the Dalaverse

OMG SO TIRED. But I will recap the vacation thus far:

Flight yesterday morning, layover in Phoenix. The only notable thing was when the stewardess explained the time factor poorly on the first flight, so that Mom proceeded to freak out for precisely no reason for like forty minutes. When we hit San Diego, I took one step outside and sighed in relief. It was sixty-five degrees and breezy, which is my idea of perfect weather. Car rental, then hotel check-in, and then we went to dinner with my great uncle Jim and great aunt Crystal, whom I hadn't seen in...eight years? Nine? Something like that. Anyway, Uncle Jim is eighty-seven so he's pretty slow-moving, but he was very glad to see us. Crystal is fifteen years younger, with more energy and in better shape than any of the three of us.

We had a nice dinner and then went back to see their apartment. I admired all of Crystal's antique furniture, which came from her grandmother in Germany - she's re-finished a lot of it herself (Crystal is a master seamtress, she used to design costumes for operas and she also made my mother's wedding dress. They picked out the fabric in New York and then, because my mother wanted it off-white, dyed it in a bathtub full of tea. Aunt Crystal was not, however, responsible for my father's powder-blue tux). Then we went through these family scrapbooks she has, the highlight of which was a picture of my Aunt Nancy wearing a black bathing suit in which I swear to god, she looks like a Playboy bunny. I think we will have to take that picture to Thanksgiving this year. I was just about asleep on my feet by the time we left.

This morning I caved and bought myself twenty-four hours of wireless (the fuck? This is a nice hotel, but it doesn't have alcohol or free Internet and that is not cool). Today was Sea World Day! As we were waiting for the shuttle to the park, Dad and I wandered around the hotel grounds and exclaimed over all the unfamiliar foliage like complete and total dorks. This was a theme that would continue through out the day, culminating in many pictures of this TOTALLY FUCKED UP TREE in the park where I don't even know what was going on, but it had a root system out to Cleveland and, like, roots growing up into the branches or some shit. It will be included in the inevitable picspam, never fear.

But anyway, SEA WORLD! I went through this whole phase in second and third grade where I became obsessed with marine mammals, whales and dolphins in particular, and I was gonna be a marine biologist and everything (yes, "Free Willy" was my favorite movie). It passed, obviously, but I've wanted to go to Sea World ever since. We caught the dolphin show as soon as we got there, and it was very cool but nothing compared to the Shamu show. That shit was unreal. I had to leave my sunglasses on the whole time because I was crying, no lie. I think it's some combination of having wanted to see it since I was a little kid and, having been a rider, witnessing the bond between trainer and animal. Plus it's awesome to hear hundreds of people squealing in delight all around you. I really hope the pictures I got turn out to be in focus.

The other highlight: DOLPHIN ENCOUNTER, BITCHES! We paid an extra fee in order to get up close and personal with one of the dolphins. We learned a few hand signals, petted, and fed a common bottlenosed dolphin named Deak. This was, as you can well imagine, incredibly cool. I have now touched a dolphin, so I can cross that off the list. The little girl who got called up for the show said it felt "like a hot dog" and I discovered that this was quite an astute observation. Other than that, we saw sea lions, otters, beluga whales, manatees (disappointing because they were all in a puppy pile up by the surface, asleep), rays, and sharks (the Shark Encounter was fully awesome with a tunnel going through the tank so you could stand on a moving sidewalk and pee your pants while some toothy motherfuckers stalked you from above). Oh, and we went on the rapids ride, which is on the higher-soaking side of all the rapids rides I've experienced. In fact, I spent the majority of the day completely effing soaked. We sat in the second row of the dolphin show, and got splashed; we sat in the eight row of the orca show and got splashed; our dolphin encounter ended with me getting a tailful of salt water directly in the chest; and then there was the goddamned waterfall in the rapids ride. I wore my green cargo pants because they dry quickly, like I did in Denmark, but today they met their match.

We got back a couple of hours ago, exhausted and soaked and carrying souvenirs (a picture of all three of us with Deak, plus my new Shamu because hello, have you met me? There was no way I was leaving that park without a stuffed whale). Dinner at the restaurant conveniently located ten steps from our door (tortilla soup, delicious), then one final soaking in the form of a shower and I could not be more ready for bed. Except I still don't feel all the way clean, damn it.

Tomorrow I believe we're going to be hanging out in Old Town with Crystal. I expect to eat crazy good Mexican food, buy some jewelry, and hopefully check out the Spanish missions tour. BTW, the tiny plastic OTP totally stowed away in my suitcase but have so far been confined to the room. I might take them to see Midway and the rest of the ship stuff if they're Jim is good.