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Wish You Were Here . . .

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I’ve missed you! Sorry I’ve not touched base with you sooner. Allow me to explain.

Bruce and I are on vacation in Southern California. That means Kelly’s watching Webster this week, and son Josh is watching the house. (Thanks Kelly and Josh.)

Our vacation began with a few days with friends – Bruce’s childhood buddies – in Sherman Oaks, where everyone pitched in to prepare a great feast that included homemade pasta, steak, couscous, an avocado salsa and a lemon tart prepared with lemons picked from the tree outside.

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We also joined our friends and their daughter on a field trip to L.A.’s Chinatown, a place filled with old buildings occupied by restaurants and shops packed with Chinese imports: sandalwood soaps, incense, paper fans, blue-and-white dishes and flip flops. An elderly Chinese man read my palm for $20. (More about that later.)

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After L.A. we spent one night in San Diego’s Little Italy at a clean, adorable, low-frills, budget-friendly place ($89.99 a night, plus $10 for underground parking) that I’d recommend in a heartbeat: La Pensione Hotel.

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Cute, cute, cute, but small, small, small. It was ideal lodging for us since we didn’t intend to hang out a lot in our hotel room. However, we loved being able to walk out the front door and see the ocean to our right and cafes on our left. And golly, what a small world it is, after all.

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We met an artist painting a city utility box for San Diego’s public art program, who moved to the area after living 25 years guess where? Redding. I’ll write more about that later.

La Pensione also offered wireless, which was crucial so we could log onto our laptop.

Love that wireless.

That’s when the trouble began – with our computer.

Hate that trouble.

It died. Not immediately. We logged on and worked for a while before we got an error message that turned fatal. That saying about not being able to take it with you when you die does not apply to computers. When our laptop perished, it took everything with it: my skype setup (which I can download again, so that’s not a huge deal), and photos (no, we didn’t have them stored on Piccassa or Snapfish or anywhere else – yes, we know we should have) – which is a huge deal. Lesson learned. That was the bad news.

The good news was our vacation destination: Crystal Cove Beach Cottages in Newport Beach to join Jim and Darcie Gore friends/A News Cafe tech geniuses. In fact, Jim and Bruce are out shopping for a new laptop as I type (on Jim’s laptop).

In the meantime, Darcie and I have all the doors and windows open where we can watch and hear the waves. Not to overstate it, but it’s pretty much my idea of Heaven.

As soon as Bruce arrives with the new laptop and we figure out how to use it, I’ll post photos from our trip thus far.

Until then, you’ll have use your imagination: Little Italy in San Diego, Chinatown in L.A. and Crystal Cove.

I’ll be back.

Doni Chamberlain

Independent online journalist Doni Chamberlain founded A News Cafe in 2007 with her son, Joe Domke. Chamberlain holds a Bachelor's Degree in journalism from CSU, Chico. She's an award-winning newspaper opinion columnist, feature and food writer recognized by the Associated Press, the California Newspaper Publishers Association and E.W. Scripps. She's been featured and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, L.A. Times, Slate. Bloomberg News and on CNN, KQED and KPFA. She lives in Redding, California.

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