Day 3:

On Saturday we got a slow start but left to pick up my parents at their hotel around 11 since we all had to be checked out by noon.  On our way over we stopped by Vons to pick up some breakfast and some tape (dad’s luggage split on the way to CA).  After we picked them up we headed to Long beach to check out the aquarium and Queen Mary.  The aquarium was pretty cool - but BUSY.  As some of you already know, I don’t do well with crowds, they make me a little crazy.  Had I not been having my crazy anxiety and personal space issues I probably would have really enjoyed it. (I’m sure Sat will post some pictures to compliment this text, but if not, check out his Flickr - they should all be there.)

After checking out the aquarium we headed over to the Queen Mary to check it out.  We were pretty excited about that - hoping to see the staterooms and the big dining rooms and stuff.  Let me tell you - if you are ever offered tickets to the Queen Mary, politely decline.  The was the biggest waste of time and money ever.  It looks like at one point the museum might have been really cool, but it hasn’t been updated OR maintained.  After wandering around the ship we opted to skip the “haunted tour” and just get out of there.  I think we were all a little tired and cranky.  From the QM we headed to the airport where we sent my parents on their merry way back to PA.

From the airport we headed to grab a bite to eat at Veggie Grill, Sat’s new favorite vegan restaurant.  I wasn’t super hungry, but what he had looked good and my “to go” meal was pretty tasty later.  From there we traveled to Sat’s sister’s in Camarillo and had a nice relaxing evening of just chillin’, eatin’, and watchin’ the boob tube.  Thankfully Jenne was gone most of the evening so we didn’t have to put up with her ;).

Day 4:

Sunday was the last day of our little vacation - awww, so sad.  Because we are awesome we convinced Jenne to pay our way to the Channel Islands (hehe. . .).  After another slow start we kicked our butts in high gear to get to the harbor for the boat to Anacapa Island.  Unfortunately, they were sold out!  But we hung around in case there were any no-shows.  Lucky for us - there were some!  So we got to spend the late morning/early afternoon out on a small island in the Pacific.  It was pretty awesome.  We just walked around the island and got some great photos.  Oh yeah, and a hell of a sunburn.  For the fist time in YEARS my legs got burned (a long with my neck, ears, collar bone, arms, hand, etc.) and even SAT, yes, SATURNINO, got sunburned on his arms.

After our last adventure we went back to Jenne’s, grabbed a snack, and then hit the road.  It was a pretty uneventful trip home - lots of road, lots of loopy Colleen (I get silly when I am tired).  But boy was it nice to be home when we finally got there.

And that sums up the Garcia Staycation 2008.

~Colleen

For those of you who missed our last post—honestly, how could you when its been about 2 weeks ago!—Colleen and I set out on a so-called “Staycation” in beautiful Southern California. Colleen’s parents were in Newport Beach for a conference all week so we decided to join them on Thursday and Friday to provide them with hours of entertainment. We were pretty excited to check out Orange County for the first time (for something other than driving through, that is). In preparation for the trip, we decided to plan out some fun things to do while we were there. That’s when it dawned on us: Orange Country kinda sucks. Sure, it’s got miles of nice beaches but, guess what, San Diego does too. The unfortunate part is that it doesn’t have much more than beaches and shopping, two things that aren’t particularly exciting to us.

I suddenly got the wise idea to check out Catalina Island since its one of the major attractions in the area. We could spend a whole day there and pretty much avoid the whole Orange County scene. There was just one minor hang-up: we’re cheap and the boat ride to Catalina isn’t. We ran the idea by the in-laws before we knew the price and that turned out to be a smart move. Howso? Well, as it turns out they decided to pay for our trip there! I was pretty stoked about the whole situation so off we were to Newport Beach, in hopes of avoiding it as much as possible

We headed North around noon and we at our destination before we knew it. The ‘Rents were staying at a Mariott in a room with a spectacular view of Newport. After lunch at the deceptively named Fashion Island (at a Cheesecake Factory, no less), we mostly lounged around all afternoon waiting for Colleen’s dad to finish up his work. After that we were off to Balboa Island to check out the sights and do a little geocaching in the process. I’m not sure what is up with things in the OC but Balboa Island was another misleading name as it is more of a penninsula than an island. Alas, I digress on a rather boring subject.

