The Beach

Well, we've lived here in Santa Barbara for almost a month, and today we finally did it. We went to the beach. It wasn't an intentional venture-- we were taking a walk around the block and turned onto a new road, and then BAM, ocean. Only about a half mile walk. Wow. Since we were just out walking we weren't prepared to play in the sun, but we did have sandals that promoted walking up to the surf. The water was COLD. Also, there was a lot of kelp. Enough that some of the college folk brave enough to go in the water were using large chunks of the stuff in some sort of kelp war. Don't you love college?

Since the spring semester has ended, most of the student have left leaving most of the apartments/frat houses empty. I would relish in the peace and quite-- but the management companies for all these buildings are using the summer as their opportunity to renovate (read construction). So there's lot of loud equipment and loud workers to make up for the noise deficit. The fraternity next door is getting a new roof. But the old roof needed to be ripped off first. I am confident that about 90% of the old roof ended up on top of our car. So Charles moved the car over 20 feet into the corner of the lot where it would be safe from construction cast off. Then the plumbers came to fix a problem in the apartments upstairs and promptly blocked us in, and took our assigned parking spot. So there are 3 cars in the lot-- ours being blocked in, one plumber blocking us in, and the other plumber in our spot. The rest of the lot is empty. Oh well. Since we couldn't go anywhere, we decided to take a walk, and then found the Pacific. Not a bad day at all. :-)