November Beach Weekend

I’m now parking in the underground lot beneath my building, which cuts down on the time needed to get to work, and the amount of calories I burn to get from the car to my desk (uh-oh, gym tonight). My building has every convenience, it’s going to make life easy for me. It’s gonna be easy to get things done. I will relax, alone with my loved ones. And that’s what I did at the weekend.

Cassie took her turn to come down to SD at the weekend, bringing Gordon (pron. gor-DON, rolling the “r”). I had another Friday off under the every-other-Friday-off-in-return-for-longer-hours regime, which is working nicely for me, even after only a month.

I spent Friday running some errands and generally pottering. I had an optometrist appointment in the morning, which was a spur to getting up and about. I like going to the optometrist – all the technology and gadgetry, and they don’t even hurt you! He did that thing where he puffs air at your eye, which makes you blink, and he took photos of my retinas. As with my dental x-rays, I was tempted to ask for copies of the images and post them here. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE MY CAPILLARIES? My eyes are fine, my prescription has hardly changed, no I don’t want Lasik or contact lenses. I have to say my company insurance rocks for optometry.

My computer seems to have been fried by my putting 110v volts through it instead of the 240v it was expecting. Why that should fry the power supply is beyond me – this is why I failed A-Level Physics, and am not an electrical engineer. Anyway, I took it to a friendly repair place, who diagnosed the fried PSU, replaced it, and sold me a wireless router as well. Proteus2 lives again. Now to get the router working…

Cassie arrived early evening, and after the usual Zagat’s discussion we went to a nice Moroccan restaurant, Kous Kous. The food was great: Cassie had a chicken tagine dish, and I had beef, all washed down with hot mint tea. We declined dessert – she had a craving for ice-cream (!) so after a stroll round the trendy neighbourhood we stopped off at 7-Eleven.

We both wake up early during the week, so it’s hard to sleep in at the weekends, especially with Gordon whining to be let out. Unfortunately, “out” means getting up, dressed, and taking him downstairs and out of the apt-plex to pee and poo, so by the time you get back, you’re fully awake and dressed. So we decided to go straight to Coronado Dog Beach. It was a lovely day, altough the temperature hasn’t been as high, so we weren’t planning on swimming. Very wise too – the surf was quite impressive, crashing and booming, and paddling was very cold. The adjacent air base was launching some F-20’s, and Gordon had a great time dashing about, barking like a loon, and digging as predicted. After a good length of time playing, relaxing, walking up and down, and throwing the ball for G, we though maybe it was time for lunch. Then we saw that it was 9.45am. Hmm. We managed to drag it out for a while longer (I know, poor us), before taking the mutt to the scrub shop for a soaking. A slice of pizza and a coke later, we were home.

In the evening we met a colleague of mine and her husband for a couple of beers at O’Briens (“the hoppiest place on Earth”), which was really nice – the first time I’ve socialised with a colleague outside of a couple of happy hours and lunches. Must do more.

Sunday morning I made pancakes with Bisquick – my Americanization continues. I added slices of banana to the batter in the pan, so they were embedded. We ate them with Aunt Jemima’s Original syrup, hand-made by the lady herself in a gigantic stainless steel factory. I was horrified to see you can buy sugar-free syrup at the grocery store, which I’m sure is just like the real thing. Whatever, they were delicious, and I’ll be doing it again.

On Sunday afternoon we went to the horrid Mission Valley mall to pick out some frames for my new glasses. I took the plunge and chose some with very bold frames, a departure from the half-framed or frameless look I have sported for so long. The prescription wasn’t very different from my current specs, so I can keep my old ones for a choice of looks. I’ll be picking them up in a week or so, and I’ll post a picture.

While at the mall, we saw Role Models with the very funny Paul Rudd. The commercials really don’t do it justice. It veered from so-so crass comedy to the climactic surreal end sequence, where the guys dress as KISS to enter a LARP battle. I was laughing a lot throughout, especially when swear words were yelled – I’m a simple man.