Review Wednesday - Project Hail Mary SPOILERS!

 ****SPOILERS****

    I wanted to give my two cents regarding the film because I had just read the book prior to the movie's release. I wanted to mention that I absolutely love The Martian (movie), and I ended up reading the book after the movie in that case, which is why I picked up the book for PHM (Project Hail Mary) as soon as I saw the trailers for the movie. I really like Andy Weir's writing; it can be kind of numbing when he goes through all the math and equations, but he doesn't do it for very long so it's not overwhelming. He does a pretty good job of dumbing it down so that you understand the gist of the issue at hand.

    First, I want to give props to the creators of the movie. Using practical effects instead of CGI as much as possible including making an animatronic out of Rocky was incredible. If you can vote with your wallet that you want to see more of this, please go see the movie. This is the first movie I've seen in theaters in a long time, and it was worth it for sure. The CGI that was used was beautiful. 

     It might have been just me, but I felt as if the first 1/3 of the film was way too slow (most of it being flashbacks), but the last 2/3 of it went by really fast (while most of this was bad shit that happened on the ship). It might have been because there was no exposition really about why things were happening, it just kind of hurriedly happened. The holes in the two tanks causing the ship to spin out of control was one. Patrick asked why they couldn't just leave the atmosphere of Adrian before pulling up the container, as this was never explained. I do believe the book said that the engines would melt the chain if they tried that. 

    I was a little weary of Ryan Gosling as Dr. Grace, but he did a good job. I'm just not sure how much was his acting vs the screenplay adaptation. In the book, although Ryland was lighthearted and did crack some jokes, he was a lot smarter than they portrayed on the film; they made him quite a goofball in the movie. Which, you know, I did find funny and I liked it a lot, but I feel as if they dumbed the character down for the film. In the book, none of the other scientists liked him or took him seriously due to the book he wrote about saying that water isn't necessary for life. He explained how much of a disgrace everyone thought he was, which made the impact of him finding out that Astrophage had water in it more... impactful. It also helped when Grace discovered that Astrophage had evolved alongside Eridians and Humans with a progenitor, hence why they all had mitochondria. You could argue that it's pointless to the film but it's a cool thing to note.

    I wish Stratt had been more of a badass. They really downplayed how much power she had in the film. The book had her doing a lot of "illegal" things but with the ultimate goal of saving humanity, because she was given power higher up than any world leader - including authority to use nuclear bombs on Antarctica to release methane and create global warming in order for Earth to last just a bit longer. I also feel they kind of downplayed how much trouble Earth was in, I suppose, but there wouldn't have been any ill-effects before the launch so I guess they could only do so much (except for, you know, bombing Antarctica.) Also, that karaoke scene was completely unnecessary and added nothing to the film or Stratt's character.

    They never mentioned the coma gene in the movie, this is also why Grace was picked to replace the dead scientist. Not only did he have the knowledge they needed but also the gene that would allow him to survive a 4-year journey in a coma. There was a huge food issue in the book, because he didn't have enough even with the other two people dead, to survive the 4 years back to Earth. He discovered that he could eat Taumoeba to keep himself alive for the journey, although he'd be extremely malnourished. His memory loss was actually due to Stratt specifically giving him a drug so that he would fail to remember that he didn't want to go, and he was much more pissed in the book once he remembers that.

    However, one could argue that none of these things really mattered in the movie, except to add character development. But there is one scene that stood out to me over all others that I wish they would have kept the same: Rocky's "death". In the book, Rocky breaks out of his ball and saves Grace, but then collapses right there. Grace doesn't pass out all the way, and he engages the centrifuge and actually drags Rocky back to his ammonia bubble, which was very difficult because not only was Grace hurt, but Rocky weighed about 400 lbs (they never mention in the movie that Erid also has a much higher gravity along with the ammonia atmosphere). Rocky did not wake up for half a second like he did in the movie, which created a much more definitive viewpoint that he might be dead. This would have been much more impactful to the audience (not that it wasn't already, a couple people told me they cried. Aww).

    Grace did not get to see Rocky's ship in the book. There was no way to allow his body to survive from the heat/ammonia/gravity. The Xenonite body suit was a completely movie-driven invention. I didn't mind it though, it makes sense to me that the audience would want to see the ship. And it was pretty cool.

