We left Spring Training in Mesa, Arizona after watching several San Diego Padres ballgames. We were only planning to stay for 2 nights, but my husbands dad had to have emergency surgery (every thing is fine now), so we instead stayed 4 days. But, has we are retired, our schedule is very flexible. While we were in Mesa, we decided to pick up our daughter and our 2 granddaughters; one age 4 and the other is 5 years old. They’ll be traveling with us for a month or less depending how it goes.

We headed north to San Francisco with a stopover in Palmdale. We made reservations at the hotel Palmdale and had lunch at a restaurant located on a golf course called Cascades . Our granddaughters really enjoyed themselves when we let them chase the ducks around the pond. We had dinner served in our hotel room, where the kids got enjoyed a hot dog.

The next morning, we headed out and made a quick stop at Morgan Hill, which is about 60 miles south of San Francisco, because it was so beautiful with rolling green hills. We let our granddaughters get out of the car and run off some energy by running up and down the hills. They had so much fun rolling down these small hills, they giggled all the way down. It was so wonderful to travel with our daughter and granddaughters. Our daughter is a very loving, compassionate woman, our granddaughters are so fortunate to have her as a mother, too bad their dad wants nothing to do with them.

We made it to San Francisco and we were all stunned with it’s beauty. Before we parted ways with our daughter and granddaughters, we took a drive down the most crookedest street in the world, Lombard Street. Our daughter had made arrangements to stay with her ex-in laws so that they too can enjoy there grandchildren.

We said our goodbyes, it was so hard for me to do that, I wish they could be with us on our journey across America, but at least I think our granddaughters will have found memories of us.

Spring Training, Ducks in Palmdale and Crazy Streets is a post from: Comfort Cell

Last summer Carl suggested that we take the boys on a historic discovery tour and vacation. Generally we make our summer plans based on theme park and adventure journey contexts and to be honest most of our vacations are based on those kind of thrilling experiences that are pure commercial spectacle and entertainment. Of course we’ve also done things that are more educational or outlook enhancing such as going to Sea World in San Diego. It’s not all just outdoor sports thrill and adventure, though our boys do have a lot of energy and it’s always nice for them to get to spend it in this way. That would generally guarantee that Carl and I could have a little quiet time in the evening, which was also an important part of our own vacation. So, after a bit of deliberation we decided that the boys were definitely old enough to appreciate some of American history and we decided that booking a room in one of the Philadelphia hotels would be a great place to start.

One of our first destinations was the Academy of Natural Sciences. We decided to begin with the dinosaur exhibit because we felt like this would be a good introduction to the appreciation of history. The boys love dinosaurs and the life size Tyrannosaurus Rex was almost as thrilling for us as it was for them. We wandered through the dinosaur hall and the boys were completely intrigued the entire trip. After we finished with the dinosaurs we walked over to the live animal center which also seemed like it would hold some intriguing creatures, though of course these were live. And sure enough we and the boys had a great time there too. We compared some of the reptiles to the various dinosaur we had just scene and felt like we were getting a bit of evolutionary understanding out of it. The boys, however, seemed to be more thrilled with the idea that these were actual living dinosaurs than with noticing similarities and differences from the past. At any rate the next stop was the George Washington Carver temporary exhibit. This also turned out to be interesting to the boys and they were particularly attracted to the life size reproduction of the Jesup Wagon. Ultimately we knew our stop at the Academy of Natural Sciences was going to pave the way for a great rest of our trip.

The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia is a post from: Comfort Cell

New York gets more interesting when you are chasing something.  It’s possible to chase someone, looking for an elusive love that keeps slipping out of your grasp, but it’s better that the someone remain nameless, because people often get away, or they can be caught and you might end up finding yourself married to the mysterious entity.  Worse things happen here, and worse things can befall a person than falling in love.  But it seems as though the city is really just built for the chase, and part of the challenge here is to know what you’re looking for.

