Uncanny

I had the strangest thought last night when I was leaving Balboa Park. I thought how risky it was to have outdoor plays... I mean, what if it rained or something? They'd have to cancel or rent everyone raincoats instead of blankets... and then the actor's costumes would be made to none effect... but I digress. No, it didn't rain tonight, but they sure did cancel Cyrano. There was some sort of malfunction with the lighting system or something. When the lady told me, I first thought of my thoughts last night, as if I prepared myself for it... weird!

So I had them refund my ticket (thankfully no hassles), and I went for a walk, trying to find something that was still open. Nothing was, as it was 7:30, so I decided to check out a restaurant nearby (outside the park) that offered a 20% discount to Old Globe subscribers. I picked one particularly out of the group of them because it was named "Baja Betty's" - I mean, I did drive right near her hometown today, so it was sorta fitting. I had tortilla soup and a house salad, partly to continue my streak of having it every time I've been here. It was very tasty.

This morning started off just swimmingly, though. Got to Long Beach pretty much right when I thought I would. My first stop today was visiting a merchant marine ship museum (also built in 1945 and served through Korea and Vietnam) called the SS Lane Victory. It turned out to be a rather cool thing to see. Besides exploring wherever I wanted on deck and some below, there were two big rooms filled with museum exhibits. One in the cargo bay (more generic stuff like "how does the ship navigate?", a mine and depth charge, and surprisingly, a lot of model aircraft and ships. The other was in a mess room, and this had lots of cool stuff, mostly from WWII. Anyway, I spent a little longer than I intended there, but it was no problem.

Next up was the Cabrillo Aquarium in San Pedro (just 5 miles down the street from the ship, really). I had read really nice things about it online, so I was very interested. Holy cow! The place was great! They were very detailed with describing the different kinds of animals and how they live; and that's pretty much all they did. There was no huge agenda (the Birch Aquarium had a whole building set aside for preaching about global warming - I just rolled my eyes and kept walking). They had lots of really different stuff! One tank had bunches of tiny nudibranchs! The building was a big maze of exhibits, and the one drawback was many times the room was too bright to take pictures through the glass... but as a saving grace, a person could walk around most of the tanks in dark, behind the scenes rooms... which was very cool. Lots of times the animals were hiding on the dark side of the tank. ;) My goodness! I spent lots of time there... three hours or so. And then I went for a little wading up to my knees on Cabrillo Beach (the Aquarium is right there next to the beach). Looked at all the types of seaweed and had a lovely stroll. I was a little hungry, as I hadn't made time for lunch... and there was nothing quite as convenient as the stand outside the Birch Aquarium, yesterday, where I had that amazing turkey & avocado baguette.

But the pains from not eating soon disappeared (as they do) as I got back on the road to make it to an unnecessary curtain call of 8 o'clock back in San Diego. There's nothing quite like sitting in traffic for a couple hours, then missing the turn-off because a person could finally go faster than 20 mph and because they were singing to the music they were listening to, then getting worried about ending up in Mexico, and then finally having the play cancelled... all without eating since 8am... LOL! A comedy of errors! Although the drive was pretty (I spent lots of that time in traffic looking deep into Camp Pendleton - where my brother had just been for weeks on end - and looking out to sea... it was brilliantly blue and the sun was casting long shadows inland. So beautiful.

So, mixed feelings about today, but it was generally pretty good. At least I have already read Cyrano! LOL - and it's a darned good thing I didn't come down here just for that one! Yikes!

Jp

P.S. - Coming back to SD, as I was listening to the episode of Our Miss Brooks where there is a strange telegram that no one opens... they mention the name of the town where her uncle is from... and then poof! there is a sign above me for an exit to a street with THE SAME NAME as that town. It was a two-word name, and it can't be all that common. What are the chances? Precisely as she says it? Holy cow! Nine-hundred-thousand-zillion to one. Or something like.