I want to start off by clearing up an error I made in my recounting of Day 2 of the San Diego trip. I did not go to Denny’s on Friday morning. I actually went to a favorite breakfast joint of MizSplotchy’s brother, The Pancake House. I had chocolate pancakes with chocolate chips. It was a little too chocolatey for my tastes, but I had been jonesing for some chocolate for a couple days (okay, I had some chocolate at Ghirardelli’s the day before, but it wasn’t enough). I actually had a Grand Slam Slugger breakfast on Day 3, Saturday morning. There, error corrected. I feel better.

So, after breakfast, the first business of the day was to visit the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park. If it was just MizSplotchy and myself on the trip, I would have voted against going there, as we live in Brookfield, home to a quite large and noteworthy zoo that we visit regularly. A giraffe is a giraffe, right?

Still, the Wild Animal Park is a little different beast (har-di-har) than your typical zoo. It’s got some wide expanses where animals can roam. According to the cheerful guide I was half-listening to on a tram tour we were riding in, the park was initially used to breed animals for the San Diego Zoo. There’s still plenty of babymakin’ going on there. I think the guide said that 2.5 animal babies are born at this facility on a weekly basis. If the zoo is a rockin’, don’t bother knockin’.

A bigass balloon you could pay 20 bucks to go up in and get a bird’s eye view of the park

The bigass balloon airborne, carrying people who forked over 20 bucks

The recent wildfires actually came very close to the Wild Animal Park. I was told that the fires were actually visible from within the park. The fires also came very close to MizSplotchy’s brother’s house. It was primarily a well-watered golf course that prevented the fires from getting too close to them, though they did receive a strange snowfall of ashes.

They had to evacuate for a little bit when it was uncertain how far the fires would go. My sister-in-law said the day they were evacuating there was a very eerie orange cast to everything. There were virtually no people left in the neighborhood, but she could see animals scurrying around. They currently have a couple giant rats roaming around their backyard bushes as a result of a nearby mountain catching fire and pushing the animals down into Chula Vista.

The Wild Animal Park was actually about a half hour drive outside of San Diego. I had expressed a desire to MizSplotchy’s brother to see some effects of the fire. He had guessed that we would be passing some signs on the way there, and was not mistaken.

Some charred cacti – you can see some green ones near the top spared by the fire

When we first got to San Diego, MizSplotchy and I were looking at possible things to do there. I was looking at the attractions contained in Balboa Park, a very large area near downtown San Diego that contained a lot of museums. As I came across the San Diego Model Railroad Museum I became a man obsessed. I absolutely had to visit this museum. Everyone was sort of surprised by my obsession, even MizSplotchy. She knew I liked when everyday objects were made big, but was apparently not aware that I also love seeing things shrunk.

I don’t have the patience or eye for detail that would be required of someone putting together a model railroad, but I love seeing real tiny people and cars, and trains moving about. I freaking love it.

So, as soon as we finished a quick lunch at a cafe in the park, I bolted, literally bolted, to this museum.

A rural scene

One of the many people making the tiny trains run on time

Who doesn’t love a miniature hobo?

We could have probably spent a couple days just stationed in Balboa Park. It was a lovely place.

I missed the puppet shows.

I spotted a piece of artwork by Niki de Saint Phalle, an alligator sculpture that looked very similar to one I recently saw. The piece was outside the Mingei Art Museum. I went inside the museum and asked a woman who worked there if the piece had been recently installed. The woman smiled and said it was a permanent piece there, and had been there for quite some time. As I nodded my head and started to walk in, she said, “There is an admission to this museum, and we are closing.” Ow. Not just a rejection, but one with a double jab and an uppercut.

Niki Gator, but not the one I saw in Chicago.

Many of the museums were closing up shop. I saw some skywritten letters: M♥C. I tried to convince MizSplotchy I had paid for it but they got her initial wrong, but she wasn’t buying it. A short time later I looked up at the sky, and noticed the letters had dissipated, but the heart remained.

A rare pic of yours truly

Later that night we pretty much just hung out at MizSplotchy’s brother’s house. I made the mistake of drinking a few beers, which completely knocked any energy I had left out of me. After some time spent on the couch, staring ahead like a zombie, I drove a few of our party back to the hotel and crashed (on the hotel bed, not in the car), while MizSplotchy stayed up a little later with her brother and reminisced.

The next morning, DENNY’S! This time it was just MizSplotchy and myself. It was nice to have a little quiet moment to ourselves. We had a good time.

We met up with her cousin and the boyfriend, dropped off the rental car, got to the airport and boarded the plane. The flight back mostly consisted us of watching episodes of Season 2 of Spaced on MizSplotchy’s laptop. We got a few looks as we were cackling out loud at some points.

This is one of the funnier scenes we saw:

So, overall a good trip. I hope you have enjoyed reading about it. In any case, I’ll be able to remember what the hell I did a year from now.

Love,

Splotchy

We started out Friday at, drumroll please… breakfast at Denny’s. I had a perfectly serviceable Grand Slam Slugger breakfast.

