Travels with Mar and Lar - San Diego

Monday - March 16, 2009

I went to work at 7:30 and got set up for class. Class was good, but I expected that because there were only two people. But enough about me.

Mar got up and relaxed and got ready for her adventure. I did not know how things were going until I called her at noon. Her first words were, "I'm having so much fun!" Then I could relax. So what did she do? Well, she just went out and drove to see what she could see.

She knew the beach was west, so she started that way and ended up in La Jolla (pronounced La Hoya). It is the jewel of the San Diego coast line. She went to the cove and saw kayaks and surfers and people just enjoying themselves. She saw birds and pelicans (yes I know they are birds), and sea lions. And she loved the houses and the different plants.

Then she drove down to San Diego itself. She ended up in Balboa Park because the people at the restaurant the night before said if there was just one thing you had to see in San Diego it was Balboa Park. That is where the zoo is. There is a Natural History Museum and an Art Museum and the Museum of Mankind. Their are hiking trails and gardens. It is comparable to Golden Gate Park in San Fransisco. Again, she loved it.

And then she told her GPS to take her home - and it did. She put in a lot of steps today - and she paid for it with a blister.

After I got off work in the evening we went up to Andrea's for Family Home Evening. A bunch of the LDS families from the base had a group FHE at the beach and did foil dinners and just played. Now we never told Andrea that Mar was coming. She thought it was only me. Boy was she and all of the kids surprised. Mar got to do a little bit of nursing. Just before we got to the beach, one of the husbands hit himself with an axe. He went home to take care of it. A little later, he called saying it was still bleeding. Ben took Mar to look at it and give her opinion - which was - bandage it up, come down and have dinner, go home and help get the kids to bed, then go and get stitches. He got two. It was nice being with the kids. Emma and Spencer insisted that their grandpa play with them and help them with dinner. Michael had a bunch of his friends there. Jasen was sick, but on drugs so he was okay and enjoyed himself. But I don't think anyone enjoyed that FHE as much as I did. I miss that crew a lot.

When we got back to the hotel at about 9:30, we smelled like smoke - so we went down and soaked the smoke off in the hot tub.

Travels with Mar and Lar - San Diego

March 15, 2009

An adventure begins.

My company is sending me to San Diego to teach a class. All year we have been waiting for a venue where it would be exciting for mar to go on a trip with me. This one is it. San Diego in March has to be wonderful, and where I am going to be is only 35 miles from Andrea. So we booked a mileage flight and she is going with me.

We left Denver in the early afternoon and got to San Diego about 4:30. We got our rental car and headed North. We are stying in San Diego but just over the freeway from Del Mar. I got a nice motel just 1/2 mile from our office. Our car has a Neverlost GPS. This may seem like a luxury but it makes it so Mar can drive around and see what she wants to see and can always get back home. We found it to be a real plus - a giver of freedom.

Sunday evening was easy. We went and found some dinner and then settled in. It was just a great feeling to know we were in San Diego, I was on a business trip and Mar was with me and relaxing.

Travels - Lar in Chicago

March 9 - 13, 2009

Yes - I am a little bit confused about where I was this week. I flew into Chicago, I taught in Lisle but my motel was in Naperville.

At any rate, I was in the Chicago Metropolitan area teaching a class for a company called Arris. The class had 14 students. They had a lot of questions, but for the most part it was a good class. I have to say that I have rarely worked that hard in a class. They really kept me on my toes. I also helped solve a couple of problems after hours.

Other than that, there is not much to tell. The weather was rainy on Tuesday, but otherwise it was clear and cold. The flights there and home were uneventful.

Reading List

March 6, 2009

Today I finished another book from the 5001 reading list. And I got serious. I read The House of Mirth by American turn of the century author, Edith Wharton. It is a story of a woman who is in the top echelon of New York society. She is beautiful and charismatic and charming. She has one society flaw. She has no money. The story is about how she falls slowly from grace, and goes down the tiers of society. There is the obvious theme of the life style. But it is important to note that in all of the story, she does not lose her "values" and sink to depths to maintain her position, even though that is what she is accused of.