    The decision to save Rocky instead of going back to Earth was also a bit more involved. Not only would he not have the fuel to do both tasks, but he also knew that he would starve to death. In the book, it is mentioned that Eridians eat rocks/minerals that are toxic to humans, and Erid would not have any food for him to eat or take back home with him. I guess this was never explained in the movie because then they would have to explain how he managed to survive living on Erid. They were able to synthesize meat based on his own muscle tissue. He called them 'me-burgers' lol.

    Oh, one last thing that irked me - why would you leave out the best line in the entire book?

“On Earth, we have a scary, deadly creature called a spider. You look like one of those. Just so you know.” “Good. Proud. I am scary space monster. You are leaky space blob.”

    It would be like leaving out "I'm gonna have to science the shit out of this" from The Martian movie. Lame.

    My main takeaway is that, although I really liked the movie, I feel like I would have liked it a lot more had I not read the book first. And I don't really think it has anything to do with the minor changes they made, per se, but maybe more to do with how I knew how it was going to go. Usually I care not for spoilers, I am more than happy to read all the spoilery stuff so I know what to expect when watching a show or something. But this felt different, I think I just would have liked it more going in without that extra knowledge. Because yeah, the stuff I mentioned is fairly redundant and not needed to advance the story, it's just nice to have it and flesh it out and explain it. The book went into a lot more detail about how Astrophage works, and Rocky's biology etc but I can see how that would just convolute or make the story boring. It's just cool stuff. If you get a chance to read the book, do it. I won't say it's better, but if you want to learn about all the extra stuff, it's a fun read and I enjoyed it a lot. I couldn't put it down most of the time. But also watch the movie, because it's damn good! We need more stuff like this!

Whynter Almost Destroyed Me

    I sang your praises in my initial review of your product, and apparently I was extremely overzealous. So look, everything I talked about in my "review" (more like a preview, really) of the Whynter Portable A/C with Heat pump is still relevant here, but as much as I raved about the hose-in-hose feature, the engineering of the product was so horribly designed that I wonder if the company - in this case, Midea - even realized what the fuck they did. I can only blame Whynter for about 25% of it, because really all they did was repackage a design that Midea created. But that also gives/gave them the opportunity to re-design it to their specifications and nobody thought to do this. And I'm also not sure, but I don't think the Midea version of this product even has a heat pump feature, and if they don't, then it really is 100% Whynter's engineers' incompetence that I've had to correct for.

    So here's what I mean by this. Let me start out by saying that this winter has been one of the warmest on record, at least since I've been alive, so it took us a while to even start wanting to consistently use the heat pump to heat the bedroom. But once we did, we were running into an issue where the damn thing would turn on, open the louver, and then do absolutely nothing. No fan, no noise, nothing. So, I emailed support. To their credit, they do get back to you very quickly. And what it boiled down to was one of the stupidest things I had ever heard. Apparently, the heat pump feature will not work if it is below 41 degrees outside.

    Excuse me, what? A feature that it supposed to warm up your house when it is cold outside doesn't work when it's below 41 degrees? What the actual fuck?

    Okay, I kind of get it, if you know how heat pumps work (This video from Technology Connections is an amazing deep dive explainer if you are interested) is that they take the heat energy from the cold air and make it hot. It's exactly how and A/C works but in reverse. It's co-efficient of energy is nearly 1:1, which is why I wanted to use it to heat my bedroom, and to also control the warmth of the room better than the shit-tastic old-school thermostats I'm stuck with in this apartment.  When they were originally manufactured, they had an issue with working in very cold temperatures because THERMODYNAMICS. The radiator would freeze over and stop the unit from working. But engineers have overcome this problem for the mini-splits by including a defrost cycle. Also, I just want to point out that I used to own a Hisense portable A/C with heat pump, that had both an intake and exhaust hose, and it worked JUST FINE in the winter. I assume it's because instead of pulling in outside air from the intake hose to heat the room, it would intake the air from the unit itself, like it does in Fan mode (I always hated that fan mode doesn't work by taking in outside air, that would make a lot more sense to me and allow me to use the A/C a lot less often, but I digress). Either one of these solutions would work here but they instead gave me a completely different solution (because the engineers didn't bother to think about these things). Instead, the solution they gave me was to expand the exhaust house out of the hose-in-hose unit, and hook it up to the window kit by itself. Apparently by decoupling the intake hose from the window, it will allow it to intake room air, which would keep the unit above 41 degrees. (Or use Fan Mode, like why wasn't this just coded into the design?!!) But anyway, this already presents two problems.

