The Same Late Season Vacation Where Everything Was Different

Here it is, the typical late season vacation to Catalina again, only different!!!

The first thing that changed, we took the younger's friend. He's a good guy, calls me his father figure, and I call him my surrogate son.

The next, and probably the most significant thing we changed, instead of getting a hotel room, we rented one of the many houses in Avalon!!! There's a lot of them available to rent, but a lot of them are a ways back from Crescent Street, along the front of Avalon.

This one was on the lower end of the price range (but still a little more than the hotel would have been... and without the room credit towards some of the local places, of course) and it was just a little ways from Crescent Street, right down the first street as you come into town.

Almost all the places over there are older construction, and skinny and close together. That was the case with this one. It has a good sized front living room, a skinny kitchen including stairs up to the upper loft room, then a decent sized master bedroom.

Dang, that glare off the bald dome!!!

It has air conditioning (actually several wall mount units and a couple of portable units) but the weather there was perfect, and we didn't need to use any of them.

Upstairs there's a couple of beds and a little bathroom with a shower that is encroached upon by the slant of the roof, a little sitting area, and a tiny but pretty cool little balcony.

Since there was a little kitchen, I brought some bagels and cream cheese so we could have some breakfast or snack chow without having to go out. When we got there and found there was a coffee maker and several filters, we headed over to the store and picked up coffee and creamer, and several other things.

It's a nice place, though far from perfect. 100% would stay there again!!!

There's a washer and dryer on the side of the house (bonus, there was detergent there already!!!), and a shed full of all kinds of beach toys and floats. We were in the ocean swimming 3 of the 4 days, but didn't ever use any of the stuff in the shed.

Here's another thing that was changed, they painted the 1953 Flxable Buses!!! I liked the old style, but this looks good, too, and matches the Catalina Island Company colors. I had wanted to take the Inland Tour again, but apparently they only run that tour when the cruise ships that port in Avalon tell them to or something. Not sure if that's only during the off season.

Here's another thing that was different, surrogate son made dinner one night!!! He's had some chef training, and it came out great!!! Of course, everything over there is more expensive on account of everything having to be shipped over (and there's only one full grocery store, which is the perennially more expensive Vons) but it still came out at a fraction of what we'd been spending most other nights!!!

We did a lot of playing games. For something else different on the games, my boy brought over his Binding of Isaac game, and we played it several times.

There were several games in the closet including Battleship and a weird Cityville version of Monopoly. Didn't get to Battleship, but broke out the Monopoly one night. The end game for this version is to have 4 properties with skyscrapers on them. You can add buildings without having the full set, but you can't complete a skyscraper without the full set, so there's your challenge. I got the equivalent of Boardwalk and Park Place, and was on my way to getting enough capital to build out one of my other properties. Got a couple of hits from the others landing on them (which is how I was able to complete another set of properties).

Didn't quite get the capital together, and ended up losing the game!!! Congratulations to son #3. I had fun, though. Don't 100% remember, but I think I may have not won a single game!!!

We hiked up the left side of Avalon this time instead of the right side, where the Catalina Chimes Tower is. It was a little early in the day (but not that early, I'm on vacation, dammit!!!) maybe around 1:00 PM or so, and it was still a little cloudy out.

As we ascended up the gradual rise, and easy hike, we got further into the clouds, and they were streaming through the gaps in the mountains!!! It was pretty cool!!!

Here's what my goal was for heading up this side this time, it's where Mount Ada is located. It was the home of William Wrigley Jr. and his wife Ada, and has since been converted into one of the most expensive hotels on Catalina. In the pictures I've seen it looks like a nice place, but not nice enough to justify the price, and being separated from most anything else you'd want to do on Catalina!!! A cursory search doesn't show it has an included golf cart or hotel shuttle, but for the price I would think it would.

The one thing I hadn't considered, for such a nice place it naturally is behind closed gates to keep the riff raff such as myself away!!! Nice looking gate...

A slightly related reason I'd wanted to hike up there, there's a couple of Pokemon Go gyms up there. When we vacationed there during the Stupid Times and they had expanded the distance to reach gyms, we put a couple 'Mon in one of gyms up there, and they stayed for weeks on end!!! The Pokemon in the gyms had been there a while, but when we got up there, we had no internet connection. (When we were back in downtown Avalon that afternoon, we still had no internet, it often seems very flaky over there).

Nice hike up there, though!!! We went a little further, and there was a similarly gated driveway. There was an overlook point that we explored a little with interesting semi constructed areas, and a nasty looking reservoir. On the way back, I got this shot of the place we stayed, Green Palace Junior, from the back!!! The master bedroom has nothing directly over it, but you can still hear when someone is moving around upstairs, and you can see how the little sitting room area upstairs is the only part that's square to the house.

The clouds had mostly cleared by the time we were heading down, giving a nice before and after of Avalon and the harbor.

The first night we were there, my wife was wanting Italian for dinner. The previous go-to would have been Antonio's on the waterfront, but the last time we had been there it looked like the menu had been gutted and the hours were shortened. It's since been changed to a place called Pier 24 and re opened, and it seems like the menu is back to being fairly robust (but not as much Italian-themed) and the hours restored. So there's another “new” place we went to. The sun had already set, so it was on the cool side outdoors, so we didn't get in on the outdoor seating ambiance.

We also hit some of our previous favorites, the classic Buffalo Nickel and Jack's Country Kitchen.

To round out the week, and for the final something different to round out this post, the last night we went to the Mexican place that's on the first part of the street we were staying on, Mi Casita (visible in the 2 pictures from the balcony shooting towards the beach). Good food, and it was much more enjoyable after the table of drunks left!!! They had a dessert menu, and my wife was wanting to get something from it, but it was close to closing and they only had flan left as an option, as they had shut down the ice cream machine. After we left, my son and I went to Von's for the final time and picked up a 4-pack of Reese's ice cream sandwiches, which were great, and fed all of us for less than a single dessert would have cost at Mi Casita!!!

