Labor Day Weekend

As you can tell by our post yesterday, Kristy picked an interesting time to visit ... during a heat emergency. Since I picked her up on Friday we have had temperatures around 110 each day. It definitely limits the kinds of things you can do to entertain your guests and the energy you have to do them with. California is not as interesting a place to visit when you can't go outside. Theme parks are out. Gardens and parks are out. Walking and tours are out. Cooking is definitely out. In fact, movement of any kind, well let's just keep that to a minimum.

But we have managed to keep ourselves relatively entertained. I picked Kristy up from the Burbank airport on Friday morning at 8:00 a.m. and was pleased to discover how tiny and convenient it was. From the outside, it looks no bigger than the Eugene airport. And, I gave myself 45 minutes to get there to account for traffic, and it only took 15. Which meant I got to sit in a parking lot for a bit and start on Harry Potter IV. (I've already finished the first three.) From now on, whenever possible, Don and I will definitely try to do most of our flying out of Burbank as opposed to the crazy LAX.

So after picking up Kristy, and getting her back home with a quick tour of the house and greeting of the pups, I had to muster up the energy to head back to work and put in a few hours of face time. This was very difficult as picking up relatives you haven't seen in a long time at the airport definitely puts you into "I've already started my vacation mode." Anyway, work wasn't that bad, I got my month end reports and invoices done, caught up on some email, balanced my checkbook, and played some computer games. In other words, it was very relaxed. So Kristy got to rest up a little bit from her 3:30 a.m. wake up call and then by the time we met up for lunch, my boss said I could pretty much take the rest of the day. So of course I did! We had lunch at the Armenian deli which I am so fond of and was excited to share with Kristy. Then we decided to go to the grocery store and pick up some frozen treats to surprise Don and his staff with at work. Our surprise was greatly received. So we hung out a bit with Don in his office and Kristy got to see where he worked too. As we tried to figure out what to do with the rest of our evening, we decided that we would escape the heat by going out to Sushi for dinner and then renting some movies to watch in our lovely air conditioned home. Unfortunately, we have yet to find a decent Sushi restaurant here in California. So we tried a new place and it was not much better than the others. We left a little disappointed but at least it was better than trying to cook something ourselves.

Thankfully, we had a little bit more success at Blockbuster. We ended up renting Fracture with Ryan Gossling and Anthony Hopkins which we watched Friday Evening. It was a really good movie with some very clever twists and big payoff at the end. I highly recommend it. Also we rented Children of Men which we watched Sunday Night. This was one I had been wanting to see for a while. I would say that the plot was interesting but not totally compelling, and the ending was kind of abrupt and obscure. But some of the shots they got in the movie were really impressive - like continuous single shots that went on for minutes at a time without cutting away. The planning that must have gone into those was truly impressive. We also rented The Good Shepherd which we still need to try and watch today before Kristy has to head back to the airport. Kristy bought some movies as well including Man of the Year with Robin Williams which I have been wanting to see for some time. The premise is that a comedian announces on a farce that he is running for president and then ends up to everyone's surprise getting elected. This movie is worth it alone for the debate scene in which we see a brilliant showcase of the way the elements of truth in comedy can so poignantly address some of the more difficult political problems that people are otherwise afraid to talk about or address openly.

