Wednesday February 21
After my flurry of writing about that crazy flight I’ve gotten lazy again. On Saturday we relaxed, held Emi, hung out with Dan and Kelsey. A month later Emi is REALLY smiling and has better control over her arms and hands, although they still tend to wave around rather randomly. She can grab at a toy dangling in front of her more consistently and loves faces and when you talk and sing to her. She’s also sleeping through the night! Dan and Kelsey are venturing out more now that Emi has had her shots. Of course now that it’s been several days I’m not remembering what we did about food on Saturday. Wait, yes I do. For lunch Lee and Dan went to Piazza and got sandwiches at my suggestion. I got their Cubano, which was huge. I ate half of it. We went for a walk in the afternoon. It’s still raining a lot. What did we do for dinner? Oh yeah, went out to get Mexican. It was pouring but we made it. I got a chicken enchilada. This is the same place we got Mexican carryout from the last time I was here. The enchilada was good but I wasn’t crazy about the sauce; too tomatoey instead of salsa. But I ate most of the black beans, they were great!
We were pretty tired, went to bed early, and woke up at a normal time. I went for a run. Then we met some friends of theirs, and tried to get Rossi and their dog to play, but neither dog is very into other dogs. They went for a walk together and so did Lee and I. For lunch we went to a pizza/burger place. I got a pizza, the others got burgers. Lee and Daniel got Piny the Younger beers which were very delicious; I kept sneaking sips of Lee’s.
We went to a few open houses too. One was right down the street from them. A little house built in the late 50’s, nicely staged, but structurally probably some problems, i.e. the floor sloped. Original (crappy) cabinets and no dishwasher. At some point the original design was modified to add another bedroom, and the master was enlarged by taking part of the garage, making it a one car, which is just not a big deal in CA. Asking price for a 2k sq ft house in Palo Alto? 3.2 mil. Crazy.
Then we went to look at another house, out in the Portolla hills. Beautiful, 3 acres, a pool, little houses for yoga, meditation, lol. Kind of an odd layout, but very pretty, lots of room. You’d have to make some changes for it to work for kids. 3.4 mil.
The thing is, you can’t tell how accurate these prices are. They might be listing low to provoke a bidding war. The housing market here is just madness. No wonder there are so many homeless.
We also went back to Stanford Mall. We found a hat for Lee at the Levi’s store, because he forgot to bring a ball cap. And I went into Vuori and bought some really nice cargo pant-like leggings. The material was just very soft, and they were very comfortable. Just don’t ask the price! It’s just stupid to buy clothes in CA with their 8% sales tax, when MN’s is zero. But I probably will go to Marine Layer at some point too because I want to go to their retail store and compare it to online.
That night we met Jean and Craig at a Japanese konkastu restaurant. I got their fried chicken, a spicy tuna seaweed taco and some rice with eel which was really good. It was POURING but we had a close parking spot and we didn’t melt.
Monday it was time to drive to La Jolla. Lee drove for the first part. We are renting a Rav 4. We got Car Play to work with his phone, which was nice, but each time we stopped we had a heck of a time finding it again! Also we couldn’t figure out how to charge our phones. We don’t know if it doesn’t like our cables because they’re off brand, not Apple, or what.
I drove from 10 until we stopped for lunch at an InandOut, and then drove again for about an hour. The InandOut was packed. Those places are popular! We stayed on I-5; it’s not very scenic, but mostly faster. There was a small detour due to flooding but considering the amount of rain they’ve had it could be worse. The weather continued bright and sunny until we hit LA. Then it started pouring and continued to do so most of the rest of the drive. I drove again from outside LA until we got to our Airbnb.
This place is ok, mostly. Very small, kind of old. There’s a living room and a bedroom. The kitchenette is in the bedroom, don’t ask me! There’s a sink, a small fridge, a microwave and a hotplate. The only bathroom is off the bedroom. There is a very nice patio on a porch, but it had to stop raining before we could use it!
We got ourselves settled and then walked to the grocery store and to pick up a salad for dinner. Then we fell into bed. We were very tired from that long drive.
Tuesday morning I went for a walk/run on the Coastal Walk along the ocean. For the first time it poured during my entire run. It was beautiful but I got very wet, and it’s so humid my running clothes have yet to dry! For lunch we went to Din Tai Fung! Dumplings, yum yum yum. And hot and sour soup, and their famous cucumber salad. And lots of jasmine tea.
Satiated we went back to the house and chilled for a while, then we drove over to the Scripps Aquarium. It was very busy because it was something people could do on a rainy day. Thank goodness we found a place to park! Of course it was not nearly as good as the Monterey Aquarium but I liked it, lots of colorful fish and good descriptions.
For dinner we went to El Piscador for fish sandwiches. Also got some oysters. Another delicious meal.
This morning I went to the Coggins Aquatic Center to swim some laps. It’s an outdoor pool frequented by serious swimmers. Lots of lap lanes. The air temp was in the 50’s but the water was 78-80 so it was ok. I was still a little chilly. I swam 850 laps, not as much because I’ve lost a little swim fitness since my second surgery and I think the water was less saline so I was not as buoyant!
Then we walked down to a french patisserie and got croissants and cinnamon rolls and lattes. Now we’re sitting in the sunshine on our patio. Nice!
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