Lots of young artists come here every year, checking into a cool hotel to have a look at the city while deciding whether or not to move here.  It’s a good idea to make several trips first, because it can be difficult to gauge with just a couple visits.  The city can behave rather flirtatiously with anyone that’s considering getting close, and there are moments when it feels like this is the place where everything is possible and everything can happen.  But just like a relationship that seems so nice on the dance floor, it becomes a very different thing when it’s in the kitchen and there are dishes to be done.

Part of the allure of the city is that it does have an ability to be flexible in providing the answers to dreams for so many different kinds of dreams.  But it also rewards those who have an idea of what they are looking for, and the ones who wander are often the first to be lost.  Unlike other places, where there is some degree of aimlessness that’s appropriate and encouraged, New York embraces the sharp wits who are looking in one direction, and with great focus.  These are the ones who push the rest of the human race into changing their way of thinking about things, so that other worlds are possible.

Finding a Dream in New York City is a post from: Comfort Cell

Make certain to have a safety net. That is what the financial advisers and analysts keep saying. You hear it over and over again. In this day and age are they aware of the fact that the financial safety nets have been pulled down to buy groceries and to make car payments and to just survive? Most of the population now, is living due to fact that they at one time, had a safety net. But the safety nets for many, are pulled down now. They have been used to wrap people in the comfort of simple day to day survival . And what is a bit terrifying for many people today, is that should an emergency happen, the safety net wrapped around them, will no longer catch them when they fall. Make certain to have a safety net…really? Make certain to have in the bank, 6 months worth of living expenses…really? In economic times such as these, people are thinking that they are fortunate to have a 60 hour a week job, one that just barely covers the bills. Having a savings account is no longer a given, the term is no longer a common term in many people’s vocabulary. This is a fact that has many people worrying about the moment an emergency may happen. It’s a bit like driving an old car on the highway, smelling something burning, and turning down the radio so the focus is on the smell of the burn…and wanting to make sure that the burn smell is not coming from the car. It is a stressful way to exist. And in the case when the burn smell is actually coming from the car and not the environment, a payday loan may come in handy. Cars are necessary in many cities and in order to get to work and get that paycheck, the car must be running. A paycheck loan is sometimes an alternative to the worry caused by the preemptive thinking of what could happen. It is the safety net in the financial world we live in today. And it may be the only thing that puts out the fire of the burn that unexpected emergencies cause.

Financial Safety Nets is a post from: Comfort Cell

Things were tough at my job, so it’s not like I just up and decided to quit, but sometimes you have to walk through the open door and into what ever the next portion of your life is. In this case I had barely stepped off the plane from Salt Lake City, lawyers from one of the hottest law offices in LA joined me just as I walked out of the secure area and started talking. It felt like a million miles a minute, but it turns out that someone who knew me and knew them had told them about me and they were curious if I wanted a job. This was somehow no joke, so I told them I would have my assistant call his assistant, but I had an appointment to be at right away.

I spent the whole day thinking about it after letting Jennifer know that I needed her to set up the interview. It seemed like a long shot, moving from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles, but I knew it would be really good for me if I picked up the nerve to do it. It might even be the thing that changes my life. As it turns out, the interview was a success. He really liked me, I really liked him, and I liked the rest of the staff I had a chance to meet. It wasn’t just easy though, it was really easy. I told him part of my fear in moving to Los Angeles would be that I wouldn’t be able to find a place to live in the area, and I don’t really like to deal with traffic too much. He said he knew someone, and we figured out a time I would be able to see a little apartment down the road from the law offices .

I went back to meeting with my client again and anticipated seeing this apartment. If there was a place for me to live when I got to Los Angeles it would make me feel a lot better about making this change. It turns out when I was done and met the agent, it wasn’t such a little apartment. Actually it was a three bedroom two bathroom apartment and was so cheap that I felt like I couldn’t pass it up. I called back the law office and my boss and broke to everyone the news. That’s how I got to this place where I am about to move to Los Angeles.

