Here and There Blog

At long last I have my Yellow Fever vaccine and can now go to most of West Africa and the South American jungle. I can go to random Asian wilderness and feel confident that while I may get some food bug, I won't get Yellow Fever. No more avoiding Costa Rica just because I was in Ecuador. My phobia of travel vaccines isn't over but this was the biggie that I had been putting off. Now I only need my new passport to arrive and I'm back in business. First up once I've passport in hand? The not so Yellow Fever (or any deadly disease) country of Canada. Go Edmonton!

Escondido isn't known for fun new eateries so it was nice to have Plan 9 Alehouse open up on Grand. Serving a good selection of local beer plus a couple of their own, this is an alternative to the same burger and brew that we habit. I'd say this is a bit of a work in progress but the grilled shrimp that I had for dinner were totally delicious. The desserts are made in-house. The dinner menu is limited so you don't have to read through endless pages but the selection might not appeal to everyone. There is a kid's menu for and a space at the back for children to play and they stayed in their area and didn't annoy the beer drinkers. Thank-you Plan 9 for that space separation! Below is the lemon dessert. I ate it all :) If you're in Escondido and want to support small business and good beer, give Plan 9 Alehouse a go.

The Flower Fields are starting to fill in with green and the hills above them are in bloom. Spring is coming. This was taken a few minutes before sunset on Friday night.

Nose shots are not easy! Even with a face view camera getting that close up to semi turn out was several tried and then I gave up. But this was too good not to share. I went to the doctor for my annual physical (decade annual in my case) and she did the skin pre-cancer check with the cool device with the light that can see under the skin. Lo and behold (I knew it too!) there was a spot on my nose that was not good. Out came the spray can of liquid nitrogen and the zapping began. Three rounds later this is what I look like. I said no to the bandage and am now waiting for the giant blister to begin.  These were two small dry spots that didn't stand out. Go figure, the big bumps are simply fat cells. No medical reason to justify insurance paying for those. What a bummer. 

No beach photos this weekend. I was even there but the days flew by way to fast and here I am contemplating Monday morning. I woke up in a hotel room and have three more nights to go on the LA/Santa Barbara circuit. Weekend fun included breakfast at Old Town Mexican Cafe (yum guacamole!) and that was about it. Wanted to see Vampire Academy but the reviews were so bad and the showtimes limited that I decided to save it for an airplane movie. No holiday for me, it's a working day in my company. I hope everyone who's off today has a great day!

The season changing from the dark of winter to the light of spring is a wonderful time. You can get out and exercise and at 6:22 am catch the sun rising from the west. In the evening, it's staying lighter in the evening and soon it will be perfect post-work sunset time. I'll have this sunrise with me today in my mind as I get locked in a meeting room all day and then spending time in traffic before getting to the next hotel.

Yesterday was 4+ hours of driving in LA traffic and it was brutal. The only reward at the end of it all was I arrived in Santa Barbara in time for sunset. It's warm enough to walk along the beach with only a light jacket and so few tourists that the beach is almost to yourself. The view makes up for the hotel that has the faint smell of sewage in the pipes and the floors are thin so you hear the person above you walking like elephants, even if they are a child of two.

Sunday night - hotel Anaheim Monday night - hotel Los Angeles Tuesday/Wed nights - hotel Santa Barbara Thursday night - hotel Anaheim It's a work visitor week which means lots of hotel hopping/city driving/up early and back late meetings. People wonder why I don't always want to eat out at "nice" restaurants when I'm home and this is one of the reasons. Those kind of dinners are always over-priced and 2-3 hours long. I'd rather have a pizza and be done with it. I probably should have stayed in hotels over the weekend but sleeping in my own bed was worth the 2-3 hours in driving to get me back home. Sort of. It's not like I took care of the garden or cleaned the house but it sure was good to feel lazy in my house! Wishing you all a decent Monday! 

Once again I was getting jabbed in the arm for cholesterol and general "labs" testing. Having not eaten for 16 hours, I was hoping for better results than last year's 199 number which left only 1 spare when coming in under the desired 200. HDL, LDL, Triglycerides all at wonderful levels. This year, I not only passed but got a full breakdown of stuff I didn't even know about. For example: C02, BUN, Creatinine and other assortments that measure liver and kidney health. All good. Yay! Sodium, Potassium, Chloride, and Glucose levels. All good. Yay! Vitamin D. - The D stands for Deficient. What?!! Didn't see that one coming. I live by the beach. I am in the sun. I eat Salmon. I can live with this. Given all the other results are great, it's time to go out and get a bottle of Flintstones vitamins!

I now have the experience of calling 911 on the side of the freeway to report an accident. It was not a horrible dead body situation for which I am glad. Setting the stage: It's 11:00 pm or so. I've spent the day in Tijuana and left the border at 8:00 pm to take someone to Anaheim. I left Anaheim at 10:15 pm and was making great time and looking forward to being home. I was on the last stretch of I-5 South after Pendleton and entering Oceanside. 15 minutes more and I'd be home. Traffic was light, given the hour and only a few cars speeding along. I'm in the middle lane. Then a big, white pickup truck completely gains ground on all of us (avg speed 75, truck was doing at least 100) and the truck swerves over to the far right, loses control, hits the guard rain and zips left across all lanes of traffic. All 5 of us cars saw this coming and were getting out of the way. Truck hits the breaks and spins around to face us and the truck is tipping. Why no other car was h...

We had a slight sprinkle of water falling from the sky today. This caused major traffic accidents and near panic on Southern California roads. It took me two hours to get from LAX to Anaheim. We have an energy alert to not use too much heat tonight or tomorrow. It's 54F at 8:28 pm. My heater is on. One of my work visitors here is from Indonesia. His hotel location gives him a 5 minutes walk to work. He woke up and turned on the news and heard about our winter storm and thought "oh no, I have to walk in a storm." Then he discovered to his amusement, a barely splash of water sort of coming down from the sky. To put it in perspective, he showed us a photo of a co-worker's home back in Indonesia that is flooded shoulder high from a storm. People are swimming, not walking. I'm glad for the rain since we need it but the amount of traffic accidents I saw today was crazy. The amount of people speeding and weaving in and out of traffic is the reason why all these ac...

If ever there was a week that needs to move along, this is the one. It's only Tuesday. I feel like we are on Wednesday with the slow pace that the clock is going at. Going by Facebook, many people feel the same way and I don't know how any work is getting done today. This picture comes from last night's sunset. I didn't make it to the beach in time to get the pink hues but it was still an event and even included a few minor drops of water to wake up all the people on the boardwalk.

Post Super Bowl Monday. I didn't even watch the game and I feel like I should have the day off. The work load has been lighter than normal which makes me believe many people did take the day off. Good thing too because was it me or was all work a slug fest today? Communications that lead to incomplete answers and more questions. Backing up files only to find out your external hard drive has a virus. Stop. Opening files that require yet another new software to download. File formats changed (good) but require more work on my end to update and match (bummer). Old printer gave out today and new printer went in. Wireless! Love that part. Endless Adobe, Java, Chrome updates to install. For such an easy day it sure was tiring.  Monday (almost done!) bring on Tuesday!

Since we all see our shadow today, it looks like So Cal is in for 6 more weeks of winter. We haven't really had one which is nice for being warm and doing stuff and a big bummer for having a water shortage. A few clouds have moved in since taking this photo but I think they are for show and not for rain. While most of the US is waiting to see if the Super Bowl gets a big storm, I'm going to continue on with early spring cleaning and try and uncover my office from years of files. Enjoy your day and may it be a great game!