After wandering around for a while there we were on the hunt for food and decided to try out a vegan place named “Native Foods.” It was located not far from our hotel (The Doubletree Santa Ana, not the Mariott) in a shopping area known as “The Camp.” I would describe the Camp as being a “green, hipster” center catering to the indy-music crowd. In other words, I was right at home I ordered myself a philly peppersteak sandwich, which was good but not great. I won’t bore you with a full review of the restaurant (you can check out my review of Native Foods on Yelp! if you are interested) but overall I wasn’t all that impressed with the place. After dropping off the ‘rents, we did go back for dessert (carrot cake and cheesecake) but, again, the food didn’t blow us away. By the time we finally got checked into our hotel, we had already had quite a long day so no more hijinx ensued for that day.

We had to be up bright and way-too-early on Friday so we could make it to the harbor in time for the cruise to Catalina. Once again, we received a lesson in “planning ahead” as we nearly got lost on our way there. The 8:30 target time was a bit misleading though as the boat didn’t set out until 9AM anyway. After a little over an hour in the high seas, we made it to the quaint little town of Avalon on the island of Santa Catalina. I had readied us to visit several caches throughout the island so we would definitely not get bored in our 6 or so hours there. The town is a huge tourist trap but it was just the right size to see just about all the major attractions. The first couple of hours we spent on foot, trying to find a couple caches and exploring the harbor area. After lunch (at a place called Antonio’s Pizzeria, I believe), we decided to rent a golf cart and wander around the self-guided tour to see some of the more “remote” parts of the island. The guy who rented us the cart must have been having a very bad day because he was one of the crankier people I have ever met in my life. The cart ride was definitely fun though so if you are planning on visiting I would recommend it. I took the following photo when we were on a scenic part of the cart-tour. Tres magnifique! There are plenty more where that came from, so check out my Catalina pics on Flickr.

After making our way back to the mainland, we headed back to Fashion Island to get something to eat. Somehow we ended up at the Yard House, which isn’t the type of place you typically think of when you think of Orange County. In any case, I learned something valuable while there: a margarita pizza doesn’t necessarily come with pizza sauce. I learned this the hard way when my “cheeseless margarita pizza” came out looking a lot like dough with a couple slices of tomatoes thrown on it. To add insult to injury, I even burnt my mouth on it!

Well, that is about it for my recap of our first two days of Staycation 2008. I’d like to thank high gasoline prices for the lovingly idiotic term known as a “staycation.” Stay tuned for a recap of days 3 and 4 of our adventures.

- Sat

I got all of my exam grading out of the way yesterday so I was able to spend this morning with Colleen. We had a pretty big weekend last week and we’re going to have another big one this coming week so I decided to play it low key and not force the issue on going out adventuring. Instead, I suggested that we wander down to REI for some “window shopping.” (For our East Coast friends, think Eastern Mountain Sports but in the Western U.S. and in the form of a co-op.) This might have been well and dandy had it not been for one pesky fact: Colleen and I are terrible window shoppers. Now, I’m sure there are multiple ways to be a terrible window shopper, but in our case it is because we always end up buying stuff. So, what was it today? It might be better off to ask what wasn’t it today?

It started off innocently enough with us picking up some hiking socks (the ones with the breathable/moisture wicking technogobble). Then, we reached the shoe isle and Colleen found a pair of sandals that she thought were too comfortable to pass up. Fair enough. Then we hit the backpack isle and kinda went crazy. I’ve been trying to upgrade from the bargain-basement JanSport purple backpack that Colleen had from her college days. Colleen was feeling a bit bad that she didn’t really get me a big gift on my birthday so she thought she would  make up for it by buying me a backpack today. We ended up with the REI Stoke 19 Pack which is very comfortable and has just about all the features we were looking for. I almost ended up picking up a hydration pack to go along with the pack but Colleen was already feeling bad about spending so much money already—I didn’t even mention the visor for Colleen and adjustable bottle holder for my bike—that I didn’t push the issue. We ended  up playing around with the eTrex Vista HCx GPSr, which we are thinking about buying as a replacement to our eTrex Legend. The Legend is working out nicely for us but we were thinking about giving it to my Mom as a Christmas gift and figured it would give us a convenient excuse to bump up to the next level of GPSr (one with a color screen, USB connectivity, and microSD support). Yes, we have a shopping problem.

