It's Been Real

I'm not a sappy guy.  In fact most people who know me might tell you I can be an asshole a little rough around the edges.  I'm no thug.  I just get queasy around emotional people.  I crack jokes and poke fun.  It's not meant to be mean, I just need to do something to break the discomfort (my own).  No, I am not one of those "guys don't cry" type of guys, I've cried while watching Extreme Home Makeover...so no "man" card here, to be fair I think they pump estrogen through the air waves.  But this move back to the east coast is not met with the same "get me the fuck out of here" mentality as when we left Virginia nine years ago (think Guillermo Diaz in Half Baked).

I'm getting all choked up here.

San Diego has been great to us.  We moved 3000 miles away from family and friends.  It was just me and the Mrs (back then she was just Ms.).  We found a dump of an apartment in Mission Beach, but it had a view of the ocean.  We were sold.

Nine months later we woke up to a skylight full of termites scratching to get out.  We left with them.  We found a better place in Pacific Beach.

What followed were drunken nights, bar crawls, the best pizza in all SoCal (Hoboken), late night destruction of breakfast burritos from the local establishment (Roberto's), adopting a bitchy kooky Australian Shepherd mutt, I took up playing golf again, the Ms' graduated from law school and eight years after our first date  I finally made the Ms a Mrs (apparently dating does not age like a fine wine, you have to buy the proverbial cow...and I am in no way calling my wife a cow - if I were to call her any animal it would be a baby sloth and we all know how cute they are...they make people cry).

Thank you.

Then we bought a house, with the help of the Mrs' folks.  We left the beach for a land known only as "east of the 5".  We (and by we, I mean I) became foodies and beer snobs.  We got a Golden Retriever.  We adopted two cats.  We had the Big Guy.  I got involved in triathlons and running half marathons (not competitively, have you seen my picture?).  We lost a beautiful person, friend, sister, daughter, wife, mother and aunt when the Mrs' mom passed away.  I became a stay at home Dad.  We had the Taz.  And I started my photography business.

Things.  Happened.  Here.

And this only covers the tip of the iceberg.  We made amazing friends.  We had an assortment of people making our life better from pet sitters to house cleaners, that we got to know all very well.  We took some great vacations.  We saw most of our friends get married.  We ate some fantastic food.  We drank a lot of beer...etc.

I know we'll have it better in North Carolina, but I know we've had it good, in fact, really good here.

It's a hundred degrees plus humidity back east today.  It's 75 here.  When the weather was frigid or insanely hot back east, I used to send obnoxious emails of overturned lawn chairs to friends on the east coast to show them that, as Californians, we were in the thick of it with them.

It's weird doing things here for the last time: taking the kids to the doctor, getting my haircut, playing Torrey Pines at local rates, hiring a babysitter, eating at various restaurants, visiting playgrounds, hanging out with the crew of Stay At Home Dads, going to the beach, watching the Padres suck again, etc...

Right now, the Big Guy has Vans (the shoes).  He looks like a little surfer in training.  The Taz, is well...the Taz - a loud, quick crawling tank of a boy.  I doubt we'll be back here in the next two or three  years.  But I wonder if when we do make it back, will the boys have slight southern accents?  Will the Big Guy remember all the places he fell down and scraped his knees as we drive by them, as he does now?  Will we have an insatiable hunger for a breakfast burrito as soon as we get off the plane?  Will we admire the postings of friends visiting In'N'Out?

In ten days from now, the boys and I will walk into the airport and get our one-way tickets to head home for the first time.  And as much as I will always consider Philadelphia home, San Diego has wormed it's way into that coveted call tag of places I call "home".  I am familiar with the nooks and crannies here.  I know the short cuts to just about everywhere.  If you come to San Diego, I can show you a great time and one that will make you want to move here.

I'm glad we have friends here to come back to and I look forward to bringing the boys back to show them the hospital they were born at, the home we lived in, the parks we played at, the restaurants we ate at, and the life we lived however many years ago.

