Comic-Con 2008

Just a few weeks ago, on July 25-26, Tim and I flew down to SD for what seems like an annual event for us now-Comic Con 2008. We spent our first day checking out all the booths, and sitting in one of the more popular panel discussions for the movie, Watchmen. Of course, the popular booths were once again Sideshow for the excellent statues, busts, and hourly giveaways, and Lucasfilm for everything Star Wars, which included a lifesize Jabba the Hutt, and a stage with the new life size Clone Wars characters on display. This stage was filled with endless and constantly changing star wars characters, such as every Clone Trooper imaginable, various forms of Mandalorian bounty hunters (aka Boba Fetts), and numerous Jedi knights. There was even a point where a group of predators stormed the stage to steal some of the spotlight from the Star Wars characters. Massive lines were also present at the ever popular Hasbro and Mattel booths for their exclusive Comic Con figures. I ended up buying a Lobo (from the Superman series) at the Mattel booth because of their short line at the Saturday opening. Perhaps it was because all the people were away lining up for the Heroes panel discussion, which we tried to get in line for at 8 in the morning Saturday by the way, but after seeing the line which wrapped around the Convention Center all the way to Seaport Village, we decided to pass and just hit the main show room.

Friday night, we also roamed the downtown SD area in search of numerous urban boutiques, such as the Armory, the Attic, and Five and a Dime. We also visited the Westfield mall (where we were standing right next to Method Man in Footlocker) before heading to dinner at Rei Do Gado's, our favorite Brazillian bbq. We stayed at the Bristol Hotel, which was awesome by the way. It was very modern, as our room was decorated in black, white, and red.

On Saturday Tim and I split up for most of the day to do our own things at the convention. Tim went around searching for autographs. I spent it looking at all the booths in detail, searching for gifts for Becks, playing papparazzi, and sitting in a DC panel discussion (included Bruce Timm of Batman cartoon fame), which had a preview of the 2009 release of the animated Wonder Woman. I actually ran into Ray P in this panel, so after it was over, we scoured the main showroom together for at least 30 minutes before he left to rejoin his family at their hotel. On Saturday the stars were out in full force (Heroe's James Kyson Lee and Hayden Panettiere, Buffy and Angel's Eliza Dushku and David Boreanaz, Star Trek's Avery Brooks and Jonathon Frakes, 24's producer and director Jon Cassar, rappers Common and Methodman, Lou Ferrigno, etc.).

5 Month Anniversary

On July 16, I decided to take Becks out for dinner for our 5 month anniversary. I had originally planned to take her to the 1930s era restaurant, Bing Crosby's, in Walnut Creek. The concept seemed great, but after reading as much bad reviews as there were good reviews on Trip Advisor, coupled with the expensive prices, we decided to head elsewhere. We ended up going to the Napa Valley Grille in Yountville, a favorite of her parents'. There was great food again, as our last visit there with Shannon in January for her birthday. I was pleased to find my favorite, Paella, on their everchanging menu.

Contest of Champions: 0-8

On July 12, I had the privelege of playing in the Contest of Champions, a church fundraiser for the youth group staff. I thought I had retired from the tournment 2 years ago, before pulling a Brett Favre, and unretiring. Our team consisted of (3) 6 footers, Julian, Christina, and Michael A, and (3) under 6 footers, myself, Tim, and Amy. We named ourselves 3-6 Mafia for intimidation because of our (3) 6 footers. Intimidate we did not, going 0-8 before being eliminated from the double elimination tournament. No one else, however, had as cool a team picture as us. Had we had more time playing together there is no doubt that we would have notched at least a couple of victories.

The 1 Year Dating Anniversary

On July 8th, Becky and I spent our 1 Year Dating Anniversary at the place where it all started: Mimi's Cafe in Fairfield. We even wore for the most, the same outfits we wore that day. Yeah, call us sentimental. It was fun just reminiscing of that lunch, and all the events that lead up to it. The day before was Walter and Kristine's wedding anniversary. We were just reminded of God's goodness, in how He brought us together last summer, and now one year, later were celebrating that special one year anniversary as husband and wife. Indeed God is good!!!

Genesis 2
18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Socal Day 3: The Real OC

We spent our 3rd day in Socal cruising the OC. Our first stop was the Newport Beach/Balboa area. We walked around the pier, took some pics. At the Balboa pier we even saw hundreds of kids doing some summer training as junior lifeguards. There was just a sea of kids running around in red swimming trunks and bathing suits along the beach and the park. We were even approached by a couple of guys interviewing for a local college on the topic of global issues. I thought for a minute it was a Jay Leno bit where they see how stupid people are about certain topics. I'll admit that when they brought up a country in Africa where there were genocides happening, I had no idea what they were talking about. Luckily Becky knew a little about it. Then the topic changed to politics and Obama...so we had our chance to give our two cents about our dislike for him. We then decided to drive south through Corona Del Mar, another rich neighborhood, before making our stop at Laguna Beach. This town was something to behold. For such a small town, there was definitely a lot of people roaming around. We grabbed a couple of sandwiches from Whole Foods and head for the beach park to enjoy our lunch. Their main beach park was awesome. Crammed into their beach park, was a lawn, a kids playground, many beach volleyball nets setup (which house AVP tournaments on weekends by the way), 2 hoop courts, and a tidepool area. And right across the street were the many boutiques and restaurants. How often can you say that you played volleyball and basketball on the beach. Let's just say that the only other place I've done that at was on Oahu. We ended our day by heading back to Newport Beach's Fashion Island Mall to kill a couple of hours before jumping on the plane home.

Socal Day 2: Disneyland

This was the big day. Neither of us had been to Disneyland in quite some time, at least since CA Adventures opened up. We knew it was going to be a long day to try to make both theme parks. Since we went on a weekday, I wasn't expecting insane amounts of people. Once the park opened we made a mad rush for Indiana Jones, one of the more popular rides. We waited about 10 minutes. Within the first hour, we rode Indiana Jones, the Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and the Jungle Tree House. Talk about fast. By noon, we rode every Disney ride that we wanted outside of a few classics which were hitting the one hour wait, such as Space Mountain. We ended up fast passing this for later in the evening. We spent the rest of the afternoon at CA Adventures. Since most of the rides were roller coaster types, we decided not to ride a lot of them. We did however ride Soaring over CA, which was an exciting simulated ride over CA. We could smell the oranges as we went over orange groves, pine as we went over forests, and even mist as we went over the ocean. We also tried to watch the Aladdin musical, which everyone recommended seeing, but upon arriving at the theatre, we discovered that it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Bummer. We also wanted to try the new Toy Story ride, but with over an hour wait, we decided to pass. In the late afternoon we caught the CA Adventures Parade, and then jumped over to Disneyland to catch the Disney Parade. We rode our final 2 rides, Space Mountain and Peter Pan, before watching Fantasmic, and then the fireworks. We ended our night at 10 pm.