Saturday

The weather has been pretty normal for SD since we've been here. Morning overcast and nice days as it burns off. The coast has been foggier, though, so not really beach weather. Saturday we met with Gary P. and Stephen and Zina and played miniatue golf at Boomers in El Cajon. Lots of fun. Afterwards, we went to a decent sit down Mexican restaurant in downtown El Cajon, called Por Favor. Laurie's sister Linda met us there and we ate. After that everyone went their own way and Laurie and I went to Pacific Beach and strolled along the beach. There is this place called Crystal Pier that has been there since the 40s or longer. It has these bungalows along the pier where you can rent and the rest of the pier usd to be for the private use of the renters. It's open now for the public and we walked out to the end of the pier and watched the surfers below waiting for their waves to come in. After the sun sank into the ocean we left the beach and drove down Garnet to where all the beach night life was. We strolled through some shops and rested at this local pub with outside tables and ate some rolled tacos and margaritas. A very nice day and evening. I promise to post some pictures after I get home on my computer. Really.

Vacation.....Gotta Get Away

I wonder if this is what the Go-gos meant? Thanksgiving was fun, and we all ate a lot. Most of Laurie's family was there and everybody behaved. Later we played Mexican train and had dessert. Just a typical holiday, but we haven't been home for this time of year since we moved to ND so it was kind of special. Friday Laurie and I went to Old Town and walked around a looked at the shops. It has kind of grown up. It was always a tourist draw, but now it's more apparently commercial. Not bad though. Walking down the street, we passed the Whaley House, a landmark and famous haunted house. We didn't feel like going in this time. Later we passed the Chuck Jones gallery and found it pretty amazing. There were a lot of Dr. Suess paintings on display as well as Jones' work from his Warner Bros. days and his work on Dr. Suess' animated stories like the Grinch. There was also some great work by a few other artists. One amazing set of paintings and scuptures were by Markus Pierson. His work is centered on this coyote character. It's ahrd to explain, the work is kind of dark but not negative. A lot of hope, dreams, and love. I'd suggest visiting the CJ Gallery website or Pierson's to see more. They are really amazing. After all this we walked around the Old Town Square and saw some great shops as well as a Wells Fargo exhibit. Pretty cool. We met later with Gary and had dinner at Chevy's in Mission Valley. An okay restaurant. They don't serve shredded beef so that was disapointing and the Carnitas (hsredded pork) was a bit fatty. I thought it was better last time when we went there about two years ago. Oh well. I'll try to post a bunch of pictures soon. Later.