was a lovely moment, however, when I got distracted by a spider. I have been looking for spiders since I got here, they being something of a fascination for me, and I’ve seen plenty of webs and plenty of crabs, but no spiders. This time, I saw a web in a tree, and sure enough, someone was home. I made Dustin take a picture for my collection (squeemish beware: this is one super-creepy looking spider):

Isn’t she awesome?? She was about the size of a nickel. I’m going to have nightmares about him for weeks.

While we were busy playing with the spider, Bonnie got tired and helped herself to a plastic chair belonging to one of the heckling vendors. When he returned – looking plenty surprised to see his chair taken over – she said, “Mister! Please, come into my shop! Look at my beautiful things!” The vendor, delightfully quick on his feet, put his hand thoughtfully up to his chin and said, “No, no, I’m just looking.” Hahaha!

I love Bonnie. This is very typical of her. As another example, when we were walking down the street toward the restaurant to eat, we passed a man carrying flowers that he was obviously going to deliver to someone. “Are they for me?” Bonnie asked him, sounding oh-so-wistful. The poor man was confused for a moment before he realized she was being silly and told her “No, no sorry. Not for you!”

The other noteworthy event of my day was cooking up breakfast burritos using chorizo saussage. This is only interesting if you know that I’m a fervent maple-flavored-saussage fanatic, so going outside my comfort zone was a big risk. It turned out the saussage was wonderful, but I thought the potatos were only so-so. They were very sweet and tasted very earthy. Kind of strange. I think everyone else liked them a lot, though, so it was just fine. They can eat the leftovers.

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Puerto Vallarta Day 5: Crabs Abound

That’s right, crabs are running amok through my vacation, and I am one of them.

I don’t know why, but today I’ve been in a mood that just shouldn’t be allowed to exist on vacations. I’m having a hard time sleeping well, so I suppose that might have something to do with it. An ocean located directly out the window is a lot louder than you might expect, and the cars on the highway out the other window sound like they’re all 18-wheelers going about 110mph.

See! Look at that! I’m complaining about being in a beach house! Gah.

When I have my own beach house, it’s going to be a 3 minute walk away from the ocean. That will be perfect. And it will be dome-shaped so hurricanes can’t knock it over. Brilliant.

Right then, what did I do today? Other than moping and being unpleasant for my housemates (sorry Dustin and Bonnie… I’ll try to be better tomorrow) the highlight of the day was the nature walk Dustin and I took, clamboring over the rocks on the north side of the beach during low tide and exploring the strange and rocky landscapes beyond. And better yet, I was no longer the only crab on the beach. Here are some pictures of the many and varied crabs we discovered today:

The little guy above lives in the stairs that lead down from the condo patio onto the beach. I saw him by luck out of the corner of my eye as he scuttled for cover. He politely stuck around and posed while Dustin got a picture. He’s abut the size of my big toe.

Now THIS little guy is really little. He’s about the size of my thumbnail, and you’d never see him on the sand except that they scuttle like mad when you walk past and catch them out of their hidey-holes. The holes are only about the size of a pencil, so the past few days I wasn’t sure WHAT could be living in them. Ever since we saw this guy, we’ve been seeing his buddies everywhere. Can you see the shadows his little googly eyes cast on his back? He’s really pretty cute.

I’m not the only one who likes coconut rum! We found this coconut washed up in the rocks that we were clamboring over. We’ve seen quite a few beached coconuts, but most of them have been floating in the ocean so long they’re now pickled. This one, as you can see, was still quite fresh. And it was FULL of these little crabs. This guy was the biggest of the crew. I think there’s enough coconut in the shell you can tell about how big he was.

Here are the commonest crabs. They live on the jetties and rock piles and they blend in really well until they start scuttling about. The smallest one I’ve seen was no bigger than a sand crab. The biggest was probably about the size of a salad plate. They’re quite pretty colors if you can get close enough to see them, which is difficult unless they’re dead and half-eaten. (Alas.) Here’s a close-up:

This guy’s about the size of a tea saucer.

And that is the story of my crabby day.

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Puerto Vallarta Day 4: Night of the Iguanas (and Cat)

Today’s adventures began with a trip to the little village of Mismaloya, about 15 minutes by daunting bus ride south of here. Aside from a lovely little beach that was populated by nearly as many hawkers of “almost free!” jewelry as it was tourists, Mismaloya is the site where the film Night of the Iguanas was filmed in 1964.

