Joey and Crystal's: Random Beach Whale Tailgating

Hello everyone! I know the title of the post doesn't make any sense. It's just a mix of random topics, just like this post. There are a lot of little things that I've been wanting to share and I'm going to mush them all together in one long post. I need to get all these things off my chest before Thursday because this weekend is our big Grand Canyon trip and I'm sure we'll have lots to share from that. So here is a list of things in this post - some longer than others....

Joey Cooks
The Blackout
Monster Egg
Biking in the Park
Beach Games
SeaWorld
Chargers Game

Let's get started!

JOEY COOKS

Ok, so this isn't really a story or event at all but one night last week when I was really busy Joey was nice enough to cook dinner. This is what the plate looked like. It totally cracked me up!

Granted this was his plate and mine had a lot more spinach on it but I still find it hilarious for some reason.

THE BLACKOUT

I'm sure many of you heard about the blackout a few weeks ago. On one of the hottest days of the year, some guy in Arizona made some mistake (they are still investigating) and all the power in southern California went out. It wasn't too big a deal for us. I walked home as usual. Joey was stuck at work because of the crazy bad traffic - but that wasn't bad because they had a generator at work and he got to watch football.

The only bad thing was that the power outage messed up the railroad crossing and it was stuck in the down position - i.e. the ding ding ding position - for like 3 hours! I had to keep the door open too because it was so hot! I thought I was going to go crazy! It also caused quite the traffic jam and people were just jumping out of their cars and holding it up.

Finally Joey came home and we had a nice candlelight dinner of cold pizza and beer.

The power came back around midnight and all was well.

MONSTER EGG

Super random - We found a giant egg in our carton last week. It was a monster! I was scared it was a mutant egg (after talking to Beth so much over Labor Day!) and I was afraid to eat it! Here is Joey comparing the monster egg to a normal egg.

But it turned out it was just twins! Ahhh how cute...Ok actually it was still pretty disturbing. That has never happened to me before!

BIKING IN BALBOA PARK

A few Sundays ago we rented bikes in Balboa park. Recently we joined a volunteer organization called Outdoor Outreach that mentors at risk youth through outdoorsy activities - mostly mountain biking, snowboarding, rock climbing, and surfing - so I wanted to work on my biking skills so I could be a better volunteer.

To start, I wanted to just get comfortable on a regular bike before I tried the mountain bike. Here I am looking like a real biker!

I have to say I did pretty well! (except for when I hit the parked car...but it was parked along a sharp turn in the sidewalk...so not my fault!). Either way it was a beautiful day and we had a great time!

BEACH GAMES

Since Joey and I have been more actively looking for friends here in SD, I recently joined a couple of meetup groups. I really like one in particular that is for "hikers and happy hour enthusiasts" - aka 3HE. A couple weekends ago we attended our first event with the group - the Beach X Games. This was a fundraiser event for breast cancer.

Saturday morning we checked in early at Black's beach at Torrey Pines and started the steep hike down. It's really such a beautiful beach!

We were assigned to a team. We were on team Rum. Some of you may recognize our pose from the Captain Morgan commercials - I didn't. I had no idea why they kept telling us to raise our leg - I just went along with it.

The event was made up of 5 field day, greek week type games that involved doing ridiculous things. The first event was the baton relay where we had to run with a baton between our legs and switch it to our team member on the opposite side without touching it. It was pretty hilarious to watch.

Another event involved 9 members of your team laying down with 1 team member on top. The goal of this game was to roll your top team member across the playing field. I happened to be that 1 top member. Here I am anticipating the start.

And roll! This is one of the other teams. It was a sandy mess but super fun! We won this game!

Another game was called sinking ship (or something like that) and it involved moving all your team members across the playing field on a serious of planks - without touching the sand. It was kind of like those "two pigs and a fox need to cross the river" type games.

Here is the full group. Over 70 people turned out! Pretty impressive I thought for an informal meetup group event!

The hardest part of the day was the hike back up!