This upcoming weekend is shaping up like it will be a good one. The Rooney ‘rents are flying into LA tonight and will be in Newport Beach for a conference this week. We are scheduled to meet up with them on Thursday and Friday so they can bask in the glory of our presence. I’m going to see if I can convince them to take a boat trip around Catalina Island. I would ask for it as a birthday gift but they were already so gracious as to send me a box (see pic on the side) full of yummy vegan cookies (from Sun Flour Baking). After parting ways with them, we are going to head up to Ventura County to see my sister and (hopefully) take a cruise to the Channel Islands.  I have been dying to see the CI since I read an piece in the LA Times about them being the “American Galapagos.” Depending on how much money we feel like spending, we can take a 3 hour cruise around the islands or we can actually land and spend a couple hours there. The latter would totally be awesome but I am not going to be pushy about it.

Well, I guess that about wraps up this little post. I figured I needed to make a real post since Colleen posted that chain blog post the other day

- Sat

The rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you (i.e. me)
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write 6 random things about yourself
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger (me) know when your entry is posted

6 random things. . .

1. I’m a Libra - nice and balanced.
2. If I could live in another time period. . . I think it would be 18th century-ish.  But then again, I really do like modern conveniences. . . but I kind of like the “structure” of behavior.  plus, it would be cool to learn more about the gnitty gritty of the time period.
3. I’ve lived lots of places. . . and have wanted to live lots of places. . . Portland might be fun. . .
4. I would in the library that houses the personal papers of Dr. Seuss/Theodor Geisel.  How cool is that?
5. I wear size 7-8 shoes.
6. I like fun socks.

Alright, I punked out near the end. . . but Sat came home so I have to go and play with him!  As for the tagging. . . well, maybe I’ll come back and do that later.

~C

1.)  EARTHQUAKE!!!  Here in SoCal we had a 5.4 earthquake up near L.A.  I happened to be at work at the time and got to enjoy the rumble (yes, we felt it) in the building that “no one knows how it will respond to a big quake”.  Let me just say, it was interesting.  I thought that someone had run a cart into the empty shelving outside of my office, but as the shaking persisted and I started to feel like I was getting pushed out of my chair I figured out what was going on.  But it was pretty cool.  The building didn’t fall and all is well.  My boss did say that she saw the bridge into the library swaying a bit. . . scary much?

2.) PAYCUTS!  Yup, that is what I said. . .  the terminator signed an executive order on Thursday slashing the pay of state employees to minimum wage and laying off 20,000 temporary/seasonal workers.  Evidently the order also calls for laying off student employees statewide and a hiring freeze.  Why should you care?  dude, I work at the University of California, San Diego!  And guess what, I am a state employee!!  Luckily, the governor doesn’t have direct control of the University (thank you Regents!) so he can’t impose it on us but he has asked the the UC’s “support his efforts”.  We’ll see what happens. . .

3.) SAT IS AN OLD FART!  Our little 1/2 Mex cutie turned 26 yesterday.  He is now in a different age bracket than me. . . what an old-timer. . . At least he still has a hot young wife!

And for tomorrow. . . a response to Lolageek. . . and maybe that meme I saw a while back and wanted to try. ..

~Colleen

Last night I was able to draw some energy from my reserves in order to make some cookies. Pink Haired Cyn suggested I put my white choco chips to use in some white chip macadamia cookies and I thought that was an exceedingly good idea, so I went for it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a good straight-up vegan recipe that met the bill so I went with a recipe for White Chocolate/Coconut/Macadamia cookies on Recipezaar. The only non-vegan items were butter (I subbed in margarine) and egg (I used flaxseed/water) so I figured it should be pretty straight-forward. The recipe called for a whole (12 oz) bag of white choco chips but I only had about 2/3 of a 10.5oz bag so I had to half the recipe. I must say that as I was making these cookies I was very skeptical that they would turn out at all. Luckily, my skepticism was vanquished after I tasted these yummy morsels. I put a couple pictures up on my Flickr page but I’ve included one here for those of you who don’t like clicking links (seriously, who are you!??!). I was a bit disappointed by the look (they were a bit on the pale side) but the taste was right so, who’s to complain?

Of course, it wouldn’t be a baking experience with Sat unless I somehow managed to botch the instructions. Luckily, my error was limited to substituting granulated sugar for the intended brown sugar. Oh, and I guess the fact that I initially forgot to chop of the macadamias could be construed as another mishap, but I was able to fish them out before I mixed them in. The moral of the story? I still can’t follow a recipe!

Before I wrap up this post, I’ll leave with a few random bits of news.

