metanoia's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- La Jolla Begins Upon waking on Thursday in Huntington Beach, we wandered over to the local Starbucks and got coffees. When I say wandered, I mean K did his power walk and I hobbled along. He just naturally walks so fast, and I am a rambler. (He said my Indian name would be "She Who Can't Keep Up" or "One Who Walks Too Slow", hehe he is soooo funny). I thought we would get coffee and sit outside and read the local free paper and kind of mosey into the whole thing. He, on the other hand, thought we would race to get a coffee and then race to walk on the pier, crossing the street against the light and almost getting creamed on Pacific Coast Highway (I used to call it PCH). Anyway, after much nattering and grumbling on my part we walked on the pier and watched the surfers and then went back to our room to change into our suits and go to the beach. Beach was fun and we played in the Pacific waves that we both miss living on the East Coast. Then it was time to go to the "old neighborhood". We drove up to The Shore and drove up and down the streets where we lived so many years. Good memories and bad flooded and poured themselves over me. Mostly good, although the darkest times in my life were lived on those streets. Property values are nuts, of course. A house we bought in 1983 for 170,000 is now selling for 725,000. Ha! So stupid and artificially inflated. One guy said the banks are not even loaning close to the market value because appraisal values are so much lower than selling price. Ah well. Doesn't mean much to me. We visited with one of our old neighbor families, they were the only ones home at the time. It was good to chat, they are wonderful people. It was a nice visit, but the time had come to whisk away to La Jolla. So whisk we did. We kept saying, "Oh that's still there!" and "It looks the same!" and so it goes along with the feels familiar theme that wound it's way all through the vacation. We drove to La Jolla through Escondido to check out the place where we were going to host the rehearsal dinner. When we pulled up and saw it nestled between two "no-tell motels" I thought Oh, fuck-shit. But when we got inside, the waterfall masked the traffic noise and it was a lovely old adobe-style house and the food was pretty good and the people were nice, so at that point what was I going to do anyway. Huh? We drove on down to the coast and bitched about the place always returning to our new mantra, "What are we going to do about it at this point?" and pulled into the motel in La Jolla. The motel which was being pressure washed and stripped of it's paint. The motel where the bathroom was as big as my left foot, with a shower door as big as my pinkie toe on my left foot. Crapola, said I. Then the manager showed us his dog's fairly impressive trick of retrieving a frisbee off the roof. Well. That did it. We had to stay there. Besides, the people were really nice and it was dog friendly which was important because my ex and his wife were traveling with their Jack Russell Terrier. So. In it's fiasco-ness it was the perfect place. I will definitely remember it. And the people referred us to a great place to have supper. A little brewery that had the very best food I have ever eaten. I made an appointment for a manicure, dropped our clothes off at the cleaners to be pressed and had a wonderful dinner. All in all it was a lovely day. After all, what was I going to do about it at that point? 1:34 p.m. - 2004-05-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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