Day Trip to San Diego, 7/11/07

A bit behind in my blogging (sorry) but two days ago, I went on a day trip to San Diego. Loving my Prius, loving the gas mileage on that car. Initially, my plan was go to San Diego, to pick up the bottom half of a bikini I bought in L.A. (on clearance), which was missing its bottom half. Apparently, in my size, to complete my swimsuit, I would have to find it at a store in downtown La Jolla. What a good reason as any to visit sunny San Diego, only an hour's drive from Orange County.

Downtown La Jolla...look at the picture perfect weather

Of course, there's always time for some sugar. Stopped by my old haunt, Extraordinary Desserts. I swear I have yet to see such beautiful desserts anywhere else, even in NYC. I had high hopes for Chikalicious, but trust me...not as good as Extraordinary Desserts. When I was living here, we'd describe locations based on this place, it was so central to our life here. It was quite common to hear us talking on the phone,"You know, that place is west of the chocolate..."

My favorite dessert was available that day, the passion fruit pavlova (fitting it's named after a ballerina). A perfect summer treat. Of course, I had to take a cell phone photo and send it to my sister to rub it in her face. :D Ah, sharing the sisterly love...

We drove by the UCSD Medical Center, where I used to work. Hi Fred! He was inside, toiling away at his internal medicine residency.

To walk off some of the calories engorged during lunch and dessert/coffee, we walked through the picturesque Balboa Park in downtown San Diego.

To our luck, the famous exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls were at the Natural History Museum, and we had the opportunity to visit and see this rare sight. Admittedly, we were a bit disappointed, the scrolls were such scraps of paper, a lot of it destroyed to old age, mishandling of the documents by history professionals (they used scotch tape, which gelatinized the paper...good going, scholars). But to think...these scrolls were written 1,000 BCE. Amazing...but yet, I don't think I'd recommend this to everyone. It's pricey, and it looks like "the good stuff was left at home while the scraps went on tour", as my friend aptly put it.

Of course, a trip can't be complete without some good theater. The Avenue Q tour was in town, and we grabbed tickets to go see the show. This is my third time watching the show (last two times on Broadway), and the audience response was so amazing...lots and lots of young people, there was palpable excitement in the air. Fun fun show. A story about being young and finding your purpose in life.

The actors totally basked in the energy of the audience, and gave a stand out performance. My favorite, of course, is the perverted monster, Trekkie Monster. Or as his puppeteer calls him, "The voice of truth". I couldn't agree more.

Who else but me, a huge theater geek, could recognize Jeff Marx, the writer and co-creator of Avenue Q in the audience. We talked about his recent work (the musical episode of Scrubs) as well as my similarities with a character in the show, Christmas Eve, who is Asian and has two masters degrees "in social work". (Thankfully, I do not have that strong accent Christmas Eve has in the show). Marx informed me that he didn't think anyone got two masters degrees. Check out his website, it has a link to internet porn, which refers to Trekkie's song, "The Internet is for Porn".

Jeff offered me and my friend two tickets to the cast party afterwards, where we had a blast, chatting it up with the actors and enjoying the nice outdoor ambience of the hotel terrace from across the theater. I met Angela Ai (who plays Christmas Even in Avenue Q...and glad to report, does not have that horrendous accent in real life), and Christian Anderson, whom I met in San Diego 5 years ago as the lead in the Full Monty tour. He told the most hilarious stories of "baring it all" on a stage in the "Full Monty"...people used to take out cameras to take a photo of the last few seconds), and once, an audience member even had the guts to bring a boat light to improve visibility. I met Christian's lovely wife, whom he had met on the Rent tour; they were Mimi and Roger together. How sweet huh? I even saw Tony-award musical director and theatrical legend, John Doyle (director of Company!!!) at the cast party. I was waaay too overwhelmed to go and approach him....

Needless to say, it was very late when I got in my car to drive home. But totally worth it...

A review of ABT gala night to come soon (I promise), which I saw last night.