Rainy Days and Mondays

Well, it’s not raining, but it’s the last Monday of our vacation and it’s been a quiet day for us. No excursions or adventures, but write-worthy just the same. My blog, my stories.

Dear and I got up early this morning (relatively speaking, of course – it was 11 when we left the room) and did the laundry chore while #3 slept. (Packing dirty laundry is yukky.) All his clothes were in the laundry anyway, so he couldn’t go anywhere decently until the task was complete. Although…this is California. Maybe no one would have noticed.

While we were out, we went by a UPS Store to arrange for shipping our redwood windmill home. The girl at the first store kind of gulped when she saw the size of the thing. It’s not really HUGE, but it stands at least 2 feet tall without the turning blade apparatus thing (I googled for the technical term, but to no avail) and it’s a good foot across. She didn’t have any boxes big enough, so she gave us directions (here we go again) to another UPS Store that could accommodate The Thing.

This excursion took us about 20 minutes, so we went back to the Laundromat to put our clothes in for the drying cycle. Since the other UPS Store was further away, we finished the laundry and brought it back to the BW lodge so we could get #3 for the rest of our days’ activities.

By the time he got ready and the boyz finished watching the movie they started while I was checking email, it was 3:00. We found the other UPS Store and forked over massive amounts of cash to ship The Thing to ourselves in TX. Good grief, it’s only wood – not solid gold. It cost more to ship it than it did to buy it in the first place! Hindsight.

After the $$$hipping transaction was complete, we stopped at a Target to get a cheapo carry-on bag to add to our collection because we have more stuff to take home than we brought with us. Souvenirs and shirts and jackets and magnets and shot glasses and whirlijigs and you get the picture. More stuff. We found a duffel bag in the Clearance section and got a bargain. Now we have to figure out who will be assigned to this new carry-on bag. That’s a task for tomorrow morning.

I took the camera out with us today, but only took a couple of pictures. I love the purple trees, but again don’t know what they are. Where’s Neil Sperry when I need him?

After Target, we looked for a restaurant for our last vacation dinner. We chose the Elephant Bar Restaurant – a place that boasted of an “eating adventure with a Pacific Rim flair.” Whatever that meant. I wondered if there would be tiki torches and pigs with apples in their mouths on roasting spits, but no.

Our sampler appetizer had shrimp, garlic bread, potato skins, nachos, chicken fingers, and sweet potato fries. Hmmm, quite a combination. But also quite tasty. #3 and I ordered “Pacific Rim” dishes: I had Mongolian beef over rice and he had sweet ‘n sour shrimp over rice. (I guess Pacific Rim is the new euphemism for Chinese?) Dear went for the chicken and shrimp jambalaya over rice. (Wait. That’s Cajun.) (Whatever.) I think all their dishes had rice in some form or fashion and there were also quite a few sushi and other Asian choices on the menu. That was their Pacific Rim theme.

It is California, you know.

We debated on whether to see a movie after dinner, but we opted to return to our lodging base and just get our act together for the Great Packing Extravaganza, Rental Car Adventure and the eventual Trip Home tomorrow. Checkout is at 11, so we’ll have plenty of time to do everything and still make it to the Oakland Airport to catch our 2:40 departure.

She said with fingers crossed and bated breath. Yes, it’s “b-a-t-e-d” not “b-a-i-t-e-d.” I looked it up just to make sure. Wouldn’t want to lead you astray or give you the impression that I’m an uneducated dweeb. I aren’t, and I got well grades in English.

ttfn