Got back late last night from the weekend trip to Orange County. Flew out Friday to Los Angeles and was picked up by Jeff at which point we proceeded immediately to an In & Out Burger. (In & Out started in Irvine.)

Sidebar: Found out via the LA paper that In & Out pays their starting employees $8 an hour, far above minimal wage. I’ve always thought that the In & Out employees at the place in El Sorrito (the only local joint as far as I can tell) seemed abnormally chirpy and it’s nice to know that it’s for some reason at least.

Saturday afternoon was spent inline skating on Newport Beach. Southern California beaches are exactly as you would expect from Baywatch - sunny, low surf, miles of warm golden sand, and lots of tanned, silicone-injected bodies in skimpy bathing suits - in short, the exact opposite of what you get on the NorCal beaches around here which are generally freezing as hell and only populated by die hard surfing nuts. It was fun despite having to inline skate about a hundred and twenty blocks up and down the beach on legs which hadn’t gone near skates for over a year.

The point of going to Orange County was to catch the No Doubt concert at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Saturday evening. Coworker Mike sneered at the thought, and on one point he was right - the concert was full of enthusiastic teenage girls (3 to 1 ratio, at least). What’s your point, Mike? Anyways, it was an excellent concert despite being out past the seats, and having Gwen only a few millimetres high in field of vision, with no video screens.

Sunday was rather boring - thoughts about going to Universal Studios were dashed upon waking up and finding it was past noon. Poked around the “Irvine Spectrum Center”, spending most of it in the arcade and playing pool, flew back.