(As a side note, I was rather disappointed to learn that the movie is based on a play by Tennessee Williams and has nothing to do with giant iguanas rampaging hither and thither.)

Once you dodge through all the hecklers, you can walk along a rather ill-kept path out to the point of the cove. We were there at high tide, and the waves splashed up against the rocks as we walked past, causing crabs and iguanas alike to scuttle for higher ground. The iguanas were pretty cool – not green like you often see, but grey with orange splashes on their sides, the better to hide in the rocks and dead leaves.

The set itself was locked away behind gates with razorwire on top, which was ridiculous because about six meters further down were places you could easily clambor over. The parts we could see looked like lovely ruins. I can’t figure out how long they’ve been abandoned, because wikipedia says after the movie was filmed, they turned the site into a cafe (John Houston Cafe) which was quite famous. The movie is given sole credit, in fact, for making Puerto Vallarta a tourist destination at all, but I suppose as the movie faded into obscurity, so did Mismaloya. Puerto Vallarta had established itself as a resort town on its own right, by then. I’m going to have to go rent the movie when I get home. Maybe I can write my first bestselling novel about rampaging iguanas.

We had lunch on the beach, so close to the water our toes got wet a few times before the tide backed out a bit. I have no idea how authentic or not the food in restaurants around here is, but it was very tasty. I especially liked my side of rice, which had yellow and green peppers in it. Mmm.

Next was a stopover at the house to do a bit of lounging on the beach. But, as today was all about outings to visit animals and eat food, I shall continue on to dinner.

We went back into Puerto Vallarta for dinner, to one of Bonnie’s favorite restaurants, the Fajita Republic. They pour tequilla over your fajitas and light them on fire right before they serve them to you. Totally delicious. The best part about dinner, however, was not the food, but the company. There was a cat wandering around the restaurant begging for food. Being in withdrawl from my own cat, (I need to pause this sentence for a moment to point out that Dustin is reading over my shoulder, and he strenuously objects that I mention the cat as the best part of company, and not him, my wonderful husband. That was unkind of me. I love him more than the cat. Just for the record.), I was delighted to find something furry to pay attention to. The cat accepted one scritch of the ears as an invitation to move in with me. He jumped up on my lap and immediately curled up for a nap. I was a happy diner. I gave him a bit of steak when we left for the evening.

I’ve been writing this post for about three hours now, and although I’ve got pictures, I’ve run out of energy to do anything about them. I’ll give that a stab tomorrow. Along with proofreading this thing. Good night!

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Puerto Vallarta Days 3: A Day In The Life…

There was no traveling on the schedule for today, so we decided to take a walk on the beach in the morning. Bonnie discovered that when you come across a pile of rocks that is within reach of the waves, you can listen as the rocks are rolled over each other by the movement of the water and the sound is absolutely beautiful. I decided that if you could hear the music of the spheres, that is what it ought to sound like. (The association has nothing to do with my personal metaphysics – just the fact that spherical objects were making music and it all makes sense in my head.)

Dustin and I were splashing in the waves as we walked, and I managed to get just wet enough that it looked like I had wet myself. As a result, I had to get deeper into the water so it didn’t look like I had bladder control problems, as a result of which I got a whole swimsuit full of sand. Serves me right. I should have just gone all the way in at that point, but I was having lack-of-sunscreen anxiety (I hadn’t meant to stay out quite so long) so we went back up to the pool, which was still shaded at that time of day, for our swim.

After a bit of lunch, we set to salsa-making. We added all the usual ingredients minus green pepper (which we didn’t have) plus orange mystery pepper and with pineapple vinegar instead of the regular stuff. It wound up being rather sweet and strange, but still pretty tasty.

After more lounging by the pool and kicking around in the waves, we had lots and lots of margaritas and then pork chops. I spent my time waiting for dinner spying on a Mexican couple who were down on the beach digging up something and putting it into a sack. The man would hunker down with his feet in the waves and watch, then he’d see something and go running to it and start digging in the sand. Then he’d chuck whatever he was finding to the woman, who stuck it in a sack. We couldn’t tell what they were getting, even with the binoculars. I figure it must be some sort of clam. Later, I tried digging a hole myself to see if I could find anything, but as soon as my fingers brushed something other than sand, I shrieked like a little girl. It turned out only to be a rock anyway. (To excuse my shrieking, I must point out that when I WAS a little girl, digging in the sand at Santa Cruz, I kept finding creepy little blue crabs. I wasn’t interested in getting my fingers pinched.)

