TNNA

The San Diego trip was wonderful. The weather cooperated - the Santa Ana winds didn't follow us south - and the hotel was (almost) as beautiful as advertised. The inn was built around the 100 year old Spreckles mansion - Spreckles was an early investor/developer in San Diego and Coronado, holding a controlling interest in the Hotel Del Coronado and owning all but about 6 parcels of Coronado island. The main part of the inn was gorgeous. Our room - and most of the guest rooms - was in one of the newer, probably 60's era, wings around the main mansion. Not quite as nice but clean, quiet, with a very comfy bed. The best part was being right on Coronado's main drag, just a short walk to very nice shops and restaurants.

The entire island is less than 2 miles wide, with stunning views of San Diego's downtown skyline, and gorgeous mansions lining the beaches.

Notice the shawl? It's my newest FO; details tomorrow.

While I was in class on Friday (details below), Dick toured the USS Midway which is on permanent display in San Diego. He got through just a fraction of the 1001 foot long, 18 deck ship, but was able to tour the flight deck, island (what I'd call the bridge), and some of the quarters. Did you know that the Midway:

• used 260 gallons of fuel per mile
• was the 20th century's longest serving carrier
  
• had 225 cooks, 200 pilots, 2 physicians and 1 dentist
• served 13,500 meals per day using 3,000 potatoes and 1,000 loaves of bread

You didn't know that? Hmm, neither did I. . .

My TNNA class - Lily Chin's 'Crocheted Tips, Tricks & Hints - was great. She's very exuberant and very New York - fast talking, fast moving - and she knows her stuff when it comes to crocheting and knitting. Some of the things she talked about in the beginning I already knew (foundation stitches) and some of her ideas are too fiddly or complicated to be of practical use, at least to me (crocheting over cotton rather than using a beginning chain row), but others I've already incorporated into my work and plan to pass on in my classes.

Our trip home was l.o.n.g. We made great time until just south of LAX, when traffic came to a slow, grinding almost-halt. We thought it was just the usual get-out-of-LA-for-the-holiday-weekend rush but after 45 minutes turned on the radio to discover a Sig-alert for a tanker truck that had overturned on the 405 by the Getty Museum. We used Dick's Christmas present - a Garmin GPS unit; great fun to play with tool - to route us around the mess and out to the Pacific Coast Highway. When we left San Diego we thought we'd be home by 4:30; we finally straggled in the front door at 6:30. Not bad by LA commuting standards, but definitely a pain in the b**t. Literally.