    1. There is no connector to attach the exhaust hose by itself to the window adapter. When I asked customer service about this, they literally just shrugged their shoulders at me. I am not joking. They said they haven't made anything to help attach those two pieces together and suggested plexiglass (????) for what, I'm not sure. WTF.

    2. THERE IS NOW A GAPING HOLE IN THE WINDOW KIT WHERE THE INTAKE HOSE USED TO BE. This is the biggest mind-fuck of it all. Imagine, it's winter. Like, it's fucking cold outside, you know. You had such good intentions by buying a heat pump to heat your space because you like the environment and it's cheaper to run. But not if it's fighting against the cold air coming through the gaping hole in your window!!! FFS. It's already bad enough, to be honest, to fight against the inevitable leakage of cold air coming in through the window kit regardless of how much tape you use, but this is god damn ridiculous. 

    I was furious at this point, because I paid an extra $200 for this A/C to have a heat pump feature, and I have to now deal with this bullshit to even get it to function. But I was determined to figure something out because dammit, I PAID FOR IT. So, I put tape over the intake hole, and stuffed it with foam and cotton batting. It's not perfect; it looks like shit and it still leaks cold air but at least it works.

    

    But wait, THERE'S MORE! Yes, the incompetence of the engineers is not over yet, my friends. Because after I fixed this issue, I was presented with another. I am shaking with fury as I write this because this could have all been avoided if they programed the fucking thing to intake room air when running in Heat Mode. I attempt to turn on the unit in the night because it got cold, and it wouldn't turn on. According to the app, it was under 41 degrees inside. How is that, you might ask, when the intake hose is now inside the house? (Takes a deep breath), the exhaust hose is just sitting in the window, as as it sits there, cold air is just slithering its way down it and settling inside the unit. I scream into the void. Why was this never an issue with my Hisense unit? Why would a $400 piece of shit work better than this?!

    I don't bother to email customer service this time. I had already sent a long-winded email that was not super friendly letting them know my feelings on this thing. So again, here I am figuring it out myself. 

    And I do - I have an epiphany. 

    Fan mode pulls in room air, right? Well now, if I run the fan for just a couple of minutes, it will blow out all the cold air that settled inside the unit and replace it with warmer room air. And this actually works. I use their app to set a schedule, 6 times a day the fan will run for 2 minutes each time, blowing out any cold air so that when the temperature drops inside the room to 61, it will turn on unencumbered. After all this fucking effort, it finally works like it's supposed to. No thanks to Whynter or their "engineers". 

    I just can't fathom that nobody else in the world has run into this issue. Maybe I'm a unique case because I like to keep my bedroom temp between 62-64 degrees. I sleep hot, and I get warm way too easily. Maybe people that use this as a real heat pump to keep their entire house warm don't run into this? I mean, I don't know why not, but I can't possibly be the only one!

    So in the end, I can still pretty much recommend the Whynter A/C without heat pump, which is, luckily, $200 less, unless I run into some weird-ass issue during the summer months. I guess we'll see!

Raising Awareness of Seborrheic Dermatitis

     The older I get, the more of these I end up doing. Fun times.

    The reason I decided to blog about this condition is because of the general... lack of caring(?) of the dermatologists that I've seen. I made an appointment back in June or July for Cascade Eye and Skin. It had been many years since I was seen there, and I didn't remember them being so... Drive Thru Dermatology. I'm sure they see hundreds of patients a day, and I really just felt like a number, especially when I watched the doctor's nurse chilling on her phone, draped over her chair like a blanket, while the doctor explained my condition. I wasn't too upset over the care; I already pretty much knew what I had and I really just needed scripts to take care of it. They did give me Ketoconazole shampoo, Ket cream, and a watery steroid for flare ups. But she also barely looked at my skin - and maybe she didn't need to. Seborrheic dermatitis is probably one of the most common conditions that gets diagnosed. The condition is an overgrowth of a yeast called Malassezia, and it causes and itchy, flaky scalp and sometimes red rashes. Most of the rashes appeared around the edges on my hair, especially at the back of the neck and behind the ears. But, since we both basically agreed that's what I had, I figured I had it under control.

    So for the first month or 2, I started changing my habits and washing my hair 3x a week instead of 2 (curly hair should have less wash time), and trying to balance using the Ket shampoo with my regular shampoo so that I wouldn't overuse the Ket. The problem with overusing Ket is that you could end up with fungicide-resistant yeast and it might stop working all together, so I was trying to find out how little I could use it in general and get away with it. But after that experiment kind of failed, I ended up washing 3x times a week with the Ket and leaving it on for 5-7 minutes while I did my other shower activities. 

