What We Did On Our Summer Vacation

Never drive past Comic-Con if you’re in a hurry to be somewhere else. Or unless you like watching alien girls with green skin wearing tin foil bikinis. I think everyone falls into one of those categories.

That structure that looks like a giant juicer? It’s a giant juicer. No, just kidding. It’s the new San Diego public library, all $185 million worth. (And you thought Midland was being extravagant with its new library.) We could have saved our imaginary film by just going to this site and rewinding to July 12th.

The Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery is always a moving experience. We read the inscriptions on the headstones and tried to guess about the lives represented.

I’m a sucker for pelican photos. How can anything be so simultaneously silly, somber, and prehistoric? Besides Betty White, that is.

I may be a sucker for pelicans, but guess who can’t pass up a penny flattener? Good thing we don’t have progeny. I can just hear the executor of our estate: “And to all the kids, equal shares of your mother’s extensive flat penny collection.” On second thought, it would be pretty cool to do that to them. They never write; they never call.

People are sometimes like horses: you can lead them to the Alfred Hitchcock movie, but you can’t make them believe THOSE BIRDS ARE OUT TO GET YOU!

You know you have an impressive yacht when your helicopter costs more than any of the surrounding boats at the dock. This is Dennis Washington‘s motor yacht, the Attessa IV (Attessa is Greek for I’ve got more money than you. And your country.) It’s a 332-foot vessel that made waves (ha!) when it docked in boat-jaded San Diego.

I can’t help wondering how they managed to get it into this parking lot, though.

The boat was so long I couldn’t get it all into one shot. Sorta like the lines at the DMV.

Nothing conveys a sense of peace and relaxation while walking along the Pacific shoreline like being buzzed by an airplane towing a banner for a strip club.

The Museum of Natural History had a special exhibit on horses. Of course, of course.

If you wondered, as I did, how they got the horses to wear those gas masks, they simply showed them this as an example of what happens to unmasked horses.

The San Diego Automotive Museum had a steampunk exhibit. I’ve always wondered what would happen if a ceiling fan married a tricycle, and I bet you have, too.

This looks like a chassis of a stagecoach – sort of – but it’s an apparently functional pedal-driven contraption. All kinds of awesome.

A genuine Dirigible Inspection Service Craft? What could be cooler than that!? Nothing, unless it was being operated by a green skinned alien girl wearing a tinfoil bikini and who also happened to be a zombie.

Seriously? Can you believe the weird contraptions some people ride nowadays?

Speaking of weird contraptions, I have no idea why all of these electric cars were lined up in the parking lot, unless they were waiting for a big bird to come along and hatch them. (Yeah, it’s getting late.)

Can you imagine how old that thing is? And the bonsai bougainvillea has been around for a while, too. *duck and cover*

It’s not a pelican – well, I’m pretty sure it’s not – but it’s still silly, somber, and prehistoric. Plus, it apparently can hover. [Pretty sure it wasn’t the prototype for what’s in the last photo, below, but stranger things have happened.]

If you go to Peohe’s for dinner on your birthday, they make a big deal of it. As well they should, given that they’re charging $68.95 for a seafood tower.

They say that everything is bigger in Texas, but “they” have never seen a yaupon on Coronado Island. It looks like something from a Peter Jackson nightmare.

Sea dragons at the Birch Aquarium: silly, somber, and…well…you know. That one on the left is giving me the stink eye. Although he could just have gas.

We took one of these out for a spin. It’s a hovercraft. It’s amazing how touchy the US Navy is about people “borrowing” their amphibious assault vehicles. Somebody’s definitely off our Christmas card list this year.