A lovely day on the beach, if I do say so.

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Puerto Vallarta Day Two: Town & Taco Surprise

I am totally wiped out. I feel like I’ve been relaxing all day, so I was a little confused about why I should be so tired, but then I realized that in the course of relaxing, I’ve gotten about five times as much exercise as I get on a regular day. Hooray exercise!

We went to bed at about 10:00 last night and slept straight through until almost 10:00 this morning. Aah! When I walked out to the balcony after waking, there was a brief moment where I wondered if the condo had detached from the shore and floated off into the ocean while we slept. I had thought the water came up close to the building last night, but it was nothing compared to how close it was this morning. I could see only water out the window until I walked up to the rail and looked straight down. The waves were lapping up against the stone wall that contains the condo’s patio and swimming pool. The stairs down from the patio let off directly into the water. It was really beautiful and, honestly, a little frightening. (I am much more easily frightened by nature than by boogey men.)

I had excellent bread and so-so cheese for breakfast (why not? it feels exotic and vacationy, unlike the Zucaritos (frosted flakes) Dustin had). We sat on the balcony and stared at the ocean for awhile until we decided to head into town and get some groceries.

A trip into town (Puerto Vallarta proper – we’re about five miles south in Punta Negra) can be had for 6 pesos on the local bus. Bus drivers are people who failed out of taxi school, I believe. The buses themselves only hold together by prayers. We careened through narrow roads between sheer cliffs and on the edge of sheer cliffs, coming within inches of disaster several times, and nearly killing at least three or four people who were waiting to be picked up. It was the same sort of thrill you get from a roller coaster.

This is the first Mexican town I’ve visited other than Cancun, and it struck me as a little less tourist-centric. Many of the signs were still in both Spanish and English (how is it we complain about doing the same thing in our own country, we who are so selfishly monolinguistic that we demand it of everyone else? Oh wait…) and we did get heckled walking along the shops, but there were also regular Mexicans going about their daily business with no concern for us at all, which is more than I can say for Cancun. We didn’t do a lot of touring, though. Dustin hadn’t been out to the beach at all yet, having spent most of yesterday working, so mostly we just wanted to get groceries and get back.

The grocery store was remarkable mostly for its multitudinous selection of peppers. Dustin went wild, buying all sorts of fresh and dried peppers that no one else is going to be brave enough to even try, since we can’t figure out what they are or how spicy they might be. They all look rather Death Spicy to me, especially the dried ones. Something about drying peppers makes them look evil.

We toted our selections home and chowed down on more tasty bread and so-so cheese for lunch (there was “salami” to add to the mix now too, but I thought it looked a little too slimy to be willing to try it). We then retired to the pool where I accidentally took a nap while streched out on the pool chair (oh, how I hope I’m not sunburned!) When I woke up, I convinced Dustin to take a walk up and down the beach with me.

There is only so far you can walk in either direction. To the south, even if you dodge around the jetties, you eventually come to a field of beautiful rounded boulders that completely replace the sandy beach. To the north, there is a jut of cliff that sticks way out into the water. The whole place is much more cliff-y/mountain-y than I expected. Our condo building is 10 stories. The first story lets out onto the beach, the 5th story lets out onto the street on the other side, and our rooms, on the 8th floor, look across the street into the lower bits of a mountain covered with palm trees. Pretty cool. Even the beach slopes down into the water much more steeply than any other beach I’ve ever visited.

After wallowing in the bathwater-temperature pool for awhile, we dragged ourselves back upstairs and I set to making dinner while Dustin went back to work. The theory for dinner was tacos, since we’d picked up FRESH tortillas and tortilla chips at the Toritilla Factory in town, but I discovered that the only spices in the entire joint were salt and pepper. I should have expected as much, but I’m spoiled with my own over-stocked spice cabinet at home, and didn’t even think about it while we were at the grocery store. This is what I came up with, and it wasn’t half bad:

ground beef
tomatoes (however many)
onion (about one)
garlic (the more the merrier)
jalepeno (one is more than enough)
mystery yellow pepper (which we made Dustin taste-test first to make sure it wasn’t Death-on-a-Stick)
pineapple vinegar (a few good splashes – why pineapple you ask? why not!)
ketchup (a little squeeze’ll do ya)
picante sauce (shake, two, three, four)
salt, pepper

I sauteed up all the veggies together with some vinegar, browned the meat separately, then added them to the same pan. Added a little ketchup and picante sauce to juice it up a bit, eh voila. It was a little bland – I would have loved some chili powder and cumin – but entirely passable. With fresh tortillas and a pile of cheese, it was a right respectable meal.

