Banana cream pie

2004-02-02 - 6:51 p.m.

I'm back, and hoo boy did I have fun!

Last Friday I got up at 4am and drove to Stockton. I got there a little before 6, and met the Babe at Starbucks. We got breakfast for the road, parked the Babe's car, and drove down to LA. It took 5 or 6 hours to get there from Stockton. The original plan was that we would get to LA in time for lunch so that we could both meet other friends before Tigger got home from school. It turned out that neither of us ended up meeting any other friends, so instead we wandered around the area around our hotel, which was actually in San Gabriel.

We ended up having lunch at an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet. Yeah, that was mistake number one as far as my diet went. Basically this weekend I ended up pretending that I wasn't on a diet. I missed my weigh in this morning and I'm not planning on weighing in tomorrow to make up for it. Instead I'm going to give it a week of good behavior to hopefully take care of this weekend's damage.

After lunch we went for a walk and then ended up back in the hotel where the Babe took a nap and I read my book. At 7:30 Tigger knocked on our door and we went out to dinner. Tigger is a strict vegetarian for religious regions so we went to one of her favorite restaurants in the area which serves vegetarian Chinese food. Afterwards we went and got bubble tea (or pearl tea or boba or whatever you want to call it). I'm a real fan of that stuff, but I don't know anywhere near home to get it. We went to a place called Quickly (which really, really needs to hire someone who speaks English to help them with their website), which had very good bubble tea, and cheap too. We spent the rest of the evening watching movies back in the hotel room.

The following morning we got up fairly early and went to IHOP for breakfast. Then we drove out and spent the day at Santa Monica. The weather there was beautiful although it was windy. We went to the boardwalk and rode the ferris wheel:

Then we went for a walk along the beach. On the beach there were tons and tons of little clams rolling around in the waves. I'd never seen so many of them...they looked like this:

After the beach we drove to the Third Street Promenade for lunch and some shopping. I ended up buying a pair of pants I probably shouldn't have bought. I doubt I will ever wear them. Ah, oh well. We went out that evening to The Cheesecake Factory on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena and then drove to Tigger's school for a tour of the campus. We stopped at Quickly for bubble tea on the way back to the hotel where we spent the evening again watching movies.

The following morning we got up and had breakfast at Starbucks and then drove out to Disneyland. We ended up going to the California Adventures theme park which was a whole lot of fun.

They had cool rides, good food, great music, and such a wonderful environment. We stayed until closing and got to see the electrical parade!

The next morning--today--we got up fairly early and had breakfast at IHOP again and then hugged Tigger goodbye because she had to go to class. The Babe and I checked out of our hotel room and drove on home. I dropped her off in Stockton, but before I did, we found a place that serves bubble tea there! It's a little place called Saigon Sandwich and it's a bit of a dive, but the bubble tea was decent.

In other news, I joined Wyndspirit's 100 Books Club, an interesting little club which she is hosting in which people try to read 100 books or 25,000 pages in one year. She has generously offered to keep track of the books and pages of each person in the club so we can compare. So far I seem to be in the lead. That's what I get for not having a life.