Nobody was really taking the initiative as to what we were going to do. There were a few things that some people wanted to see at some point during the trip. One was visit the Hotel Del Coronado, and the other was visit San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park.

We decided to hit the Del, but first we took a trip to Seaport Village, mostly because we couldn’t find the damn thing on Thursday. It was okay, mostly tourist stuff, but in a pleasant enough environment. MizSplotchy got some earrings for my mother. The thing I liked most about the place was the nearby Marina Park, right off the water.

There was a guy flying some enormous kites there, and the park was filled with strange trees. I am sure I bored everyone with my constant out-loud musings, but I was fascinated by all the different foliage I saw around me. I probably asked MizSplotchy at least ten times (I’m not exaggerating) what she thought the root system for the palm trees looked like.

Aieeee! Kite Lobster!

Who doesn’t love triangles?

I don’t know what these trees are called.

It was cloudy in the morning, and as a result I still didn’t quite feel like I was in California. The weather report called for “decreased cloudiness” in the afternoon, so I hoped for the best.

Our next stop was the lovely Hotel Del Coronado, a really beautiful old hotel, famous for being the place where Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot was filmed.

We spent most of the time out back, next to the Del’s large beach. Again, a large part of our party spent their time just sitting outside downing beers. I would go down for a walk on the beach, then come back and hang out with them, then go back. I think I took something like five separate walks on the beach. I took a different person on three of the walks. I actually had a great time. There was much joy in my heart as my feet walked through the sand, then the freaking cold waves of the Pacific Ocean.

That brown sliver on the left is my jacket. It was cold.

Sploosh.

Thank you, cleansing ocean waves!

The sun started to break through as the day progressed.

Note that bright sliver of sun on the ocean in the distance.

On one of my walks down the shore, I spotted some guys with pitchforks knee-deep in water. I asked what they were doing, and they replied they were getting clams — pismo clams to be precise. They started pulling out some very large clams and dropped them into nets hanging from their belts. They said they had a limit of 10 per day, and they could only keep those greater than 4½ inches. I asked to take their pictures, and they said okay.

I had wanted to get a picture of the clams they were pulling out as well, but felt like I was already imposing. I decided I would ask them when I walked back down the beach. However, by the time I got back to their place they were already gone. This didn’t surprise me, as in the couple minutes I watched them they pulled out three giant clams.

One thing that this landlubber thought was really cool was finding many, many sand dollars washed ashore. I picked up a few for the kiddies back home.

There was a constant stream of airplanes and jets, flying close to the ground to land at a nearby naval base.

On my last walk down to the ocean, I was accompanied by the lovely MizSplotchy. We went exploring some large rocks near the ocean, and saw a fair amount of wildlife.

I believe these were barnacles. They were squishy black things covered in bits of shell. I’m assuming the shell material was produced by the barnacles.

MizSplotchy completely creeped me out by pushing her finger on the barnacles. “Look!” she said. “They squirt water when you push them!” Oh, gross. MizSplotchy is deathly afraid of rodents, and I apparently am deathly afraid of squishy wet things.

We saw a starfish, which seemed to be dead, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to touch it.

We also saw these things. I have no idea what the hell they are. They move when you drop water on them. Gross! Icky!

The miniature nature hike ended when MizSplotchy picked up a rock covered in seaweed and chased me around with it. You bet your ass I ran like hell. NO MEANS NO!

As the day wore on, the clouds dispersed. We watched a wedding get set up on the sand, then saw the ceremony. MizSplotchy’s cousin said the bride looked like a porn star. I dunno, as long as she was a happy porn star, that’s all that counts.

I got overcome by the retarded tourist urge to snap photographs at the setting sun over the ocean.

Going

Going

Going

Gone

We were going to go to Old Town to eat at some wonderful Mexican restaurant, but for some reason, plans changed and we headed to the seafood restaurant Anthony’s instead, which turned out to be my favorite meal I had in San Diego (and it was completely boob-free!).

Next Up: Day 3, where we witness fire devastation, see some “wild” animals, visit a model railroad train museum and hang out with the family.

Our flight was leaving on Thursday morning to San Diego. We got up at 5:45am. Our eldest son got up soon after we did. He didn’t want to miss us leaving in the morning. He was pretty upset at our leaving, and took a couple days to get over some bouts of weepiness. We left in a cab as he was crying and waving, held by my mother. Bummer.

We flew out of Chicago’s Midway airport — smaller than O’Hare, but still pretty big. Our airline of choice was Southwest Airlines, where the flight attendant announced that “all seats are first-class”. Probably a more accurate statement would be that none of the seats were first-class. As you may already know, Southwest doesn’t offer any meals or inflight entertainment. They did offer a little box of snacks, which contained Chips Ahoy Cookie Crisps, something I won’t be seeking out in the supermarket unless all other eating options are unavailable. The flight was perfectly fine, though, on time and all that stuff.