After everyone had a chance to get cleaned up, there was a happy hour and awards ceremony.

Our team won second place. We wore our medals all night!

It was a really fun event for a good cause and we made some new friends. I can't wait for the next meetup event!

SEAWORLD (sucks)

Ok, that title is a little harsh. Let me back up. Joey's company had an employee SeaWorld day where we got tickets for like $15 (normally $80 - I know, ridiculous!). I really don't have a lot of interest in going to overpriced themeparks with lots of crowds and lines, but if we were ever going to go, this was the time. So last Saturday morning we went.

First we saw the famous Shamu show.

I don't know what I was expecting but I kind of felt like those killer whales are one trick ponies! It's like all they can do is jump and splash. Not so impressive...

Oh yeah, and they can slide up on the stage and lift their tails. I guess that's kind of cool..

Maybe I'm being a little harsh. The show was pretty neat, just not super awesome like I would expect for an $80 ticket. But still, we had a lot to see.

Here is Joey playing with the starfish in the petting pond. If there is an animal somewhere to poke, Joey will find it, guaranteed!

Then we saw the sea lion show. This one was probably my favorite because it had a lot of slapstick comedy in it and the sea lions are actually pretty impressive. Here is a sea lion balancing a ball on his nose while swimming - about to jump that pole without dropping it! We weren't quick enough to get a picture of that part...

Then we looked at some of the animal exhibits. Here are the beluga whales.

And the penguins.

And the sharks! The sharks creeped Joey out a bit. I don't think he wanted to see those sharp razory teeth and evil eyes so close.

Then the pirhanas! These guys creeped ME out! Look at them - just sitting there lifelessly - staring, waiting to eat you! I think I sat in front of this window for like 10 min just staring back at them. Creepy! Really, you should click on this picture to see it larger!

Lastly, we went to the dolphin show. It was a huge arena! (That's where my $80 would go!)

The dolphins were pretty cool but the show had a terrible theme and was not entertaining. There were random people dressed as birds flying around doing acrobatic tricks. Weird.

All in all, I stick to my original statement - Seaworld sucks. I guess I didn't mention all the crowds and people in between all those pictures, but believe me, they were there! I do admit some of the animals were pretty cool but definitely not worth the cost and the hassle. We will not be recommending SeaWorld to any of our visitors!

CHARGERS GAME!

Today we went to our FIRST Chargers game. We have been wanting to go for a while but we wanted to get enough people together for a decent tailgate. Finally the day came!

Here we are bright and early setting up our spot.

For breakfast I baked homemade banana bread. It was Tyler Florence's recipe and it was amazing! See here if you are interested.

Here I am trying to get a picture with Joey but he has a mouthful of my delicious banana bread and he is trying to escape!

Now that he's done chewing he posed with me. We were showing our SD spirit! We bought Chargers shirts. We almost bought the same one but we decided since we are the only married couple among our friends, that would just be TOO dorky.

Here's our friend Fabian looking like he is posing for an advertisement. He was really just sitting like this. He didn't know I was taking the picture. But in his defense, we did forget to bring chairs...

Grill master Joey with Daniel. We had meat, meat, and more meat! Our chicken skewers were definitely the biggest hit though (all the thanks to Joey's mom for the always awesome recipe!).

A few of our new friends joined up with us. It turns out this was at least 4 of these people's first tailgate ever. Yeah, that's right EVER! And it wasn't the German! How can you grow up and go to college in America and not go to a tailgate!?

Here I am using this chip grabber thing. Some Japanese coworkers visited my office this week and gave it to me as a gift. Yes, the sole purpose of this device is to pick up chips in a sanitary way. The Japanese sure are interesting...

Hiding from the sun and sitting on the coolers. Today was a scorcher!

Joey and Jordan on the way up the escalator inside the stadium. I thought it looked cool.

In our seats- looking down the row. In case you are wondering, the pink beads are for breast cancer awareness - they gave them out at the gate. Breast Cancer has the most impressive and far reaching campaign ever.