Notes of a Desolate Libra

San Diego was the last stop on my S tour and it was to visit my friend John, whom I have known for over ten years and we met online (!) when I was still using my AOL account (!!!). It was the first time I've seen him since he got married and had his child and I am so unbelievably happy for him that despite all the crap he went through in his younger years, he was able to make it to this point. It was strange but comforting to see him living a family life. In the years that we've known each other, we've both had our ups and downs. The fact that he can reach this point is really encouraging and really speaks to how strong human beings can be. Things could always have taken a worse turn... but the important thing is that they didn't.

Our relationship is a testament to and evidence that friendships between male and female DO exist (although I think *I* exist as a good piece of evidence already since a LOT of my very good friends are guys - Libra trait?). Although sometimes I am concerned that his wife would over think his being so kind to me. History is history, what matters is that we survived and so did our friendship. And now we both know our paths and are ready for the future, and know that we  have eachother's support.

Old Town really wasn't all that. Of course, there were a lot of nice Mexican restaurants but I wasn't sure how Mexican food would agree with my stomach so I stayed away from them. I got myself lost in downtown San Diego looking for the Amtrak station and ended up walking under the scorching sun to find it. Despite it all, I found downtown SD rather interesting, with plenty of activity and lots of tourists (not to mention tons of Comic Con banners). Although I had the same issue with people not knowing directions. (What's UP with these Californians!?)

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="192" caption="What a cutie!"]

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John and his family as well as some friends were making a trip to Las Vegas so I decided to tag along. LV was rather amusing. We barely went out because the temperature there was just a BAD JOKE. It was so hot that we felt like we were in an oven for all of the 3 minutes that we were outside. Even the wind was oppressively hot.

John was there for a family event, which ended up to be rather... messy and I took up the task of babysitting his beautiful Ju-chan (Julia) for the entire night so he and his wife could go about cleaning up the mess. She is probably one of the (if not THE) BEST babies I've ever met and that's a LOT coming from me. A happy baby is a good baby and she certainly was a very happy baby. I couldn't stop telling John how lucky he is to be blessed with such a wonderful baby. We (Ju-chan and I) almost became best friends by the end of the night and I do so miss her adorable smile.

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="210" caption="Watch (or listen to) the clock!"]

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Since I know I have no gambling luck, my main focus was finding good food to eat. We saw so many Wolfgang Puck (ate at Spago) restaurants there, among other great restaurants. The most amazing and wonderful thing was that the guys (the girl's didn't gamble) donated all of their winnings to treating all of us to dinner so I ended up with quite a few free (AND GOOD) meals. The funniest thing was that at Payard, there was a grandfather clock that would spit out tiny packages of chocolate truffles every 15 minutes or so. We were standing guard around the clock and every time it rang we rushed to get the package. Between the 7 of us (including Ju-chan) we managed to get 7-8 chocolates... and there were only 3 windows where the chocolates would come out! (you see how diligently we were watching the clock) We even ran for the clock while we were sitting elsewhere eating our lovely desserts.

It was certainly a memorable trip and I even got a 20" monitor out of it (bless you, John) so my eyes don't have to die from staring at 10" Spockie all the time.

To top it all off, I managed to get all my luggage on the flight as carry on... yes... I'm good.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Guess where I'm hiding the monitor?"]

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