And now I’m writing up my blog and listening to the waves crash outside. They’re really loud.

Tomorrow’s schedule includes more swimming in the pool, kicking around in the waves, reading of books, and trying of the mango I bought today. I’ll also try to get some pictures I can put up. But not of me. My hair has gone totally poof-tastic in the humidity.

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Puerto Vallarta Day One: Evil Alarms and Fresh Margritas

Something about being on a beach makes me want to write. It probably started on Topsail Island, where I was in my phase of compulsive journaling and continued on Tybee Island where keeping a journal was an assignment. I equate beaches with writing and so that’s what I’m in the mood to do tonight. Since I have not kept a regular personal journal since I started keeping a blog, you’ll have to forgive me if I start waxing dangerously poetic. (Also, I’m on my second margarita of the evening.)

I am on vacation! I started the day thinking that nothing – not even vacation – could be worth the pain of waking up at 4:00am after going to bed sometime after midnight. Of course, now that the ordeal of traveling is concluded, I feel much better about my sacrifice.

We are currently visiting Dustin’s grandmother, Bonnie, in Puerto Vallarta. She had rented a condo here for the three most dreadful months of South Dakota winter, and as she is a very social creature, it would be unkind to leave her alone for all three of those months. She has carefully scheduled many visitors who will fill up nearly her entire stay down here. We are round three.

We arrived in Puerto Vallarta at about 2:00 today and were driven to Punta Negra by a maniac cab driver who was pretty sure we had underpaid for our ride (apparently, from the airport, you pay in advance). I have come to terms with the fact that cab drivers are, as a rule, maniacs. I’ve had a few very harrowing rides where I spent the entire time digging my nails into my companion’s arm and fearing for my life, but since then I’ve learned to relax. You really never hear news stories about horrible taxicab diasters, so I guess the maniacs must be very good at what they do.

Bonnie’s place is exactly what I expected: a pre-furnished vacation unit decorated very traditionally. It has wonderful huge windows and sliding doors and little balconies all over the place. Everything is tiled – floors, walls, counters – to keep the water and sand as manageable as possible. It is on the 8th floor, which provides a wonderful view of the ocean (which is close enough that I could probably dive from the back balcony at high tide at make it with no problem). Pelicans frequent the area, as do crabs, I understand, though I’ve yet to see any of those for myself.

I started my afternoon by hanging out by the pool with Bonnie while poor Dustin tried to finish the project that he wanted to have done before we ever left. The pool is probalby 85 degrees, and I splashed around, happy as the proverbial clam, until I got shrivelly and hungry and decided to get out.

My goal for the week is to do as much of nothing as I can get away with. In fact, updating my blog is hopefully the most ambitious thing I will accomplish. Maybe I’ll try to learn a little more about the area – the geography looks absolutely fascinating – and I will read books. I brought five. I would love to finish them all. They are all easy paperbacks and I feel like doing nothing so much as laying around in the sun (copiously slathered in 30spf sunblock) and devouring my books.

Tomorrow I think we’ll go over to the market, which is also a lovely thing. We’ll need to do some cooking for Bonnie while we’re here. Eating and vacation simply go together. I’m already in love with the fresh made tortilla chips and salsa (I even discovered the guacamole isn’t so bad) and I squeezed limes for fresh margaritas tonight too. Whew, speaking of which, dinner isn’t on yet, and I feel like another nap. I blame the 4am thing.

So off I go. Hopefully there will be a few more updates while I’m here. Don’t be too jealous – when I’m done, I have to go back to work to confront the Wrath of the Tax Lady.

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Extra Tacky Year-In-Review Letter

Tis the season to receive letters from your far-flung friends and family telling you all about what they, their children, and their pets have accomplished during the past year. I really enjoy this time-honored tradition, since it is frequently the only time I get news from people who haven’t been sucked into Facebook yet.

And there is something extra special about the year-in-review letters, something about trying to sum up your life for people who you hardly care about that causes you to do very strange things, such as narrate the letter from the perspective of the family dog, or the newborn baby. Better yet are the letters that seem to be narrated by absolutely no one, referring to all the members of the family in the third person, as if they’ve hired a reporter to document life at home.