I really liked the book. However, I doubt if most "modern" readers would like it, or would even get it. The morality is so far distant to what our mores are today. And the language is different and in many cases difficult. Also, nothing ever really happens. There is no adventure or even romance. It is a story about a woman, and that is all. But as a novel, developing a character and revealing that character, it is superb.

( The name comes from a passage in Ecclesiastes 7:4 - "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.")

Reading List 2009

3/6 - The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton

2/16 - The Wonderful Wizard of OZ - L. Frank Baum

2/11 - The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

2/9 - Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie

2/1 - Next - Michael Crichton

Travels - Lar in Minneapolis

February 22 - 28

Yes, I returned to Minneapolis only one week after my last trip. It was for a Library Manager class with three people, 2 from the company I taught during the last trip and one Mentor employee from Oregon. The class was successful.

Were there any highlights from this trip? Hmmmm....

I did get to go to the St. Paul Temple again on Tuesday evening.

I chose Tuesday because - the weather was changing. On Thursday there was a "fast moving blizzard" that went through. It lasted about 6 hours and dumped 6 inches of new snow. It was really only bad for about 30 minutes - then it eased off to light snow. But during that 30 minutes visibility was as 0 feet.Flights for this trip were easy. Almost everything about this trip was easy.

Travels - Mar in San Clemente

February 16 - March 2

I have been traveling a lot (three weeks in a row), so what does Mar do in those times. Well of course she travels too. She went to San Clemente to see Andrea for two weeks. The real reason she went was to see Michael and Jasen in Grease, but the rest of it was real fun, too.

For instance, they went to Marine World. Mar was so captivated by the polar bears - watching them from underwater. (The miracle of knee surgery is that she can walk - oh how glorious it is.)

All of the school kids got sack lunches one day, so they also made Spencer a sack lunch. That day Mar was babysitting Spencer, so they took his sack lunch to the beach for a picnic. Andrea, meanwhile, helped chaperon a school field trip to Disneyland. Hey, I never got to go to Disneyland on a field trip. I only got to go to the fish hatchery.

Michael went snowboarding - and sprained his wrist - bad enough to go to the emergency room and get a splint.

A little excursion to Hemet, just to see where Michael is serving on his mission. It is an hour-and-a-half from Andrea's in a desert valley in the mountains. Mar said it was pretty nice. The mountains were high enough to have snow on them, but she said its a safe bet it is pretty hot in the summer. And no they did not cruse to find the missionaries.

(Stay tuned to this entry for updates on the upcoming week.)

The second week of her visit was a little bit more harried. Michael and Jasen were both in the school production of "Grease". And because they were in it, Andrea was very involved. Hence the harried week. Mar found herself doing a lot of "holding down the fort" with plain housework and taking care of the two youngers. Not very exciting, you may say, but she was very glad she was there to really help.

Thursday and Friday were the performances - 3 on one day and two on the other. Mar said they were wonderful and darling and great. Of course her grand kids were the greatest part.

Saturday was a breath of relief. Michael went to a speed skating competition where one of his friend was competing. Jasen went off with some friends, too. That left Andrea and Mar with Emma and Spencer, so they went to the beach and had a lunch and watched the sea and saw dolphins.

She came home on Monday. It was a needed trip - for Mar and for Andrea and the kids.

Travels - Lar in San Jose

February 16-20

Nothing too exciting - just a business trip. I taught a class to two people in our San Jose office. The class went well.

One of my compatriots - Grant - was also teaching in San Jose. Every evening we went out to dinner together - to some rather interesting places:

A place where they didn't give us any utensils, we had paper plates and our dinner was served in a plastic bag. It was Louisiana mud bugs - or crawdads - and catfish.

A Bar-b-que Tiki Bar - which was a hangout for San Jose Shark hokey fans.

A steak house.

Gilda's on the municipal wharf in Santa Cruz. That was a nice drive over for sunset on the Pacific and local sea food. I had sandabs - a small relative of flounders and souls.

It rained a couple of days. It was sunny a couple of days. Just a trip, but I thought it was a successful one.