san diego, a wedding, and some photo recovery.

This Labor Day weekend was one of the best I've ever had – I got to go home! Not home home but home. Since I fully plan on moving to SD when we're ready to settle down and buy a house, I feel it's safe to call it home. It's especially safe to call it home since there's family there... and home is where the heart is, right?

We made the trek to the amazing west coast to witness Dave's little brother, Michael, get married to his girlfriend of years, Rebecca. Thursday night, we went straight from the airport to Dave and Buster's for a bachelor party of sorts. Though it wasn't a wild and crazy night... and it had a girl (me) in tow... it was a lot of fun.

The ceremony was held on Friday at the San Diego Court House. If you've never seen this building, look it up! Gorgeous with amazing views. There was a sailboat festival on the bay adding to the beauty of it all. The reception was held in the backyard at home. The transformation of that backyard by adding lights and tables was amazing. I've always loved that backyard for how lush and green it is. But adding the tables and lights... amazing.

We tried to pack in as much as we could on Saturday and Sunday. Corona del Mar, Board N Brew, Sweetwater Marsh, In N Out (animal style fries, I've missed you so!), sushi, family time, legit Mexican food (Dave got brain and tongue), seeing friends, and whatever else we could do/get that we can't out here in DC.

It was tough to say "see ya soon" to SD since we're not sure when we'll be able to go back, but it was great to get away and just enjoy with no responsibilities and no real plans. Plus, you can't beat the coast line and weather!

As for the photo recovery part of the post title... I flubbed and deleted all of the photos on my memory card after Dave put some of the photos on his parents' computer. In my head, they were all downloaded onto my computer. In reality, just a portion of the photos from the weekend were saved. Thankfully, I found a program that allowed me to recover ALL of my photos. Unfortunately, I was not able to recover the video file from the actual ceremony. Dave found a program that worked for that, but for some reason it only recovered a portion of the video. Still working on trying to save that little piece of the puzzle. In case it ever happens to you, PhotoRec is free and works on all systems. It says it can recover .avi files, which is what my video is, but it didn't work. Either way, it recovered all of my photos!

Update: Thankfully we put the wedding stuff on dropbox and the video was there! Thank goodness for technology. 

sd and oc.

Last Thursday, I flew down to San Diego to visit Dave. All day Thursday, I couldn't wait to get there. Work seemed to take forever but eventually it came time for me to go to the airport. Tam, my roommate, dropped me off. I walked in to see which gate I will be at and notice that my 8:20 pm flight was delayed until 10:20 pm. I immediately called Tam and had her pick me up. After a trip to McDonald's and watching some tv, we went back to the airport. By this point, my flight had gone from being delayed till 10:20 to being delayed till 10:50 to finally leaving at 10:30.

The flight itself was terrible. All I wanted to do was be in San Diego with Dave, but instead I was on a delayed flight with some of the loudest people on earth and was inflicted with some sort of allergy. By the end of the flight, my sinuses had become so inflamed that the decent caused me the worst pain I've ever felt on a plane. The right side of my face hurt so badly. I looked it up online after my flight and I think I was experiencing aerosinitus. Well, after hours of waiting, I finally arrived in San Diego at 12:05 am. Luckily, that ride was the only bad thing to happen to me the entire weekend. Dave met me at the airport, took me to his folk's place, and I fell asleep. I was so exhausted.

The next morning, Dave and I grabbed sandwiches at Board & Brew and then drove to Fashion Valley Mall to buy a gift for Holly and Steven at Crate and Barrel. We ended up getting a few of the cheapest items instead of getting one large item. Then Dave and I went to Tiffany's to pick up a necklace he purchased for me. This necklace. It's the Elsa Peretti Open Heart Lariat necklace.

After Tiffany's, we went to Macy's where I bought Dave a cream-colored dress shirt so that we wouldn't clash when standing next to each other at the wedding.

When we finished at the mall, we made a quick stop at AAA so that Dave could pick up some maps for his host families in Panamá and bought wedding wrapping paper, and then we went to the beach!

First stop, 18th street in Del Mar. This is the beach right next to where Dave lives. I love it here. Every time I visit him, this is where we go. Mostly because it's so close to his place.

After sitting at the beach for a little, we decided to go to the beach in Encinitas. We went to D Street and Moonlight Beach. So beautiful. I think I actually prefer it to Del Mar, which is good seeing as how I hope to live in Encinitas one day.

We stayed at the beach for most of the day, and then visited Dave's uncle, who owns an apartment with a gorgeous view of the beach. After visiting his uncle, we went to Barnes and Noble to check out some Panamá travel books and then went to see the new movie Adventureland. It was actually a really good movie. I recommend it to all of you!

After the movie, we went to Dave's house where his mom had made dinner. It was a chili dish and it was so good. We stayed in the rest of the night... I fell asleep pretty early.

Saturday was the day of the wedding. We got ready and drove up to the hotel in Lake Forest and then went to the wedding at the Coto de Caza Golf and Racquet Club. It was a really short ceremony, at least compared to Filipino weddings, and had an open bar. Lots of alcohol with little food made cocktail hour at lot of fun. There were two tables of band people and we were all set at the back of the reception area. We all realized very early on that we were the loudest people at the reception, which was the reason we were at the back.

View from Coto de Caza Golf and Racquet Club

Me and Nikki

Jed and Kuya Thomas

Dave and Me

The night and the weekend itself were both a lot of fun, but I was glad to fly back to Davis this morning. The only thing I was sad about was not seeing Dave for another... 2 weeks.