We had MizSplotchy’s fancypants MacBook laptop along for the ride, and a thumb drive full of movies and TV shows at hand. On the flight to San Diego we watched The King Of Kong, which was a truly awesome documentary about a man attempting to capture the high score of the old-school videogame Donkey Kong. I first learned about this documentary from comedian Patton Oswalt’s website. His synopsis of the movie cannot be improved upon, so I’ll include it here.

THE KING OF KONG is about the International Donkey Kong high-score championship, and how far some people will go to defend such a pointless and meaningless title. I’ve never seen a documentary where the hero and villain are SO clearly defined. Watch KING OF KONG, and marvel at the sad douchebaggery of Billy Mitchell.

After we landed, we took a tram to pick up our rental car. It was cloudy and chilly, and despite the abundance of palm trees, it still felt like Illinois. A short twenty minute drive and we arrived at our hotel. They wouldn’t let us check in yet, so we left our bags and went in search of lunch. There was a Denny’s across the street that I was reluctant to go to, because I thought it was a bad omen to start one’s vacation there. However, we didn’t really know where things were, and it was right there. So, to Denny’s.

There were four of us on the flight out of Midway, and four others on a later flight from O’Hare. While we were finishing up our lunch, the rest of the group came into the restaurant. Most of our group were family from MizSplotchy’s mom’s side, though one of her cousins had her boyfriend along.

We were going to surprise MizSplotchy’s brother that night, so we had some time to kill. We asked for a recommendation (the trip wasn’t meticulously planned out) and a couple people suggested we go to Seaport Village. We had two rental cars, me in the lead. I made a left turn instead of a right and completely missed Seaport Village. I ended up turning into a neighborhood called Gaslamp Quarter.

I parked at a meter ($0.25/12 minutes!) and we started walking around. At this point I realized our group was a collection of different interests — many in the group were content to lay back and sit down for a drink, while others were itching to experience vacation NOW. As you might guess, I was in the itchy experience camp. So, MizSplotchy’s cousin and I went for a long walk in the neighborhood while everyone else sat down outside and ordered some drinks. It was a relatively high-end commercial area. We found a big Ghirardelli’s cafe and bought some chocolatey goodness. As we finally got back to the bar where the rest of the gang was commiserating, it was time to go surprise MizSplotchy’s brother.

We had decided to go to his house and park around the block, knocking on his door a couple people at a time (yes, I was thinking of the opening to The Hobbit as we were doing this, thank you very much). MizSplotchy and her aunt went first (they were the only people that were expected to fly in for the birthday). Then little by little we knocked on the door and went in. MizSplotchy’s brother was truly surprised, which was nice.

After we settled down and talked for a while we headed over to one of MizSplotchy’s brother’s favorite restaurants, the Butcher Shop Steak House, a cozy place in Chula Vista with red-leather seating and warm lighting. They had very delicious, hot sourdough garlic bread, which was probably my favorite part of the meal (I like bread, what can I say?). You can find generally favorable reviews of this restaurant online, but they neglect to mention the very lovely waitresses working there. I’m theoretically against the objectification of women, but boy howdy, the waitresses there were smoking hot. Their uniform consisted of a very short skirt and black fishnet stockings. The tops varied. Our waitress had a very low-cut white top from which her ample bosom spilled from. And she was cute, too! I didn’t have my camera with me for this first day, so you’ll just have to trust me about the waitress. MizSplotchy was fortunate enough to hear me talk about this woman for the rest of the meal, mostly along the lines of “Wow, that waitress is pretty! And she has big boobs!”.

After the boobs and dinner, we retired to the lovely Ramada Inn by the 805 to rest up for the following day’s adventures.

Next up: Seaport Village, ocean frolicking, seafood served by an attractive non-buxom gentleman waiter, and picture, pictures, pictures.

Hello, I’m back from San Diego.

This isn’t a post about San Diego, merely a post indicating yes, I was there, and now I am back home.

MizSplotchy and I had a very nice time.

You guys have been writing entirely too many posts. I had like 200 freaking posts I had to catch up with. Jeebus H. Crikey.

Thanks for everyone’s recommendations as to what to do in San Diego. We did many of them, some of which I’ll go into more detail. I took some pictures, and some turned out nicely.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we did/didn’t do there:
Anthony’s – Yes
San Diego Zoo – Sort of
Fires – Yes, if you count its aftereffects
Tijuana – No (I wanted to, but ran out of time)
Beach – Yes
Dr. Seuss House – Nope
Coronado Hotel – Yep
Tequila – Nope, but had a fair amount of beer
Old Town – Nope, almost did, but didn’t
Balboa Park – Yes

A few more items, not related to San Diego, but need to be shared:

Doc wrote a lovely piece of fiction involving the iSplotchy. Check it out here.

I learned upon my return that my brother is still playing World of Warcraft. There will be an update to his adventures later this week, WITH SCREENSHOTS.

Plans are underway to liberate G. Kristi Love from the clutches of her running mate Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein. It’s going to require some mad photoshopping skillz on my part — when I finally get it done, the world will never be the same (that was hyperbole, by the way).

Okay, I’m going to watch a new shitty episode of Heroes now. See ya soon!