Weekend in Oceanside

 

Saturday
Seems like almost every day is perfect in this part of the country, weatherwise. It’s a little cool and cloudy first thing in the morning, but then the clouds clear out and the sky is bright blue with few clouds, and the temperature is always a comfortable 70 to 75 degrees. Perfect weather for doing anything outdoors.

Tom announces that we will have some “mandatory fun” this morning, which turns out to be some gardening at the house next door, which he and Cindy also own. It’s a four-bedroom house that they rent out. It feels good to be outside and doing some physical work. I’m assigned to deadhead some plants and trim them up a bit. We spend about an hour and a half on yard work and clean up, and then declare a lunch break.

Cindy and Tom's two houses. House on left shows results of our morning yard work efforts!

 

After lunch, Cindy and I go for a walk down to the beach. After sitting on some rocks in the sun for a little while, watching the kids in their bathing suits play tag with the waves, we decide to take our shoes off and wade in the ocean. It’s pretty cool yet, but not bad—very refreshing.

When we get back, Cindy makes dinner, a special one since this is Tom’s birthday weekend. She makes a salad, a delicious potato casserole, and sauteed tilapia, with some yummy pastries from the bakery for dessert. We eat up on the upper deck, so we can see the ocean.

Our dinner spot, with ocean view.

 

Afterwards, Tom and I climb a ladder to the roof, to see if we can see the green flash at sunset, but there’s a marine layer of clouds, so no luck this time. Cindy is somewhat scared of heights and declines to climb the ladder. It’s a little scary.

Ladder to roof.

 

Cindy and I watch The Princess Bride for our evening’s entertainment, but I fall asleep about halfway through, so we’ll save the rest for later…

Sunday

It’s Tom’s birthday, so Cindy made him waffles this morning. He’s King for a Day today. They plan to walk about 3 miles down the beach to Carlsbad, the next town south of here. I’m going to church this morning, to a little neighborhood church around the corner. It’s nondenominational Protestant, just like our church in Oriskany. It’s an inspiring worship service, and the congregation is small and friendly. Makes me miss King Memorial Church.

Nondenominational neighborhood church.

 

After church, I drive to WalMart to buy a birthday card and gift for Tom. I promised to buy him a box of frozen creampuffs, since he loves creampuffs and has never tried the little frozen ones. I also see a Nicolas Cage collection of three shoot-‘em-up DVDs and buy that too, since I tell Tom that he reminds me a little of Nicolas Cage.  I also buy a few bars of dark chocolate—I don’t want to run the risk of running out of my daily dose of chocolate! (It’s a health food, you know…)

When I get back, I work on my book editing and finally finish up one book and send off the files to the publisher. I have two more books in the queue now, so I guess I won’t have too much down time on the rest of this vacation.

For supper, we all go to The Flying Pig, a fairly new and popular restaurant within walking distance of the house. It has California versions of various pork dishes and other stuff too, like duck salad. It was very crowded and we had to wait a half hour to be seated. The food was pretty good. The waitress brings Tom a special bday dessert and we sing to him, just to embarrass him a little.

The Flying Pig

Cindy and I watch a movie and then off to bed, with plans to get up early and take a walk tomorrow.

Bird species count: Vermilion flycatcher, turkey vulture, Bell’s vireo, *golden-fronted woodpecker, Say’s phoebe, northern cardinal, greater roadrunner, house finch, common raven, *northern rough-winged swallow, *summer tanager, *prothonotary warbler, *yellow-breasted chat, *yellow-rumped warbler, northern mockingbird, mourning dove, cliff swallow, Mexican jay, black-headed grosbeak, black-chinned  hummingbird, Wilson’s warbler, *Scott’s oriole, chipping sparrow, house sparrow, lesser goldfinch, black-crested titmouse, acorn woodpecker, scrub jay, *western kingbird, white-winged dove, *canyon towhee, *Grace’s warbler, *zone-tailed hawk, *curve-billed thrasher, Bullock’s oriole, Gambel’s quail, great horned owl, black-throated sparrow, *cactus wren, ladder-backed woodpecker, white-crowned sparrow, brownheaded cowbird, Brewer’s blackbird, *pyrrhuloxia, hooded oriole, verdin, crow, Anna’s hummingbird, dark-eyed junco, white-throated swift, Steller’s jay, mallard, common egret, brown pelican, western bluebird

State count: 11 [Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California]