March Madness

I am not talking about basketball here....

Have you missed me?  I missed you!  Things have been a bit dead here on the blog for the last two weeks, sorry.  It is not that I haven't had some great thoughts running through my head, it is just that I haven't written about them or when I tried to they seem to have escaped my steel trap mind.  Where was all this activity back in icky, dreary, boring, long January when I would have happily entertained guests, traveled to interesting places (Ok, I did travel to two great places in January), played golf 3 days a week and had to carve out time to do mundane things like laundry?  It is feast or famine and right now it is a feast!

One thing that was suggested in my writing class was to find a great book of quotations to use in our writing.  I admit, quotes are a good tool to spark the brain, give you direction or support a point.  It is also nice to have someone else say what you want to say... and say it better.  I call it cheating!  Pardon me if I cheat a little.

 "I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine." by Caskie Stinnett. 

What would life be like if I woke up every day looking at this?  Wow!  Would it become routine?  This is only one of the panoramas I was blessed to see over the last week, far from my daily routine view of flat land covered by cement and retail spaces!  I found myself saying over and over, "I could really get used to living out here in sunny, dry, beautiful California!".  Do they know how lucky they are?  Maybe, maybe not.  They are all too busy driving their convertibles, letting their hair blow in the breeze and then sitting outside eating lunch with a glass of wine. I could get used to that too!

Speaking of wine...we tasted a lot of it on our visit to Sonoma.  Just so you know, it is possible to have too much of a good thing but that did not stop us!   I dare say we sent home enough wine to keep us pickled for a few months.  I look forward to reliving our Sonoma wine tour at home when the goods arrive.

On our first morning, we left early...at least for me and headed to an off the beaten path winery.  We drove up, up, up on Barf-a-lot Road, climbing back and forth through the mountains to a very beautiful winery.  I was just a little green and dizzy by the time we arrived. 

My view looked a lot like this....

instead of this....

The winery was well worth the long and winding road and we found some beautiful flowers at the top too!

After we tasted all the wine in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys we went down to San Diego so TJ could network with a few thousand other people who work in the oil and refining business.  I went along... because I could!  The last time this conference was in San Diego I was a little less than 100% so I was really looking forward to experiencing San Diego with both arms and both legs in working order. The first thing I did was go for a run along the water... because I could!  San Diego is another one of those places that is just too beautiful for it's own good.  It's just not fair! 

One highlight of the time in San Diego was a tour of Balboa Park with a professional photographer.  He gave us a lot of history of the park and a few photography tips along the way.  I showed up like a dork with my pocket size digital camera, that I personally think takes some pretty good pictures sometimes.  Almost all the other women on the tour showed up with bazookas.  They had some serious ammunition to take their pictures with, I was using a cap gun compared to some of them.  So for your viewing pleasure....here are some nice pictures of Balboa Park through the eye of my cap gun.

gnarly

yes, the entire car is covered with beads!

The cap gun did a good job!
I really enjoyed San Diego...until the second to last night...well it was more like 4 a.m. when the food poisoning hit me!  I was down for the count, every part of my body ached for about 8 hours.  It was very bad timing too because I did not want to miss my lunch date with George W. Bush.  You remember him, the former President of the United States of America!  I drug my tired, aching  body out of bed, showered, dressed and hobbled to the luncheon.  I prayed that everything that was left inside my body would just stay there for at least the next two hours.  It did and the speech was very good, he even pronounced all the words correctly.  I am glad I made it.  Now I can check that off my bucket list....be in the same room as a former President of the United States.

This post has gone on too long and there is still so much to say.  Looks like spring break will take up more than one blog post again this year!  Adios gang until next week!