You are probably wondering why I would leave then, right?  I guess I am getting old.  It's no longer about what's fun or exciting for me anymore.  Now I think of where my kids will go to school and what the quality of education will be there.  I think of how close can I be to my family who can help with the kids as well as watch them grow up.  And I think of how much the Mrs is working and how that translates to less time that we spend together as a family.  Add it all up and San Diego, as nice as it is, just isn't for us anymore.  The square peg, round hole issue.

So yes, it's kind of sad, or as people keep saying - bitter sweet.

San Diego, we bid you farewell.  We leave the "Hola, dudes"  for the "Hey ya'lls."  We leave the fish tacos for shrimp and grits.  And we leave the sunshine tax for potential heat stroke.  But we leave it all knowing we can come back.  Stay good San Diego, it's been real.

 

Holy Nerd-fest Overload, Batman! Comic Con 2012

...And I mean "nerd-fest" in the nicest and most respectful way, honestly.

In case you don't know what Comic Con is, you can read about in detail here.  But for the most part it is a 4-day comic, movie, TV, art, fashion (standard wear and kooky dress up - such as the $1300 Storm Trooper suit I saw), toy, gadgetry and everything in between convention held in San Diego every year in July.

Since our first summer here, the Mrs and I have wanted to get down and check it out.  Not that we are Trekkies or really fanatics of any kind, but the people watching and the overall hysteria surrounding this event is hard to miss.  As someone living in San Diego, it is less of a convention and more of a tradition, so we have always wanted to be a part of it.  However, for whatever reason (insert lame excuse after lame excuse here), we never made it down...and we live a mere 10 minutes away.

It took 8 years and my cousin-in-law to get me to go, and I'm happy to have finally made it.

Over 130,000 tickets were sold.  All tickets were sold online.  You had to register to get tickets over 6 months in advance - if you did not register, you could not get tickets...non-transferable, no door sales, and no Stub Hub.  From that registration, you were given a link to follow on the day tickets went on sale (again months before the event).  To much horror, this link turned out to not work on the morning of ticket sales and unless you were curious enough to go and check the website you never got to the ticket room online or if you did then you got there late and missed out on certain days or the whole event.  People were pissed.  And you know what's worse than pissed off comic book readers/collectors?  Probably a lot of things, like people in the drive thru at Starbuck's at 8:55 AM.  But really, people were pissed.

Oh well...I got a 4-day pass so I was ready to go or at least I was able to go, "ready" as I learned when I got there was a whole different thing.  It's like saying you're ready for your first trip to Vegas, your first enema or your first purple purple (or tittie twister, for you heathens).

If you are not immersed in the activities, shows, blogs, or newsletters of this immense subculture, then you have no idea what to expect.  See, it's not just the people - though there are tons of them.  Some sitting on the ground just resting.  Some talking about where the newest swag will be given out.  Others hoarding the classic Star Wars toys and classic comics.  Tons of people catching previews, trying out new video games and looking at soon to be released toys (easily the biggest surprise of the event shockingly enough, as I had no idea people awaited the release of so many action figures...another strange event in my life that takes me back to my 10th grade english teacher's statement: "the older I get, the dumber I realize that I am").  On top of that there are lines.  Lines for everything, though you often don't know what exactly and sometimes the people in line don't know either.  It could be for a super exclusive giveaway, toy purchase or lame poster/swag bag/sticker/laniard.  And last but not least, the characters.  I'm not talking about paid employees or even event volunteers.  We're talking about people who spend an exorbitant amount of time and money crafting some of the craziest costumes I have ever seen, everything from unbelievably realistic Siths (Star Wars) and Batmans to Slink (Toy Story - which was two guys in costume attached by some landscaping hose) and the Dude (The Big Lebowski).  

I walked in on Thursday, thinking that I would just putz around and get my bearings.

Yeah.  That didn't happen.

I was lost.  Like I said I am not a comic book fan.  I used to watch Saturday cartoons and I know a little bit about anime, but that's not even the tip of the nerd-berg.

There were artists doing custom drawings, 3D printers (yes, printing a usable Thor's hammer or Akira's motorcycle), movie costumes and props (they had THE everlasting gobstopper from Willy Wonka!), kooky gadgets (the weirdest were these cat-like ears that had some contraption that touched your forehead making the ears "react" to your brainwaves.  While standing at the booth, I made a comment out loud to myself of how weird this shit was.  At that moment, the ears on a girl in front of me turned towards me like they were listening...creepy), and classic toys like the original Millennium Falcon at just the small cost of $600 (now if you don't wish you had saved all of that crap from your childhood then you're a god damn liar).  I had to get out there, before I got completely sucked in and spit out.

