Photos

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Tue, 11 Nov 2008

Where Do I Start?

Posted by somegosoftly under Austin, Park City, Photos
[2] Comments 

How about some pictures? Click to enlarge!

the-resort

The house before the first snowfall. The day we moved in.

the-canyons2

The Canyons before snow. Our first day out tour.

deer-valley1

Deer Valley before snow. Ditto.

temp-home

How the B’s let us trash their home. For two weeks.

bobs-jeep1

BB’s super sweet new ride.

gateway-mall1

The mall in DT SLC. Actually pretty nice.

the-longhorns

Super cute Longhorn fans.

learning-hook-em

Teaching SB “Hook ‘Em!” Gotta start ‘em early.

sunset

The B’s backyard light show. Epic sunsets where ever we go…

cousins

Visiting family in Austin.

cs-house1

That family’s amazing new home.

snowoncar1

Back from 76 degrees in Austin to snow on the car at the airport.

first-snow

How the snow looked that night.

house1

And the next morning.

snow-view

The backyard view after the first snowfall.

slc-night-out

Our first drinks on a night out in DT SLC.

early-morning-fog

Fog early Sunday morning.

 

Thu, 30 Oct 2008

Making Friends

Posted by somegosoftly under Photos
[2] Comments 

With the local wildlife. How cool is it that the B’s have their own pet owl?

 

Wed, 24 Sep 2008

San Diego Street Scene 2008

Posted by somegosoftly under Music, Photos, San Diego
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There are a lot of music festivals out there. I haven’t really been to that many. But of course, ACL is a great example of a streamlined successful one. People tell me Jazzfest is the same. And SXSW is the best thing that has happened to so many people for years. We tried Sasquatch. Meh. I’ll see Lollapalooza someday. I’ll never go to the desert for Cochella.

I hadn’t seen hardly any live music in San Diego so I decided to pop over to Street Scene. If you’ve lived here longer than I have you care a lot about the fact it was returning to the streets of downtown for the first time in a long time and whether or not this was good or bad. I just had a free Friday night.

The ticket price for what you get was a little iffy (75$/day pass), since the days are only 4-12, and the four stages are maybe two blocks from each other. I saw Diplo, TV on the Radio, Spoon, Vampire Weekend, and Beck. I have already seen all of those bands except for Beck. Beck was not very good.

If there was one word I had to use to describe it, I’d go with ‘cute’. Seriously. It was like a little miniature attempt at a music festival that really turned out more like a block party.The one great feature was a beer garden portion of the CROWD in front of the STAGE. If you follow me, this great invention means I kicked it with my 21 and up brethren and didn’t have to watch my step, unlike outside the beer garden, where the ground was literally littered with unwashed raver children. Yuck.

We went to the 94.9 after show at the House of Blues, which I’ve always wanted to check out. The surprise band was NOT MGMT like I had been praying since I missed them, but the acceptable reggae beats of Michael Franti and Spearhead.

So I ended up not going back for Day Two. Literally no one I knew wanted to go back. And besides Ghostland Observatory, who I can never tire of seeing, I’d seen all those bands too. Am I getting too much music at SXSW? I sure feel spoiled when I’ve seen all the bands I want to. Here’s a funny review from someone who didn’t even make it. I’m not old -yet I hope- but I get what he’s saying.

Soon to feature a link to the pictures, if you care.

 

Sat, 6 Sep 2008

Collegiate Memory Inspired Antics

Posted by somegosoftly under Adventures, Friends, Holidays, Music, Photos, San Diego
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I’m not gonna lie or sugar coat this situation. I in a moment of insanity forgot my friend’s birthday. Her 30th birthday. SB, my college roommate, had to go so far as to call me and remind me I missed it and I suck. To be fair, we were planning a Mexican getaway to honor the event, and its cancellation is what prompted my forgetfulness. It’s not like I didn’t have it written down. Also in my defense (ask my mom), not having anything to do all day makes them all blur together and oftentimes I just honestly don’t know what day (week, month) it is.

Anyway, to apologize, I got SB here to SD. Her arrival late Friday was pretty exciting, as I hadn’t seen her since our road trip through Denver to Seattle. We commenced celebratory drinking at the La Jolla Brewhouse, ran kicking and screaming from stupid old Jose’s, and did a little late night drive through La Jolla Cove, calling it an early night so we could make the most of the long weekend. Did we, and how.

Saturday morning we had some technical difficulties with the car, as in we had to have it jumped. We walked the Cove again, stopped in at Karl Strauss (another brewery, already)

Mmmmm

Mmmmm

for a sampler and a Bloody Mary, and then meandered to Porkyland, our tourist coming armed with plans had suggested this place - it was great Mexican food.

Car fixed we drove to Balboa Park and paid 4$pp for the lamest Japanese Garden (it’s really 100ft. long) and wandered a bit taking pictures. When we were read to go, the car was not. Seriously, stupid car…so loving Super Husband let us cab it to Old Town while he waited (and waited) for the solution, which was determined to be a new car battery.

