Catching up . . .

You know my favorite thing about downtime?
Snuggling up on the couch, having a Netflix Instant marathon (Psych, anyone?), and looking to my left, seeing my orange tabby curled up and purring, then, looking to my right, seeing my dingo snuggled up, trying to push my laptop off my lap with her nose. I am surrounded by furries, and it's glorious.


That and I can finally sit back and think about our trip.
I'm not sure if hours and hours in the car can be summed up in an intriguing manner . . . Someone drives, you sit, you all suffer navigating the foreign waters of new radio stations, the world whirls by. 
And really, as much as I'd like to, I can't really give you any interesting descriptions of the plane ride over because, quite frankly, I was unconscious. While my subconscious can be intriguing, to say the least (Kermit the Frog vs. Zombie Gorillas? A group of blonde psychotic cultists bent on taking over the world . . . until I destroyed their leader with a toaster? Time travel?), you really don't want to travel there for extended periods of time.
So, I present you with a bullet-list of my observations

• If you're traveling with Steve, you'd better hope he wears a brightly covered shirt because that makes him easier to target as he is literally ZOOMING through the airport. And to the bus. We didn't even know where we were heading after we landed because Steve just started running outdoors weaving between traffic and other pedestrians. Don't stop. Not at all. He's a bloody hurricane
• Maybe the airport is just in a crummy part of town, but LA was less than pretty . . . it reminded me of Orlando . . . but with more palm trees (if that's even possible), and a little scary. There must be another LA that looks like the heaven they use in movies because it wasn't the one we drove through
• Chris's new boss is AWESOME. Laid back, friendly, sensible . . . and former special forces . . . with awesome stories . . . that he can't tell you . . . because then he'd have to kill you.
• The company's celery packaging plant is actually much cooler than you'd think. Diamond tipped super-high-pressure water spouts to cut celery? Yeah, we're high-tech. 
• If the music choice sucks because we can't find a radio station everyone agrees on, be prepared for the hubs to suddenly, out of the blue, make a MAD DASH for the music section of any random store. I mean, there one minute, gone the next. The Flash by sheer artistic desperation. 
• Carmel is the prettiest place EVER. And I mean EVER EVER EVER.  First off: coastline--gorgeous. Houses and cottages I can never even dream to own in every style imagined--fabulous (take THAT Winter Park! You're a lame mockery). And they have hotels like this:

No photo can possibly capture the awesome garden and quaintness of this little hotel. LOVE.

Yeah, our room had a fireplace. No air conditioning. So, we slept with the window open and the fire roaring. Happy and snug? As a bug in a rug. Heck. Yes.

 

•   Due to leaving Oxnard a day early, we had an extra day to play around in Carmel and Monterey. Just FYI, you totally need to visit the aquarium there. I mean, if you're into stuff that's awesome.

I might need  to do an entire post JUST of photos from the aquarium. It was beyond fabulous. 

• After the aquarium, Lisa, my MIL, had this idea . . . Dear Lisa, beautiful (seriously, it's not FAIR how gorgeous this woman is) and sweet Lisa, decided that, since we had a "late" breakfast (because, really 9:00 AM on a "lazy" day may be a little late, but it's not brunch . . .) and an "early" dinner, thought that, instead of grabbing lunch, we should go buy fresh cherries.
  In a way, this was a GREAT idea because, seriously, I don't even like cherries, and these were DELICIOUS.
  However, due to not eating lunch (not that I was really hungry), and eating maybe six cherries, my stomach hated me.
  I thought eating a little bread at dinner would help. Yeah, no. Maybe visit the bathroom? Yeah, no, it smelled like someone had crapped, barfed, and died after rolling in anchovies. All at once.
  I kept having flashbacks to the time I spent the night with a friend and woke up with a stomach ache. In her great eight-year-old wisdom, my friend told me to eat breakfast. Being terrified of puking, and seeing the only way to survive as starvation, I refused. Then she pulled the "Do NOT waste those Froot Loops and milk I just poured for you--DO NOT WASTE." Guess what made a sudden reappearance in her car. Yep.
  So, here I am, trying to eat some soup at what seemed to be the BEST seafood restaurant ever, and all I can think of are soggy Froot Loops.
  By the time I was back in bed, I was grouchy, near tears, and cramping so badly I thought I was going into labor . . . but without a pregnancy . . .
  Seriously.
  I have never been in so much pain. Luckily, I woke up alive . . .and without any unexpected offspring . . . .

But this is long enough . . . maybe more another post :]