    However, as the weeks wore on, my hair was getting worse. It would barely last a day before it would become dull, dirty, greasy and itchy/flaky. I was still getting rash flare ups sometimes on the back of my neck. So even though it cleared up behind my ears, and the shampoo worked for about a day, I began to wonder if my diagnosis was wrong. I decided to make an appointment with a different dermatologist at a different clinic to see if they had a different opinion. Of course, I wasn't having a flare up at the time, it wasn't even that itchy/flaky when I went in, so again, she barely even looked at my scalp.

    I asked her if this dx was right, and if there was anything additional I could do to help with my hair. She asked me if I let my hair air dry after washing. I said yes (I squeeze dry it with a Curlsmith microfiber towel - which is really bomb btw) because my hair is curly. She said I really shouldn't, since yeast loves to grow in dark, damp, warm environments. First of all, lady.

    1. You're standing within my personal space and you need to back up; it's really awkward. And 

    2. No. Not only would I be drying my hair for well over 30 minutes, but even when using blow dryer on low with a diffuser, my hair becomes a frizzy mess. So that's not happening.

    She did not offer any other suggestions. It was a pretty well wasted appointment. She did say that I could use the steroid on my scalp where it was itchy and not just on the periphery, but the itchy spots were rarely in the same spot twice, so that wasn't very helpful either. So here I was, having to figure out things on my own. And Google (including their stupid AI bot) was the opposite of helpful. But, I had two ideas.

    1. Stop wearing my silk bonnet to bed. Silk is not breathable in the slightest, so I can just imagine the dark, warm environment it's creating for my scalp each night. Plus, I only washed it once a week with my laundry, so it wasn't the cleanest thing either. I've gotten really used to having my hair out of my way while I sleep though, so I found these mesh sleep bonnets from Amazon. The holes are small enough for my hair to stay inside, but still breathable. They work great.

    2. Double wash. Nobody that I've found online advises this. But I had a theory. See, Ketoconazole shampoo is, by definition, a shampoo, but first and foremost a fungicide. I decided that it wasn't a very good shampoo, so I washed my hair with a small amount of my regular shampoo first, and then washed again with the Ket. Because most of the grime was washed away with the first cleanse, the Ket foamed up really nicely, and I thought well, this also probably helps with distributing the fungicide all over my scalp as well. After doing this, my hair lasted MUCH longer after one wash. It no longer gets nasty after just one day, and the flakes have pretty much disappeared. It still gets a tad itchy, but at least it's not all greasy and gross. 

    I just find it really annoying that I had to figure this out on my own instead of getting advice from a medically trained provider. If you're also suffering from this condition, I would also advise you watch this video about a new Pantene product that I will consider buying after my other shampoo is gone to see if it also helps. It talks about oxidative stress and an unhealthy scalp that might be the reason the yeast overgrowth happens in the first place. It's always better to treat the issue and not just the symptoms, you know?

    Hopefully this helps someone!

    

Over Compensate Much?

     Let's say you live in an apartment and they've decided to ban in-window air-conditioning units. So this limits you to a portable A/C if you want one. Now let's say you live on the first floor, and the view from all your windows in the apartment is the parking lot that has night time lights on all night, and you have a husband that works night shift so he sleeps during the day. You've tried putting a fan in the window to help cool the room down but alas, it reminds you of those dingy underground hideouts where you see shadows of large fan blades moving across your walls. Not to mention the occasional flash of headlights. During the day you have typical apartment noises, but since your window is feet from a main walkway to the garbage and mail, there is constantly people going by.

    In addition to all this nonsense, your apartment is so oddly laid out that getting air moving from one room to another is nearly impossible. You have 1 sliding glass door in the living room (everything faces the parking lot), and a window in each bedroom. That's it. The airflow is basically non-existent. 

    So what do you do? You overcompensate! I want to firstly say that these blackout "blinds" are a lifesaver, as they're covering the entire bedroom window, in addition to the A/C's vent hose because it glows like a beacon in the middle of the night. We bought a portable A/C that is also a heat pump so that we can keep it in the window all year round. It's possible that as much as we try our best to seal the window, air still leaks in and it might be fighting against that, but it's better than a heater register that doesn't understand when to shut the f*ck off when it gets to a set temperature. And actually, as I write this in October, and probably well into November, we'll still be running the A/C on cool. It's such a waste of energy because it's most definitely colder outside than it is inside, and if A/C's could use the "Fan" function by bringing in cold air from outside that would solve this issue but alas, there are no other options if we want the room dark and quiet. We keep the bedroom door closed at all times and have a draft thingie under the door, but the room temp still rises (even in the middle of the night) despite the fact it's cold outside and the window is (essentially) open.

