Go Fathers!

Vacations are not necessarily a slippery slope, but they're definitely a well-lubed, slanted surface.

My wife, two daughters and I returned this evening from beautiful San Diego, Cali, after six days of sun-soaked lounging, eating, arguing, driving, getting lost, swimming, blaming, sleeping in and looking at animals.

The looking-at-animal experiences were a little strange. Between the San Diego Zoo, Sea World and the Wild Animal Safari, we witnessed:

people behaving like animals,

animals behaving like people (right after this whale did an awesome Nestea plunge, he swam up on the concrete and waved to us),








and animals behaving like animals (I'm not going to show the photo of the zebras humping, or I might end up on a few other websites and be busted on a future Dateline NBC. I'll just show you what the zebras would have seen from their perspective):

We hit a lot of beaches, which sealed the deal for my fifteen-year-old daughter.
"Dad, I'm so gonna live here."
"Okay, what would you do for a living down here?"
"I don't know, but it's sunny and hot boys are everywhere. I think my abs have gotten more toned from boogie boarding. Check it out. I'm hungry. What's for dinner?"
"I don't know."
"Dad, couldn't you just picture me standing on a beach here."
"Actually, I don't have to, because that's what you're doing right now."
"Do we have any chips and salsa?"

We stayed at the Omni Hotel in downtown San Diego. It overlooks Petco Park, which is actually a baseball field, not a dog run. I was very happy about this, as you can see, even though the team, the San Diego Padres, wasn't in town while we were.

I've always found the name "Padres" interesting for a sports team; I understand "Tigers" and "Yankees" and even "Nationals," but isn't it odd that their moniker is Spanish for "Fathers"? Go, Fathers!

Our rental car was a Nissan Cube. You may ask, as did I, "Why would any vehicle be shaped like a cube?" I don't have an answer to this or other questions like, "Why are my nipples 94 percent useless?"

They just are, friend.


We had a fantastic time in southern California. Sure, there were a few random scuffles regarding who had worse sand-and-saltwater-induced-inner-thigh chafing, or why wasn't I able to effectively apply sunscreen without a bright pink map of Indonesia appearing on my stomach after a day at the beach.

Overall, however, we recharged our batteries,

and enjoyed each other's company.

And let me tell you, surfing must be really hard on the body, because I smelled a lot of that medicinal California marijuana down there. Poor surfers.