Sitting in San Diego, CA right now, relaxing in the hotel - 2 days down 7 to go. Only have 260 pictures so far - I'll get around to posting them eventually. :)

Don't remember what happened Thursday, but Friday was long. After I got home Thursday I think I just washed some clothes and sat around. On Friday all the students were leaving and apparently the faculty and staff weren't calling for help either so no little things. Then the no big things since I was trying to get those in consistent state and everything finished up so other people could cover them for a week. That night was packing and stuff. Ended up going to bed shortly before 1 thinking I'd be done, but no, at around 1 my phone rings and I end up on the phone for over a half hour. Then at around 1:45 (right as I'm almost back to sleep) it rings again and i'm on the phone for another 20 minutes...

Anyways, back to vacation. Been good so far. Saturday morning started with getting up at around 5:30 (with only a couple hours of sleep) to get ready and take care of final packing and shutting everything off around the house. Given my water heater leaks I shut off the water and water heater to save water and heating bills. Then might as well cut the heat way back too... Anyways, we were supposed to be picked up between 6:30 and 7 by the family on the way to the airport, but ended up waiting until closer to 7:30. Given our flight left at 9:11, that's cutting it a bit close. Checking our bags took a while, as the guy kept leaving to check on stuff, and apparently he had to wait to talk to the people who could actually do things. Anyways, once I got to the beginning of the line it took like a minute to get my stuff checked, which was nice. Then there was security. It took me, the guy with a bag full of odd shaped metal objects, about 30 seconds to get through (no laptop booting - that was nice). Unfortunately some people in my family were suffering a bit from lack of sleep, and neglected to think about what security involved, and left things like gum wrappers in the bottom pockets of cargo pants. Yes, a metal gum wrapper will set those things off. As will keys, belt buckles, etc... It's also a good idea to pick up your stuff afterwards. Anyways, after waiting for that to finish up, went to the gate and got there with perfect timing and were able to board almost right away. I got to sit next to the window, and took advantage of that for a couple dozen pictures of stuff like the rockies and Grand Canyon, but unfortunately mine was rather scratched so most have a soft look to them and some have funky polarization and diffraction issues (shows as wacky color shifts). In San Diego it went pretty smooth, my dad and I went to get the van we rented, and rode with this guy who had an interesting driving style. We got back to the place and the guy commented he got us back there quick - "it usually takes him longer to find people." Guess that explained the driving... Went back to pick up the rest of the family at the airport, who had been waiting around an hour at that point. We couldn't actually check in to the hotel that early, so spent some time walking downtown and grabbed some lunch. Then we went on a Harbor Tour which took a couple hours but went north as far as Point Loma and south down into the south part of the bay. The tour guide was a bit odd, but I got a lot of pictures. Due to the military presence in the area lots of military ships and stuff, including a cool newer high-speed one that the tour people don't know too much about. After that we were all tired since we hadn't had much sleep to start with combined with the time zone so we went back to the hotel.

Sunday woke up and headed off to the Los Angeles area, specifically Garden Grove to church at the Crystal Cathedral. Lots of interesting pics outside there - they have a lot of statues and stuff. The whole place is pretty impressive. They had a high school choir visiting from Ohio which was pretty good. There was also a choir from Holland which ended up singing (without any preparation), and seemed pretty good too (no mics on them, so they were trying to sing loud). The service was pretty good, although definitely a production performance due to the televised nature. They sorta go for more application and explaining rather than any depth, and it's a bit odd having the stage manager walking all over during it, but oh well. After that we went to lunch at a nearby mall with a family friend who we met for church. After lunch we headed over to Huntington Beach. They have a pretty good size beach which we walked along for a couple hours, again resulting it a lot of pictures. It's also paintball tournament time so there were teams people from all over and courts set up on the beach and stuff. I don't think people realized that even though there's a fence, if you stand next to it you will get splatered with paint... Walked back to the van along the beach again, this time at a quick walk pace so only took us like 30 minutes, and proceeded to drive down the coastline, down around Dana Point, around the Edison south plant, and Point Loma. This took until it was dark, when we proceeded to drive around San Diego including downtown a bit more, followed by Del Taco and the hotel again.

As mentioned, pretty good so far, except as you may have noticed by the fact updates are delayed. Verizon's latest update messed up my phone's data link somehow - it doesn't want to talk AT to my computer right now. Oh well, I'll probably link up through other means within a couple days to sync up these updates and email. Speaking of phones though, Their EV-DO network out here seems to have problems. The system can keep track of a phone fine for voice calls, but then seems to looks track of it for data purposes until the instant a voice connection establishes when text messages dump through. LA is better, but apparently the ability to send emails from the phone depends on which cell you are connected to (and the ones it's broken on work fine for SMS). Not to mention battery standby life goes down noticably, probably due to the two networks in SD thing... I think it's time for me to relax now though... Ross, Arizona is only half the week, but yes, it should be warmer than MN (SD sure is). And brooke, you're confused a bit - I came from the best state in the continental US to visit a couple around the southern west coast. :)