    So onto the A/C itself. I bought a Whynter 14000 BTU A/C (12,000 SACC/DOE, which basically means "real world usage") with heat pump. As you can see from the pic above, our bedroom is not that massive, it's 169 square feet, but we do have 9 ft ceilings which is pretty rare for apartments. I bought this unit for several reasons (our old one kicked the bucket recently and it was a typical cheap, dual hose unit, 10,000 BTUs)

    1. The Hose-n-hose feature. This is available only in the highest end units, and
I was getting so tired of our janky set up with the two hoses stretched off to the side. The exhaust hose was covered with an insulator to help avoid heat getting back into the room before it's exhausted out, while the intake hose had been wrapped in layers of aluminum tape to stop the light bleed.

    2. The inverter. Again, only the highest end units have this feature, as I'm sure it's expensive to produce. It allows the A/C to ramp the speed of the compressor up and down as needed, instead of cycling on and off constantly, which not only saves energy, but also extends the life of the compressor. As a bonus to this, it is also extremely quiet. (As an example, we briefly bought a Hisense dual hose portable A/C 8000 BTU unit - spoiler alert, it was DOA - and it has an energy star sticker on it of $169 a year to run. In comparison, this unit, even though it is 14000 BTUs, had a sticker of just $65 a year to run.)

    

I know it doesn't look bad from this photo [left] but all the jankyness was hidden behind the curtain

As a side note, I am well aware of the A/C rule of sizing your unit to your space. It's annoying when everything is listed in square footage, and they don't take into account the height of your ceilings. When you convert sq ft to cubic feet, that 169 turns into 1521 feet, and the unit is rated for 600 sq feet. Plus, like I already mentioned above, the things I wanted for my portable A/C were only available in their highest end model. So I'm hoping the inverter saves the compressor so that it won't die early from short cycling.

    3. Evaporative Drainage. This is a big one. Our old unit had to be placed on a stool with a hose running to a bucket to allow water to constantly drain. Not only was it unsightly, but sometimes we'd forget about the bucket and we'd have water overflowing onto the carpet. There was more than once I had to take my hair dryer to it. This unit doesn't need to be drained in A/C or Dry modes (unless it's super humid, but we don't live in a super humid environment), but it *does* need to be drained in Heat mode. Although, it has some kind of pump where we can drain it from the middle plug (instead of the one on closest to the floor) just when it needs it. I'm not sure how much it holds or how often it will need to be done, but it sounds pretty simple and we won't need to have the bucket around all the time.

    This thing is so darned efficient that it cools the room in less than 10 minutes. Granted, it *is* colder outside than it is inside, so it's not fighting the heat, but I can't imagine it having a hard time. The only issue I feel we will run across is in the summer months, once it gets above 85 degrees, we like to open the bedroom door and add a fan so we can try to get that cold air to the rest of the apartment. But the way our bedroom/window is set up, its not at all facing the door like the old one was, and we can't make it due to the way the hose works. It was already hard enough, because as you can see from the schematics, there is a 90 degree bend outside of the door. So getting air out is already a chore, and the old 10,000 BTU unit worked it's butt off for not much payoff [our whole apartment is 1100 sq ft though!] We'll see if this 14000 BTU unit can do better. We're counting on you, Whynter!  

Time to Zip!

     For our one year wedding anniversary (June 2024), I decided that a Canada do-over was in order. The reason for this was because we had a $300 credit for Ziptrek Ecotours burning in my pocket that I needed to use. The plan was to be fairly quick about it. I had decided that if we drove up to Whistler and did the zip almost immediately, maybe I would miss the brain-cold-fuzzies (for context on this, please read Honeymoon Part 3). 

    In addition, there was no LTX this year (The timing wouldn't be right anyhow). So I didn't need to plan around that at all. We were going to completely avoid downtown Vancouver this time, which was definitely okay by Patrick since he's the one driving. I found a hotel in North Vancouver on the bay (Ocean Promenade Hotel) that looked really nice that we would stay in on Day 1, and then stay at a hotel in Whistler proper on Day 2 (Evolution Whistler). Whistler in the summer, not on a Saturday night, is actually quite cheap and definitely worth it.