• My trip to the car dealership today was a complete joke. When I got there, the guy asked me to turn the car on (I was all ready to hand over the keys), he jumped in the passenger seat, noticed the “Passenger Airbag Off” light wasn’t on and said, “Your car is fine.” After some initial disbelief (this was a full-sized guy and it was supposed to only be a problem with petite individuals) he convinced me that everything was working properly, just not the light. For Colleen’s sake, I hope he’s right.
• Rubi and Roxy have been up to it again. This weekend and into Monday they were in a “lets pee everywhere except the litterbox” frenzy. Colleen was convinced that it was just a behavior thing so she managed to get a second litterbox from a friend at work. The problem: on Monday I noticed that some of the pee had blood in it. Not good. I couldn’t tell who really had the problem so we were on the lookout for anymore bad behavior but, surprisingly, there has been none. I just hope all is well with our kittehs.

Well, that’s about it for this little blog entry. Stay tuned for more wonderful news from BaconAndTofu Land.

- Sat

P.S.
If you haven’t done so already, check out my FriendFeed: it’s pretty stinky sweet (and make sure you sign up too!)

When we first got Sundai (our Hyundai Sonata) there was a funny light that would go on whenever I was in the passenger seat - “Airbag Off”.  Well, we looked it up in the manual and it seems there is a sensor in the passenger seat that will turn the air bag off if there is a small child in the seat.  I may be petite, but I am no small child.  So the next time we talked to the guy that sold us the car we asked about it.  He assured us that it wasn’t a problem and was common - Just wiggle around/move the seat up and it will turn off.

We haven’t really thought much of it until we got the recall.  And although it is a “voluntary” recall we will be taking the car in since I am all small and stuff.  The letter promised a rental so we are a little excited about being able to try out another Hyundai.  We really like ours but it is alway fun to drive someone else’s car.

Sat just got out of the shower - Time to go!!!!

Colleen

Today I was itching to get out and do something outdoorsy. Our default activity when doing something outside usually involves going geocaching so I used that as a starting point for our day. Unfortunately, I’ve been (unsuccessfully) trying to catch up on my sleep deficit so we couldn’t get an early start to the day we would need to go somewhere slightly farther away than our normal UTC/La Jolla/Mira Mesa stomping grounds. I have a whole list of local places that I want to go geocaching but it’s been slow getting through them. (On a side note, if you aren’t using Gubb to handle all of our listmaking, you are really missing out!)

Since the plan was to be around for 12:30 mass, we played it conservatively and tried to get a couple caches we couldn’t locate a couple weeks back. After going one for two (damn you, “Short, Steep Stop”!), we decided to head to the mall so I could fulfill my desire for new t-shirts. After spending some time at Sun Diego, I was ready to call it a day and head to church with Colleen but she apparently had other plans. I think she was just trying to make it so we didn’t go 3 weeks in a row (what evil machinations could be in that head of hers?) but whatever the case, we ended up forgoing church for some more shopping. For all of Colleen’s talk about cutting back on spending, she sure does like to browse It was another beautiful day out though and since the Westfield UTC mall is an outdoor shopping center, it wasn’t a soulless experience.

After spending way too much time at the mall (and buying a couple Stansport Expedition Trekking Poles at Sports Chalet in the process), we came back and decided that the good weather called for more BBQ’ing. We had hoped to work on rearranging the furniture in the office today but Colleen got sucked into watching The Tudors (on DVD) this afternoon so we didn’t get much done after that. As a result, I still have plenty of stuff on my todo list (the one on Remember the Milk, not Gubb ;-)) including bike maintenance and fixing some more cookies. I also placed another cooking task on my list: make a vegan “cheese” cake. I’ve found a promising recipe but since Colleen isn’t a big fan of lemon cheesecake, I’m thinking that we’ll end up doing something similar to SusanV’s eggnog modification but with orange liqueur instead. I’m looking quite forward to it!

Well, it is getting late and I don’t want to add onto my sleep debt any more so I think I’ll wrap up this little (and, admittedly, bland) post now. Please check back tomorrow when I am hopefully successful in convincing Colleen to write an exciting post.

