His name is Boogey and i wanted to bring him home with me. (Photo by Corrina Lawson)

His name is Boogey and i wanted to bring him home with me. (Photo by Corrina Lawson)

Cat Cafe

This guy was sleepy. (Photo by Corrina Lawson)

Cate Cafe San Diego

The King of the Cat Tree. He did not wish to be bothered, like many lions. 🙂 (photo by Corrina Lawson)

I’m home!

But not without 12 days of wonderful memories, of learning, of spending time with old and new friends, of the fabulous food of San Diego, and all those free drinks. (Note: When the public relations people want to woo the press at Comic Con, free booze is heavily involved.)

This visit to the Cat Cafe in San Diego came in between, on the Sunday that the national conference of the Romance Writers of America ended but before we moved into the “Dexter” house which would be our headquarters for Comic Con.

That Sunday was my first visit to a Cat Cafe and it was lovely. The first thing that was perfect is that their chai latte was suburb and at $3, cheaper than any of the local coffee/tea places. The second was the music piped into the cafe was a soothing balm for both cats and humans and just what I needed.

The cats, which are all adoptable through the Cafe’s partners, never had it so good with a room decorated to suit their needs. There was also a cat door to a backroom so they could scoot away from that annoying human interaction if desired. Of course, being cats, the bulk of them staked out their territory in that common room and, because it was mid-day, went to sleep.

Boogey, who liked ear scritches,was among two or three exceptions. (Had I not been on the other side of the county, Boogey might have come home with me.) The king of the place was the orange cat who took over the top of the cat tree and gave the side-eye (and sometimes an extended claw) to anyone who dared disturb his rest.

From there, Sunday was a whirlwind visit to the Horton Grand Hotel for brunch on their indoor patio, which also included bottomless mimosas with my fellow adventurer, Chris Merrill.  A trip to the Hotel Del Coronado with Chris and Kay Moore, who used to be a fellow moderator with me on the old cherry writing list, made the day extra special. I bought my husband new cufflinks at the Hotel, which said “Brave” and “True.”

And then we went to the Dexter AirBnB.

Chris deserves credit for that nickname, as she took one look around the place and its ceramic/cement flooring, its sparse decorations, its black and white design scheme, and pronounced it was one of those places where you could kill someone and clean it up easily. (We are writers. This is what we do. I’m sure the Dexter house will show up in a book of mine down the line.)

One complaint: the mugs were far too small for my required tea consumption in the morning. I had to pull out the travel mug given out at the Day of YA at RWA. (Thank you, Young Adult chapter of the RWA!)

We spent a lovely couple of days in quiet before our other two roommates arrived on Wednesday. Two things became clear in this quiet. One, I was so used to trying to cram all my work into just a couple of hours that when I had five or six hours available without interruption, it felt like the ultimate of luxuries. Two, I multi-task unconsciously. While I was making French Toast on Wednesday morning, I also emptied the dishwasher. Why? Because I’ve learned never to do just one thing in the kitchen or else nothing gets done. (The French Toast turned out wonderfully, Chris said. I thought so too.)

A Diana Prince drink from the Searsucker restaurant. It features hot pepper tequila. One of the few drinks I paid for. (Photo by Corrina Lawson.)

A Diana Prince drink from the Searsucker restaurant. It features hot pepper tequila. One of the few drinks I paid for. (Photo by Corrina Lawson.)

On Wednesday afternoon, Comic Con began! More on that next week.