    Once we reached Canada, we had one stop to make before checking into our hotel on the bay. The farmhouse on Smallville. Yeah, that's right. Smallville was filmed in Canada and they used a house right on the Canadian border with Washington for some outdoor shots, I guess. A farm next door was having a
wedding, so we sneakily used their parking and walked to the house. Obviously we didn't bother them. There was an equestrian trail next to the house where I
got a couple of shots of the windmill and where they had the "Kent Farm" sign. After that, we checked into our hotel. The weather was going to be pretty great so we were lucky. All the rooms at this hotel were pretty sweet and I loved ours. Every room had a large balcony with a view of the bay, right on the downtown street where you can walk to restaurants and such. It reminded me a lot of Alki Beach in Seattle. 

    We walked to a long boardwalk that lead into the bay, and then walked to dinner from there. We watched the sunset also, which was quite nice. The weather overnight was going to be partly cloudy, but because the beach was facing south, I wanted to give myself a chance to take photos of the milky way. Turns out it was much too bright for something like that, which was unfortunate. 

    Our reservation for the zipline wasn't until 12:30pm, so we lazily made our way up to Whistler. I was not going to have a repeat of last year where I booked ourselves like crazy and we had to rush from place to place and feel stressed. No stress allowed this time!

    We were too early to check into our hotel, so we parked at Whistler Village and walked around until it was time to check in. Patrick and I were both nervous. Neither one of us had ziplined in 10-15 years, and my zipline was babyish compared to what we were doing this time. You see, when I went to book our times, the credit didn't match up with the pricing. If I bought the Bear line, which is what we had originally booked last year (and was the "beginner" course), we would have $20 left over that we couldn't use. So I booked the Eagle course, for the "people who knew what this was all about", for $20 extra instead. We basically drove half way up Blackcomb mountain to start, and zipped our way back down to Whistler Village. Patrick hates heights, but from what he had told me about zipping in Mexico, where you have to break yourself by hand (??!!), this was going to be much better. It was still very hard to take that first step off of each platform, and even by the end I never got 100% used to it. Was it worth it? Sure. Would I ever do it again? No thank you. I have the Gopro video so that's good enough for me, thanks! lol

    We immediately went to check into our hotel after, and I specially chose this place for one reason: It had a dry sauna. That's why I loved Scandinave Spa so much. That smell of cedar while sitting in a hot, dry room was heaven. And the hotel was freaking amazing. It had a split bedroom and living room thing with a gas fireplace in the center. A massive bathroom with the biggest soaking tub I had ever seen, a really nice kitchen, and it was backed up to a forest with a balcony and a view of a mountain. I'd say the only downside was that these hotels were built for winter activities, so it had features like a heated floor (which was definitely not needed right now- it was around 78 degrees outside), but that also meant the minisplit that cooled the room only went down to 65, which wasn't nearly cold enough for sleeping. (And unfortunately, the fireplace kicked out some heat too so I couldn't even leave it on! We had to leave the balcony door open most of the night, which was certainly a risk as we were backed up to a forest, but I couldn't sleep otherwise.) I immediately jumped into the bath and soaked for a good 30 minutes and Patrick took a nap before we headed back to Whistler Village for dinner. We had made reservations at a fairly fancy Italian restaurant for our anniversary dinner called Quattro. My dinner was delicious but Patrick absolutely loved his spicy pasta. After dinner we headed back to the hotel to check out the hot tub and sauna as the sun set before heading to bed.

I have one weird story to tell and I don't think I can adequately describe what happened to us. So our car was in an underground parking garage with a gated entrance. Patrick had parked our car around a corner in the garage when we checked in. And when we came back to drive to our dinner reservation, our car was nowhere to be found. I began to panic, wondering if it had somehow been stolen, which would have been nearly impossible - it was a gated garage! We walked in, walked out, went back to the lobby, walked back out to the gate... nothing was making sense. We had no one to ask because Evolution didn't have a front desk (their sister hotel had checked us in). Turns out, the garage had two identical levels, and when we had used the elevator to go to like, P1, it was the lower level. We had parked on the "lobby level" of the garage, I guess. It was surreal, though. We thought we had entered an alternate dimension. And the time we wasted trying to figure it out almost made us late for our reservation!

