California: Day 2, Monday September 1st

California Day 2

Monday, September 1^st

After waking up on a set of uncomfortable outdoor couch cushions, relocating to a bed inside, and falling asleep again, I woke up for good and headed upstairs for a breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs. We then gathered our painting equipment and headed to the post office: we had a wall to paint. Yesterday Grampy had explained that several years ago he and our cousin Kelty had painted the wall and that a few days ago the postman had asked him to paint it again. When asked what color he wanted, the postman said any color would do so Grampy picked a nice bright purple. Four hours and a half of a pint of paint later, we had a beautiful purple wall with a bright white mailbox in the middle.

After going back to the house we jumped into the endless current pool that Grampy had installed several years ago in his back yard (as if having the ocean a block away wasn’t good enough…). After getting tired of regular swimming, we brought out the boogie board and did some endless boarding in the current. Soon it was lunch time, so we headed in for some quesadillas.

Before long it was dinner time, and Grampy’s girlfriend Joyce arrived. I was excited to find out that she was a professional photographer and that she had just bought the T5i. We conversed for a while about photos and Photoshop, and then Carter and I played a little fiddle concert. After switching back and forth a couple of times (and apparently thoroughly impressing Joyce), the concert abruptly ended with the explosion of my E string. Dinner time.

The food was extravagant and delicious as per norm with mom: walnut-breaded tilapia, noodles, capreze, bread and cambizola, stirfry veggies, and a flourless chocolate cake to finish it all up. After gorging ourselves, Joyce and I took photos of the dinner gathering, each one missing the photographer. The plan was for her to take them home and do a bit of Photoshop magic, but I thought that I might as well use my new laptop since it was sitting right there. Ten minutes later I had a dinner photo with everyone in it which, to my content, passed Joyce’s inspection.

After Joyce went home we watched another episode of Phych, and headed for bed. 

California: Day 1, Sunday August 31st

California Day 1

Sunday, August 31^st

Today is the day: off to the sunny side of the country. We left the house at about 10:30am with hungry stomachs and luggage in hand. After a quick pizza-stop at Whole Foods, we were on our way to DIA – at least that was our intention. Luckily someone (read Mom) thought to check to make sure we had extra strings for our violin and guitar. Violin? Check. Guitar? Ummm… Not quite. We had broken a string earlier in the summer and then promptly proceeded to forget about it. Luckily Google found us a guitar store that happened to be open on Labor Day Sunday on the way to the airport. We got ourselves two packs of strings (which turned out to be cheaper per pack than buying the bundled three-packs, no thanks to my amazing mental math skills… Ha!) and were back on the road.

We arrived at the airport, checked in our bags, and got a large Screaming Orgasm from a nice lady at Jamba Juice (before you get too freaked out Google the Jamba Juice secret menu). It was epic, but not quite as delicious as the Thank You Jesus we tried last week.

After finishing our drinks, we proceeded through security to the train. We had planned out our timing to leave us two hours to play on the DIA train, but due to the string incident we ended up with only 45 minutes, which flew by in no time at all. We pulled in a respectable $36: good considering we played less than an hour but very pale in comparison to the $150 we achieved last year.

Grampy Bob picked us up in his new Tesla (Joking!) and soon we were at the much beloved green beach house. After settling in, we proceeded to satisfy our appetites at Shack Burger via their “world-famous” Shack Burger, topped with a hot Louisiana sausage. While waiting for our food to become done, we read the biography of Ernie the Milkman by Bob Krauch (Grampy Bob) that was posted on the wall. Who knew that after 42 years Ernie would still be getting up at 4:30am to deliver milk?

We returned home and introduced Grampy to Psych. After finishing one episode only to find both grownups passed out, Carter and I decided to take a nighttime beach run. We ran down to the beach and proceeded to make our way down towards where the airplanes take flight. Feeling a bit rebellious, we crossed the road and made our way up the barricaded street to the top of the hill and watched as 747s roared overhead, wing lights flashing and tails glowing.

We fell asleep on the sun deck with the gentle sound of takeoff floating through the cool ocean air. Day 1 complete.