A Fresh New Day

Although the chiblin woke up about the same time this morning that he did yesterday, it was a welcomed wake-up because Ashley and I were going to spend the morning out and about doing things and then somehow getting back to the tattoo shop by 2. If our calculations were correct, we'd have to leave about noon to get back on time. So leaving early was what we needed to do. We got up and showered. I made it the fastest shower possible, but it was still refreshing.

After this, we left almost immediately for the trolley station. We bought day passes for $5 each, hopped on the next one, and headed to Old Town. We got there about ten minutes before everything opened [10:00] and wandered into one of the only open places, an ice cream shop. Surprisingly, they had coffee drinks and even offered blended mochas. So, that's what I ordered. The girl was nice and made it with the powder instead of real espresso [which I don't mind, I just know I'm going to thoroughly enjoy having true blended mochas when I get home]. Ashley got a fruit smoothie and we wandered until the shops started opening.

The first one we went in had lots of San Diego stuff, including sweatshirts which happened to be on my shopping list. They were $30 each for the basic ones, so we went to the next store, a sunglass and gee-gaw shop. The sunglass section offered knock-off brand name ones, including Chanel, VonZipper, Versache, and others. Ashley didn't bring any from home, so I convinced her to get the 3/$20 deal instead of only the one for $10. I found a cool bracelet, a wallet, and two pairs of sunglasses [knock-off Coach and Gucci]. We then went back to the other shop and I got a hoodie that says "Lifeguard San Diego" which is kind of lame but you know, it'll be okay for almost $10 cheaper. And it's red, which is sweet.

From here we went looking to no avail for a turquoise cuff bracelet for Ashley. They were all REAL so they were REAL expensive. Sad day. We then meandered to some little gee-gaw stands that had some cool stuff. There were tons and tons of jewelry, accessories, trinkets, clothing, blankets, and other stuff. I found another bracelet similar to the first one I bought but different enough to buy. I also bought a beanie with the dangling ear coverings. I forgot what they're called. Oh well. It's out of the same Native American pattern that those blankets are made out of.

We then went looking for a bathroom and ended up in this sweet clothing shop where I found a cool hat and a scarf. I know how crazy it sounds to go to California and buy a hoodie, beanie, hat, and scarf, but I'm coming back to Washington, people, WASHINGTON! ...And Ashley found a dress, skirt, and belt. She brought one pair of shorts with her to California, so I encouraged her to get both the dress and the skirt. They're really cute, too. From here we browsed some more, ate salads, and caught the trolley back to the original station we came from.

On this ride, there was some kind of confrontation between some guy and some other guy's wife that ended up in loud accusations and "small penis" remarks. Honestly? Honestly.

Five minutes off the trolley, Ashley's friend brought us to the tattoo shop where Ashley was to get hers touched up. Although it was just a touch up, it apparently hurt a lot worse, since it was scar tissue he was going over. He re-did everything and it took about two hours.

We got picked up around 5:00 and got back "home" around 5:35. I checked in online to my flight and instead of being at the beginning of the last group of the five to board [two As and two Bs, one C], I'm at the end of the second group. I'm crossing my fingers that I get a window seat.

After printing out my boarding pass, I sent myself yesterday's blog and copy and pasted it to my blog. When I was doing this, the kid decided he wanted to watch some movie online [through Netflix] and stood, stared, and repeated over and over, "I WANNA WATCH A MOVIE!" Jesus, kid. Give me a couple minutes. That blog was 2,400 words long, from my piece of shit phone, taking over ten emails to get the blog to the computer, and the breaks and HTML formatting that I made didn't show, so I had to go through and manually fix things with a keyboard that doesn't have a properly functioning spacebar. Throw me a fricken bone here.

After I was done, Ashley got on to look at stuff in Gaslamp for us to do. We were going to take the trolley down there and hang out in the nightlife for a while. We got on the trolley at around 7:00 and got to Gaslamp around 7:40. Before we got off, I asked what time we were going to be back. Ashley told me that her friend wanted up back around 9:00. We looked at the time charts, and we would only have about a half hour to do anything. So, we went walking down 5th avenue looking for somewhere to eat. Everywhere was either packed or a bar, that I couldn't go into. We then realized that we were more thirsty than anything, and raced to the trolley to make it back to the depot where we got dropped off at, that was by the cafe we went the night before. The trolley stopped at the station at 5th avenue at 8:26 and we got there at 8:25. We then talked on the trolley and almost missed our stop. When we got off, I got backwards and like a mirror, I steered us one direction that looked identical to where we were the other night. But we needed to go the other way. Who knew! We walked to the cafe and learned that Tuesday nights the cafe is open until 10:00 and Wednesdays they're only open until 8:00. Go figure. So we went down to the corner store and got bottled drinks. Not even three minutes later, our ride was there. Ha! We then came back and watched Speed. Speed rules!