Recreation


Mr. W and I drove up to San Simeon with no hotel accomodations made ahead of time. This is the first time I’ve traveled like that, but we got lucky. The San Simeon Pines Resort, which happens to be a place my judge recommended, had one room left, but for that night only. The front desk lady said because it’s a resort with its private beach, woods, golf course, pool, clubhouse, shuffleboard, etc., people book the place up months in advance for their vacations. Minutes after we snatched that room up (for less than $100! lodge-style rooms with private fireplaces were like $104. What a steal.), the front desk had to reject room requests over the phone and she lit up the “no” on the “vacancy” sign.

I was recently informed by 2 friends who don’t use Internet Explorer as their web browser that my captions don’t pop up when they rest their mouse pointer over my photos. If you’re running Netscape or Foxfire, you can right-click on the photo and drag down to “see alternate text” or something like that.

The Golf Course:
one of the many rustic rusty artifacts of farmlife around the grounds

taking photos at the golf course.  this windmill reminds me of Willa Cather.

This is the photo I was taking as depicted in the above photo.  The beach is over yonder.

On the Private Beach:
looking down at the rocky private beach

'Hello, Mr. Giant.'

snapping away in the background

it got too hard to walk around the rocks and tidepools with flip flops, so I took mine off around Mr. W's.

How many of you have the 'Wheel of Fortune' tune playing in your head now?

I need a little time to process my photos to blog about Hearst Castle this past weekend. In a nutshell, we drove up Friday afternoon, stayed on the edge of Cambria and San Simeon that night, went to the Hearst tours in the morning, took lots of pictures (that turned out a bit hazy cuz it was SO foggy and overcast, but it felt really good after the heat wave back at home), hung out in Cambria for dinner, stayed in San Simeon beachside Saturday night, and on Sunday, we drove back making detours through Santa Barbara and of course, Solvang for its Danish pastries.

I’d also like to say, my bailiff’s on vacation in Yosemite with his fiance these couple of weeks, and I’ve had a new bailiff in here whom I *love*. =) She is wonderful. So I’m happy to be back at work today, too.

We went to every show, every ride, saw lots of exhibits, and got soaked in various attractions (wettest to damp order: Shipwreck Rapids ride, soak zones, Journey to Atlantis ride, R.L. Stine’s Haunted Lighthouse 4-D movie), got out just before 11pm, and were pooped! We weren’t the only ones:
seal, I guess.  I don't know the difference between a seal and a sea lion.

another one of those sea lion/seal thingies.

my cat sometimes sleeps like this...tucked away in a stone crevice...

you can't tell in this picture, but the bear is so cute with the tip of his paw dipped in cool water

(Rest mouse pointer over photos for captions)

Pink Flamingo exhibit. Can you spot the egg and the baby flamingo?
I could NOT get the Three's Company theme song out of my head when I saw the flamingos.  'Come and knock on our door'...

The Sea Lion and Otter Show: “Clyde and Seamore’s Risky Rescue” :
Seamore arguing with his trainer, whom the sea lion just pushed into the water.

Otter serving up soda.  Sea World is a very Pepsi park.  The only cola they serve is Pepsi and Diet Pepsi.

Cirque de la Mer:
mini Cirque du Soleil production 'stage'

Pets Rule! show:
Hammy the pig running through a brick wall that other animals jumped over

dog jumping rope with his trainer

One of the aquariums had catfish:
Meowr!

The Dolphin Discovery Show:
Holy leapin' dolphins, Batman!

My favorite show was the nighttime Sea Lion & Otter Show, which is a Saturday Night Live-ish spoof of all the other shows in the Park:
Ha ha ha!  You'd be laughing too, if you were at the show.

The Wild Arctic exhibit:
Look at that big paw!

'Did someone open a bottle of Coca Cola over there?'  The bears are craving Coke at this Pepsi park.
When I used to play Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. game (or was it Bubble Bobble?), there was a white whale villain named “Baluba.” I never knew it was the breed of an actual whale.
Baluba whales have lots of blubber!

When talking about visiting SeaWorld, what most commonly comes to mind is the world-famous killer whale, Shamu. Here is the new killer whale show, “Believe”:
Shamu (?) leaping
I’m not sure if this is Shamu or Baby Shamu, but I like the unique bent top dorsal fin.
quicksilver arc
You know the first 12 rows of these shows are labeled the “Soak Zone?” Here’s why:
airborne orca; what goes up...

...must come down!  And the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and the bigger the splash.
Take a bow, the show is over!
Tah dah!!!
Guess where we were seated:
That's right.  In the Soak Zone.
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I’m waiting for Mr. W so that we can go visit Shamu and otters. I’m all slathered in sunblock. “Should I wear tennis shoes or flip flops?” I asked, thinking about all the walking and wetness involved.
“Well,” he said, “Tennis shoes get wet, but sometimes we’d have to run.”
“Why?”
“‘Cuz sometimes I’d have to run to get from one show to the next.”
“… Oh my gawd, you’re one of THOSE geeks. I refuse to run in sandals.”
“*laughing* All right, we won’t run.”

