Category: Uncategorized

Sylvia

In a word “don’t”. In a few more words, this was one of the most boring
films I have ever seen. Within 15 minutes of it starting, i’d got distracted
and started playing games. By about 30 minutes Laurel had fallen asleep and
I had tuned it out and was engrossed in Guild Wars. Its the kind of film you
don’t even hope will get better because you know it won’t. So .. just
“don’t” 🙂

Writing this on my clie

So I bought myself a sony clie from the outlet store when i was in the US.
No complaints so far, it was really useful while travelling, coupled with
avantgo i could download our etickets and check on the flight status while
sitting in borders. Or even sitting in the car at a gas station that had a
starbucks attached. Not to mention keeping laurel entertained on the flights
playing games on it.

Resyncing the body clock

Well its taking a bit longer than usual to get back my body back into NZ
time, either its being away for a month and fully getting used to the US
timezones or im just getting
old thats the cause. Consequently I havent been hugely productive the last
few days. I think i’ll just call this week a right off and start fresh next
monday. I’ll just do some more reading today to try and catch up so I
can get right into it next week.

Home Again

We woke up round 8, with vinyl the dog licking my ear. Proceeded to pack up
all our stuff, or should I say, Laurel packed up our stuff. Im constantly
amazed by how she can fit so much stuff into the bags.
After Lunch at wendys (more vouchers :-)) we headed off to LAX to catch a
flight to San Francisco. Stupid US Airways didnt tell us we had to check in
at United, nor did they have any signs, so after waiting in line for a while
we got to the counter and got told we had to go to Terminal 7.
So we followed a US Marine who had to do the same thing and checked in.
After dealing with security which although tedious was less annoying than
MAF in nz (I hate those guys) we flew off to san francisco to repeat the
performance.
We boarded NZ007 in San Francisco and started the 12 hours and 20 minutes
flight to Auckland. It didnt start well when Ray (one of the flight
attendants) yanked the boarding pass out of my book, losing my place. He
then proceeded to annoy the crap out of Laurel and I for the remainder of
the flight. Poking Laurel with tongs to wake her to try and force a hot
towel on her went down like a lead balloon. If I could be bothered I’d make
an arsehat entry about him.
We landed in Dorkland where it was raining (it always seems to be raining
when we land there) and did the immigration and Customs and MAF dance.
Crackheads working at an international airport still can only manage to try
to communicate by yelling in english. Did I mention I hate those guys, with
their arbitrary random bunch of rules, jackasses. Anyway we headed out and
across to the domestic terminal and then home.
Now we are sitting in the lounge unpacking, the dogs have gone to bed but
snurrie still wont leave us alone. Its good to be home.

Day 11 Riverside to Palm Springs

We spent the morning talking with Laurels grandma and great aunt. Then after
lunch we headed off towards Joshua Tree, about halfway there we decided to
head into Palm springs to spend the last real night of the honeymoon
somewhere fancy. And fancy it is, I think us two are probably the only 2
guests in this fancy Hyatt hotel that havent had ‘work’. We are staying in
Indian Wells, right by where the play the tennis and just down the road from
Arnold Palmers private golf course.
We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner courtesy of Joe. YUM

Tomorrow we are off to Joshua Tree park and to the Meerkat farm, should be
tons of fun, then sunday we start on our way home. We wont arrive back till
tuesday sometime (nz time).

17256 steps since day 7.

Day 12 Palm Springs to Morengo Valley and back to Fullerton

After an earlyish start we headed off to Morengo valley to visit with the
Meerkats. We stopped at the Funky Monkey cafe for breakfast which was
suprisingly good. After that we had a little while to kill so decided to
take a little nap and then we drove out the unpaved road to where the
Meerkat sanctuary is.
Its a fantastic place well worth visiting. They only have meerkats that
other zoos have had problems with, they dont breed them just provide a home
for ones that have no where else to go. As well as the meerkats there were 2
super friendly dogs and a bantam rooster that thought it was a dog. Im
pretty sure there was a cat around too. The money we donated will be used to
buy some more galvanised steel mesh for cages.
After feeding meerkats and talking and generally having a fantastic time we
hit the road back towards Fullerton, CA. About halfway there Laurel yelled
out “holy shit” and I looked up just in time to see a car flip over 2 times
and stop. Laurel thinks it rolled at least 8 times in total. We slapped on
the hazard lights and pulled off to see if we could help. Laurel grabbed a
blanket and we tried to see if we could get across the freeway to help. But
it was 6 lanes with a lot of traffic, so as soon as I saw the driver crawl
out, we decided to stay on our side and wait for the police to arrive. Once
they did we figured we should drive off before someone tailended us. Scary
as hell but at least the guy walked away from it.

We got back to Fullerton and watched some baseball and an odd movie, then
hit the hay.

Day 8,9,10 Los Angeles

Well not really Los Angeles, Fullerton in fact, but close enough. We arrived
here at about 3pm on Tuesday and navigated our way around to Laurel’s
brothers house. No one was home so we wandered off to the local mall and
got some ice creams from Baskin Robins (Thanks again for the vouchers).
Later that evening Tom and Joe took us out to El Torito for dinner (99 cent
tacos, cant beat that). Then Tom, Laurel and I went to listen to Mike Barnet
and some others play at a local bar, very cool. Laurel headed off home but
Tom and I wandered over to another bar to have a few brews. After causing an
argument between the bartenders over where Bass ale comes from, and having
imbibed our fill we headed home.
The next day (Day 9) we just laxed out and did some shopping and watched
game seven of the Yankees vs Red Sox series which the Red Sox won .. YAY!!
Pizza for dinner, gotta have pizza with baseball.
Day 10, we had another slow start, got some lunch and then headed off to
Riverside to visit with Laurel’s Grandma. After battling our way through the
traffic (its insane) and stopping for hotdogs we arrived there around 6.30pm.
We stayed the night there and looked and wedding photos and tried to play
the wedding video with no success (stupid PAL/NTSC issues). Stayed the night
there.