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Date Posted: 20:32:18 06/30/99 Wed
Author: Emrys
Subject: Tales from California! (read me)

Hey all. How goes it? Well, as some of you may know, and as others are just now learning, I made the venture back to the homeland and returned in one piece... barely. I say homeland, of course, referring to California. That is where I was born... hence the 'homeland' referral. It's been about 10 years since I've been there... well, actually it's been 2 days now, but before that there was that 10 year period where I wasn't there... anyhow, I got to meet some of the old friends of the family, whom I didn't remember at all cause I was only 7 when we left and while I can remember stuff from preschool when I was 3, honestly, I had no idea who some of the people were that I met. I did remember one guy though, but that's about it. I also got to go see the house we used to live in back in the day too... funny thing, the house is now up for sale. Of course, it's smaller than the house I now live in, and in keeping with the southern California tradition the house, albeit smaller and less attractive to look at, is valued at about 3 to 4 times the price of my house here in Indiana. I also went to Tijuana for a day, which is the city right across the border from southern California. I thought it was kinda odd, but every other store seemed to be a pharmacy (where you could get any prescription drug, without an actual perscription of course... Viagra seemed to be a big seller there) or a dentist office. Odd, that. I wouldn't have thought that too many people would want to go to a cheap Mexican dentist, but apparantly they're actually trained as well as or better than many American dentists. There were also several thousand sun glasses down there... every shop had shelves of Oakleys for sale. Bought a pair for myself and a pair to sell to some chump here in Indiana. Decent pair of glasses, really. Especially for $6... heh heh. But if anyone here asks, I paid $15 for them, still a good price, and I'll sell them for $20. I'll let them talk me down to $15 of course, cause then they fell like they're getting a good deal, and I still get a good profit... always the business man. We went to the beach on two separate occasions as well, but I got burnt pretty bad the first time so I pretty much stayed in the shade the second day. Annoying too, cause I never got sun burn when I lived in California, but now that I live in Indiana my skin has gotten a lot lighter, making me more prone to sun burn. The second day at the beach was easily the most interesting though. At about noon, "naked guy" came roller blading down the boardwalk. Everyone calls him "naked guy." He seemed to be really well known at a few of the larger beaches (Mission Beach and Pacific Beach). Rather disturbing though, cause even though he wasn't actually naked (he was wearing a G-string), I really didn't need to see that. Coulnd't have been too healthy for the mind. Add that to the fact that he was dressed up (and by that I mean that the had a little body paint and a hat) to make him look like the gay Teletubbie... very, very disturbing. Ah, guess what Phule? It was pretty interesting. My sister saw this girl walking down the beach that looked almost exactly like Kim, and she almost went up to say 'hi' before she realized that it wasn't actually Kim. This is my oldest sister I'm talking about... junior in high school now, book smart but definately lacking in the common sense category... and she didn't make the connection that there are millions of people in California and you guys don't even live in San Diego. It was pretty funny. Also on that day, a guy who was 19 years old almost drowned in the ocean. This was at Pacific Beach, and the guy was only about 15 yards away from me when the rip current pulled him under and held him under the water until the life guards came and rescued him. I heard the report about that later at night on the news, but I didn't get a chance to see if I was actually on TV. Unfortunately, after the guy almost drowned, they made us clear out that area and go farther down the beach. Kinda interesting to be swimming out in the ocean, and all of a sudden a bunch of life guards come out of a boat and pull up a guy that you didn't even know was there. Of course, the real interesting part came on Monday, the day that we were supposed to leave California. We flew United, and we were supposed to depart at 8 am California time. After numerous delay message, finally at 9:30, after having sat on a plane for an hour and a half, they said that there was a severe mechanical failure in the plane and they needed to fly in new parts from Los Angeles. Everyone on the plane had to get out and rebook flights, but we were in the back of the plane, and by the time we finally made it to the ticket counter all of the flights that could take us to Indianapolis were already full, so United paid for us to stay and extra day in the Holiday Inn by the bay... easily the nicest Holdiday Inn I've ever seen... and the most expensive. About $200 per room, and we stayed in two rooms cause we have a family of six and we just don't fit in a single room. That was the only day on vacation that I managed to run too, but it was cool cause I ran at night and there were all kinds of lights reflecting off of the water and stuff... very nice. Course, I decided to run 6 miles to make up for not running at all that week, and my legs took two days to recover from that, cause the longest distance I've ever ran up until then was 4 miles. I ran the 6 miles in 45 minutes too, about a 7 minute mile pace, so I was rather proud of myself. Especially since I had eaten chicken feticcuni only an hour before running, and feticcuni of any kind just doesn't digest well, and it's hard to run when you're still trying to digest food. After running though, I went down to the pool and met a girl from Michigan who turned out to be a model. Pretty nice too... we talked for a couple hours. Anyway, was managed to make it home a day later than planned, and I missed an extra day of work, but things turned out all right. The only other cool thing that happened was earlier in the week when we went to a place called The Family House of Pancakes. They're famous for their omelets, according to them, and I saw why when I ordered on... they put 10 eggs in the thing, and I only wish I were exaggerating. I was one of the few people they had that month who ate a whole omelet (most people split it two or three ways), but I didn't stop there... I downed three large buttermilk pancakes after that, plus several glasses of chocolate milk. I wasn't very hungry for lunch, needless to say, but for breakfast I did eat the same quantity as my dad and all three of my sisters combined. I was rather proud of that... I am one of the few people who take pride in the quantity of food I can consume. I only weigh 150 pounds, which isn't much for a 6 foot tall person, although Phule can claim to be thinner, but I still have yet to meet my match in food consumption. One day at McDonald's, for breakfast, I had a competition with another guy who did pretty well, and I ended up eating one of everything on the Breakfast Menu to beat him. I'd also like to say right now that I've never eaten to the point of throwing up, or even getting sick or anything like that. I doubt I ever will either, cause it's just not worth getting sick in my opinion. Eating contests are rather fun sometimes though. Anyway, I got back last night, but I didn't have a chance to post cause the first thing I did was go to Cincinnati to watch Big Daddy. Now, from what I hear, Wild Wild West and South Park are both released, so I'll have to make a trip back to Cincinnati and pull that little trick where I see two movies for the price of one. One day I saw three movies for the price of one, and I would have done more but really, who wants to spend that much time at a theater. Plus, even though they have 20 screens, there's seldom more than 2 or 3 good movies at a theater at the same time anyway. Well, I guess I've been on the computer plently long enough now, cause my youngest sister has come up about a half dozen times now to ask if she can use the internet yet. Well, gotto go. Oh, I also managed to read two books in California and beat Diablo again... things I did as opposed to sleeping at night in the hotel room.

- Emrys
"Yep, that's me. Third row up, seventh from the left."

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