And here's what I consider to be my prize winner photo from the trip!!!

Bool Disposal

During this week the drain for the kitchen sinks got clogged and backed up. It's been a while since I've had to work on that plumbing, but I have a shorty snake and my trustworthy hydraulic drain cleaner. To use either, I was going to need to undo the P trap and the elbow on the pipe going back into the wall. Not long after I started working at my current job I'd done some work down there, and have replaced that pipe with some nice schedule 80 stainless steel pipe, so it's heavy duty. I had my boy take all the crap under the sink out and put it in a box before I got off work the next day. That project spiraled, but I got it back together after much work.

Among the crap down there was this potion bottle. I don't remember the origin, but I'm pretty sure the boys had it in their room for a while. Might have found the bottle at the dollar store and put water and food color in it. I think it used to be a dark purple and it's faded over the years. It was grubby from being down there, and no one has much of a connection to it. I had the idea to just clean it off and stick it by the bleachers at the basketball court in the park across the street. I've done that with other stuff that seemed too good to throw out, such as the radio that was in the Matrix when we bought it, and it has worked.

My wife cleaned it off and it was on the counter. I saw it today and had a better idea. There's a swing over there, too, with a sand area beneath it. I went over there this evening (after yet another project that took far too long, the alternator in the Matrix had gone out. At least the rain that they had been predicting for today had all blown through yesterday!) and dug a hole and buried it off in the corner of the sand, with just the top peeking out!!! I hope a kid finds it and is filled with awe and wonder!!!

8 Weeks

It's been a while since I've done any updates about work. The last time I'd mentioned anything, I was the only person doing sourcing for information for our CAD builds. That wasn't a lot different than what they do for photography for the catalog, so they added me to the photography & art direction team for doing that kind of thing, too!!! Towards the end of last year, they started discussing returning to the office. The plan was to have various teams come in for a few days each month on a rotating schedule. The only thing is, the rest of my team is located back east. I don't mind, I'll head back a few times a year!!! Instead of doing that, though, they decided to transfer me to a department that is represented locally. They trained me for a customer service position, dealing with e-mail and text contacts. Since the beginning of the year I trained in that department, and then was working doing that. April was my first rotation coming into the office for three days of the week. The second day, they called me in, and told me that they've been struggling in my old department, and asked if I could, on a temporary basis, come back and help out.

This is one of the first of my old friends that I saw when I came back. He's the one that I'd gone to see Brian Fallon with a few years back, and he wanted to get a selfie with me to send to his girlfriend, who occasionally asks after me!!!

The opinion of several of my co-workers was that I would probably be there longer than the time they had specified, the 8 weeks mentioned in the title. They took a couple of days an re antiquated me with the process and show me the changes. After that, I was able to get back into my old role fairly easy. I told my co-workers it was like getting back on the world's worst bicycle!!! All the old aches and pains came back to me, too!!! Since I wasn't working from home, I wasn't seeing the cat, and one day on break I spotted this shaggy fellow out in the quad, so I got a picture of it!!!

I don't know if I've ever made mention, but one of the break rooms features a cool curved glass block wall. It used to have a couch, but they took it out on account of the Wuhan. One day I went in and both the chairs were taken, and I asked if I was going to have to sit on the floor. One of the girls I work with said they would lay back with their legs up the wall, and it would give them a good stretch on your back and legs. That sounded good, so I tried it, and after that, almost every day I'd do that on my afternoon break!!!

Of course, I was finally getting my steps in every day, so I would get my Pokemon GO buddy out. One day, I tried getting my buddy out while reclined against the glass block wall, and this is what a mamoswine looks like from underneath!!!

And the same mamoswine down one of the asiles.

The second week I had a vacation scheduled, which I have yet to post anything about. My wife is having another surgery this coming week, so I recently asked how they were doing on getting things staffed. I could tell that things have been better than they had been at the start. I told them that since the recovery is an uncertain process, it would be great if I could return to the customer service position and go back to working from home, and they arranged to get that taken care of, so I held them to the eight weeks that they said to begin with!!! It was honestly a nice change, other than commuting during the worst gas prices ever, but I don't mind being back to working from home!!!

Gotta Find a Geekier Neighborhood...

So last Monday was Halloween. As we often do, we went to my parents' neighborhood to trick or treat, as it's much flatter lands with sidewalks there.

First up is the youngest. He changed his costume idea from Assassin's Creed to Minecraft. The diamond sword was the trickiest part of the costume to come up with. The rest of the costume was just getting the boxes cut to shape and colored. One other kid recognized it for what it was supposed to be.

Next up is my older boy. His original idea was to be a Halloween decoration. I thought that'd be great, to get a large circle, cut a hole in the middle and put a tablecloth on it and stick his head through the middle. He'd changed it to Discorda from My Little Pony, but finally went with Dr. Who. Bow tie, and a light stick fashioned into a sonic screwdriver, and he was set. He'd trick or treat, then tell people he was the doctor. Only one customer had the proper response, "Dr. who?" To which he responds, "Precisely!!!" I don't know if anyone got it.

For my own, I already had a mask (don't know where it came from or how long we've had it, but it's been a decoration in our basement for years) and was easily able to fashion a mohawk from the leftover foam I'd made the boy's diamond sword from. Used a piece of cardboard to make the name tag, and my wife had some beads to complete the look, and I was Geoff from Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show!!! A few people called me by name, but I'm not sure if I was recognized for the costume or the name tag. Balls!!!

Yep, definitely have to find a geekier neighborhood to get the references!!!