I bet we will. =P

I gave Mr. W a Motorola Razr V3 for his bday, which led to much of the weekend spent with him playing with his phone via his laptop via the Bluetooth connection. He transferred address book entries, downloaded and cropped MP3s to transfer to his cell via Bluetooth to use as ring tones, transferred photos he took while in Alaska and some from Disneyland to use as caller ID tags or phone wallpapers. Such is the life when one dates a techie. I’m happy he’s enjoying the features on his new phone, even tho it did bring about a slew of cussing about the defects of networking. Well, that was bday present #1. Bday present #2 is a 2-day pass to Sea World. We’re going this Saturday. Luckily, the 2 days don’t have to be used consecutively, so we have until the end of May next year to go again. I’m really looking forward to Shipwreck Rapids floating river ride, R.L. Stine’s Haunted Lighthouse 4-D show, and the Journey to Atlantis water coaster ride. I’m only slightly concerned with getting my stuff wet. My bailiff, who went to Sea World this past Saturday and brought me back a map and schedule, suggested I just bring a plastic Ziploc bag to hide the camera and electronics in when necessary. Mr. W gets to play with his new camera and maybe, just maybe, we’ll have photos as impressive as Jordan’s (who recently went to the Sea World in Florida).

For the life of me, I can’t remember what we did on Saturday, but on Sunday, we went to an amazing champagne brunch at the Anaheim White House with the very generous gift certificate that Navy Girl Vanessa gave me when she moved out of my house. We’d never been there before, but the food and presentation were so impressive that he said, “How do I get rich so I can eat like this all the time?”
Mr. W's seafood mousse crepes and my sparerib meat

more of the same

my artsy mashed potatoes and veggies hiding in the crackers

And then after brunch, Mr. W and I went to visit my parents, where we hung out for like 7 hours before going out to a Taiwanese dinner with them. Yummy greasy “street” food! Ah, childhood memories…

Last nite, I redeemed Karen’s birthday dinner offer. I met up with her at her Santa Monica apartment, so that I could also visit Dozer…
Dozer dozing in his cat bed
who is my cat Dodo…
Dodo, a dear, a FELINE dear‘s older brother.
Scottish Fold cats are very inbred and therefore have genetic vulnerability to many health problems. Don’t make me get into them. We love the Do-brothers, as Karen called them once. The above are the 2 most recent photos taken of the brothers, thru my new cameraphone. (rest mouse over the cats to make them chase it! just kidding, it’ll just bring out a caption.)

We had dinner at a new Spanish tapas restaurant called Tasca in Beverly Hills. Her best friend Jose of nearly 2 decades met up with us there. The chemistry between the two of them is hilarious. They are so night-and-day, but so in sync, that they totally play off each other. The earliest example I can think of is when Karen wore a Windex T-shirt to school in high school, and Jose happened to be wearing a plain white T-shirt. They looked at each other, and Jose took a big marker and drew a window on the front of his T-shirt. And the two walked around together all day like that. (I may have gotten the details on that story confused, so feel free to correct me, Karen.) Anyway, dinner was fun and delicious. We all took turns ordering small plates, and ended up sharing something like 7 small plates and 2 desserts. The Argentinian owner was very nice and service-oriented. Karen assured him we’d be back.

Thanks for the birthday dinner, Karen!

Mr. W assembled a really amazing slideshow with special effects and rotating photos and Louis Armstrong singing “When You Wish Upon A Star”, with the photos he took (and doctored on an advanced version of Photoshop) of my 30th at Disneyland’s 50th. I’ve got a CD-Rom for everyone who attended, but here are some random photos. It’s really too bad I was bloated that day, but it was so hot I couldn’t wear enough fabric to cover up…
(rest mouse over photo for caption)
Bet you can’t tell that Sandy and Alex (white t-shirts in the middle, top row) were photoshopped in from another photo:
most of us (well, the ones who were there on time at 10a) just inside the entrance
That tattoo was not on my arm. It was photoshopped in from an image at the entrance to the building of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride:
sunning among the sunflowers at the end of Main St.
Yes, we spent money on Pirates headgear. Sandy’s cowboy hat and my tiara was a gift from Sandy’s boyfriend, and my Pirate Princess mouse ears hat was a gift from Mr. W:
childhood friend Sandy and me in line for the Pirates ride
Vicky’s wearing a San Diego Rock-n-Roll Marathon ’06 t-shirt. Thanks for your support for her very first marathon, ever! Ignore all the pink I happen to have on, I swear I’m not normally a “pink” person. The rude Happy Bunny tank, a gift from Vanessa, says “A makeover? You should be run over.”
childhood friend Vicky and I on Main St. while everyone else was doing the scavenger hunt
Some of us walking. All of us drenched after Splash Mountain. Everyone in this photo is with the group:
L-R: Vanessa, Mark, Lisa, Josh, Chance, Vicky, me
We’d separated, and Mr. W and I went exploring on Tom Sawyer’s Island. Here is some other portions of the group riding Tom and Huck’s raft to get to the Island:
My friends are too nice; they should've shoved the kids overboard so they could be in front.
Me waiting at the shore to greet them on the Island:
this is literally how I greeted them: 'Hello, you bunch of FOBs!  Welcome to my country.'

