La Jolla!

My job rocks. I was on the short list for a strategy meeting with the CEO. He sent a small group of us to La Jolla, CA, mid-week last week for three days, two nights (apologies to the distant fam, I had no time to visit).

No, we did not stay in a hotel, but in a rented mansion a block from the beach!! A personal chef came in to fix us lunch one day.

This picture sucks, but hey, palm trees and a bit of ocean in the shot:


What little time we had outside the house was spent, well, eating. Absolutely one of the top meals of my life was found at Hash House a Go-Go. Cheap, comforting food.

This is my boss. She thought she was ordering one little pancake and a scrambled egg. The plates were the size of a small tire.

My meal was far more elaborate (I'm no salad-muncher). Check this out: waffles with strips of hickory bacon stuffed in the middle, topped with pecan crusted chicken, fried leeks on the side, rosemary branch stuffed in the middle (signature on every dish), and all covered in reduced maple caramel sauce. THE BEST!

This is the mutilated view of the dish...it literally had two FULL chicken breasts in it. I almost ate half the dish and almost exploded. The rest of our crew was so jealous, they helped eat the rest.

This tree in the neighborhood reminded me of Dr. Seuss.

Austin trip

So I went to Austin this weekend, love that town! Beautiful surroundings, artsy, lots to do. I spent a good deal of time looking at real estate (from the car), and had a good laugh. That market is EXPENSIVE. The house I'm trying to sell now in Kansas would go for, oh three times more? Small bungalow homes, less than 1,000 square feet, that NEED WORK, go for at least $250k. Ouch.
But it was fun seeing some of the "character" houses, there were plenty:
This one had tons of sculptures in the yard.

This one is hard to see, but the orange section is BRIGHT ORANGE.

I did a lot of driving around, found the local watering hole in the middle of town, where boys can leap off tall trees into the aqua blue water...





















...and found some nice hills on the edge of town.