Chet Reads & Writes*

Girlfriend and I flew out of Houston Thursday night on the last plane to San Diego. We waited on stand-by for 3.5 hours. I had a reserved seat on the flight, she did not. It was very nerve racking for the both of us. We were terrified that Hurrican Ike had ruined our plans, and even more terrified at the thought of having to drive back to Huntsville. However due to a very kinda stewardess, we made it onto the plane. It was a great flight, we both slept through the majority of it since it was kind of a late flight. We landed safely in San Diego at about 10:20 local time. The two hour time difference is nothing to deal with, except I have some family back in Texas having issues with it.

We went to the San Diego Zoo on Friday. This place is awesome! We took a lot of pictures, but due to complications we had to buy a disposable camera, and we haven’t developed the photos yet. As soon as I get those done they will be up! We got to see the Pandas, Polar Bears, Galapagos Tortoises, Komodo Dragons, Okapi, Sun Bears, this list could seriously go on for a long time. We had a blast at the zoo! We even got to go on a bus tour which was fun, and take the sky trolley across the zoo twice! That was intense, I’m usually not into heights, but that day I decided to just go for it! We left the zoo about ten minutes after they were asking everyone to leave. In the toy shop they had a stuffed hedgehog that I contemplated buying for Layla, but didn’t. After the zoo we went to Wal-Mart. I can never seem to escape that place, even when in a different state. We bought snack foods and stuff like that. We met a very kind person that let us in on some local secrets, about different areas that was kind of them. While at Wal-Mart we attempted to remedy our camera situation. After purchasing one disposable camera for $13.00, we needed something else. We bought a Digital Photograpy for Dummies camera for $30.00. This is the most crap-tastic camera ever. I’ll post some of the photos we took with it, and you will see. However it did get us through an afternoon of picture taking, and the pictures are decent enough.

At this point we had been taking cabs everywhere we needed to go, but that was getting ridiculous. It cost us almost $40.00 to get to Wal-Mart from the zoo. Cab pricing is messed up in my opinion. I don’t know who chose these seemingly arbitrary numbers, but I think they’re bad numbers. For those of you who don’t know, cabs charge $2.40 as soon as you enter the vehicle, then they charge another $0.20 for every 1/13 of a mile. 1/13? Really? Why? On Saturday we learned about the trolleys and the rest of San Diego’s amazing public transit system.

On Saturday we spent the morning being lazy and watching the tele. We did finally get up though and head over to the Seaport Village. We were told it was a place filled with shops and such, but it was kind of disappointing. There weren’t many shops, but there were some great food joints. There was an artwalk going on that day, where all of these artists had their work out on display and for sale. We bought two painting from a very kind Taiwanese man named Gary Poon. His painting are watercolor on silk, and they’re magnificent. I will post photos of those soon too! We also spent some time at the Fashion Valley Mall on Saturday. We mostly did window shopping, but we also each bought new clothes because we needed something more formal to wear. We then went to see the new Pacino/DeNiro movie Righteous Kill it was a pretty awesome flick. Nice and twisty and such. If you haven’t seen it yet, go do it now.

On Sunday we did more early morning lounging, because that always feels nice. We then went out on the trolley and spent some time at another shopping center. This place however gave me my first In-N-Out Burger experience. The burge was delicious. I even enjoyed their secret sauce or whatever they may call it. The burgers look so small, yet so filling. Not to mention the place is cheap. I ate a burger and fries for less than $5.00, beat that McDonalds. While shopping on this day we purchased a Nintendo DS for ourselves. We’ve been debating this for almost a year now, and decided that it was silly to keep waiting. We then spotted a Radio Shack. I was very disgruntled by the cheapo digital camera we had purchased, so we went in to find a battery charge for girlfriend’s regular camera. Luckily we found one, and it worked great!

Sunday evening was interesting. It started with some nice DS playtime, then moved on to us getting ready for dinner. We had decided on Friday that we were going to go on a dinner cruise out on San Diego Bay. It looked like a lot of fun, and we had a two-for-one coupon! As girlfriend was gettign ready, she decided to paint her toenails. This was going fine and dandy until we realized the crack in the fingernail polish bottle, which occured because of the pressure changes in the plane, was not sealed. There was now a healthy cover of fingernail polish on a box she was using and our rooms carpet. This escalated us both to panic mode! We tried scrubbing it out of the floor with what we had, but eventually gave up, then we got it stuck in the bath tub and sink. This part is awesome! Girlfriend had gotten it on her hand, and while standing up accidentally close her fist. Now her entire palm was a gorgeous pearlescent red, and we had no way to get off except some baby-wipe-like fingernail polish remover wipes. We scrubbed for hal fan hour to get it mostly off, then we had to rush off to our very expensive dinner! As she was putting on her shoes girlfriend realized only one foot had toenail polish on it. That was exciting, and we had no time and no means to remove it, so we went with it anyway.

We made it to the boat with plenty(!) of time to spare. We boarded at 6:30 and all was well. We had out picture taken, we were sat at our reserved window seat, and then everything went to Hell. We were seated next to a very obnoxious couple. They weren’t dating, but they knew each other some how. We could never figure it out. They were loud and very rude to the wait staff. They were on a yacht, for a dinner cruise, and instead of sipping some more refined drink or wine or anything at all, they decided to go fro Jaeger-bombs and shots of Patron. Our steward eventually came to us and whispered that he had an open table across the boat from them. We leapt at this opportunity. After we left them our night was very, very nice! It was a fantastic 3-course meal, and a bottle of champagne for us to share, except I can’t really stand the taste of champagne. WE have lots of pictures from the boat too that I will soon share.

Today is Monday. The conference officially starts today, and we’re busy with that. I don’t know what all I’m going to do today, but we’ll see!