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Had a wonderful day yesterday! ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) colubra drove out from SF in his Mini Cooper and picked me up, and off we went to Santa Cruz to bid it a fond farewell. And how fond it was! The gods smiled upon us and the weather was gorgeous. We first had Japanese food (not limited to but including sushi) on the beach, and watched the dedicated summer employees of Natural Bridges State Park attempt to dig a ditch from the lake that the creek had made out of most of the beach to the open ocean. Surprisingly, it was not that difficult of a task and soon the lake was emptying. A couple of "helpful" kids came out to dig with their sand buckets, but mostly ended up dumping buckets of water on each other. It was hilarious.
Turner and I then went over to the lab and, even though I don't know any of the current staff (TLF is on vacation), we got to go on deck and say hello (and goodbye) to the dolphins. No training, but I didn't need to, I just wanted to see Puka and Primo. We also played with them at the underwater windows. Do they remember me? Doubtful. But they're still cute. The birds seem to remember me a bit, and Mary the cockatoo let me hold her. Turner seemed to enjoy the tour even though I talked nonstop...because I'm a Tour Guide.
We also visited the Seymour Center (lab's visitor center) and my geocache which, I found out, is only 2 years old, and not whatever I quoted to Turner. However, it has stayed very nicely in that spot, without being disturbed even though people walk by the hiding place every day. A whole bunch of coastal daisy things have grown over the hiding spot, which may help a bit. I had a geocoin that wanted to go to ocean places, so I put it in the cache, and checked to see that lots of fun trading items were available. All looks good! Not sure who is going to maintain that cache for me now that I'm moving out of state, but hopefully it simply won't need any help/cleaning/replacing.
Making my way up to campus, I went by the office of the registrar to see if they would print me out some transcripts, official or unofficial, right then and there. They would not. Would they help me get to my records even though I haven't been a student there for years? They would not, but if I call this number...sigh. Also visited the GLBT center (now known as the "Cantu center") to look up transgender resources for a friend. The lady inside, probably bored out of her mind, was so happy to SEE people (it being summer, for one thing). We chatted for quite awhile. The GLBT center is so adorable with big comfy couches, lots of books, nice music playing, and a nice stash of teas (with rainbow mugs, of course!). I should have hung out there more while I was living at Merrill College, it's probably a nice place for light studying or working on projects. It's so colorful and...they have free tea! I spent some time regretting things that I didn't do during my all-too-short college years.
Turner and I then picked up jarsofwind and we headed to a different beach - Twin Lakes, and I even remembered (sorta) how to get there! We talked and built sand castles and I slowly got sunburned, it was lovely. The beach was full of interesting people-watching, and the boats going by and the waves crashing on the beach are all full of things that...do not exist in Phoenix. I doubt I'll find myself pining for what is far away (I'm not a piner, I don't often pine), but it was nice to get a good healthy dose of California Beach.
Then, dinner was had at the Saturn Cafe. I'm sorry to report that the Saturn has become less wacky. The decor has been scaled back a bit: gone are the starry Christmas lights, gone is the random mural of tattoo designs. The bathrooms remain gender-neutral, but are labeled something along the lines of "Robot" and "Alien", with signs urging you to choose what you want to be today! ...I think I speak for many of us when I note that gender-neutral bathrooms are sort of a non-issue, as the bathroom in my house is gender-neutral...but I suppose we must be understanding of the tourists from Kansas. Despite reports to the contrary, I found the food there to still be pretty good, and can honestly not tell the difference between a meat and a soy corn dog. Both delicious and both probably not very healthy. Yum. quakewave's milkshake looked very impressive and smelled great. Turner and ladyaxum found out that they have mutual friends in the fantasy convention circuit, and everybody was adorable and friendly and chatty - we were there for hours and I was very sad to leave.
It was great to see you, my Santa Cruz peoples! And thanks to the wonders of Livejournal and the Internet in general, we shall keep in touch. I will, of course, be back. And now, back to packing. There isn't a great deal of things to be packed, but there is enough. We leave at 5am tomorrow, hooray!
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