Walking Images - SoCal

"See how the lilies of the field grow..." more

Walking Images - SoCal

I'm back in Southern California this week, staying near the Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard. It was a cool, still morning around the harbor:

Home again

Yesterday was a roaring success getting all of the new electronics hooked up for Mardie. Plus, we had another great dinner, this time at home with grilled shrimp, veggies, and crab legs. Yum! Flying home today in a beautifully clear sky over snow covered mountains was gorgeous. It didn't even feel that hot in Phoenix when we landed.

Now for reality...back to work tomorrow...

Oh what a dinner

So I arrived in Salt Lake City about midnight Thursday, slept through some coughing fits, and then awoke to a beautiful, clear, chilly Friday morning. Lots of snow still cover the mountains all around the valley here. And the view from Mardie's front window toward Mt. Olympus is spectacular! They took me to a great little Mexican place for lunch (yeah, it was good, even in Utah) where we had fish tacos, carnitas tacos, and carne asada tacos (with Dos Equis, of course).

Mardie had to go to a meeting at the University in the afternoon, so Mona and I went shopping! Three hours later, we had a new surround sound receiver, upconverting DVD player, universal remote, and a few other little goodies. When we picked up Mardie, she took us to the Red Butte Botanical Gardens at the University, which was pretty cool. The daffodils are starting to bloom, and the gardens were very nice. That would be a great place to get away from the busyness of life for a couple of hours, especially if you worked or went to school at the University.

Even though all of that made for quite a good day, we topped it off with a wonderful dining experience. We headed to The Gateway with plans to go to the Brazilian restaurant that we had found during the Olympics in 2002. Well, we found it easily enough, except that it said it was opening in a few months. Huh? We ate there 6 years ago! But, we were hungry and instead of trying to figure out what had happened, we headed to Flemings Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar.

Oh my.

Without a doubt, this is one of the top five best dinners I've ever had. We were even sitting at the bar, because it was an hour wait for a table when we got there around 8:00pm. It didn't matter. It was...fantastic! And then, they began bringing us food.

Oh my.

I had the 22oz bone-in ribeye. Oh my. Mona had the Veal chop. Yum. Mardie had scallops. Probably the best scallops I've ever tasted (and Utah is a land-locked state!). Wine, hefeweizen, grilled asparagus, chipotle macaroni and cheese (this ain't your mama's mac-n-cheese!), and then...cheesecake. With blueberries. And chantilly cream. Oh my!

Honestly, we didn't want to leave. But it was 10:00pm, and we were getting pretty sleepy. Wow - what a meal.

So today, I'm the geek squad for Mardie, installing all the new stereo components, fixing the old ones that weren't connected properly, hanging speakers on walls, fun stuff like that. And, well, it's time to get started...

On the way to Utah

I complain a lot about Phoenix. In fact, if you live in Tucson, that's kinda expected. You know, things like, "Phoenix is so much hotter than Tucson!" or "Wow, the traffic is sooooo bad in Phoenix, much worse than Tucson!" or "ASwho?" (you know, instead of ASU) Anyway, I must admit that right now, I'm liking Phoenix - at least the airport anyway. Because I just had a pretty good Machaca burrito, I'm sitting at a little table with a power adapter and my grande non-fat chai from Starbucks, and I'm online on Sky Harbor's free wifi. It's still hotter than Tucson, and there's still more traffic, but at least I can get online for free while I wait for my delayed Salt Lake City flight.

More for the hotel room list...

• A small refrigerator with one free bottle of water per day. Again, this is cheap - why charge somebody $3 or $4 a bottle, especially if the tap water tastes gross?
• A nightlight in the bathroom - my current room has one, but that is very rare...

I think those are the major items. I can't think of anything else right now, but who knows what tomorrow may bring...

Back on the road

I'm back in Southern California this week, but what a beautiful week to be here. It's another postcard week: clear and sunny and cool, with wildflowers blooming everywhere! I'll try to snap a couple of pictures with my new phone, but I don't have a cable to download them yet, so...yeah.

