The fog has lifted

First, a shout-out to Jenski, who has left not one, but two scintillating comments. Thank you!

And yes, the fog, the interminable fog that has hovered over San Diego since my arrival last week, finally has lifted. What a difference.

But before I get too rosy, I should start at the not-so-chipper beginning. This morning I went downtown to explore. My first stop was the San Diego Chinese History Museum, a small but plucky little museum in the historic Gaslamp Quarter. The museum itself was great: lots of antiquities and well-written captions alongside them. What followed, however, was not great.

My travel book said that a nearby coffeeshop would be good for lunch. It was not. Flies everywhere. A sticky tabletop. Loud electronica. Un-fresh food. I don't know why I didn't just leave. But I already had ordered and paid so I thought I should follow through. It seemed honorable at the time, but perhaps commitment to stranger-waitresses is qualitatively different from commitment to, say, your spouse. I certainly think there's a difference, now that I've wasted a perfectly good meal.

At any rate, I was so cranky after lunch I thought my day was ruined. But I hung in there, mostly because I didn't have many other options. By this point, the fog had lifted and the sun shone through. I walked to the harbor, where there was a boardwalk, fun little shops, and more Navy memorials than I ever have seen in one place at one time. One of those memorials was a three-story sculpture of Alfred Eisenstadt's famous photo in Times Square. Because the sculpture is so tall, you can actually look up the nurse's skirt. I don't know if that's the message we want to be sending our young people.

But like the fog, my mood was lifting. The weather was gorgeous, and I was walking off my wasted lunch. I spotted a seal swimming up close to the pier, and little kids with their families were having the run of the place. Lovely.