Day 2 was a far better day.  I game planned.  I figured out which panels I would go see (which is a huge part of Comic Con).  I knew what areas of the main floor I wanted to hit up again and what products I was interested in.  Sure there was plenty of new stuff too that I had not seen on Thursday such as: John Lassiter signed wine bottles with various Pixar movie labels (for the nominal fee of $1000 per bottle), a new Transformer mega toy called Bruticus, some great kids books (my favorite being The Halloween Kid ), and a great iPad app & digital pen for artists or even kids (this was unfortunately sold out, but I will be buying it as soon as it is back on the market).

Unfortunately, I missed all of the panels.  Lesson learned here, show up early to the panels...as in hours early because 30 minutes didn't cut it for a rinky-dink show like Cartoon Network's Regular Show.  Even in Hall H, which held 6000 people, if you weren't in line at least 3 hours before the panel was to begin then you weren't getting in (as a friend experienced trying to see the Big Bang Theory panel when he showed up about 45 minutes early only to be told by security that the theater only held 6000 and he was about 10,000 and he therefore had 0.0% chance to get in).

The best part of the entire event occurs on Friday night, when hundreds of costumed zombies drag themselves down through the Gaslamp district and frighten all of the tourists and dinner guests of the local establishments.  Some of the zombies mailed it in and are boring while others really work it and scare the crap out of people over the several block walk down towards the convention center.  And these folks aren't just plain fake blood or arrows through the skull.  There were slit throats, throwing stars in the forehead, gouged out eyeballs, and even baby zombies.

Comic Con-ers are, suffice to say, serious people despite their costumes and poor posture (who am I kidding? my back looks like a horseshoe from playing video games and being hunched over my computer).  But like many things, I can show you better than I can tell you.  Please enjoy the trip!

Boys Gone Wild

I love the outdoors.  Sunshine or snow (not that we get snow near downtown San Diego) it's always great to be out and about.  I love running in the rain, and though a torrential downpour can be disheartening at first, once you are soaked to the bone it's actually not that bad.  All of the sights and sounds (as long as you can get far enough away from the sounds of traffic passing) can really take you away.  That being said we rarely get out into the great outdoors, at least not in the grander sense.  Sure, we make it to playgrounds, we take walks around the neighborhood, we go to the beach and sure those are all outdoors but I wouldn't label any of them "great".

Luckily in San Diego we have a few national and state park areas that are close enough to reach in under 45 minutes but still placed just far enough or are just deep enough to escape the urban reality.

Yesterday, the boys and I as well as a fellow SAHD and his two boys headed out to Torrey Pines State Park.  Hands down it is one of the best spots to go in San Diego county.  If you love the beach, it's there.  If you love trails, they're there.  If you want history, you can find it there.  And if you want to experience a section of the great La Jolla Half Marathon known only as "the hill" (a one mile long ultra-steep grade switch back paved road leading from the beach to the trail heads), you'll find it here.

The trails are always in great condition and even with the overcast and marine layer you still have the beautiful and aptly named Torrey Pines.  The trails offer a little bit of everything from steep stairs, to smooth dirt trails, to rocky tops (not like West Virginia) and steep switch back descents.  Just get yourself a map and pick a route.

We chose an almost 2-mile loop and the older boys (almost 3 and 4), were able to handle the whole loop with little to no fussing.  We took our time as both Dads were strapped with an extra 15-20 lbs of sub-1 year olds, and the older boys wanted to stick sword fight, dig in the dirt and generally horse around.  We had a great time, and though I can't speak for the Big Guy's friend, I can say that the Big Guy crashed for 2.5 hours as soon as we came home.  Even the Little Man was washed out by the time we got home...or as you'll see below...he was done when we reached the car.

The only downside is that I was shooting with my D80 and left the ISO at 500...the D80 doesn't shoot much without grain over 400 so the pics weren't blow up keepers, but they'll do for the ol'blog.