in a very large nutshell

since the last legitimate post i have been jack kerouac-ing all over the road with my sister. we started in san diego on a three day carnival cruise with my mother. it was the perfect amount of time and my only regret is that my mom had to take a red eye on sunday night to get home. but, it seems she rolled with the punches... the cruise was my first, and we found plenty of time to learn how to play roulette, win some money, lose some money, drink really strong mixed drinks with really cheap rum, win the "name that tune" contest, hottub it, and eat a lot a lot of food. lucky for us "crazy bonny" came out to play and so the trip was punctuated with sheer silliness. by the end of the three days bons had endeared herself to all of the housekeeping staff on our hallway as well as our dinner waiter jorge, who called bonny his "little champion". her particular favorite part of the cruise was when the waiters sang during dinner. she called this waiter time and compared it to an intoxicating substance which takes one to the pinnacle of happiness.

the sunday that we disembarked we drove back to newport, had dinner at alta and dropped the moms off at LAX and proceded to drive north. we hit bakersfield having to pee and stopped at a sonic, which turned into a long debacle involving one sonicblast, three young employees who were probably high, bonny saying "bakersfield is sketchy", one of the employees not remembering where the water faucet was (here's a hint, look to the soda fountain), and generally the weirdest fast food experience i've ever had. four hours and a melted sonicblast later, we were still an hour away from our destination of modesto, so bonny took the reigns and drove a full 25 mph over the speedlimit. we nestled our heads in a scratchy and janky travelodge and tried to sleep.

the next day i convinced bon to take me to sacramento so we could see something i have longed for- the sign that says "Ocean City, MD - 3073 mi". you can guess that we have one in OC that says the reverse. we found it, but anticlimactly the official large sign had been stolen by some frat boys and all we got was a regular mile marker. oh well, dream realized. we spent the afternoon in davis and then made our way to san francisco. bonny found a great deal on the hilton near union square, so we were sitting in the lap of travelocity luxury. for dinner we ate at the stinking rose (really, too many garlicy details), then lulled ourselves to sleep by watching mtv's taking the stage. i should add that the sleep came easy after a 5-pint pitcher of fat tire.

the next day we found ourselves riding for free on the trolley, holding photo shoots with some sea lions on a public set of docks, and eating the rest of our previous night's dinner before heading off to see sunshine cleaning. we settled the night with pisco sours at a bar called cantina. apparently pisco is a popular spirit of the city, which only made my heart beat stronger for it. the liquor, similar to brandy, is made from grapes not good enough to make wine; i drank it by the liter when i lived in santiago. while in country we were told that valparaiso, chile is the sister city of san fran (they call it pancho, the diminutive of francisco), so the alcoholic tie suits.

now i find myself in baja mexico playing with babies and loving every minute of it. i will post pictures soon so that you can empathize. my favorite is named andres. i want to take him home with me.

lovies,