Great Interview at Law Offices in LA is a post from: Comfort Cell

This is where she came in, a storm dancing on the edge of a knife, and a night balanced on the edge of a song.  She said she did not come to stay, and no one stays here for very long, because the sweetest places are also the most precarious places, and for that night I had convinced myself that I could live in her heart for just a moment.  She rains on me like a storm, she comes on like thunder, she focuses in a thousand directions at once, and complains that she cannot focus.  This is the spirit of a buffalo, and this is the way things fold in half, and then another hundred thousand times, raining like madness and desire over all the marketplaces in the world, able to make sense of wars, and sometimes even joy.

Oya-Yansan, the Yoruba deity of the wind, among other things, has made appearances in Tampa whenever she wants to be seen.  It’s very difficult to stop the wind for more than a moment, and it always turns out to be a bad idea to try and stop her.  Someone more savvy about gravity and falling might be able to hang adventure on tenuous chords, lit by the summer’s flight of imagination, but I did not imagine her at a summer hotel.  She always comes in the fall, or that’s when I first noticed her, running on the beaches in my mind’s eye, and I wanted to know her.  But the roots and the bones speak to the hardness of ourselves, and our own inabilities to know who we are while we are living in these bodies.

I was infatuated with Oya when I was just a boy, since I was a boy, and my first ghost was connected to the wind.  She flew by my window, a white sheet passing in a storm, and my mother said it was just paper and cloth blowing, and I didn’t believe her because I didn’t think these things were shaped like human heads, hearts, and hands, even in the strangest of winds.  I would fall in love with the wind later, much later, chasing it to the edges of the cemetery.  This is where I would come to understand Oya’s roughness, tasting it for the first time, and becoming enamored with the sweetness that is on the tip of the tongue when death is always so very close.

Oya in Tampa is a post from: Comfort Cell

There are places high in the mountains, low along the coast of the Atlantic and plenty of green in between to explore in the state of Georgia. The history is rich with stories of winning and loosing battles and rebuilding communities. The state is also shining with pride in these modern times as it has created such metropolises like the city of Atlanta. So let us help you find fantastic hotels of luxury in Georgia so you can plan a few stops in the state without a hitch.

In the northern part of the state, you will find some fresh mountain air at the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains. These mountains will eventually work there way up through South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The part of the mountain range that spans into Georgia had some bloody battles between the Creek Indian and the Cherokee Indian tribes and they are named Blood Mountain. There are many waterfalls and wild life to experience while hiking in this forest.

Along the coast of Georgia there are many little towns with a lot of rich history. Brunswick was named in honor of the original home of King George II. The streets still hold there original revolution  names like Albany Street for the brother of King George III and Amherst Street for a commander of the British troops, Jeffrey Amherst, during the Revolutionary War. There are some interesting museums in town that can tell you more about the area like the Hofwyl-Broadfield Plantation Historic Site. There is also an experience to be had at Jekyll Island National Historic Landmark district and the Liberty Ship Memorial. Oh, there is so much to see and so little room to write about it so get out you guide and enjoy the state of Georgia.

High and Low in Georgia is a post from: Comfort Cell

The Eastern U.S. city of Philadelphia is similar to many Eastern cities of the country, in that there is an appreciation not only of the arts and music, but of the history of those arts and that music that is shared willing and enthusiastically with all those who come to visit the city for the first time.  The hotels in Philadelphia are artistic and historical, as are the gardens, the pubs, the various art galleries and music venues.

The visual arts and the performing arts are celebrated and supported in the city, and so it is no wonder that the oldest museum of art in the country is located in the heart of the downtown Center District.  This is the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.  Their vast and varied collection spans more than a decade and holds the original treasures of such masters as the Wyeths, Thomas Eakins, Charles Wilson Peale, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Edward Hopper.  And that does not begin to scratch the surface of the works in which they house in their collection.  The building itself is a 1876 work of art, the creation of architects George Hewitt and Frank Furness.

