I was wrong :-p

As we headed north towards Escondido, I made a remark “oh, we really need to go to the Wild Animal Park next weekend.” As it turns out, we wouldn’t have to wait that long. We got a yearly membership last February when Sarah, Colleen’s sister, came to visit and we went to the SD Zoo. The membership runs out at the end of March—and we’ve both decided not to renew—but we have been talking about going to the Wild Animal Park for a while so the time was ripe. I visited a few years ago and really enjoyed it because of the large open spaces with lots of different animals commingling. The SD Zoo is cool but I liked the openness of the Wild Animal Park much more.

Based on my description, I think Colleen was expecting something totally different but it still is pretty zoo-like. Still I think she enjoyed it, especially the train ride that was part of the Journey Into Africa tour (yes, I still consider it a train, even if it isn’t on a track!). It must have been mating season not long ago because half the animals there were knocked up or just had babies. We did learn an interesting fact about the park though: it was originally created as a place to breed rhinos, apparently a very picky bunch. It was very successful at doing just that and just expanded from there.

After nearly 4 hours at the park, we had enough though and decided to get some lunch from the Vegan Zone. We’ve been wanting to go since it opened early last year but we are pretty lazy and never really go down to Pacific Beach so it’s been on the backburner. There was no stopping us now, though, because we were hungry and in the mindset for trying something new. Colleen “kinda” knew where it was but she was slightly off so we almost got lost. I was in the midst of getting the location from GOOG-411 when we happened upon the restaurant. There was just one tiny problem: IT WAS CLOSED! It was during their normal operating hours during lunchtime on a Saturday and there was no indication of why they wouldn’t be open but sure enough, IT WAS CLOSED. I don’t want to say that they “lost some potential customers” but we definitely have soured on going there. C’est la vie.

By the time that we were rejected there, I was hungry, tired and cranky and just wanted to go home. Colleen tried finding another vegan place in PB but I just kept shooting her ideas down (note to self: look at review for Synergy Raw Cafe). We were nearly home when she took a detour and we made our way to Grillions instead. Long story short, we were both—well, I should say she was—pretty disappointed by the food there.

Sunday was the Super Bowl and I had some vague plans to make a lot of snacky type foods for the big game but they never really materialized. I did make some spinach dip and french bread before the game but the feast came after the Steelers eeked out a victory. I made a double batch of Susan V’s BBQ Ribs and tried my hand at some vegan potato skins. I burnt my ribs but the skins were pretty good so I guess it was a split.

Well, I’m a bit on the tired side now so I think I’m going to call it a night. I have a couple more posts to make this week to help keep good on my resolution to write one blog post per week this year. We’ll see how that goes

- Sat

Well, Sat and I dropped Sarah and Collin off at the airport this morning around 5. It was a pretty awesome weekend. S and C flew in late on Wednesday night for the long weekend. We spent our valentine’s day mostly in bed – S and C resting from their trip. It was one of those rare rainy/gloomy days in San Diego but it seemed to work out okay for us. While S and C were waking up and getting used to the warm weather I went to the dentist and got myself a shiny new tooth.

I can’t remember if I posted about my last dentist appointment or not but let me just say it SUCKED. I got what they referred to as “the rush” from the Novocain. I guess there is epinephrine in the anesthetic and since I was nervous, had just run two BIG blocks and then got TWO shots of drugs I had a less than pleasant reaction – nearly passed out.

Anyway, back to the new tooth and Sarah’s visit. . . Had a nice long talk with the dentist when I went there. Decided to use the heart patients Novocain instead of the regular. I didn’t realize I was getting numbed this visit (Sat told me I didn’t need it! but since I didn’t get a root canal I did. . .) so it took longer than I thought.

On Friday the weather was much nicer so I took Sarah and Collin to Balboa Park while Sat went to campus for the day. We walked past the museums, through a few gardens, watch the fishes in outside the botanical gardens before roaming around inside, hung out by the fountain and then headed to the cactus garden. I had researched a little before our trip and found that there was a geocache in the cactus garden so we poked around a bit looking for it. Unfortunately it wasn’t an ideal place to go caching with an almost two year-old. Collin kept running around the cacti on this super steep hill so we had to concentrate on him not falling instead of finding a cache. Maybe next time I’ll take Sarah out by herself – I really think they would like it. Sat and I are planning to go back to the park later to find the cache.

After Balboa Park we hit up Doyle Park for a little time on the slides and to kick a ball around (hoping to kill some of Collin’s energy so that he would go down for a nap). Collin really enjoyed the play time and Sarah was just in awe of the park. We had to promise Collin we would go back for more tomorrow in order to get him to leave peacefully.

On Saturday all four of us made an early start for the San Diego Zoo. As much as I didn’t really want to go it was pretty fun. Collin got a slow start – didn’t seem to enjoy the zoo at first but about the time we were going to give up on getting him excited he just perked up and fell in love. I think that happen at the turtle tanks. the next few hours were spent trying to reign the little bugger in – he was running all over the place and constantly wanted picked up. As usual, I was the one to ruin the party. I’m never good after noon and this was no different. At about 1:00 it all just got to be too much for me. We left shortly after and just in time for Collin to pass out on the way home. And now Sat and I have a year of free visits to the Zoo and Wild Animal park (and 1 free quest pass!).

On Sunday we had a super lazy day – mostly hanging out at the house. We did go to the beach for a few hours to barbecue and play in the sand. Sat and I worked on getting the grill started while Sarah and Collin went to make a sand castle on the beach. We kicked the ball around, helped a family in distress (we think she broke her foot kicking a soccer ball – we lent them our ice pack), and had a few hot dogs. Later that night Sat and I came down with a super cruddy cold – the midwestern plague .

Monday was a slow start for the Garcia’s – we were really feeling the cold and not wanting to get up, but we fought through. We made a quick trip to Birch aquarium which Collin and Sarah loved and then swung by the library to show them where I worked and catch the view from the 6th floor. Stopped by to see my boss and let him know that I would probably be out today (which I am). We spent the rest of the day hanging out and just enjoying each-other’s company while resting up for the big travel day for S and C and clean up day for Sat and me. Collin, Sarah, and I did a craft and then made a scrapbook page for Stephen with pictures from the trip.

Pretty good visit, all in all.

I actually have a lot of other stuff to write about but I have been writing for a while and this post is already humongous. So here is the short version of the rest.

1. I didn’t get the job :-/
2. The Poetry Open Mic night was AWESOME and we are doing another one in April!
3. My cube in on the move at work – but where will it end up? I don’t know. . .
4. Sat made me the cutest card for V-day – I’ll try to take a picture of it and post it on Flickr.
5. I love you Sat!!!

Time to spend some time with the kitties – they are feeling a little neglected.

~Col