The party on Saturday night went pretty well. I think a good time was had by all, much Rock Band was played, met many guild members and the whole thing was rounded off with a game of “Apples to Apples”. That was pretty amusing. Party wound up around 1 or so and by the time we had cleared up it was 2am. Needless to say I had no problems getting to sleep that night, lol.
Sunday was pretty quiet. J and I joined a Karazhan raid in wow as tinyfroglet took a nap in the afternoon. It turned out that the raid was only partial, but the group we were with was comprised mostly of alts with lesser gear than previous runs. Still they did remarkably well and we did finally clear the instance. Even the fights we thought we had no chance.
This is where I wish I had taken tinyfroglet‘s advice and actually written down what I got up to as a memory aid, lol. Since I can’t remember specific days things were done I’m just going to summarise…
Firstly the weather took a definite turn for the better on Sunday, much warmer, rain gone etc.
We spent Monday morning visiting Laguna Beach. And so I got my first view of the Pacific Ocean. Strangely enough tinyfroglet was not too surprised that I was underwhelmed… After all I live on the coast, it’s just more sea, right ? 🙂 The tide was in so we couldn’t walk far in one direction, thus spent the next couple of hours wandering along the beach taking pics, chatting and finished off with a walk around the main street in town. All in all, a very nice morning.
On Tuesday tinyfroglet was feeling pretty poorly and hadn’t slept much so we decided she should spend the day at home resting. I broke up my day by taking my camera out into the garden to try and take lizard pics. I even took a wander to the local grocery store after finally convincing her that I could walk there and back without melting away.
Wednesday morning was spent on a boat around Upper Newport Bay taking photos while some friends of tinyfroglet were counting the bird life. I did learn to identify a few of the birds and tried to help, not very successfully, lol. Still, it’s always nice to see the birds in their natural habitat. In the afternoon I got shown around Blizzard’s new offices in Irvine, CA. It was pretty cool to see where all the work on WoW is being done. As expected, the art on the walls is pretty damned impressive.
On Thursday tinyfroglet was feeling somewhat better so we went to San Diego Zoo and spent the day wandering around cameras in hand. There are some walk through aviaries there which were really nice for trying to capture some bird pics. Many of the other exhibits were also pretty neat, the ones I liked best were probably the Tiger and the Monkeys. Not that many photo ops tho since not all the exhibits had glass or open areas to take pics through. Still it was an enjoyable day and the weather was very pleasant.
Friday was my last day, since my plane left LA at 3pm. We decided to go and take a walk around the nearby Mission San Juan Capistrano, again with camera in hand. For the first time ever, I managed to completely flatten the battery in my camera which was a surprise. Mission San Juan Capistrano apparently has the oldest standing buildings in the O.C. so that was pretty interesting. After wandering around the nearby town a bit we headed back to the house for lunch. I finished my holiday as it began, grinding out a few more fans on Rock Band before it was time to head for the airport and my plane home.
The trip home was fairly uneventful. The plane itself was completely full, which sucked as there was no room to move around. Never managed to sleep on that flight. Ended up waiting for 3 hours or so at Heathrow before my flight to Glasgow which was uneventful. Dad wimped out of picking me up at the airport so I had to harrass foebane100 to come pick me up which he kindly did.