Dirty Rotten Scoundrels @ Starlight

Spent Friday night at the Starlight Theater @ Swope Park watching the Touring version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Its been pratically ages since we saw any musicals at all, probably none in the last 2-3 years, so we bought tickets to this event a few weeks back. Starlight's an outdoor theater where they will do touring musicals, rock concert and private events too, so we were expecting a nice nice watching this under the stars (hence the name!)

Basically, DRS a play/musical version of the movie with same title with Michael Caine and Steve Martin that came out a while back in 1988 i think, where these 2 con-men try to trick the women of the French Rivirera out of their cash...

All in all, a pretty entertaining night, I was skeptical on how the can convert a feature length movie into a musical, even when I knew the ending already, but I was pleasantly surprised with the plot, the singing/dancing and the ending! Yeesin's never watched the movie before, so I think she liked it even better than i did!

Weather was kind of iffy that night. With rain predicted off and on the the evening. Raining was probably the part that I couldn't arrange for the evening 4 weeks in advance when i bought tickets! In early June, you'd expect the nights to be in the low 80's and dry right? It felt more like early fall weather @ the low 60's, with clouds looming overhead ominously. So for that night, I'd either be a genius for picking a nice night, or the opposite for picking a bad weather night. Anyway, rain held out in just time time for the final bows, with the heavy drops picking up just when everyone was leaving for the night... I guess the weather listened to my instructions then!

San Diego Vacation [Part 2]

Day(2) Woke up to a peaceful non-traffic morning in Temecula, to the chirping of little birds in the air, and where you can almost "hear" the grapevines growing outside our villa. Checked into South Coast Winery Resort & Spa after lots of traffic the night before, and chilled (or rather roasted) out in the hot tub, sipping the complimentary house wine. Yes, they make their own wine here. Most of the villas face the vineyards, and all of them don't share walls, so its pretty romantic. Definitely more romantic than a fossilized museums (*Hint*Hint Husbands/Boyfriends)

Our Winetour-Bus showed up at 10.30am to pick us up, and we were off for a fun filled day of Wine Tasting in Temecula! Our itinerary included 4 wineries with 4-6 1Oz tastings at each location, with a lunch provided as well! No stress at all, with directions, and parking when you are being ferried around in style with a bunch of friendly people with you! BTW, everyone got a LOT friendlier by the last winery! Had a really nice lunch in Wilson Winery, were they also served their really awesome Almond Champagne! Bought a few bottles back, but bought them at the local drug store cheaper. Hint- Long's Drugs in town sells them at 1/3 the price at the vineyard!

Drove to San Diego from there...

Day (3) & (4) - Woke up in La Jolla, which is about 10 minutes north of Downtown San Diego. Spent the next 2 days checking out the sandy beaches in along the San Diego coastline. Tons of people surfing by the beach, weather was mild, and San Diego only gets a couple of days of rain in a year. so not much use of an umbrella over there! Visited some seals just hanging out sun-bathing at La Jolla cove, then went to see Shamu at SeaWorld!

Tons of stuff to see in SeaWorld, with live shows every 1/2 hr, we timed it just right so that we saw most of the performances by the time we left. Obviously we had to sit in the first couple of rows to get splashed by Shamu, we found out really quick the difference between getting "splashed" vs getting "soaked". I'll just say that it was pretty cold for a while out there until the sun dried us out!

Went to San Diego Zoo as well, checking out all the animals, and riding the Safari-Cable-Car like 5 times to get our money's worth. Its $3 to ride each way, but our $25 all-access tickets got us unlimited rides... So had to ride more la! Snapped a quick picture of Mei Hwa, the latest panda cub just lazing around on his tree branch... What a life, just hanging around and getting fed all day long!

Last day in San Diego what do we do? We start scrounging for Asian food to eat. After a couple of days of eating non-Asian food, our craving for Asian food finally won! It was almost like a solitary beam of light shining onto the front of Ranch 99's entrance when we pulled in the parking lot! 2 orders of duck + pork rice, and roasted intestine's later.... MHHMMM good! Its too bad we don't have Ranch 99's in KC... :(

That's about it for this Trip!

San Diego Vacation [Part 1]

Hi all! Just came back from a fun filled vacation weekend in sunny San Diego. It was our 4th Year Wedding Anniversary, and we happened to stumble on to $49 tickets each way on our Southwest.com. So, we decided to go to another SoCal location again this year! Left Thursday Morning, and got back to KC late Monday Night.

BTW, couldn't help noticing a "little miss sunshine" van in SD, so snapped a picture of it!

Here's highlights of what we did along the way:

Day (1): Woke up at 5am in the morning, caught plane to LA, landed at 8.30am. Yep. Gotta love Pacific Time. Drove to the "original" Farmer's Market in LA, really happy to beat the early crowd ; Its the closest thing to a "Mamak Stall" food place in the U.S so far, so we were pretty jazzed! Now all that's missing is Malaysian food, and maybe a little less attention to cleanliness! BTW, there's a "Singaporean" stall there, but we wouldn't recommend it. Apparently Singaporean Prime Ministers have dined there before, but Yeesin & I strongly discourage our fellow Malaysians from trying the food there! We spent the next couple of hours trying to wash the taste out of our mouths !!!

Spent some time in the LaBrea Tar Pits where they have the most extensive collection of wolves + vultures (too bad no dinosaurs) of fossils that got stuck in the tar 10K-20K years ago. Yeesin managed to snag a photo with this handsome devil of a Mastodon. I don't think I can measure up to his Ginormous TUSKS, but I think the fact that I DIDN'T get stuck in Tar and die a horrible death makes me win the popularity contest! Note to other husbands - Fossils are decidedly NOT very romantic, so we proceeded quickly to wine-country instead!

Driving out of LA to wine country took slightly longer than we thought. Fun Fact here- Rush Hour in LA starts at 3PM! Basically every freeway out, no matter what number (I-15,I- 91, 1, 101, etc) is jammed up. Car pool lanes don't help much either, the crawl along slightly faster than the other poor souls in the fully-stopped lanes. Heck, they even can pay $10 to drive in the car pool lane if you're alone... Anyway, after 3 hours in traffic, we finally pulled into the city limits of Temecula Wine Country! Another item of import, when driving out of LA, don't drink lots of water! Somehow gas stations with working toilets will be always just out of reach when you are stuck in traffic!!!

TO BE CONTINUED....