It's not all work and no play

Seems as though my events have been taking up most of the space on the blog these days....but never fear John is still near!! John has been super busy the past couple of months with work and making sure all is well in the world of Asics. Photo shoots, trips to NYC, golf outings just to name a few of his recent work events. Even though it's considered "work" it still looks like fun to me! First up, John participated in an agency golf outing. They played a Friday afternoon up in the very beautiful and posh Rancho Bernardo.

John & his coworker Danielle are working while playing...check out the laptop on board.

Check out that swing. It looks like John knows what he's doing.

It's all about the strategy....John's thinking things over.

Also, back in September John had the opportunity to fly out to NYC for a photo shoot for the 2008 Asics ad campaign. They shot all the ads for next years campaign including shots in downtown Manhattan, Brooklyn, New Jersey, and West Chester NY. John and his crew from work also got to go to a Esquire magazine party. John had two star spottings that night: Kyra Sedwick (from the Closer / Kevin Bacon's wife) and Dan Marino. Also while walking around Manhattan they saw the movie set of Sex and the City. None of the gals were spotted...but it was still pretty cool.

This is a picture from the studio in Manhattan where they were shooting. Yes, that's the Empire State Building.

According to John they were shooting inside that restaurant. They had the street blocked off so you couldn't see what was going on inside the restaurant. Guess we'll have to wait for the movie to come out.

DJ Sarah's Sonic Chill

My good friend Sarah recently won a contest put on by one of the local radio stations, 94.9 Sarah made a set list of her top chill songs and it was chosen by the station to be played live at one of San Diego's local club's, the AC Lounge. Sarah hooked several of her friends up with passes to the VIP area where we lounged and enjoyed listening to her set list while having cocktails. It was super fun and made for a not so typical Tuesday night. So nice to have good friends...especially good friends with excellent taste in music. Enjoy some of the pics from the evening.

Group shot at the AC Lounge

Margaret and Sarah toast to a sonic chill evening

Part of the fun was coming up with our very own DJ name. My name was "Tricktickler K Silk" What up Yo!

Lori's adventures in San Diego

Yeah for visitors!!! My best friend from growing up, Lori,
was out in September for a late summer vacation. We crammed a bunch into the 3 days she stayed at the Jutland abode. Sushi, shopping, beer fest, fish tacos in Ocean Beach, dinner on the San Diego Bay, beach cruising, Coronado dog beach, and hanging out with her Aunt & Uncle. Whew....I'm beat just thinking about all we did. Here's the shutterfly link in case you want to view the full weekend's events, but I'll gladly post a few of the highlights below.





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Friday Afternoon stroll through the very scenic Balboa Park

Beerfest!!!!!!!!!!

More fun at beerfest. Karen, Lori, Sarah, and Mags

Saturday lunch at South Beach Fish Tacos in OB. Margaritas anyone??

Beach Crusin'

Wrapping up the summer

The summer is slowly coming to a close and I thought I'd recap a few fun events that we haven't had a chance to post on the blog just yet.

First up, a visit from my NCSU friend, Mike Fitzula aka Fitz. Fitz came out for a business trip and graced John, Miles and I with his presence for 2 nights. On the top of the agenda while Fitz was in town surf and eat fish tacos!

Fitz lives at Atlantic Beach, NC and got up EARLY the day of his departure and worked in a short surf session on the Atlantic and then when he arrived late afternoon in San Diego we hit up Tourmaline Beach in PB. Fitz successfully completed his mission of surfing in both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean in the same day.
Here's a shot of Fitz and I post surfing. The water was super warm for the Pacific (70-72 degrees) so neither one of us even bothered with a spring suit. Waves were great, water was only slightly crowded and the sunset was amazing!

John and Fitz share a brewskie as we watched the sun set and worked up an appetite for fish tacos.

Yep, the sunset was pretty hard to beat. When you say Southern California sunset this is pretty much as good as it gets. Fitz was our first non-family visitor and we hope he gets more meetings on the west coast so I can have a good excuse to go surfing mid-week again. Also hope that next time he's out this way that Becky gets to come with him :)

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Sometime in August The Avett Brothers, a favorite NC band of ours, made their debut in San Diego. They played at a super fun smaller venue in Solana Beach about 20 minutes north of where we live.

John and I met up with my NC friend from camp, Holly, and had Pizza Port before the show and then had a few PBR's while we enjoyed the music. I was surprised how many people came out and how many people were singing along with the songs. I kept wondering to myself if the crowd was a bunch of east coasters or if the Avett's are really getting big. Regardless, the show was great and they played a good mix of new and old. I'm going to try to insert a video I took at the show, it's of the song Paranoia in B. Can't wait till they come back to S.D. again!

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Of course I couldn't make a post and not mention a climbing adventure or ten. John spent a bunch of weekends going up to the Tram...that's the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which is part of San Jacinto State Park.
You take this gondola tram from the palm springs (elevation 100 ft temperature 100 degrees) up to the top of the mountain (elevation 8,400ft and temperature 75 degrees....much better)

John met some cool climbing buddies, Chris and Jeannie, and we climbed with them on this particular day. Jeannie doing this cool overhang problem.

I climbed for about .2 seconds before I was spent and done for the day. I'm way out of climbing shape, but it was fun to be outdoors and watch the rest of the crew. Here's a shot of me on the fun (easy) green boulder.

John doing this cool crack problem. We ended up climbing ALL DAY and caught an amazing sunset and moon rise. Check it out

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And the fun just keeps continuing..... in September John and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary!!! We treated ourselves to an amazing dinner at Oceanaire restaurant in the gas lamp district downtown. The executive chef at Oceanaire, Brian Malarkey, was the 4th runner up on the Bravo TV show, Top Chef. Needless to say, the dinner was out of this world. We both tried different varieties of fish we hadn't heard of. For me it was the Coho Salmon which is only available and in season a few weeks out of the year and for John it was Black Sea Bass. Afterwards, we went to see the musical, Mamma Mia. John and I laughed our asses off at the costumes (the fluorescent scuba gear was my fav) and you can't help but sing along when it's ABBA.

Our dinner ran over a bit so we had to bust a move to get to the theater. Here we are on the peddi-cab (think small bicycle drawn carriage). And if you're wondering what those white things are on top of John's head it his sunglasses.

Here's John at intermission enjoying a beverage by this cool boat fountain. You can make out the hull of the ship and then the massive bow wave. Very neat.

And that concludes the marathon blog entry.....