SB suggested the Jolly Boy Saloon in Old Town since she wanted absinthe. (She does not mess around). What I saw and we chose first was a sight which my eyes have never before been blessed with:

Wheel, Fire, Beer-Margarita

Great Inventions: Wheel, Fire, Beer-Margarita

Yes, a beer IN A GIANT MARGARITA. Or, a GIANT MARGARITA with A BEER in it. Whichever you prefer. It was AWESOME. Due to it’s size, we shared it responsibly. Then shared the absinthe. Then we were totally roasted. It was, maybe 2pm. We wolfed down some ice cream (yup, still gorging on that) then husband picked us up. We made it to Del Mar just in time to bet on the last two horse races before - seriously, she planned the whole trip, basically - we set off to the infield to attend the last concert of the summer Del Mar series that SB had discovered: DEVO.

Seriously. DEVO.

Seriously. DEVO.

As you can imagine, it was pretty hilarious. We topped out at about 30 minutes of rediculousness and headed home to clean up to head to the Gaslamp District. We had some dinner, some more drinks, and gussied up. I know it was a holiday weekend, but I’d never seen the bars so busy. There were lines everywhere, except (thankfully) Mr. Tiki’s, our staple starter bar. From there we hit up The Field, staple number 2, and some super cool new bar I forgot the name of.

Sunday morning we headed up to Mt. Soledad, then found the SDSU library and Dr. Suess statue (that was mostly for me). We went to the Gliderport, where it was super windy and there were a ton of paragliders out. We tried to get to Lahaina’s in PB but again, the beach was more crowded than I’ve ever seen it, even more than 4th of July. We changed-of-plans it right to Cass St., who serves up 4$ rice vodka spicy Bloody Mary’s. Are you seeing the theme yet? Back to our pool for some more drinks at sunset, a fashion photo shoot, and then off to the Pink Elephant, a pretty great neighboorhood hipster theme bar.

Pink Elephant Bar

Pink Elephant Bar

We got convinced by running club to meet up at Bourbon, where there was, no lie, a foam party. I tried my best to stay away from the madness, but we did have some fun dancing.We got home and totally ran through the parking garage, pool room, and etc. making messes like we were 19 again. Good times.

The next morning, hangover free, miraculously, we hit the Cove for snorkeling and the Shores for Body Boarding and Bahia Don Bravo’s for lunch all before getting SB on the plane ride home. We managed to squeeze quite a bit in.

Here’s the rest of the silly photos.

 

Tue, 26 Aug 2008

Central California

Posted by somegosoftly under Photos, Travel
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After Santa Barbara we drove north and found more interesting places. We had lunch in the city of Solvang, a crazy Danish inspired village. We were expecting Santa Ynez to be bigger but Solvang made up for it. We ate an awesome meal and tried our first Aebleskivers, shown here:

Aebleskivers

Aebleskivers

The best dessert I’ve had in a while. After walking the shopping area a bit we kept heading north and saw Pismo Beach and San Luis Obispo, where we spent the night, at a normal hotel even though we were tempted to check out the Madonna Inn.

I’m putting up two separate links for pictures, here’s one of the drive and random stops,

and the other is the Hearst Castle, in San Simeon. (On these you couldn’t use flash so they aren’t perfect)

Make sure to read that captions I painstakingly add so you know what you’re looking at…

We took so many pictures there it’s easier to see them separately. The main building itself is some 70,000sq.ft. but we saw maybe 10 of that, the outbuildings, and the indoor and outdoor pools on the main tour. We were there 9-12 and some people would go back down to the Visitor Center and take the other tours offered in the same day. The views were amazing, as was the art and architecture. I for one can’t say I’ve ever even heard of this place but was super impressed.

I can’t lie when I admit Mom and Grandma wanted us to see the Ronald Regan library but we skipped it. We did, more importantly, find and drive by Neverland Ranch, because we are giant freaking dorks. We also saw The Hitching Post, where they filmed Sideways. Priorities, ladies…

Amazingly we finished our visit with one last stop in Santa Barbara and made it all the way home in just under 4 hours, which I think is awesome. There is so much to do on the California coast and it pretty much rules that it’s all doable in a day, weekend, or as much time as you want to take.

 

Mon, 25 Aug 2008

Santa Barbara

Posted by somegosoftly under Adventures, Photos, Travel
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We drove up from LA to Santa Barbara and immediately began running around. We checked out quite a bit of the area by simply driving through neighborhoods. There were some really stunning properties, and with the mountains as a backdrop, many of them have front yard ocean views. You can tell a little from my pictures just how green it is, but I was too busy looking to take really great ones. The whole place feels tropical and lush like somewhere other then the US, some tropical destination.

The city itself had a distinctive college town and feel, and reminded me a little of so much about what  liked about Austin. It was easy to navigate, and we went down to the water and walked the pier sharing an ice cream. We strolled through an artwalk and down State Street, through California’s first mall, and through the many restaurants and shops. There’s a definite tourist vibe (it’s called the American Riviera) but it wasn’t overwhelming like I feel La Jolla is right now. There was certainly less beach but it’s relatively a small place so it wasn’t overcrowded.

We saw the mission and stayed the night at a great hotel called the Best Western Pepper Tree Inn. For some reason this quaint and unique hotel had the highest ratings on my phone’s suggestions so we decided to see what it was all about. For how cheap it was it spoiled us with a giant bathroom, giant living room, view of the pool, deck, and amenities everywhere. It was just what we needed to recuperate to head further up the coast.

Here are the pictures from Santa Barbara.

 

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