Okay, so on my second visit to San Diego: 

Plane ride on Sunday morning followed immediately by work. After the meeting I had lunch.

I ate at Tabule again. This time I had the white sea bass ceviche. Love their ceviche. It was the one restaurant I missed, and fed me only as much food as I could eat.

I walked out to the Gaslamp Distric looking for dinner, but I never got around to it. I just walked the city for about an hour and then returned to my room.

Monday morning I had breakfast at my #1 breakfast spot. Granted the Cheese Shop was good, but Richard Walker's Pancake House WINS. I had a monster veggie omelet and pancakes covered in cherries. So good. Promise. I would have eaten there again if I could.

Monday evening I visited Seaport Village. It was behind my hotel. I found this shop called Hot Licks and bought all sorts of Habenero hot sauces, and even a habenero mustard. I had them shipped to me. I hope to have my spicy gifts soon.

All that walking and I was finished. I had my dinner at the hotel. They had a restaurant called DW's pub. I brought the monster hamburger and fries back up to my room. 

Tuesday morning I was in the airport by 5am preparing for the long flight home. Had a little fun with turbulence (henceforth knows as "rough air", probably for those who don't speak English.) And watched the plane circle Atlanta looking for a decent spot to land.

I caught an itty bitty puddle jumper back to Pensacola, seats 50, if I heard the stewardess correctly.

So, I had fun. Nice trip. Very happy to be home.

It happens more now than before, and much of it had to do with forming chords, and playing songs.

... and general suckage that presents with a 1st year newbie. 

I went back to theory. I put away my finger picking lessons book and picked up my scales and chords book. 

After giving myself a 24 hour cool down period after getting testy enough to hit my guitar. (No hitting!) I picked it up again and set the metronome. I played one scale in one pattern for one week. That was it. Peaceful. Easy.

Then I went back to playing my songs, and forming a few new chords. 

So, in my thought, the best way to handle 'getting ahead of myself' is to reset the practice session. When I find myself doing too much, trying too much - go back to scales. Set the metronome low, and play that single scale for 10 minutes. 

I'd like to blame my stiff steel guitar for my inability to form chords easily, but that's just a lame excuse. The strings have nothing to do with how quickly my fingers get into shape, and I've discovered that in these past few weeks.

While playing Dock of the Bay (yes, still) I had a single moment where my fingers formed a G chord all at once, not a string at a time. That was a small glimmer that progress can and will happen.

Why am I still on Dock of the Bay? Well, it's great strumming pattern practice. I keep experimenting with what sound best for my dismal skill level, and different ways to strum out the chords. I am definitely anti-pick, and strumming with my thumb is... getting better. The best is a hybrid thumb / finger pick / strum thing I have going. 

And singing it really... really... slow, to allow myself more time to switch chords. <-- Another frustration dodging tactic. 

Mostly, it's my hand that's lagging. The muscle strength, the flexibility, the dexterity. I don't have it, and nothing but practice is going to get me there. 

So, my personal lesson is: practice something, anything. Mary Had a Little Lamb if it comes to that - but don't stop playing. That will get me no where. 

Now... here's the snag. Me? Myself? I will be in line at 10pm (maybe earlier). That's the kind of person I am. Make a night of it. Get awesome seats. Meet people. Make friends. And the spontaneous shouting and applause at midnight showings rock.

And that's what I'm going to do, despite the fact that I know my husband is going to call me all kinds of names and not join me. 

It's my neurosis and it's my responsibility to feed and water it. 

I hope there are people there in costume and make up. That would be +++ neat.

the above mentioned were all well loved and played into the ground. 

I knew I wanted puzzle games. So I searched for some of the highest rated ones out. I never found someone selling Meteos. This upsets me...

...but I bought Crosswords instead.

Oh this story is going to be disjointed. From the top!

I found 4 titles, well reviewed, that I wanted to add to my collection. Meteos, Neves, Zoo Keeper, and Picross DS. 

I thought, "Hey! Lets do that buy local thing!"

Bad start. None of the above mentioned games were sold in any of the stores I visited. 

So I went online. I found Neves through a 3rd party Amazon seller. Buy.

The other three? I went to the third party and placed an order. The order was canceled "Out of Stock."

That put me on a mission to get them all. 

I found Zoo Keeper and Picross through other stores and bought those. Meteos? That was a near lost cause, until I read that the Disney version is just as good, with improvements, save for the fact that it's Disney characters all over it. 

I still didn't have a game in hand on July 3rd, and I wanted something to play over the weekend. Best Buy did not have it, and I was steamed... so...

Crosswords. I do not enjoy crosswords. The clues sound so foreign and ... rely so heavily on pop culture. (The ones I've seen of course.) I got it anyway, and was greatly suprised.

