We arrived in California eight days ago, welcomed by our best friends at the airport. With my arm outstretched my friend gently tugged it and we hugged sharing that moment where two friends who haven’t seen eachother in a long time just soak in the moment, soak in the memories. Our friends give us the news that just a terminal away a movie crew is filming a movie with “one of the girls from Lindsay Lohan’s Mean Girls” called Redeye, no doubt a teen comedy about airlines or traveling.
After spending a day in Riverside, California my father, brother, wife, daughter and I made the 4-hour trek to Bishop, California which sits just an hour away from Mammoth (the famed location of the WB’s The Mountain). It’s cold here and snowing and we’re trying to fully realize the situation because we left New York to get away from the snow and yet here in California they are experiencing frigid conditions.
I’ve spent the last couple of hours (at least) cleansing this site of spam which seemed to hit hard over the span of a few days. I’m amazed at how persistent these mouthbreathers are (sorry Greg) and why they insist in making it that much more difficult to maintain Wordpress and this site respectively. I’ve tried a handful of spaminators out there but as Michael has expressed they have a tendency of getting rid of legitimate comments in addition to vile comment spam. It’s a topic I could rant about for a few years but for now I’ll just do my best to remove it.
As I sit here writing this I can hear the patter of raindrops pounding the snow and it sounds surreal for where I am but it’s a welcomed change in some respects. In other irrelevant news I finally pro-ified my Flickr account which means I can dump a boatload of photos into the Flickr system and enjoy the full experience as a Pro user, which I had experienced temporarily several weeks ago. Ludicorp has created something special and as each week goes by it seems they implement new functionality into an already superb photo-sharing and community-powered lifeforce.
I plan on making a few updates here and there as this vacation progresses. In the mean time I hope everyone is having a pleasant new year and hopefully your resolutions come true if you’ve made any that is. I’ve been uploading a slew of photos from this trip to my Flickr account so if you’re interested feel free to browse.
See you in a week or so.
++entry
As for the spam problem, I really suggest having moderation automatically kick in after an entry gets a week old. That catches most of mine anyway…
Thanks for coming to visit us Erik, you and Chess / Zoe were wonderful house guests and we sure love you all. Hope to see you next year or the year after….be safe and enjoy Disneyland on Wednesday.
My prayers and love for you and your family,
Dad
I really enjoyed your vacation photos. I grew up in Costa Mesa but one of my best friends in elementary school lived in Riverside. Every year my dad and I would go skiing in Mammoth, so I’ve driven through Bishop a bunch. I’ve even been to the hospital there. I got food poisoning from eating at a truck stop diner, en route, and went to the emergency in Bishop.
Thanks for your thoughts, Nicole. Tell your boyfriend that he needs to respond to my email.
As for Bishop, I think it’s a nice, quaint typical small town. You’d be surprised how much the local businesses like to rip off tourists by marking their goods up 125%. My Dad works for a local bait and tackle shop and according to him it’s about 90% of the businesses that do that. :)
Food poisoning from a truck stop? Yeah, I remember one vacation years ago when my brother got food poisoning from a convienance store hot dog. Boy, was that an experience!