- Sat

Usually we like to have people over to BBQ with us but with my sister out “roughing it” in the wilderness—she is out camping somewhere with coworkers, hopefully avoiding wildfires—and our Del Sol friends, S&J, doing their own thing, we were on our own. No worry though because you definitely don’t need a ton of people to enjoy good food (although it usually spices things up a bit). I picked up some corn on the cob and watermelon at Whole Foods earlier in the day. I also grabbed what have become one of my favorite things: Celebration Field Roast Sausages. As I alluded to earlier, they aren’t super-processed like the Tofurky Brats (which I still enjoy) and they are mostly wheat gluten rather than some weird soy protein isolate shtuff. Colleen has been crazy about Turkey burgers lately so she had that plus a hot dog. The last couple of times I’ve grilled corn, it didn’t seem to cook evenly and the result was some parts being overdone while others were just the opposite. Luckily my grilling touch returned yesterday and everything turned out yummily.

Later in the day I decided to get off my lazy butt and use the leftover cookie dough for my world famous cookie dough ice cream. I got the recipe from the kick-ass blog, A Vegan Ice Cream Paradise, so I wanted to thank the author, Agnes, and wish her a speedy recovery from whatever illness has slowed her. The ice cream turned out pretty stinkin’ good again, but I think the white chocolate chips aren’t quite as good as regular ones for this recipe. Speaking of the white chips, I still have most of the bag left so I think I will take Pink Haired Cyn’s advice and make some white chip macademia cookies with them. Just don’t tell Colleen because she doesn’t like macadamias!

One sad thing from yesterday is that we didn’t get to see any fireworks. I heard them really get going around 9PM but there wasn’t a clear line of sight to them from our apartment. I managed to pull Colleen away from Zelda for a bit to go out to the LJC passive-use park to see them but just as we were gettign there, we heard the big finale get going and then it was over. Lame-o!

Things have been pretty low-key around here otherwise. On Wednesday, the gamecube controller I ordered from Amazon finally showed up. This meant I was finally able to give Colleen one of the gifts I bought for her: Animal Crossing. It’s a bit difficult to describe the game but its somewhat similar to the Sims but with less tedium and a lot more character (at least from what I’ve seen so far). The game unfolds in real time so if you get up earlier, you’ll run into cranky, just awakened people (or those still asleep) while playing late means you’ll find people dozing off. It’s strangely addicting and so far Colleen seems to be enjoying it, so it’s a win for me. Colleen also seemed to like the other gift I got her: Simply Super Paper: Over 50 Projects to Cut, Curl, Twist, and Tease from Paper. Hopefully Colleen will make some of the things in it and then blog about them here (if only I can cajole her into actually writing a post one of these days!).

I suppose that’s enough rambling from me for one night. I’m off to catch up on some sleep.

- Sat

Who would have thought that it would take the purchase of a fancy new HDTV before we finally were ready to give up our cable addiction?

A couple weeks ago, Colleen mentioned that since it was the summer (read: nice outside), we had the Wii, and the SSHL summer reading program, it made sense to cancel the cable. Sometimes I wonder if she has some kind of mind-reading device because I was pondering the same. I quickly agreed and within a couple days, we were down to the local cable package rather than the expanded (but not digital tier) package. I thought there would be a period of adjustment where we really missed it but, from the looks of it so far, we really weren’t addicted at all. Part of ease of transition stems from the Paradox of Choice book that I read a couple weeks back. We had all these extra channels but all the choices we had weren’t really making us happier. We only watched a couple of them (ABC Family, Comedy Central, HGTV, etc) and we watched them so much that everything eventually became a rerun for us. The Daily Show is the only thing I thought I would truly miss but since they have the full episodes online, I haven’t missed a beat.

Are we better people now that we only have basic cable? I don’t think we are foolish enough to think that quite yet. We still waste a lot of time in front of the TV watching the beautiful HD local channels and our favorite shows like Hell’s Kitchen, Bones, and House—I’ve even taken a liking to PBS and it’s HD offering. We have also increased our Wii play time, mostly occupying ourself with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which we recently purchased and have slowly been making our way through. I’ve even picked up a brand new addiction: OpenStreetMap (OSM).

OSM is like the bastard child of Wikipedia and Google Maps. You can freely edit the map, adding roads and trails, and placing points of interest (like gas stations, grocery stores, parks, etc) on it. The beautiful thing is that you can then take those maps and upload them (after a bit of finagling, of course) to your GPS unit. This saves us the pain of having to pay Garmin $200 for some local street maps for Colleen’s Garmin eTrex Legend. You can upload GPS tracks to OSM or (if you are sans GPSr), you can just check out the ariel map and eyeball locations based on your memory of the area. Don’t be shy: map your neighborhood. It’s oddly addicting.

- Sat