California

10
Dec
2020

Coronado, California Photos

Our annual meeting that’s usually in May was moved to February this year. That was a lucky change because it meant that it took place right as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning but was not so bad that we couldn’t travel. As fate would have it, this would be the last trip any of us would take for business or pleasure for quite a while. The meeting was on Coronado Island this year. In our off hours, we enjoyed a lot of delicious Mexican food in San Diego and even found ourselves an incredible Mexican diner for breakfast every morning.

Click here to view the photos.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
08
Nov
2020

Southern California Photos

While in Southern California in May 2018 for a week of meetings at Port Hueneme, a few of us flew out a couple days early to do some sightseeing. After landing at LAX, we spent our first day exploring Santa Monica before driving up Pacific Coast Highway to our hotel in Oxnard. It’s the first I’ve been on PCH in about 15 years. The scenery is as great as ever! The next day, we drove down to Los Angeles and took a tour of Paramount Studios. After our tour, we continued south to Long Beach for lunch at a place that had been featured on Food Network and then spent the afternoon at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

We then headed back up north to Oxnard to meet up with our newly arrived coworkers from around the country at the hotel. The remainder of the week was spent at work, but I still managed to snap a few more photos in our off hours. Most were taken around our beautiful oceanfront hotel (Mandalay Beach Resort) in Ventura County and Port Hueneme. The weather was perfect and the scenery was quite nice!

Click here to view the photos.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
09
Mar
2020

Review: Clayton’s Coffee Shop – Coronado CA

Finding a good breakfast spot while on a business trip is important. We randomly picked Clayton’s from Yelp figuring if we didn’t like it, we’d pick another place the next day. After our first visit, we knew we’d be back everyday for the remainder of the week we were on Coronado Island.

Clayton’s a small diner that looks like not much has changed in many years. It’s old, but well maintained. There are old jukeboxes along the counter and in the booths. Two of our three days there, we sat at the counter since the booths were full and we wouldn’t have all fit in a one anyway. Like I said, it’s a small place. However, for breakfast, this isn’t bad since you’re not there too long anyway so the seats turn over fast. The staff was friendly and attentive, especially when sitting at the counter.

The menu has traditional diner items with a distinct Mexican twist. I’m a sucker for good machaca and the machaca scramble did not disappoint. I will say that I ordered it twice and the first time it had more eggs than meat and the second time there was much more meat than eggs. Maybe there were two different cooks in the kitchen. However, both were delicious. We tried a variety of other dishes, mostly egg-based, and no one had any complaints. The portions are also quite generous.

Clayton’s is a “coffee shop” and not officially a diner, but it could hold its own against any east coast diner, which is high praise coming from a resident of New Jersey, the diner capital of the world.

Posted by Michael in Reviews
20
Jul
2014

San Diego Photos and Video

I just posted a few albums of photos from my trip to San Diego. While out there for a week on business, I added an extra day to do some sightseeing. Even though I didn’t have a ton of free time, I managed to see much of the downtown area, tour the USS Midway, take a boat tour of the northern part of the bay and go to the amazing San Diego Zoo. I also got to spend quality time with old friends and coworkers and we ate ate incredibly well throughout the week with meals of Mexican, Italian & Thai food! I’ve also included a video of the adorable pandas at the San Diego Zoo.

The photos can viewed right here. Enjoy!

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
30
Sep
2012

California photos posted

Friends Central Perk setI have FINALLY taken the time to get my California photos posted on the site. It’s disgraceful that it’s taken me so long to get this done, but anyone who has seen me in person since February has probably already seen them on my iPad or at least that’s how I’m making myself feel better about taking so long!

The pictures are from my visit to with Marianne in Los Angeles County. We went to a bunch of Back to the Future filming locations plus Griffith Observatory, Warner Brothers Studios, Universal CityWalk, Long Beach, La Brea Tar Pits, the Queen Mary, Hollywood and more. Check them out here.

More photos will hopefully be coming soon. I have a LARGE selection from my trip to Michigan and some photos from the New Hope Ivyland Railroad excursion to Lansdale.

Posted by Michael in Photography, Site Updates
16
Mar
2012

Omnibus catchup update

I was recently told by a someone whose opinion matters more to me than most that I don’t write in my blog enough anymore and that my weekly Twitter summaries are all that are there anymore. This post is my attempt at fixing that a little.  If you don’t like reading things that jump from topic to topic you may want to click away now! You can consider this a bit of an omnibus update focusing on what’s going on in my life instead of just random comments on world events.

I’m back from my vacation in California. I spent a little under a week in Los Angeles County with my friend Marianne who I’ve not seen nearly enough of over the past decade. Besides doing a lot of long overdue catching up, we visited Griffith Observatory, Long Beach, the La Brea Tar Pits, Hollywood, Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank and more. And of course, we visited more than a few filming locations from the Back to the Future movies. You’ll be seeing and reading more about this great trip when I eventually get my photos posted online.

After many months of spending a crazy amount of time trying to find all the various pieces for the bathroom remodel, it was finally completed a few weeks ago. All of the hours taken up by searching for the the stuff we needed for that project can now be committed to other projects. The next big one is working on digitizing the dozens of VHS home movies that have been sitting around quietly decomposing in a cabinet. I wish I’d started that project about 5 years ago, but better late than never! Now I just need to get all of the home movies on film reels converted before “vinegar syndrome” does them in!

So, there you have it. That’s what I’ve been up to, plus working on planning a vacation to Michigan later this year. Now that you’re caught up, hopefully I’ll do better at keeping up with this my blog going forward.

Posted by Michael in Life