We had a decision to make today: we needed to either leave early to avoid afternoon traffic on south I-5 (and in Vancouver as well), or leave late to hopefully skip all of the backup. In the end, we decided to leave late so we could spend more time in Whistler being lazy. We grabbed an easy breakfast at a nearby coffee house and took it back to our balcony to enjoy it before we checked out. We spent much of the morning shopping at Whistler Village before we headed back towards home. We caught the very tail end of Vancouver traffic, but completely skipped south I-5 traffic and made it home by 10pm. All in all, a very nice and relaxing anniversary. 

San Diego Day 3

     Well, my sleep was definitely piss-poor due to my injury so I had decided to make an appointment with a local urgent care to get checked out. Was able to get in and out quickly when they opened. They barely did any kind of exam, told me to RICE, gave me a neoprene knee brace and a Toradol (like advil only a bit stronger) shot. Okay well, GG I guess?

    After that, we went to breakfast at Breakfast Republic, and that was some of the yummiest food I'd had in awhile. I ordered the Oreo Pancakes and they did not disappoint. Patrick had ordered the banana split pancakes with ice cream and he really liked those as well. Dessert for breakfast, just my kind of place! After breakfast I wanted to find a gift shop that sold comfy hoodies (I'd ran into a few before and almost bought one but finally decided I really wanted one), so we visited Old Town. It was like stepping into an old Western but was Mexican inspired with gift shops selling ponchos and sugar skulls. I found a super soft hoodie that I could snuggle up in, but we didn't stay long because we needed to make our way to Patrick's old stomping grounds - El Cajon. We drove around and he showed me some old places he used to frequent. We also stopped at a local mall so that he could find a new jersey and hat for the Padres.

    His friend Ruth had rented out a space at an RV park she worked at and was throwing a get together starting at 2, so before we left to go back to San Diego for that, we stopped by one of Patrick's favorite Mexican restaurants call Victoria's. I had a trio of street tacos and they were delicious. And Patrick was right about the best Carne Asada burritos being in San Diego - theirs were very tasty. 

    Then it was time to finally meet the fam. Unfortunately my face was scratched up after the incident and I had quite a limp - a memorable first impression for sure. I really didn't interact with them much at all; Ruth had her family with her, and Josh had brought his wife and kids as well, so I kind of just... didn't talk much. I feel bad about it, because generally when I'm uncomfortable I don't participate in any conversations; I even prefer not to sit with others in order to make my quietness less awkward, and I don't accept any accommodations like food or drink nor do I ever ask for any, even if I'm hungry or thirsty. I feel like I'm imposing. I prefer to make myself invisible - it's just easier for me. But I probably came off as standoffish or rude. Anyway, they were all very nice and accommodating. They tried to make me feel welcome even though I didn't really join in. It's definitely nothing on them.     

    We played 1975 trivia, ate pizza and tons of candy, the kids went swimming in the pool while Patrick chatted with his friends. There was cake, and a very moving speech by Ruth about how close they were and how they would always be friends and it really made me wish I had friends like Ruth and Josh.

    We left right after cake because we needed to rush to Sunset Cliffs and catch the sunset. Well, as best as we could. Despite our best efforts the whole trip, the clouds refused to let up during the evening and I never caught a good sunset. The cliffs were gorgeous though, I could just imagine how they would look when the golden hue of a spectacular sunset would light them up. I'll probably have to add it to my spite list!

    We had an early flight to catch but we had to make one more stop tonight; we drove out of our way to find the closest In-N-Out for a late dinner. He promised me it would be better than Oregon (our closest location, which has lines 1+ hour long constantly) because In-N-Out was everywhere so it should be fine. Yeah, no. It was packed, the drive thru line took up the entire parking area, and we waited at least 30 minutes for our food. Sigh.

    After that, it was bedtime and our flight back home was uneventful. Despite my injury and lack of good sunsets, I had a good time. I would definitely like to return some day. 

San Diego Day 2

     We started off the day innocently enough. With two options in mind for breakfast, we ended up driving past Breakfast Republic because the line was out the door. We drove to Morning Glory, the other spot on my list, because they have the Japanese Souffle Pancakes that I really wanted to try. Unfortunately, or fortunately as you'll see in a moment, they had a farmers market going on in the same area so cars were parked everywhere and streets were blocked off. We chose to park in a parking garage (with a $35 charge for only 2 hours!) and when we got in the elevator to head up, floor two said "Morning Glory". Well there ya go lol. We actually wanted the first floor though. W had to stand in line in order to add our names to the waitlist. This place was popular as f. So, with about a 40 minute wait, we checked out the farmers market until it was our turn.