You know, with all the travel I've been doing lately, I think I need to start a list of what makes a great hotel room. So I'll start, in no particular order, and you can chime in when you like:

1. An incredibly comfortable bed - like the Westin Heavenly Bed - because after all, that's the main function of the room: sleeping!
2. Soundproofing: the room needs to be quiet - period - regardless of where it is on the property. Like the Sheraton Gateway at LAX. It's next to one of the busiest airports in the country and I hear nothing outside of my room!
   
3. Lots of electrical outlets: I typically bring 4 chargers with me on every trip - cell phone, laptop, MP3 player, and JBL portable speaker. I need a lot of outlets that are not hidden behind the bed!
4. Wired and wireless high-speed free internet service. Come on, we pay enough for the room already. Skip putting a phone in the bathroom and give me free, fast internet.
5. A nice clock radio with auxiliary input for my MP3 player so I wouldn't have to take my JBL portable speaker with me all the time - like a Bose Wave System...ahhh...

What else?

Day 30

Today I leave for Albuquerque for a couple of days for work, and (gasp), I'm not taking my laptop. I know, I know, that's close to the edge, but I decided I could get in whatever study time I needed without it, and basically I didn't want to lug it around for this trip. Our day-long meeting tomorrow is a wildcard at this point, given the miserable meeting last week in DC. But, we have a recommendation for dinner, so maybe it won't be all bad. I hope to be able to get in a fair amount of Greek study, so I can take my final exam on Friday morning before we head to Pinetop for a long weekend. Well, either way, I'm taking the final on Friday - I just hope I'm ready by then...

Home

Ahhh...I got home last night around 10:45pm. The flights went well, and other than full airports of people trying to get home like us, the trip was fairly uneventful. The flight from DC to Phoenix was long, but I slept a little, studied a little, watched the movie (Million Dollar Baby) and listened to music. The guy next to me had been trying to get home to Vegas since 8:00am that morning, so he spent most of the day in the airport bar and slept almost the entire time. The other guy next to me - yeah, I had a middle seat - worked on his laptop and wrote notes almost nonstop the entire flight, with his Bose noise cancellation headphones doing their magic.

It's so nice to be home after that trip. I love Tucson. You just can't beat the weather this time of year...

Day 27 - very early

Yep. My flight was canceled. That's the bad news. The good news was that we found out before we left the hotel (thanks Tom!). So, even though it's 5:30am, at least I'm in my very nice hotel room instead of at the airport. The other bad news was that I was automatically rebooked on a flight tomorrow. But, the other good news is that I was able to rebook on another airline to leave here at 5:00pm and go direct to Phoenix, flying right over all the bad weather in the middle of the country. So, if all goes according to the new plan, I'll land in Tucson around 10:00pm. That's 11 hours later than the original plan, but at least it's still today.

So things could be better, but obviously they could be much worse. I'm sure there are still a lot of people in Dallas trying to get home today and not knowing if/when they will. At least here in DC, the weather is nice (now), and I am confirmed on a flight home later today. And who knows what the day may bring. I'll be paying extra attention to the ordinary today. Because, I'm guessing it may not be very ordinary after all...

Day 26 - in Washington, DC

Well our meeting today could have been better. In fact, it could have been a lot better. We're all pretty frustrated and down. Plus, we just saw where Dallas is expecting 2-4" of snow tonight. And guess where we're headed at 6:00am tomorrow? Yeah. So, who knows when I'll get home. The phrase "adding insult to injury" comes to mind. Oh well. At least I can study while we wait...

Day 25 - in Washington, DC

My trip to DC today was easy and uneventful, exactly the way air travel should be! In fact, I had a very nice and interesting conversation with the person sitting next to me from Tucson to Dallas. She noticed my Greek study notes and asked what I was studying. After telling her, I discovered that she is a linguistics professor at UofA! I told her about studying Greek and what I hoped that would do for me in the future. She grew up in Mexico, and confessed she knew little about "religion" outside of Catholicism in Mexico. So I explained a little and maybe helped her see that God works in many different ways and in many different situations. It was cool. I'm glad I didn't miss that moment of talking with her by being too busy. Maybe, just maybe, she got a little of glimpse of God shining through me.