So we did spend a lot of time watching movies this weekend, but we also found a few other things to do as well. Saturday was our big trip to the Santa Monica beach. In order to get the full effect of the day, Kristy and I decided that it would be best to head out in the early morning where it would be easiest to find parking and orient ourselves to the different options before it got too hot and crowded. After the week that Don had and his definite need to catch up on sleep, Don decided to stay behind so he could recooperate a bit and meet up with us later in the afternoon. So Kristy and I arrived at the beach around 9:00 a.m. It was exciting to see how close we actually are to the beach, Santa Monica at least. We are only 10 miles away and with traffic flowing freely it didn't take us more than an easy 15 minutes to get there. Parking was a breeze and we were able to get front row parking right on the pier which made it easy for us to stop back at the car throughout the day to drop things off or grab extra towels, etc.
While it was still cool, we decided we would head up to the street and check out the shops and stuff. We found a little Visitors Kiosk and got some good pamplets and maps with options to check out in the area, but most importlantly we got some good advice on where to go for breakfast. We choose a nice little cafe called the Cafe Crepes. It was hard to select just one thing, everything on the menu looked so delicious and reasonably priced too. In the end, Kristy and I decided on the same thing. We both ordered the breakfast bagette, which was a breakfast sandwich with scrambled Eggs, fresh basil, tomatoe, avocado and bacon served on a fresh whole wheat baguette. It was so delicious, it tasted like everything had come fresh from the garden picked in the last two minutes. Of course we accompanied it with two tall refreshing ice waters.
After we energized up with breakfast, we did a little window shopping along the Promenade which is a fun street with lots of shops.

I say window shopping because both of us were on a spending budget. They had a good mix though of spendy shops with more reasonable priced ones. Also, they had the cleanest most well organized Old Navy I have ever been to. I told Kristy that next time I wanted to go to Old Navy I would drive all the way to the beach and pay for parking just to come to this one. Everything was hanging nicely on the racks where they belonged and the dressing rooms were not a zoo. This even on Labor Day weekend! Also there was a really fun Toy and Hobby store that I would love to go back to some time where we spotted some old childhood favorites - Kristy's old Darth Vador, and the Sylvanian Figurines Terri and I used to collect as kids.


Here is Kristy next to one of the Giant Chia Pet fountains on the Promenade. After we finished touring the shops on the Promenade, we checked out the local Saturday Market where we got some tasty samples of super fresh watermelon, peaches and perfeclty ripe pink grapefruit. We thought about picking up a watermelon but decided it would be dumb to have to carry it a mile back to our car and that we should just stop at the grocery store on the way home.

By the time we got back to the beach it was a much different picture than before we had left it. Kristy commented that this was more people than she had ever seen at the beach in any single place. Looking out for miles, you could see crowds of people every where you looked. We picked out a little spot for ourselves where we layed in the sun for a bit, and then decided that it would be nice and refreshing to to just walk along the shoreline and let our feet get wet.

It was pretty impressive, though there were thousands of people there, nobody got in each others way, there was so much beach that it was easy to find your own spot. It was fun to see all the kids having so much fun in the water, running into the waves and then running away from them, building sandcastles and then seeing them get washed away. There were people speaking all sorts of languages, people sunbathing, people body surfing, people hiding under the shades of their umbrellas. But everyone was there to have a good time and to escape the heat. The cool refreshing water and the blessed fresh air breezes have me itching to go back with friends some time soon. After wading our ankles along the beach for a mile or so, we decided to head up to the pier and check out the fun time options. Standing at the edge of the pier out over the water the breeze was almost cold. It felt awesome! Finally, before we called it a day, we decided to split a funnel cake and spend a few bucks at the arcade. With our four dollars in quarters, we got in a game of air hockey (I won!), fooseball, a couple rounds of the basketball shooting game, and skeeball (I forget who one those ones...;).

It was hard to top our fun at the beach since it is the only place in California that it was cool this weekend. But we did also make it to church on Sunday and tried a new restaurant that I have been interested in called - The Good Earth Cafe - as in the Good Earth Tea that you can buy at the grocery store. Well, this restaurant definitely made up for the Sushi Flop. It was awesome. Again, we had a hard time picking just one thing. It was full of healthy fresh food options and Don and I can't wait to go back. We may have to make a Sunday morning brunch routine of it after church.

If you would like to see more photos of our weekend trip to the beach I have started a new Webshots account (it is bigger and more flexible than the Flicker). Just click on the Webshots Link. I will be adding to my albums as I have time so check back for more pics in the future. I hope everyone has had a nice Labor Day.