This weekend we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We left at 4:30 a.m. from home for the 5 hour drive to get there. We wanted to get there early and thank goodness we did! It was fairly impressive, but we both agreed we would have gladly paid double to go on an "adult-only" day. Now don't get me wrong, all you kid-lovers out there ... yes, the kids drove us INSANE. But I don't blame them for being excited .. it's a neat place! I place the parents who use the aquarium as a babysitter, just letting their kids run free, run into people, push, shove, slap their grubby little fingers all over the glass, etc., while they sit back on a bench and yell at them from afar, talk on their cell phones, basically ignore any bad behavior. And even worse than that .. some of the parents were even MORE annoying than the kids! Running their strollers into us and never even saying 'excuse me' or anything. By the time we left, we had HAD it with people!

Add to this the fact that my right shoulder, hand and elbow were hurting. The night before, I'd gone to gas up the Explorer, and while it was filling, I tried to step over the hose to get to the back of the car to wash the window. I tripped. And fell. Hard. In fact, I thought I'd re-broken my hand where I broke it in the motorcycle accident in '96. I just wanted to lie on the ground and cry, but of course in those situations where you do something boneheaded in public, where people are watching, you don't want to admit that you made a mistake, so adrenalin shot through my system and I jumped up like I was actually a stunt person in my off time, and that I really MEANT to trip like that. I tried to hide my limp back to my driver's seat, all the way muttering "ow, ow, ow" under my breath.

After we had a nice seafood lunch in Monterey, we headed up to Oakland for our hotel room for the night and the boat show the next day. I've never been to Oakland and don't know California very well. After I got back, my boss said "I don't even GO to Oakland!" and another friend said "Did I know you were going to Oakland? I'm sure I would have warned you first." haha. It wasn't so bad, but let me tell you how uncomfy Jeremy and I felt as we left out hotel room in the late afternoon, cameras and all kinds of gear hanging off us (to the tune of thousands of dollars), turned the corner and came face-to-face with pimp alley (our hotel was apparently right next to the XXX theater). We lived through it all unscathed, and the boat show was really neat. We've decided now that every year we will attend a boat show in a new city we haven't visited yet, and just fly to it for a little mini-vacation. So, if you live in an area near water, watch out .. we may be coming there soon! :)