On Vacation in San Diego

First, an update on last week's illness:  It turned out not to be food poisoning as I first suspected (Sue was right!) but rather a stomach flu that made the rounds in our community.  I was fooled by the fact that the symptoms came on right after I ate a few handfuls of peanuts.  But then my wife got sick the next day and we later received an email from our daughter's daycare center warning of a nasty stomach flu that had hit nearly every enrolled family.

The good news is that I was back to almost "normal" by the next day, which really surprised me.  And I have continued with the relatively good health streak that I wrote about last Sunday.  At the risk of jinxing it, I really do seem to have turned a corner.  I've since developed a more detailed theory on what may have led to this improvement, which I'll blog about in the near future.

We're on vacation right now in San Diego, staying at a historic hotel on the island of Coronado. This is the first time we've been away from our daughter for more than 24 hours since she was born 14 months ago.  She's staying with grandma and grandpa right now and probably soaking up every minute of the extra attention.  Mrs. Calvin seems to be handling the separation well...so far.

The hotel is a historical landmark, built in 1888.  If you've seen the 1959 classic comedy Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe, the hotel provides the main setting for the high-jinx of Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis.  Here's a picture of the exterior:

This was originally supposed to be our Hawaiian vacation, but we ultimately decided to make this a local affair for a number of reasons (one of which was the hazards of air travel for a CSFer).  I have to say, while Hawaii would have been nice, it's hard to beat a one-hour drive from door to door.  That's gotta be worth an extra day or two of crash-free vacation time.

We've stayed here once before, exactly four years ago on a trip to explore San Diego's best surf spots.  How our lives have changed since then!  Then, we woke at dawn each morning to catch glassy morning waves.  Now we wake at dawn each morning out of sheer habit, responding to phantom baby cries.  But, in many ways I'm better suited now to truly enjoy a vacation in the traditional sense of sitting by the shore all day and not...doing...anything.  That old restlessness is mostly gone, or at least, in hibernation.  

My wife just snapped a picture of me typing this post, which I'll post below.  Just as on Facebook, it's difficult to post pictures of your vacation without seeming like a braggart.  So I post this with some reservation, but hear me out!  My blog is too often about the bad news.  Often the only times I feel like blogging are when things aren't going well.  So I hope you'll indulge me this once if I engage in a teeeeny tiny bit of boasting.

There, I'm done.  Thank you for that.

Oh by the way, it's 70 degrees and sunny.

OK, now I'm really done.  It's out of my system.  :)