    This place was very interesting to say the least. Check out the link above to see it. The restaurant was open air so we actually had pigeons flying in occasionally. The souffle pancakes were... not what I was expecting, I guess. The texture felt off to me, like I expected them to be light and airy, and they were still pretty dense. I dunno, everyone that eats the pancakes really likes them, but I prefer the originals. Patrick really liked his egg chorizo hash thing; it was very tasty if not a tad spicy for my liking.

    After breakfast, it was time to visit the place I was the most excited for: La Jolla. It was still pretty cloudy out and it was taking its sweet time to warm up, (too early for swimming) so we decided to walk around the shore a bit before doing some window shopping up the main two streets on Prospect and Girard. As I began to walk past a gallery, which I would normally never enter, we decided to take a peak. The artist, Ian Elly, was a wonderful photographer and had a lot of gorgeous pieces on display. Patrick really liked this one of the moon, but the one that caught my eye was his gorgeous shot off a dock looking at a storm, bolts of lightning, and even a piece of the galaxy of stars in the corner. It was incredible; all of these things in one shot. The lady who worked there hooked us in, began talking about the pieces, and thought to bring us into a small room where we can see different lighting conditions on the piece (it's crazy how much light can bounce off the whitest parts with hardly anything shining directly on it).

    She told me that if we were interested in the piece, the smallest size was 20x60, and was $5500. That made us pause, of course. We/I had never spent that much on a piece of art! Apparently, and I should have figured this but never really thought about it, digital artists need to create scarcity in their pieces, you know? They have the original file, and can make copies as often as they want, but they choose to limit the amount sold and once they're gone never bring them back. So when she said this was only 1 of 500 pieces, that's what creates the price and makes them limited edition. She then mentioned free shipping, which is normally about $800 because it's crated and has an insurance policy on it. And then also said there was no sales tax if shipping outside of California (for some reason). It got me a lot closer to saying yes but I still wasn't sure if that was enough. She also said that the piece included his coffee book, which I guess sells for 1k (like, why??), and mentioned this piece was shot in Washington. That peaked my interest, I asked if she knew where, because that would be cool to tell people it was shot in my state. She said she'd be right back and when she returned she was followed by Ian Elly himself! He had stopped by and generally wasn't around as he didn't live locally, but was doing some work there. He said it was shot in the Seattle area but wouldn't disclose exactly where because he didn't want to ruin it in case he wanted to return. Fair enough, I get it. Seattle was close enough to say anyway. But how cool to meet the artist! And knowing it was a piece shot in WA kind of sold it for us. We celebrated with some champagne (well, Patrick did) and he told us that he would sign and dedicate the coffee book to us, which was so cool.

    After blowing our budget for the entire trip (and then some lol) it was time to head back up to the car and switch into our swimming stuff. We stopped by Bobbi Gelato for some delicious ice cream and got ready to go swimming. La Jolla is one of the prettiest places I have ever seen. The ruggedness of the west coast always takes my breath away. The colors of the water are striking, and my pictures definitely don't do it justice (in order to keep us to a carry-on, I left my camera gear at home). I wanted to swim in La Jolla Cove, so we headed down there. The air temp was about 75, the clouds were finally parting, and the water temp was between 65-70. The tide was going out but was still very high, and I was not expecting the waves to be so strong. I wasn't used to the huge undercurrent. The way that the beach was, there was a large dip close to shore, and that's where all the waves formed. A large wave would come in and hit us pretty hard even at knee or waist high, and pull back so strongly that I had to hold onto Patrick most of the time.

    Then, the worst happened. Patrick and I were standing probably 6 feet in front of the concrete entrance stairs. This is a pic to show you how high off the ground they are. An incoming wave swept me off my feet, and threw me right into the stairs. The side of my face hit them as well as both of my knees pretty badly. I got pushed into them twice before I was able to stand up. Luckily the undercurrent didn't take me back out to sea, as I was able to grab onto the railing in order to stay put. There were several lifeguards on duty and one of them got to me quickly, though. I am okay, but my face is pretty scratched up, my right leg is all bruised, and my left knee was injured in some way, like maybe a bruised MCL. It hurts to extend or bend my knee at all, and I was limping for the rest of the trip.

    Obviously after that accident, we headed back to the car and went to the hotel to shower and make sure I was really okay. I did not hit my head on the concrete luckily, so no concussion. Just banged up, and hoping the knee heals up quickly. We decided to eat in at the resort, and spent the evening at their many fire pits on their private beach along the bay. It was a nice way to end the night.