Friday. Hooray. Monday and Tuesday are all that's left of summer school.
Picked Flynn up this afternoon and we went to Burger King (lousy food) and then to the bowling alley. It was fun. I actually hit the pins most of the time without using the bumpers too much... then we stopped @ Plough Boys and the butcher shop and then headed home.
Whacked the blower to get it to work. I had Sears out in the springtime to check on that very thing. Fuck fuck fuck. It's erratic. I want the system to function without beating on its housing to get its attention.
e-mail to Boxington:
Well, what about the Sawdust Festival?
http://www.sawdustartfestival.org/
If you're here the 2nd through the 7th it will still be open (until the 5th, I believe). Laguna Beach was once an "artist's colony" and is now chock-full of "executive homes" -- worker bees commute from inland valleys, I think. Anyway, the Sawdust Festival might be fun. What do you WANT to do when you're here? Is the DJF/190 thing going to be a major bringdown? Isn't 19 below the legal drinking age..?
If I might pry a bit, were you two an item or a proto-item or just pals or what? ie how disappointed/pissed off are you going to be when you hit our little border town?
Maybe just a posh seaside restaurant in Del Mar (pricey/exclusive beach town)..? Will you have a car? Driving is not a lot of fun here (or anywhere, I guess) -- but it's not Boston or San Francisco or a genuine nightmare.
Hemet is a pickup-truck type of town in the mountains. Oceanside is a hard area in San Diego right next to Camp Pendleton, the enormous Marine base which is the only land left open between the Mexican border and above Santa Barbara -- it's all one colossal suburb, basically.
If you're going to visit Mexico, drive to Ensenada (it's all superhighway) and avoid Tijuana entirely. You'll need specific Mexico auto insurance if you drive across the border.
There's an architecturally interesting shopping mall called Horton Plaza downtown, but it's just another grimy urban shopping mall. Balboa Park is interesting, lots to see and all kinds of special events. Wow, you're here NEXT WEEK!!! Maybe I can find a copy of The Reader and send it to you so you can read it on the plane. It's the best weekly city paper I've ever seen. The LA Reader is a seedy, ugly mess IMHO and similar papers in Alabama and Georgia aren't on the same level. It really is an invaluable resource. The daily paper in town is hysterically conservative with starch in its underwear. It's a Navy town, it's a border town... it never developed like LA and San Diego has never come to terms with that. It's a small town government shot through and through like you wouldn't believe with corruption. Having lived all my life in the satellite cities to LA, moving here ten years ago and realizing what a fucking backwater San Diego is was a genuine surprise and a real disappointment. You'd think with two big universities and being a California beach town that they'd be more... *life* here.
I think that the kids would flip if I had a friend I was going to hang out with. I'm not as concerned about them as I am about the eventually-going-to-be-ex-spouse, who is an inpatient once again at the local huge mental health facility. If she could be affected by my doing something earth-shaking, like going to lunch, I'd defer until next time. OTOH it could be a good excuse to drag the kids out to do something. I dragged them off to a museum and lunch a couple of times so far this year and it hasn't so much as slowed them down, much less killed them.
I just wish they'd consent to going to the good tropical fish store in La Mesa, south of San Diego proper. Last year I started taking care of a goldfish my son had acquired for a Cub Scout project. I'd always been interested in getting an aquarium, and by the end of last summer I had a 40-gallon tank with many small colorful fish. I really like going to the good fish store. I think the kids just want to make sure that I don't have a good time.
Anyway. I'm in blog mode. Sorry for rambling. I will try and find a copy of The Reader and send it ASAP.
On Jul 29, 2005, at 12:15 PM, Gail Warnings wrote:
Old Town sounds fine with me. The Italian place is in Ocean Beach,
the hippie-throwback section of town. Now, who is DJH? Did you meet
them on the board or @ one of the conventions? Are they a Rochester
alum, also?
You mean DJF? That would be DrvnkenJ@ckFlask, a/k/a Tim O'C0nnell, who apparently at 40 is having a relationship with 190 pr00f, a/k/a Meg@n, who is 19, after I had arranged to come visit him many, many months ago (what an asshole I am). I met him at the first convention in Vegas, when I was still going out with T0ny a/k/a M@yhem. I hate everyone who lives in R0chester, BTW-- no desire to get together with any of them.
Anyway, Old Town is good. I'm glad it looks like you're available to get together-- I definitely want to meet as many people as I can while I'm out there. Maybe we could even get together with S@vage-- she is in Hemet but says she visits Oceanside sometimes.
San Diego I'm sure is beautiful-- everyone who has ever been there can't talk enough about how great it is and how the weather is perfect.
"If you don't expect too much from me, you won't be let down" Gin Blossoms
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