Things that go boom

Last weekend we took a little vacay to Southern California for the 4th of July holiday and it was a combo of friends, family, and fireworks. Here's the re-cap of our weekend o'fun.

To fuel up for the drive down Interstate 5, we stopped at Nugget to get gloriously delicious sandwiches that only Nugget can make. I am salivating just thinking about it. My signature sandwich is not the healthiest, because it consists mainly of lots of meat and cheese, but oh how I love it. I get focaccia bread with a basil ailoli spread, brushed with a little olive oil, piled with prosciutto, genoa salami, smoked gouda and fontina cheese. Since the sandwich is so freakin huge, I ate half for lunch and had the other half for dinner...scrumptious!

First stop was staying at my Aunt Becky and Uncle Chuck's place in Huntington Beach. David had been driving 8 hours, and I had been sitting restlessly in the car for 8 hours, so we were both quite tired upon arriving around 10:30 pm. However, somehow we got into a lengthy discussion with my Aunt about the state's decision to legalize same-sex marriage (she is against, we are for) and this caused us to stay up until a little after midnight. But I'm glad we chose to have this conversation instead of pushing it under the rug to avoid being uncomfortable. I'm hoping she can think about some of the points we brought up, mainly how the real issue isn't about how the state defines marriage but rather how we as Christians treat the homosexual community---with judgment or with love?

The next morning Becky takes us to Cappy's Dinner off of PCH in Newport Beach for brunch and then since she's a hair stylist, she takes us to a special store that sells expensive hair products at their wholesale price...and you have to be a licensed stylist in order to get in. I ended up buying Paul Mitchell's tea tree lavender mint shampoo...it smells awesome and I think will help repair my hair from all the flat-ironing I do! Becky even convinced David to buy a new jar of hair gel...after opening up several bottles and enthusiastically trying them all on his hair! Needless to say, David was just a tad annoyed at all the hair product put in his hair and was eager to take a shower afterwards.

We left Huntington and met up with one of my favorite couples: the Rickmans! I know that whenever we spend time with them, there will be lots of laughs. Our first night with them, we went to their favorite Thai place for dinner and had the amazing coconut milk and sticky rice dessert....mmmmm. We chose to rent "Vantage Point" and I have to say I was disappointed---definitely a '24' wannabe but didn't quite hit the mark. The next day, we joined Mark in his 4th of July ritual of watching the annual ESPN Hot Dog Eating contest. It is absurd how serious this competition is, it truly is given the same treatment on ESPN as any other major sports event! The first round resulted in a tie, so there was a 5 dog "eat off"---first one to swallow 5 hot dogs AND buns was proclaimed the champion. Just watching this whole thing made me want to vomit, but it was strangely entertaining as well.

We then went to Golden Spoon for a mid-day frozen yogurt run and decided to mull around Whole Foods. As you can tell, our outings all revolve around food. We ended up buying some awesome blue cheese (a Spanish variety) and a Tillamook sharp white cheddar...along with a fresh baguette and some wine to have before we went to go see an Anaheim Angels game later that evening. Since Mark works for Wells Fargo and Wells Fargo is a sponsor of the Angels, he was able to use his corporate connections to get us good seats for the game AND for the fireworks show afterwards! So we went to the stadium and had a very yuppie-ish tailgate session with our wine and cheese, and then went up to the Knothole, an exclusive club-level restaurant for special Angels guests only (which thanks to Mark, included us!). I'm not a huge fan of baseball, but it was good to catch up with Ashley and discuss our future life plans (or what, at this point, we think are our future plans). During the 8th inning, we went down to join the rest of the Wells Fargoians in order to get our special wristbands needed to be on the field for the fireworks show. That's right, we got to watch the fireworks on the field beside the players and their families...pretty awesome. We came back to their place

The next morning we met up again with my Aunt Becky and Uncle Chuck for breakfast before heading down to Sandy Eggo to see the Browns! Krystle and Dan just bought a condo in SD and I looked forward to seeing the Brown Bungalow. We were greeted by their new kitten, Pixel, and were given the official tour (I loved how Krystle had made a proud display of her Starbucks city mugs in their kitchen). Then we had Dan take us to his office at DivX, a tech company that he works for in La Jolla. Normally, taking someone to your office would be boring but Dan's work setup is awesome and designed with a younger workforce in mind---it's all one huge office space with lots of work stations and lounge spaces with flat screen TVs and Playstations. I laughed when I saw open bottles of alcohol on people's desks.....a little different than the university environment I work in. We came back to their place and changed to go to Chelsea's wedding ceremony. Chelsea is one of the girls who was on the 2004 Italy mission trip with me and through that experience, became a dear friend. I was happy we were going to be in SD the same day as her wedding, and I was also happy to be able to see Nicole (the other girl who was on our team) and catch up with her briefly. We didn't stay for the reception because we didn't want to neglect our already short time with the Browns but I was SO happy I could see her in her wedding dress, beaming with joy as she came down the aisle.
That night, we went to Cafe Coyote in Old Town and enjoyed the margaritas and carnitas....Mexican food always hits the spot. Then we took a little drive around Coronado Island and ended the night by playing some MarioKart on the Wii....I failed miserably. The next day our vacation came to an end and we made the long 10 hour trek back up to NorCal. However, NPR saved the day...we listened to several of their podcasts and were able to not go insane on the long drive (my podcast recommendations: "This American Life" and "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!").

Overall, a very enjoyable and jam-packed 4 day weekend...if only the drive to see our SoCal friends wasn't so long, otherwise, we would do it more often!