Monday, August 01, 2011

San Diego and all that

It has been a crazy past few days.  On Wednesday the girl and I drove to San Diego (her brother was graduating from Marine Corp boot camp).  I forget how awesome San Diego is -- I live in pretty a awesome part of Cali but how on earth does one compete with this:


Or even this:


Or...well, you get the idea.  We made great time so as soon as we checked in the hotel, we headed down to Harbor Ave/Harbor Island and took the above pics looking back on the city.  The sky and the water were that blue.  I'm trying to convince the girl to go to college in SD (a few years off but...) but she said she'd miss me too much (awe) so I said fine, I'll move down too.

We hooked up with my mom and her hubs and ate in Old Town (very close to where we were staying).


Girl and Grandpa had to have ice creams which I get is pretty important.

So the next morning I got up for my tempo run -- it was supposed to be 6 miles but I got a bit distracted with the view and taking pictures so it only ended up being 5.5. Well, actually, while I was stopped taking pictures (yes, it was a bit overcast but still beautiful) I had this young guy come up and ask to borrow my cell phone to make a quick call.  This was 6.30am and while he looked very clean cut I was so suspicious in part because he didn't have his own phone (what teenager in the US doesn't have a phone!  don't answer that).  But he explained that he had the wrong transit pass and he was late....so I let him use my phone.  And come to find out, he was a Navy boy, walking back to the base.   I felt bad that I reacted so strongly but apparently no harm was done other than I had to book it back to my hotel to get ready so couldn't continue my run any longer.  I would have like to as there was some fun art along the waterfront.


Those are rakes!!


So we were off -- Thursday was Family Day!  Basically we got to get a little drill instruction of our own.

And watch the new Marine's run and then stand there and look all scary.


The blond with his  head right under the window is mine.  Then we went and sat down and waited for them to clean up and show back up.


They marched around a bit and stood there a bit while we listened to stuff and then he got to be ours for the rest of the day.  Whoo hoo.

He looks so happy is the general comment I got on Facebook -- and yes indeed he does.  Amazing what a little freedom will do for one when it has been gone for 13 weeks.

We all went to lunch (his dad and other grandparents and an aunt and uncle all showed up after dinner the previous night) and heard all kinds of stories which reinforces my belief that boot camp is just plain hard in so many ways.  But he did it and he is different for it.  Different in a good way - - he's experience some tough times and an entire different cross section of people that he's never been exposed to.  It definitely has made him grow up and understand life from a different perspective.  They were taught to fight a war and be in battle and quite a few of his platoon mates will be deployed (he won't, initially anyway, as he signed up for reserves) and he understood the seriousness of it all.

We spent the afternoon attempting to feed him as he was hungry about every 5 seconds.  We said our goodbyes, went to dinner, bed and then started all over the next day.


Graduation day was more of the same - but with prettier uniforms (and I don't mean to sound sarcastic -- it was lovely all around -- I love the Marine Corp band and it was interesting hearing what they talked about).



After the graduation we headed back to Old Town for lunch.  The only thing the boy wanted to do (after eating) was go to the movies -- he wanted to see Harry Potter but his sister was being a nudge (she'd already seen it) so we all ended up at Captain America which was fairly appropriate and a lot more fun than I expected.  We then went back into LA for Friday night and I came back up to SJC on Saturday. The boy and the girl stayed down in LA to go to Disney and hang with family down there.  I believe they'll show back up here tomorrow.


It was a good weekend and I think despite that this was the most unpredictable thing for the boy to have done I do think it might have been the right thing.  Amazing how it works out sometimes.  He's got more training to do before he's back up here full time and back in school but the difference in his attitude is noticeable.   

I enjoyed a nice and quiet Sunday -- did 10 miles, laundry, errands and finished the afternoon sitting on my front porch with my neighbor drinking wine.  Not bad at all.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

WOW, we're in the same "phase" of life! Kids leaving, growning up and doing their thing! I think it's good for our kids to do the unpredictable...it shakes us all up but it's their life!!
I laughed about not being able to finish the tempo run because you wanted to take pictures...I'm SO like that!
Keep running! What are you training for, or did I just not read your blog well enough?

Mary said...

I enjoyed reading and seeing the pictures, thanks for the heads up!