Friends

Apart from the hotel snafu and leaving my meds behind, we had a great time in San Diego.

We started Saturday off by going to a cute little French cafe. Then we went to the Zoo. Sticker shock: Adult admission to the zoo for one day is $80! Holy cow! We rented a wheelchair to push HalfshellHusband around, but he'd still had enough after 3 hours, which was too bad. We covered about half of the zoo— it's huge! But we saw most of the birds, monkeys, and the African section. We never quite found the red pandas, and had to skip the giant pandas because you either pay extra or wait in line for more than an hour to see them. We missed the fossa, which was either indoors or hiding, but saw the serval (which was larger than I expected). We also saw the orangutan baby, the tiny Chinese alligator, and watched hippos snoozing underwater (but didn't realize we missed the chance to see a pygmy hippo! *cries*). The exhibits are large with really nice habitats, and the landscaping is beautiful. I could have spent the entire day there.

We went to dinner at BJ's Brewhouse, and had a monster pizookie for dessert. It was delicious, though our daughter shunned the blue ice cream. I can't really blame her.

Sunday, we went to the La Jolla Shores beach. Parking was a nightmare because EVERYONE was there, both local and people visiting for Spring Break. SO crowded, which was completely new. This doesn't happen in Oregon or Northern California— the weather at the beach is colder, so fewer people go there to hang out all day. Our daughter joined us, and we watched the waves and the little kids and enjoyed the sun.

Dinner was at La Cesarina, our daughter's favorite Italian restaurant. Sticker shock again! But really good food. I had ravioli with mushroom sauce, and HSH had (as usual) the lasagna.

Our daughter had to work quite a bit of Monday, but mid-afternoon we went to a cafe on an ocean bluff where people board hang-gliders to sail out over the beach. That was really neat!



Then we went to see the Padres/Giants baseball game. The stadium was really impressive, with lots of different types of food available. HSH and our daughter opted for hot dogs (what). I passed due to ongoing queasiness. The Padres' fans love them, and it was a great experience. I had qualms during the national anthem, though. The crowd near us was largely Hispanic and very patriotic, and it hurt to see that and know how badly we're treating them.

I'm not much of a baseball fan, so one of the biggest surprises for me was the number of left-handed batters. It seemed to be about 1 in 5, which apparently matches the MLB overall. Interestingly enough, my profession (embedded software engineering) also tends to have that same, higher proportion of left-handers. The new Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system is in play now. The Padres invoked it for one of the pitches, but the umpire was ruled correct. The Giants ultimately won that game (HSH was happy about that), though the Padres got their only two runs in the 9th inning, so it was close!

Our last morning there was Tuesday, and we had brunch at a New Zealand cafe(!) in the heart of downtown. It's our daughter's favorite place for French toast, and we all ordered it. SO good, though I wasn't expecting the cinnamon.

Then it was time to say goodbye, so we could get to the San Diego airport ridiculously early. It's always hard. We really wish our daughter lived closer. After the farewells, we had a slightly convoluted trip to the car rental facility, thanks to a couple of Google Maps glitches. That was a first! But the return went smoothly, and we got to the airport in time to spend about 2 hours sitting at the gate. \o?

It was great, but over much too quickly!

We got back from San Diego on Tuesday night. It was a great trip overall, and wonderful to spend so much time with our daughter. But it got off to a rocky start.

There's a lesson in here about touching bases with your hotel early, though I don't think it would have helped us. When we got to our hotel at 10:00 on Friday night, the desk clerk informed me that they had cancelled our reservation. This was because they had overbooked by 6 rooms, and the manager told her to cancel anything that wasn't pre-paid. Late at night in a strange city is not the time to find yourself without a hotel! The clerk suggested the next hotel over, which fortunately had a room. But ugh. More than the price of my carefully arranged lodging, and we were hit with the smell of mildew smell as soon as we opened the door to our room. By 11:30pm, I was searching for another place to stay for the remaining 3 nights of our trip.

I found one, which was listed as having breakfast and a fitness room. Yay! But no. When we got there on Saturday, a sign noted that they no longer served breakfast and the desk clerk informed me that the fitness room was being renovated. I could not win for losing. Also? More mildew smell when we entered THAT room.

Friday night was also when I realized that I had somehow forgotten to pack my meds. They were all in the 7-day organizer, ready to go, but it was still sitting on the bathroom shelf at home. /o\ It wasn't worth it to hunt down replacements for just 4 days, so I went without instead, but what a stupid mistake. I was also envisioning being ragingly hungry for the duration, since one of the meds and a supplement both suppress appetite and I am otherwise always hungry, so I was dreading that.

Surprise! That didn't happen. Instead, I spent each day feeling swimmy between the ears (vague-headed and with a sensation almost like having my ears randomly pop), getting sudden hot flashes, and riding the border between nausea and hunger. My blood pressure was also low for 3-4 hours each morning, and it was like I couldn't fully wake up. I wondered what I was taking that normally addressed that-- thyroid meds? Antidepressants? It wasn't until a couple of days in that it occurred to me that those might be withdrawal symptoms, rather than part of my base unmedicated state. IDK. But the lack of hotel breakfast also meant I had no coffee! I had to make up the difference with caffeinated diet soda, which... Ullllhhhh. On the plus side, we got to try Blackberry Dr. Pepper! On the minus side, I also stopped enjoying it by the second day.

More on the actual trip in a separate post. I've been busy with work and trying to get caught up with my friends-list now that we're back.