The star of this year’s collection is a letter which detailed how the new puppy got sick and required surgery, after which the vet divulged that the source of the illness was a couple pairs of fancy panties that the dog gobbled down, and would you like to have those back?

Awesome.

And now I’m going to transcend a new level of tackiness by posting my Year-In-Review letter here on my blog rather than sitting down and handwriting envelopes and taking them to the post office. I always mean to do that, but my good intentions never actually make it to the post office. If I don’t do this, I probably won’t do anything. Maybe next year.

Laura, Dustin and Minou: 2008

Hello friends and family! It has been an exciting and eventful year in the Floyd household.*

Dustin and I have spent the last year+ learning American Sign Language, a skill at which we are both becoming increasingly adept. We are capable of interpreting talks up to 30 minutes on a fairly impressive range of topics. Starting this year, we will begin focusing less on interpretation and more on using the language for conversation and discussion. I find this exciting but also a little frightening. We took a field trip to Denver in September to attend a one-day convention held specifically for the deaf community, and I felt lost and totally adrift all day. I guess that’s why I need to do more work dealing in ASL without anything audible to fall back on. Yikes!

Early in the spring, I undertook to participate in the first theatrical production to take place in the Deadwood Opera House since the place burned down 25 years ago. I fulfilled my dreams of stardom in the role of Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof. It was a fantastic amount of fun, even though our opening performance was canceled by a record-setting snowfall on the 1st of May. Dustin got roped into running the spotlight, so he got to be involved too. The final performance was for a standing-room-only crowd, which made everyone involved very happy. I look forward to finding out what they’re planning to do for the coming year. Rumors say Grease. I hope they’re wrong. :p

Since, in the course of rehearsals, I spent my anniversary pretending to marry another man, we headed to Vegas for a belated anniversary trip in May. The warm and sun were lovely, the shows entertaining, and the million miles of walking between casinos was a good work out.

In June, I got to spend a week working as a Real Live Archaeologist for the Deadwood Archaeology Camp. It was a lot of fun. Myself, two other archaeologists, a handful of counselors, and 26 kids started excavating the site where an ice house once stood. We found bricks, nails, chunks of wood, shiny rocks, caterpillars, and all sort of other indicators of civilization long past. (It’s just as well that I don’t work with kids every day… the caterpillar thing might eventually have done me in.)

August saw Dustin and I escaping the insanity of Rally Week on a road trip to Washington DC driving a very small car. We took our time, drove the backroads, and finally spent a few days with my folks in DC. We didn’t do many of the things tourists are supposed to do. Seeing the FDR monument and part of a concert on the Mall were the extent of our outings, but we did discover a bakery that makes the best macaroons ever, and we got to visit our friend Scott from college, who is a Big DC Wahoo-In-Training. It was a nice trip.

After a long, lovely fall, winter arrived with face-slapping suddenness, catching all the trees still wearing their leaves and wreaking havoc with the roads and power lines. November brought one of the earliest big blizzards in my personal memory of the Hills, trapping us in our house for a couple of days. We couldn’t get out at all until our very gracious neighbors lent a hand, since ALL the snow in the neighborhood had blown into our driveway and our shovel broke.

We escaped the freezing cold for awhile when we flitted over to California to visit my grandparents. The weather was rainy, but compared to great drifts of snow, no problem! We toured around San Fransisco and got plump on my grandmother’s incredible cooking. It was wonderful.

That brings me to how I’ve spent the last couple months of the year, which is in a flurry of fiction-writing. I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo, an event which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. And no, despite my father’s total bafflement, no one actually reads the final product once you’re done. There’s no chance of me getting Discovered and becoming an overnight gazillionaire because of my brilliant work. (Even if someone DID read the NaNoWriMo manuscripts, there would be no chance of anyone calling what I wrote brilliant.) I completed my 50k words in the nick of time, then promised myself I’d finish the novel (50k words got me about 75% of the way there) in December, which I did not do. Maybe in January!

In Dustin news that doesn’t involve me being attached to his hip, he has taken over part of the family business, and despite the crappy economy, has managed to help scrounge up a good share of new business. Next stop: an office in Scotland. (Okay, so that isn’t in the official plans yet, but heck… optimism: pass it on!)

