Watchin' the sun set in Monterey

A couple of weekends ago, Alan and I headed down to Monterey for the day. Side note: If you're a country fan and you visit the town, Tim McGraw's song will be running through your head the entire time. We really wanted to take Marti as well and stay the night, but because of a blues festival in town that weekend, hotels were pretty pricey and/or sold out. It's only about 90 miles away, so we decided to make a day of it. We got there and as always, were surprised by the low temperatures. End of June and we were seriously chilly. I still see ocean and beach and think "warm." I really must to adapt my mindset and remember that we're in NorCal (another term used by us locals), not SoCal. Here is a shot of the Casual Island store near the beach. As you can see, heavy coats are on display. Alan almost bought one. Oh, and coats and jackets are the one thing you can find really cheap in California.



After we hit up the Old Wharf, ate barely tolerable fish and chips (which means "almost induced Alan's vomiting") and failed to buy kettle corn because of a high demand and low-and-slow supply, we headed off to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We thought it was just a block or two away from where we were, so we kept walking on. It was a lovely walk along the water and we spied some sea lions.



This was especially amusing because I kept saying, "Look at that sea lion!" thinking there was one lone sea lion. No! If you can see from the picture, almost every rock has one or two sea lions sunbathing on it. Fooled me!

We kept walking along the water on a touristy sidewalk, Alan in his flip flops (which meant much complaining), waiting to find the aquarium. We walked for what felt like miles* before we finally got there. We seriously couldn't believe how far it was; we'd walk by maps with "You are here" stickers and each time we got to one we'd barely gone anywhere. Luckily, the walk was gorgeous and I'm accustomed to wearing flip flops.



The aquarium was very cool. Lots of...fish. But seriously, it was awesome, with jellyfish and "drifter" displays, a sea otter exhibit (those suckers are adorable), and plenty of sharks and other sea creatures. I even got to touch a sting ray, which was very slimy feeling. We were going to drive down to Pebble Beach, which is very close to Monterey, but it was a $9 toll and we didn't have any cash on us. We'll do that next time when we've got Martikins in tow!

The next morning, a Sunday, we got up at about 8 a.m. Why, you ask? We had to go get a Wii. Had to. You see, even though the gaming console has been out for about 7 months, demand still way outnumbers supply. We had learned that Best Buy was getting a shipment in, and we had to arrive before the store opened to have a shot at getting one. So when we got there, a line had already formed. A young lad informed us that the store was getting 14 Wiis, and there were 14 already in line. Great. All for nothing, we think. Then I suggested that since we were already up we might as well go to another Best Buy we knew of and see what was going on there. So we did. And there was a line there as well, but no one knew how many Wiis the store was getting. The ad said they were going to get at least 9. We were about 15 in line, so we figured it was a lost cause. Here is the line ahead of us:



We're there at about 9, 9:15, thinking they open at 10 like the other store. However, no, they didn't open until 11! We had quite a wait. During that time, more people showed up. The line behind us:



Finally, a Best Buy rally or employee meeting ends, and employees start streaming out of the store. One of them says "You all here for the 10 Wiis we have? Just playin'!" Ha. Anyway, a Wii official, trained in dealing with mobs I'm sure, comes out and says they have 36 Wiis. 36! In our wildest dreams we wouldn't have thought they would be getting that many. Needless to say, we were in the safe zone and able to lay our hands on the toy. It is actually really fun to play; when you play tennis you actually swing your arm to hit the ball. When you box, you actually punch. I won't even tell you how sore I was after boxing. Actually, I will. I was REALLY sore. If we had any friends I'm sure they'd come over to play our Wii all the time. Our new slogan: Come visit, we have a Wii! Wheee!

By the way, for those of you thinking our life is all leisure, have no fear. It came to an end on Monday when Alan went back to work. Alan had to start making a living once again, and with just my check rolling in we were going broke living the vacation-a-week life!

*I looked it up: the walk was 1.7 miles there and 1.7 miles back to our car.