What a great weekend, and surprisingly productive too.

As if a four-day working week following Memorial Day weekend wasn't enough slacking, I took off from work at 12.30 on Friday to go pick up Monica from the train station. Yes, I did say Monica, she made it to San Diego! Only for about 18 hours, but it was enough for her to get a taster of "sunny" San Diego, and enough to show her a little of my life here. The June gloom was in full force when she arrived, but during lunch it burned off and we got to sit in the sun for a while in the courtyard of UTC mall.

I had completely neglected to inform her of the layering rule of dressing here. It may be sunny most of the time, but the gloom and breeze make some variety of sweater a neccesity. I must remember to make this a standard part of any invite to visit me here, soomething along the lines of: "Come see me, we can go to the beach, bring a bikini, sandals, and a big fuzzy sweater!"

Eventually we got back to my place, with the slight chaos excused by my impending move (nice cover for the usual state of dissarray in my apartment). Matt wandered down and met us there. Monica got the full experience of my apartment, right down to the shower flooding itself again, this time while I was doing dishes. Got to love those interconnected drains. So we made a hasty exit and headed down to Ocean Beach to watch the sun set behind the marine layer. The rocky cove Matt discovered is fantastic, the waves make a great show splashing up against the crags, and we managed to avoid getting splashed full on until the very end. There were a few narrow escapes, but that's all part of the fun. My poor shoes are now officially dead. Two occasions of a saltwater soaking spell doom for any suede.

After we dried off somewhat we met Bob at the Cheesecake Factory, he and Monica bonded over the atkins diet, which is still a mystery to me, being allowed to eat eggs and cheese till the cows come home, but no tomatos because they've got sugar in them. Wierd.

Back to Matt's place for the night, since my bathroom was somewhat out of commission. Up at 5.45am (bless the coffee machine with a timer function) and back to the train station by 7, so Monica could go back to LA and schmooze more Democrats.

That only covers Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. After we got back from the station, we watched The Ring, Matt did a bunch of packing while I had a nap, then I went back to my apartment to find the building manager attacking my drains with a motorised snake, he got the blockage cleared apparantly, with another flood on the bathroom floor in the process. So instead of packing my kitchen I went to the laundrette to wash my towels and bathmat. It was ok though, because the laundrette had the History Channel on one of the TVs and I got to learn about how insane Ivan the Terrible really was.

The rest of the weekend was packing, until I ran out of newspaper to wrap kitchen stuff in, a short cycle up to the Antique Row Cafe for lunch on Sunday, Costco for supplies for this week, Lane Bryant, Express and DSW for (in order) jeans that FIT, more tshirts and a pair of maryjane clogs.

Oh, and Brandon and Rachel called by for a while, so we have another helper for the move next weekend.

Four more nights until we spend the first night in our place.