Off to the zoo in a few minutes, to be followed by three days of food and parties and blowing stuff up, but first wanted to give a little shoutout to the San Diego Symphony Summer Pops for a great concert last night on the Embarcadero.  The trouble with any outdoor concert is a lack of control over outside influences, and at the end of the night I was seriously wishing the fireworks would take out a certain obnoxious party boat rather than just explode harmlessly in the sky, but the concert was great.  Their Independence Day show repeats tonight and tomorrow for those locals who missed it last night.

I may have been slacking in my personal swims lately, but smelling the chlorine vicariously this morning with this video.

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Love being able to combine alumni fan-boyism with the vicarious smell of chlorine in the morning.  It’s especially good when it involves seeing Cal Bears out giving back locally and working with the kiddies.  Now if I could only get up the energy to get to an actual swim…

Saw in the server stats this morning that this photo of Randy and the wonderful John Barrowman is now the ninth most viewed photo in the local gallery here at Howling Point. Out of 1367 posted photos, this is the first non-sports photo to crack the Top 10.

Randy met the actor who played Captain Jack Harkness (not to mention “Lead Tenor” in The Producers) at the 2009 Comic-Con.  I stood several feet away with the camera and tried not to be too jealous.  Hopefully they can rekindle their relationship at Comic-Con this year, which by the way starts in only 27 short days.

I haven’t made much of a secret of my humble opinion that the California courts are seriously broken.  Their infrastructure, particularly that for handling information, is at least 20 years behind the times.  Instead of expanding to deal with the consequences of the recession, they cut back with a resulting slow-down in the handling of cases across the board.

The issue is compounded by a certain class of cases that will never, ever, end, taking resources forever.  Yesterday while waiting (two hours to make a five minute appearance) for a case to be called, I watched the child support case of an elderly man where the state was still pursuing $164,000 in arrears for a child who is now 33 years old.  The man was arguing his monthly payments should be reduced to $50 per month because he had just lost his job.  The result of the day’s work on that case was squat nada bupkus because a continuance had to be granted because a party had only received certain documents 24 days before the hearing instead of the required 30.  The court will take up the issue again in August.

NB: the interest alone on $164,000 of past due child support is $1366 per month.  If his motion is granted, he will still only be paying 3 1/2% of the interest accruing each month, and never touching the principal.

I admit I don’t know what the solution should be in cases like this.  I suspect it took a lot of neglect to rack up that much in arrears.  Massive neglect, even intentional wrongdoing, doesn’t stop the government from bailing out banks, or automakers or reckless homeowners though, so maybe I should stop feeling judgmental about how the debt was created.  I just hate seeing cases (or problems, or debts, take your pick)  that by plan and inflexible laws can never end, and in the process eat up dwindling, finite, resources and judicial time.

Celebrating the first day of summer with some old-school linkey love.  Please welcome Shawn “Nugget” Conley’s Endless Banter to what’s left of the blogosphere.  Blogs and other personal sites have really taken a hit since the rise of Facebook, et al, and I certainly hope this is a sign that the pendulum’s starting to reverse course on that trend.

One week ago today, thirty or so very good friends and family gathered at The Linkery in San Diego to celebrate Randy’s 50th birthday. The people at The Linkery outdid themselves with great service and great food, and while the Big Five-Oh is easy to poke fun at (and there was a ceremonial presentation of Spinner’s first AARP card), the rapidly-marching-to-death jokes were kept to a minimum, and as far as I could tell a great time was had by all.

Very early the next morning we left Diego and the Great Basil Forest in the care of a wonderful housesitter, and set off for Hawai’i.

In hindsight we’d redo the itinerary. It seems ridiculous in hindsight to fly 21 minutes from San Diego to LAX, then sit on some very uncomfortable seats at LAX draining the batteries on various portable devices for three hours until our flight to Kona. We could’ve driven to LAX in less than two hours, and still left home at least 90 minutes later than we did. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… As for Delta – I know it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything but a hop from here to the Bay Area, but $25 to check a bag and no food except a bag of peanuts on a five-hour flight? Ohmygawd you’re cheap bastards and you’ll get no linkey-love here.

Once we got off the flying metal deathtrap though, life was renewed. I suppose for Randy it was like how Logan’s spin through carousel should’ve been. Hours of people reminding you of approaching mortality, more hours trapped immobilized in a sealed metal tube, then whoosh…PARADISE!

In our first two hours on the Big Island we swam in the ocean, swam in the resort’s pool, then had mango daquiris and kalua pork quesadillas at the hotel’s poolside bar.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday: we shopped, we ate, we swam, we bodysurfed, we paddleboarded.  Lots of details in the photo captions over at Vista.

Yes, I got injured a couple of times, but it was all still absolutely worth it.  I got stung by a jellyfish or something, but I got stung swimming the water portion of the Ironman course in Kona.  I beat up my ankles on some silly rocks, but I did it body surfing at Magic Sands on the Big Island.   I suppose I should mention the dead brain cells from several rounds of Mai Tais too, but that doesn’t sound nearly as butch as the swimming and bodysurfing.  Would it help if I said they were flaming Mai Tais?

We visited palaces and churches and archeological sites and generally behaved like gawking tourists we were.  Spent lots of time sitting on the seawall just watching local life: the triathletes and open-water swimmers, the locals playing, the outrigger canoe clubs, the birds and crabs doing their things.

We had a great time.  The vacation was way too short.  Probably wouldn’t have come back but for the grim realities of modern life spelled out by Quicken, even given my responsibilities to appear in court this Tuesday.

The flight home was relatively uneventful: same tin-can of death, same lousy service, still no love for Delta.  Diego not only survived, but seemed much better after five days with the housesitter than he’s ever seemed after any time at all in the kennel.  The Great Basil Forest is thriving.  After 36 hours the mountain of laundry finally seems surmountable.  I’m back and I accept it, happy or not.

Now running WordPress 3.0.  Upgrade seems to have gone smoothly, but please let me know if I’m being delusional or something.

- Randy, the husband, also known as Spinnerdude, is celebrating his fiftieth birthday today.

- I found out last night that I won an Honorable Mention ribbon at the San Diego County Fair for a photo I took back in February 2009 of a Cal Poly SLO – Navy Academy rugby match down at the Del Mar Polo Grounds.

-  Today is Friday.

Focused on the upcoming vacation, and really wondering why I took on so much family law work.  OK, it was for billables in a recession, but ramen can be tasty and if I’d stuck to my principles I’d be much skinnier heading out to the Hawaiian beaches next week.  I’m expecting to be seeing lots of sights like this or maybe this.  Maybe even a Baywatch moment.  At this point even hanging out with cute little tropical fishies would make me very happy.  If you know reality is different, please don’t spoil the anticipation for me.  That anticipation is really all that’s keeping me going at this point.

Why do I think that all the people procrastinating on getting back to me now are going to find they have ohmygodpeoplearegoingtodie emergencies when I leave for Kona in nine days?