No other building could be such a backdrop for the work that is found within its walls and hallways.  There are bronze ornamental fixtures, gold leaf trimmings and intricate and delicate carvings within the wood work.  The school and the museum was founded in 1805 and is and always has been, the epitome of style and the illustration of the finest American artists of all time.  Modern painters are represented as well such as Diebenkorn, Lichtenstein and O’Keefe.  This is not only a museum for the adults but one which offers classes on the weekends to the children of the city and to those who happen to be traveling through with their parents.  This is truly one of the gems of the country, and for those looking for a bit of history mixed with art, this is the place to attend on any trip to Philadelphia.

The Music and the Art of Philadelphia is a post from: Comfort Cell

We were going to Los Angeles first, to visit Allen, a long time friend and his wife Carey, when we got a call from Allen and he told us to pull up this hotel website http://www.hotelsburbank.com: on our Iphone, because he found us a place for the night at a Burbank hotel and this site will give us the directions. What was really great was Allen had paid for our accommodation and even the valet parking! We thought we would be staying with them, but he proceeded to tell us that since he never gave us a wedding gift, that this is his very belated present. Plus, he told us, he has no time to visit with us, so this was another way to make it up to us. After we got off the phone with him, we couldn’t help but be thrilled about staying at a great hotel for the night.

We saw our first sign for Los Angeles and the mountains in the distance, which surround the city were all telling. The highway into the city was wide, about 7 lanes and every lane was packed with cars, we were lucky to be against traffic, because the cars going the other way were almost at a standstill.

Our Iphone gave us great directions to Burbank and to our hotel. It was really nice. Our room was awesome and the beds were very comfortable. It was so close to Universal Studios, to North Hollywood, and Griffith Park. When we got to our room, Allen had them prepare a nice dinner for us in our room and a nice bottle of champagne. We really are going to have to thank him! Wow.

The next morning, we got some breakfast at the hotels restaurant, which was really very good and then we took a tour of LA and then went for lunch at a restaurant in Melrose which had some very awesome organic options on their menus. Unfortunately, our day had to end, because we had more traveling to do, our next stop is San Diego. We really hated to leave our wonderful accommodations, but the ocean was calling us.

Good Friends In Burbank is a post from: Comfort Cell

I grew up just outside of Atlanta, Georgia and as a child I can remember my grandparents taking me into the city to see a movie at the Fox Theater. They always made such a big deal about it and I always had a great time but didn’t realize what a major landmark the theater was. It dates back the early 1920s and is one of the grand movie palaces that was built during that time. Now the theater hosts the Atlanta Ballet and a number of touring shows, such as the Broadway series. I hadn’t thought about that theater in years until yesterday when I was walking up Peachtree and passed by it. In fact, I haven’t even been near Atlanta in years and happen to be back because I got a gig at the Masquerade and will play there tomorrow night.

I arrived in town a day early because I wanted to get in contact with some old friends and just kind of kick around old neighborhoods I used to hang out in. While I didn’t actually grow up in Atlanta, I was close enough that I could regularly visit my cousins who lived in the city and it was my second home. I love the Atlanta Hawks and would go to games at Philips Arena whenever I could. I was never much of a baseball fan though I did like the Braves and would follow their season. The same thing is pretty much true for the Falcons, so while I was an overall city fan basketball is my favorite sport and I have always been a passionate Hawks fan.

The Atlanta hotel that I’m staying in was around back in the day and I chose it specifically because I remember passing it so many times as a kid. I always had dreams of becoming a famous rock musician and those have sort of given way to being happy that I can make my living playing music. I wouldn’t call it having given up on my dream, it’s really more of a reality perspective. I really love the life I’m living and superstardom just isn’t what I’m looking for anymore. It’s ironic to think back now of all the things I dreamed about now that I return to the hotel that was destined to be my point of glory I realize I’m happier with the life I have than the one I dreamed about made me at the time of the dreaming.

Live Music at the Masquerade in Atlanta is a post from: Comfort Cell