Minou has also been keeping plenty busy. She spent all her summer days running amok outside, escaping our yard to pick fights with the neighbor cats or sleep under the neighbor’s porch. She refuses to tell us why our porch isn’t good enough. Now that the weather is cold again, she has completely forgotten that cold = not going outside, and spends most of her days complaining about being cooped up. She doesn’t even seem to mind the snow very much, frolicking from drift to drift, just happy that we decide to let her out now and then.

Things that have not happened this year: I have not had any babies (nor are there any in the works, sorry); no personal or family disasters (thank goodness); no long-lost twins discovered (oh well). I expect 2009 will be equally full of joy and happiness and blah blah blah.

I hope the year was, on the balance, also good for all of you who might be reading this.

*I believe this opening sentence is legally stipulated somewhere. Exclamation point optional.

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For My Brother

It has been very subtly brought to my attention that I’ve been slacking off on updating my Sign Blog. That may be true… I’ve been slacking off on a lot of things lately. For now, I’m not going to try to keep up with the sign blog, but I do find so many good signs, I can’t not post them. So I’ll just put them here. Stay tuned.

Here’s three good ones from recently. Dedicated to Tommy.

“NO THONGS Except on Feet”

This gem comes from Pier 39 in San Francisco. I definitely appreciate the regulation, especially since I think the picture on their sign shows a little more coverage than a tiny thong in a fat world actually provides.

“SATAN 08: the lesser of three evils”

Hahahaha!! I think this is really funny. It was stuck to a garbage can, also in San Francisco. Disclaimer: this is not my personal opinion.

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

And finally, what might be the funniest sign in the history of ever:

Do you get it?? Hold on, let me give you a close up:

“Street Cleaning: All Vehicles Off Street, Or Will Be Towed.”

Seriously dude. Someone scrubbed that street WAY too hard.

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I Brought the Rain to California (You’re Welcome)

Actually, it’s a family condition. My grandparents are also followed around by unusual weather. It works like this: in the places we usually live, we do not affect the weather at all. If we go to visit each other, the weather in the visited location changes for the worse. This usually means that when my grandparents come to visit us in South Dakota, it blizzards. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is.

But more recently, Dustin and I went to visit them in California, and though it hasn’t rained there since last March, it spent four of the five days of our visit pouring. Poor grandma was beside herself.

In any case, I spent the last five days in California visiting my grandparents, and I had a wonderful time despite the weather. We used to visit every summer for about three weeks, and it was my favorite part of the summer. We always visited a few spots of interest (Santa Cruz, Sea World, Great America, various other parks and touristy sites), but often we stayed around the house and did the things you’re supposed to do with grandparents: played in the yard, went for bike rides, went swimming, did crafty hobby things, played computer games. My grandpa owned the first computer I ever used. How many people can say they learned how to use a computer from their grandpa? Pretty cool.

I haven’t been back since I graduated from high school. I miss it. There is something special about grandparents’ houses, I think. No matter how old you are, they make you feel like a child again. You know you’re in a place where someone will take care of you and feed you wonderful food and entertain you and you don’t have to worry about stupid grownup stuff like work and bills and cleaning toilets. Happiness.

Since I brought my husband along for this ride, though, it seemed best not to try and spend all my time sitting around the house soaking up my grandparents’ attentions. He’s never been to California, so I had to show the place off a little, even though it was raining.

We visited several of the wineries in the Livermore valley, which I’ve never done before (never having been to California while of legal drinking age before). That actually turned out to be a really lovely day, and we got a couple nice bottles of wine. The above picture is from the Concannon winery.

The Golden Gate Bridge is lovely this time of the year, n’est-ce pas?

We spent a lot of time in San Fransisco, checking out the town and the shopping and the bridges. We thought about going to Alcatraz, but it was raining so much, in the end I’m pretty glad we didn’t try very hard. (Alcatraz is actually somewhere in the background of the picture below.)

We took a driving tour through Tamalpias State Park, looking for some big trees to oogle, but it was so cloudy and wet that day, we couldn’t see much at all. Still a nice drive. We went to see Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge, but it was closed for retrofitting the day we were there. So we watched the waves and then moved on.

We drove down Highway 1 to have lunch by the ocean, and the views were stunning, though somewhat wetter than usual. The below picture is from Half Moon Bay.

Next time, we’ll go back in the summer. We’ll plan a little better so we can hit some of the big parks (Kings Canyon is on my list) and beaches, and soak up a little more sun. But until then, I’ll happily take this does of California.

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