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On Saturday we did our normal bi-weekly trip to Ann Arbor Michigan (we live in Toledo Ohio) for Grocery shopping. We do weekly trips to Kroger here in Toledo but Ann Arbor has Whole Foods and Trader Joes. It's surprising how many people we know that do the same thing.As I was leaving Whole Foods I heard someone call out my name. There was a woman smiling all happy at me. It was one of the very nice women from my yoga practice. * It's funny to see someone unexpectedly like that. The circumstances were so surprising that I didn't recognize her right away. A couple of nights earlier we had run to Krogers and a nice young man was smiling and talking to me. Took me a few beats to realize it was one of the Physical Therapists. He was the one who did my initial assessment. Very nice guy, but again, wrong place so I didn't recognize him.

Also unexpected was walking to our car at Trader Joes and suddenly seeing these guys running down the sidewalk in the shopping plaza.

They're just babies. There is a small pet supply store that keeps food and water on the sidewalk and I'm guessing they were there for lunch. The pet store lady came out and grabbed them. She said they had been there the day before as well.

Last night my husband, my sister and I went out to dinner. It was a Vegetarian Meet Up. www.meetup.com/The-Toledo-Vegetarian-Meetup-Group/. Only two other people came, Liz & James. Liz is the nice woman I had lunch with a couple of weeks ago and James is a really nice guy so it worked out just fine.

I really hope I can continue to do dinners with the group at least every few weeks or so. It's good to get out. We tried a Vietnamese restaurant that I had not been to but have been wanting to try. They treated us like we were their most important customers EVER. Have you ever been treated like that in a restaurant? It was a welcome change from the usual feeling like you're bothering people by paying them to feed you.

Look at some of the beautiful food:

None of my pictures came out very well. I need to check my settings on my camera. I keep changing the settings for a specific picture and then forgetting to change them back.

Off to find some breakfast. Shouldn't be too hard after all those trips to the grocery stores, right? Actually, I think I'll have leftovers from dinner last night.

Here, go read my sisters blog. I had some things to say on this topic but have run out of steam.  http://www.nobrain-noheadache.com/

*It occurs to me that the people who do yoga regularly with me are all very nice. Is it the yoga practice or the yoga teacher that draws nice people? Are all people who do yoga regularly nice?

Got home at about 10:30 last night. This three hour time difference is a bitch. Woke up way to early this morning but that means early to bed tonight and hopefully back on EST.

I am a sucker for old buildings. I wish this were a better picture. The detail on the houses is so amazing. This is what you see up and down (literally) the streets of San Francisco. The colors are amazing.

I wish I had gotten the picture the day before when they were much much higher! Would you do it? I would.

We spent the day mainly walking around Golden Gate park. I do love stairs.

The Japanese Garden is beautiful. I could spend a day just sitting there.

They have a small tea stand. We bought a cuppa and sat for awhile. Beautiful.

For some reason a lot of birds kept showing up in this week of pictures. This guy posed for me.

This guy hung out at my feet while we were having tea.

And this guy was waiting on our balcony when we got back to the hotel.

The obligatory trip to Haight Ashbury. At one point I had to step around a corner to get some space  between a group walking and myself so I didn't end up too stoned to walk from inhaling their trail of smoke.

Of course on the trip home we did our new practice of getting seats across the aisle from each other. The airline changed planes on us and opted for a much bigger plane. I was in the middle aisle with two empty seats next to me. Across the aisle from me was Corey.

In a little seat with a woman who had, three bags, a coat, two pillows, a couple of to-go meals, her slippers and her sleep mask. apparently a four hour flight is just too much for her! You can see Coreys comfort level by the way he's leaning towards me in desperation. He moved over into my empty row.

I leave you with this picture from Ocean Beach. It really says it all. A man doing Tai Chi on the windy beach surrounded by good looking graffiti with construction going on in the background, in the far left is a shot of houses on a hill stacked on top of each other, a giant restaurant to the right and the startling appearance of an old windmill in the background!

My pictures are all out of order and I'm too tired to fix them!! Geesh we've done a lot of walking.

Sunset from our Balcony.

This is the behind our hotel. Look I'm magic and managed to take a picture of myself. 

We spent a couple of hours at the Winchester House. I thought it was very interesting, and the outside is beautiful.

I was surprised by the size. It was not nearly as big as I thought it would be! The rooms are all quite small. Too many versions seen on Television.

Does anyone kow what this tree is? I didn't recognize it, but it was very interesting.

Then of course our tour of the San Francisco piers. This is the famous Pier 39 including the obligatory Seals!