Ah, the many variations of headgear. Mark got me the paper birthday hat that has another set of pop-out Mickey ears. So in that photo, I had 6 ears. “I have many (y)ears on me ‘cuz I just turned 30,” I told people. It was a very good day. =)

I finally went to jujitsu again! It was a beginner’s class so there was a lot of standing around as people learned how to set up a hip throw, but in the warmups and ab exercises, I got worked. It was also a good 85 degrees Fahrenheit in the room. Mr. W said that people there would be upset that I didn’t show up for the last 3 months and they’d disown me for the Hawaii trip, and I told him, “Nah. They’ll welcome me with open arms.” And that’s what happened with the returning students. It was also Vanessa’s first day back, and Josh was there, so it was a lot of fun.

After class, those of us who’ve been around the class for awhile and have become friends went out to Chomp! sushi for my bday. Yes, again. It was a really good time, lots of laughing and goofing off. I’d post the details of the night, but I don’t think it’d be good for my karma.

*** LATER ***
Navy Girl Vanessa’s email to me:
“I don’t think it’s bad karma to blog about [Creepy Guy]. If you knew he was going to read it and you wanted to hurt his feelings then that would definitely qualify for bad karma, but you are just journaling your feelings, so need need for karma to come back.”

I already told her that I’m gonna blame it on her, so here we go…
There’s this creepy guy in our jujitsu class whom I’ve mentioned on a few earlier blog entries. The first time he met me he thought it’d be good to walk around with his shirt off and try to start up a conversation with me. Subsequent to that, Vanessa had an experience where she was hugging people hello or goodbye and he planted himself there so without much thought, she included him on the hugs. After that, for a long time, he tried to hug her every time he saw her. Someone else told us that he “accidentally” grabbed another female student’s breast during practice. When I was chatting with a student about taking Mr. W to a future performance of Cirque du Soleil’s “Quidam” and the student was telling me his recommendation of “Quidam,” Creepy Guy kept interrupting the conversation and following me around asking me about when I was going and saying how he wants to go, too. For days.
So anyway, last nite, Creepy Guy was on his way out the door after class but overheard someone mentioning going out for my bday. He came back and announced he was hungry, and asked everyone where we’re going. Damn. We all acted indecisive, but he wouldn’t leave. So we had to decide on the plans with him having planted himself under our noses. Vanessa had to go run some errands so she bailed out. Josh, however, totally took one for the team.
Chomp! seated us at a semi-circular booth and Creepy Guy got in first. I was like, “Frick, that means he’s gonna be in the middle.” No one moved to sit after that, cuz either way you slide in, you’re gonna be next to Creepy Guy. But then Josh got in, I clambered in behind him, and then one of the blackbelts, Ramon, got in the other side. Whew. Josh complained afterwards that Creepy Guy’s breath stunk and he wouldn’t shut up. HAHA! Creepy Guy’s not a bad person, but…
Oh yeah, and afterwards as we were about to separate outside, Ramon got up and hugged me again. I saw Ramon moving toward me and look like he was gonna hug me, and my immediate panicked thought was, “Now there’s gonna be a hug chain and Creepy Guy’s gonna hug me, too! ACK!” And that is just how it happened. Ramon hugged me, wished me happy bday and apologized again for forgetting, Rebecca then hugged me, and then Creepy Guy stepped up, and then another blackbelt Lee, and Josh and I walked off since we parked next to each other. Of course the first thing he did was bust up laughing at me. As we walked off, Creepy Guy said pointedly, “I guess I’ll walk home.” We just kept walking, and apparently the 2nd instructor Lee offered Creepy the ride. Josh said, “THANKS, LEE!” I’m sure Creepy didn’t know what the thanks was for, but Lee did and grimaced. Vanessa said that that’s how Creepy tagged along for Ramon’s birthday celebration, too; saying the same hinting thing and suggesting that someone give him a ride. Gerardo took the hit that day, not wanting any of us girls to give him a ride home.

Now I must cleanse my karma.

*** STILL LATER ***
I just added a photo onto my Disneyland post.

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