SoCal

I don't think I've been in Southern California since high school. Whereas then I was here for a marching band competition the main purpose of which was to get to go to Disneyland. Now the main purpose is two different meetings for work at our plant near San Diego.

I flew in last night with my boss. Though we're on the same flights we have separate rental cars and are staying in different hotels. Our company switched travel agencies at the beginning of the year, and either the new one isn't good or they need some time to get used to us. We've had a plant down here for at least three years, and people from all kinds of departments come here all the time. I know for a fact that there's a Four Seasons here we're supposed to stay at because the company has some "minimum occupancy" agreement with them such that when we all got an email saying no one can stay in four star hotels except the Four Seasons in San Diego. I was excited about the idea of staying at a four star hotel. Brad in my group stayed there once and said they actually put a mint on your pillow, it was so fancy.

So when I called the travel agency and asked what hotel I was supposed to stay at in San Diego I expected them to say "The Four Seasons" to which I would happily agree. I wasn't expecting them to say, "We don't have any recommended hotels for San Diego." Uh, seriously? I clicked on the list on our website and it had a whole list, one of which was the Residence Inn (Four Seasons was not on that list for some reason). So they signed me up for Residence Inn. But then when my boss called two days later for reservations they wouldn't let her sign up for the Residence Inn! She got put in a hotel 20 minutes away, hence the separate cars.

So despite the disappointment over the Four Seasons gotta say this Residence Inn is super nice. I didn't understand the concept of "residence", so I wasn't expecting a full suite with separate living room, bedroom, and full kitchen. If we have an engineering run for my project when it goes to manufacturing I'd totally stay down here for two weeks to watch over it if I got to stay here.

Today was a six hour meeting and then two hours of trying vainly to do work on the work laptop which doesn't like pulling up files from the shared drive over wireless and didn't have Adobe Acrobat to do the other things I needed to do. Then I got takeout from a Yelp-recommended Italian restaurant - penne milano (ziti with sun-dried tomatoes and chicken in a cream sauce) and broccoli and watched Fox News and read Georgette Heyer.

Haven't seen any of San Diego in daylight. I have been using my GPS to get places and see the same street names over and over again but couldn't get home without the automated voice giving me directions.

Now my microwavable lava cake is calling me.