Listen: 

Crosswords on the Nintendo DS has ANAGRAMS (and word search too!)

The bold was necessary. I L-O-V-E anagrams, and the crosswords were fun too. 

Neves is the best. It's about 500 tangrams. Untimed, timed, and in 7 steps. Viola. I'm tearing that up too. 

Zoo Keeper is Bejeweled with animals. W00t. (I need not say anymore.)

Picross is a Nonogram that makes pictures. 

Meteos goes back on the list for future gaming spending. 

Now... all I need is a Nintendo DS game with Logic Puzzles and I'm set. 

Either way I found some subpar batteries to use for this one shot. CJ and Misty asleep in my husband's spare chair.

I present to you. The cuteness. CJ's on the left. Misty's on the right.

How can you tell them a part??? After a while, you really just know.

A man went to a hotel and walked up to the front desk to check in. The woman at the desk gave him his key and told him that on the way to his room, there was a door with no number that was locked and no one was allowed in there. Especially no one should look inside the room, under any circumstances. So he followed the instructions of the woman at the front desk, going straight to his room, and going to bed. The next night his curiosity would not leave him alone about the room with no number on the door. He walked down the hall to the door and tried the handle. Sure enough it was locked. He bent down and looked through the wide keyhole. Cold air passed through it, chilling his eye.

What he saw was a hotel bedroom, like his, and in the corner was a woman whose skin was completely white. She was leaning her head against the wall, facing away from the door. He stared in confusion for a while. He almost knocked on the door, out of curiosity, but decided not to. This disinclination saved his life. He crept away from the door and walked back to his room. The next day, he returned to the door and looked through the wide keyhole. This time, all he saw was redness. He couldn’t make anything out besides a distinct red color, unmoving. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room knew he was spying the night before, and had blocked the keyhole with something red.

At this point he decided to consult the woman at the front desk for more information. She sighed and said, "Did you look through the keyhole?" The man told her that he had and she said, "Well, I might as well tell you the story. A long time ago, a man murdered his wife in that room, and her ghost haunts it. But these people were not ordinary. They were white all over, except for their eyes, which were red."

After hearing Morning Edition, I had a genre... Canadian Folk... and this afternoon, I had my mission. 

Mission accomplished.

There are more songs out there, waiting for me to find them, but for now, this will be played to death all day today.

I quit my guitar lessons. 1) Traveling, so I didn't practice. 2) Working harder, so I can't take my lessons during my lunch. If a Saturday slot opens up, I'll certainly return to it. I miss my teacher already.

In the meanwhile, I've been working through this book called Fingerpicking Guitar. I've been practicing different picking patterns and progressions. As for my songs, I've been improving upon Blackbird and Dock of the Bay. I'm still working on a suitable picking / strumming pattern for Dock of the Bay.

Today's picture features Misty, who is currently sleeping behind me in the black chair. (I had to stand up to take the picture, of course.)

CJ is curled in a near perfect ball sleeping on the "cat chair" covered with my red robe (more like the cat blanket).

Tomorrow I'll aim to catch CJ's 'greeting pose.' He hops up on the scratching post with his "Love Me Please" face and waits for me to come up and pet him, at which point he lifts his paws to my face head-butts my chin.

Misty doesn't greet me. She will, however, meow incessantly when she's ready for me to verbally call her over. Then I must lift her up, and present my arm for her to lick, and not just any part. She really loves the inside of my elbow. Goodness forbid I've been lax on the nail clippings... she likes to knead me while she tries to lick my skin off. 

Before I had CJ and Misty with me, I followed Gun-Hee's journal.  Gun-Hee is a fellow Abyssinian. He died yesterday at the tender age of just under 2 years old from FIP. Gun Hee's mom was religious about taking pictures of him, and it made me think, "hey, I better break out my camera. I don't know when I'll lose my own two."

Rest in Peace, Gun-Hee

In that spirit, I took pictures of CJ and Misty, and the baby Mockingbird we found out in the grass yesterday. I'm not going to care if I'm bad at "picture-taking." Better to have a cruddy picture than no picture at all.

As for the baby Mockingbird... We've been keeping him in an empty, never-used litter box with a towel. The mother bird has been feeding him under the carport. We've been bringing him (or her) inside at night to keep hir warm. 

CJ and Misty (CJ up top)

Baby Mockingbird

Since the mother and father have been keeping up on predator watch and feeding the baby bird, we have not fed it.

We've been checking on him every 30 minutes / hour, and the parents seem to be just fine with hir in this location. I really hope our vigilance and make-shift nest is enough to see this baby through to adulthood.

(And yes, when we bring him inside at night, we lock him away from CJ and Misty.)