Another unrecognized plant. Look at the way the flowers grow on the stalk with the stalk rising from the center.

We of course ended our day with time on the Cable Cars.

 This is what it looks like when you're hanging out the back.

Today was the Alcatraz Tour. 

Best views of San Francisco from there!

I love stair cases

I understand now. California is beautiful, it even smells good. Really, sometimes you'll be driving along and you think what smells so good? Oh...it's the trees, or the flowers. Even the Pacific Ocean smells better than most large bodies of water.

This has so far been a very inexpensive vacation. We used frequent flyer miles for the flights and we tend to eat inexpensively even in expensive restaurants. The side benefit of being vegetarians.

I have a hundreds of pictures up on Facebook but I won't do that here. So if you're really really bored and want to see then please go find me and friend me, https://www.facebook.com/tlm0000  You may want to pop me a message letting me know you're Xanga name so I don't feel stupid.(OMG! My husband just opened the hotel room door and I smell breakfast. It smells really good. This hotel is a little gem.)

So, here's just a few;

Usually I get a window seat. This time my husband and I got aisle seats across from each other. I'm a convert.

This is a good representation of Santa Barbara.  Eating Dinner outside at a Vegetarian restaurant on the main street.

Standing on a pier in Santa Barbara. I really have to stop keeping large square things in my pockets.

The obligatory oops.

This picture pretty well represents Carmel-by-the-Sea. Lovely little town. Filled with art galleries.

So you're driving down Pacific Coast Highway and there are just all these places to pull over and look at the ocean, or hang out on the beach. You never know what you're going to find when you stop at one.

One of them was filled with hundreds of Northern Elephant Seals. Oh the smells & sounds!

Or this beautiful view. This is not what public areas look like in Ohio.

This will be our home base for the rest of the week.  This morning the weather has shifted down by 15 degrees and it's very cloudy. Don't care!!

I wrote this up and didn't post it publicly because sometimes you gotta wait and think about it. I noticed a lot of people yesterday on Xanga were cranky so I should have posted it then to fit in.

Got my feelings hurt. I hate it when that happens. I'm not particularly sensitive I don't think and I really do try hard to be considerate (mostly) of others so it throws me for a loop when someone gets to me.

This is what happened. I made friends with someone I went to High School with. Nice guy in High School, though I didn't really know him very well. He has moved to California and he takes the most glorious pictures. Really beautiful to look through. He had me at the first picture of a shadow. I have a fondness for shadows. We also seem to share the same opinions on what's right and what's wrong so that's nice as well. He was very supportive and kind during my unpleasant cancer thing and I just genuinely like him.
I am going on vacation on Thursday morning to California. A few weeks ago he posted on my Facebook and invited me to dinner. I told my husband and he replied with a list of possible things I could tell my HS/FB friend for why we wouldn't be joining him for dinner. ( do your partners do that? Tell you what they think you should say? Very odd, but there you go.) If you know my husband you know pushing him to meet with people he does not want to will be a very bad idea. If you don't know my husband, take my word for it, and it's his vacation too so he has a right to do what he wants as well. So this is what I sent as a message to my Facebook acquaintance.

"Thanks for the offer of dinner when we're in San Francisco. I won't take you up on it because I'm traveling with my husband and though he's been pretty good so far about meeting for meals with random strangers that I've met on the internet through blogging I think I will let him have this vacation without having to be polite to anyone. It's quite a stretch for him. Now I just have to see if I can think of a reason to go back without him so I can meet you again. You're such an interesting and seem (at least on the in-depth venue of social media) like such a nice person.
Please do feel free to throw any links at me that you think I might like. We're always looking for good vegetarian restaurants!
Tracy"

To which there was no response other to drop me as a friend.
I was really stunned and it seemed like such an odd thing. I'm a big girl, tell me straight, did I say something wrong in that message? I've reread it and I just don't see it. I mean, I'm not kidding, he seems like a really nice guy so it was totally unexpected. I did send another message this week asking if perhaps I had done something else to offend but have not received an answer. I mean obviously I have really offended him, which also hurts because I would never want to do that. I think that's what makes it worse since I really didn't mean any offense. I was trying to be as honest, but light, as I could.

As always I've pondered whether to write this up. I don't mind sharing some of my life in public because I get to choose what to share but I'm always hesitant when it involves other people. Though, I'm pretty sure no one who reads my Xanga will know about whom I'm speaking. So this leads me to another discussion for another time and place.