Tomorrow is the big meeting, so I had better get some sleep now...

Malibu's Aftermath

Well, I survived my final on Tuesday night and flew to LA on Wednesday morning for a 3-day business trip. From LAX, I drove up PCH through Malibu on the way to my destination and had a chance to see first-hand a charred and scorched Malibu. Two things really struck me as I drove and looked up at the blackened hillsides from the fires last month.

First, I was amazed at how many homes appeared undamaged in these burned areas. I know a lot of people lost homes, and I don't want to minimize those losses. But, all I can say is that the firefighters did a tremendous job at protecting as many homes as they did.

Second, I was also amazed at how close the fire came to Pepperdine. The campus is beautiful, sitting just up from PCH in rolling green hills. It looks like the fire burned right down to the road going into the campus from PCH. Perhaps the road was used as a fireline, but thankfully the campus itself appeared untouched. I also passed a couple of spots where the fire jumped PCH and burned on the beach side of the highway.

I drive back to LAX tomorrow afternoon, so I'll have a chance to see Malibu from the other direction as well. In general, I think the people of Malibu were very lucky that the winds died down when they did. And, they are even more fortunate to have firefighters who will do anything they can to save homes. I know this isn't the first fire Malibu has seen, and it won't be the last. But I think they dodged a bullet big time...

A Day on Mt. Lemmon

Since the kids were out of school this week for fall break, we made the short trek up to Mt. Lemmon for a picnic and hike on Tuesday. We had not been up there since the Aspen fire of 2003. The town of Summerhaven continues to rebuild and looks completely different - everything is brand new! We hiked up Marshall Gulch and back down on the Aspen trail which took us directly through some of the burned out areas. It's still pretty desolate, but we had a nice day just the same. I forget how close this is to home...I need to get up there more frequently.

Our picnic table at Inspiration Rock

Just up from the Marshall Gulch trailhead we saw some fall colors

And the winner is...

We have a new number 1! Yes, The Habit has topped In-N-Out as my favorite LA burger spot. The double teriyaki charburger with bacon and cheese edged out the double-double with gilled onions, primarily due to the subtle-but-tasty teriyaki flavor, and the bacon, of course. Bacon makes everything better. Plus, The Habit has several burger choices, including a BBQ Bacon Charburger and a plain charburger, all available on regular burger bun or grilled sourdough. Hmmm...now I think I need to determine the best Habit burger. But that might need to wait for a few trips as I think my body needs to recover from four straight days of burgers. I don't know how Morgan Spurlock could do it for 30 days...

It's Burger Week

I knew it would happen on one of these trips to LA, but this is the week: Burger week. What's that, you say? Well, it's when I do some very informal but critical judging of burgers from our normal eating spots in LA. So, final results will come in a couple of days, but here are the standings so far:

1. In-N-Out Burger: Still at the top - it's hard to beat the double-double with grilled onions...
2. Malibu Inn - The "Famous Malibu Inn Burger" with cheese and bacon is a surprising second, but seriously, everything here is good...
3. Wendy's - The Bacon Cheeseburger combo still rates in the top 5...

Tomorrow...The Habit. It has serious potential to knock In-N-Out from the top spot.
(I think I need to do this with tacos, too...)

Beautiful Southern California

I'm in the LA area this week for work, and so far the days have been postcard perfect. Clear skies (yeah, I know, that doesn't happen often here...), cool temperatures, calm seas, good food. Ahhh...

I don't like being away from my family for a week, but at least this is a nice place to come for work. I do miss them a lot this time, though, because I'm still feeling a little out of sorts after last weekend...

I can't wait to get home...