"Here's to freedom of movement and no little papers."

First of all, vacation is awesome. I really needed this.

We drove down on Monday. Yelena's dad had given her his old pocket PC with a GPS unit a while ago, and she's been using the pocket PC but we never got the GPS working. We figured it was finally time (since we were about to take a road trip) so on Sunday I futzed with it for half an hour and got it working. The thing is actually a big help, especially when you don't know where you're going. We stopped by these outlets in Cabazon (east of LA on I-10) and spent a few hours there. Yelena got some clothes for her upcoming rotations, and I got a new suit. Calvin Klein. Awesome.

Tuesday morning Yelena & I ran errands. At noon we met with her great aunt & uncle, Paul & Bess. Paul & Bess are two of the coolest people I've ever met. They're also both artistic. Bess does watercolors and pastels and Paul used to do clay sculpture. He doesn't do it much any more, but for our wedding he did a sculpture of the two of us. He made me promise him I'd take a picture and give him a print (since I got to keep the sculpture). I promised him I'd do it months ago. So I decided I couldn't show my face in their home again without that print. So while Yelena went to the dentist and got her nails done, I ran across La Mesa looking for a photo lab that could do an 8x10 print in under an hour. They're all happy to do that, the catch is they basically use an ink jet printer and fake "photo" paper. I didn't want that; I wanted a REAL print (using the real chemical process). I finally managed to find a photo lab who could do it, and I got it framed.

In the afternoon I got together with Curtis and we went to Fry's and Dave & Buster's. We played my favorite shooter arcade game, Ghost Squad, and kicked ass. We beat the game and didn't even manage to use up all our quarters. Awesome.

Then I went home and had a second dinner with Yelena's parents.  They're buying a new house and they're very excited about it.  They started talking about their apartment back in Russia, and Yelena's dad started talking about all the papers he had to carry around.  Since he was a high-level government employee working on ballistic missiles (no, really), he had a special permit that allowed him to travel almost anywhere in the Soviet Union.  (But obviously, without the permit you weren't allowed to do that.)  He had another permit that allowed him to buy food in Moscow.  (When there were food shortages in other parts of the country, people would flock to Moscow in order to get food, so the city issued permits to its residents so that only they could buy food.)  There was a second stamp on the back of his food permit, saying he had a daughter, so he was allowed an extra 250 grams of certain items (like sausage or butter).  Sam said he was glad to live in a country that lets you go wherever you want.  We toasted "to freedom of movement and no little papers."

Now we're taking off for LA.  Gonna go to Disneyland, visit a couple friends, and tomorrow we'll go to the Getty.  I've never been to Disneyland, believe it or not.

J