Last night I went to an obedience class with my daughter. LOL, as I typed this I realize it sounds a little different than it was. It was actually a training class for dogs held at Pet Smart. I thought it would be fun to take pictures.

This beauty was not in class (but he should be). He is a grey Great Dane.Three months old and 50 pounds! Oddly, I swear I know this woman from somewhere. I just couldn't place her.

This is my daughters Barsky. He is the smartest dog I've ever seen. That's Snickers in the background. Barsky is not wearing a muzzle. He is wearing a collar that goes behind his ears and over his muzzle. It is not tight and not meant as a punishment. The behind the ears portion his pressure points. It was amazing how much he calmed down as soon as she slipped it on.

So alert! He was by far the best trained dog in class, and in the whole store!

This is a random picture of my NetBook. It's a good little computer. Very small and perfect for traveling. In the last three months I've basically stopped using my desktop and only use my netbook & tablet.

I love this picture. So focused even with all the toys all around! 

My little camera has a gazillion settings to get used to.

I tried to take a ton of pictures on Saturday so I could get used to grabbing it and snapping pics or changing the settings and taking pictures. I really didn't do very well. We were actually out and about all day (Went to a very nice local artist show) and I took almost no pictures. So these are the ones I took in the morning.

Some people might look at this and say, awwww. how sweet.  It's not. This is Jesse the beagle sleeping on the bed that Mili wants. So Mili is laying on one corner of it to claim ownership.

My camera has an actual food setting and I wondered if it would automatically switch to it. It didn't. Not even a good clear picture. I'll try to do better today.

I took a gazillion pictures of the table playing with the different focus settings

yay! My Goodie box arrived.

Yellow bird has a bloody eye. I got yellow bird because he had a giant cyst around his eye that the vet treated but then the Pet Smart couldn't sell him. Apparently it's bothering him again and yesterday I caught him rubbing it on his rough perch. It looks terrible and bloody after he does that. Both birds are frantically nesting today. It's very cute.

With his blood hidden.

The reason I like taking pictures that are really big is because when you see something in the picture like people standing in front of your house, you can click a few times and see why.

Sweet little puppy has a cart!

I had a sub yoga teacher on Saturday Morning. I am sore! 

Namaste!

I ordered a new camera for our next vacation. I have a decent little camera except that the port for the USB cable has never worked well and now it's almost impossible to doc it. Very frustrating when trying to get the pictures. My new camera should be here tomorrow so I will have plenty of time to play with and get used to how it works. it's got a touchscreen so that will be nice. Unfortunately for you this means many many giant pictures while I play. At least you won't be stuck with my cell phone pictures for all of the vacation. The one I ordered is just a nice little Nikon. It's RED!

We are planning to go to the Winchester Mansion in San Jose. http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/thehouse.cfm

there aren't many pictures online so I'm guessing they're pretty restrictive.

I have a mourning dove that nested in a hanging planter on my porch and now she has little babies in there. I would like to get pictures of that.

I had my first physical therapy appointment on Wednesday for my foot. Mostly they just poked and prodded and pushed and pulled and bent and straightened and measured. They were very nice and very funny. My next one is Friday. I know this sounds weird, but I'm having trouble fitting all of my doctors appointments into my schedule! I need to quit my job just so I can keep up with them. Today I finally called and scheduled my ENT appointment to follow up on my hearing loss, A YEAR LATE! Geesh. I didn't let them schedule me in May. I just can't even think about adding anything else to May. So, June. While I was typing this my dentist office called to remind me that I hadn't rescheduled my cleaning that I had to cancel a couple of weeks ago.

I really need to find a dress to wear to my daughters wedding too! Oh, I have a doctors appointment the day before that. We bought my husband a suit last week and I picked out a tie for him. 

My daughter has explained to me that her "color" will be peridot green. Though, I don't know what that means now since I know one dress will be navy blue.

Have you tried Mini Pops? It's not popcorn, it's sorghum that has been popped. It's the funniest looking thing because it looks like popcorn except it's about 1/5 the size! So far it seems to be something I can eat. Yay! I needed to find some snack food. Mostly I've been using it in place of crackers in soup.

Look what we got int he mail. Vacation after this vacation. More like a long weekend really. I have to stop saying vacation when it's really only adding on a day to a weekend. People think I take six or seven weeks off a year!

I bet this would have been pretty with my new camera instead of my cell phone. The sun was hitting the dew like a hundred prisms. It was really beautiful.

Wait..I'm going to add that picture again but really big! Maybe we'll be able to see the colors.

Curious if this will embed correctly! If it does then what you are seeing is my sister opening a little gift I got her.

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