Number 23 and the Urinal

This has nothing to do with small business web sites or SEO, except for finding the hotel we stayed at and using Yelp to find places to eat and maybe, well, maybe this does have to do with small business web sites.

The Hotel

Last Sunday was our 23rd wedding anniversary. We drove up to Santa Barbara for a romantic interlude. I picked the hotel from Google maps, based on ratings. I’ve never liked going to new hotels because they never quite meet your expectations. This one had 4.5 stars so I hoped for the best. Their web site looked good and I’ve been known to disregard a business strictly base on their web site design.

We stayed 2 blocks from the beach, at Harbor House Inn which looked like it was built as a bunch of studio apartments in the 20′s. It could have gone either way, but when we walked into our room, we were surprised to see it had 10 foot ceilings, fresh paint, a full kitchen and a great bathroom. This place was great. We completely recommend it with no reservations, I mean, you should get a reservation if you’re coming here, but we really loved the place. We have a new favorite place to stay. The little folded ends on the toilet paper deserved a photo. We were going to save it, but in the middle of the night, I, um, didn’t.

Places To Eat

We had lunch at our favorite place in Santa Barbara, Stella Mares. It’s so romantic, we drove here for Valentines Day. If you are ever near Santa Barbara, you need to eat at this place. It’s casual and romantic and has great food and it’s the first place I had absinthe.

For dinner, we threw the dice and picked Joe’s Cafe. Notice how they don’t have a web site that comes up on the first page when you search for them? Why is that? The food was pretty good and the service was pretty good. I’d agree with the 4 star rating. Nothing to complain about and we had a good time. Cool sign any way.

Drive

We went for a drive, ended up down some cool roads outside of Lompoc. We love Lompoc. It’s a strange little city that grows flowers and has weird shops. It’s also home to the best food ever. Jalama Beach Cafe has the best hamburger in the world. Kobe beef and bacon. What else do you need? I can not say enough good things about this place. Great wine, great staff, great food. Nothing is bad here. You should take the time to drive here to eat. It’s that good. We’ve done a day drive just for this place. Yeah, it’s 2 and a half hours from home, but it’s worth it.

We explored the roads outside of town and found some very cool places. One road was one lane wide and had flowers six feet high on both sides. There were some crazy birds flying in the sky with 3 foot wingspans. We sat and watched them for a while, looking over the flowers and listening to their calls. Life is good.

We stopped at Gaviota State Beach on the way back. Very cool little hidden away beach. Also worth a visit. There’s a creek that empties out into the ocean here, under the railroad bridge, high above.

Antiques

We all know that the only reason to go anywhere, is to look at and acquire antiques. Victoria did her share of that while I sat in the truck and watched videos on my iPhone about SEO and I learned a bunch of cool new tips to try out. She had one more antique store to go check out and when we got there it was closed. Did I mention that we live in an Arts and Crafts house built in 1916? and that we love old fixtures and stuff for the house?

As we drove around the corner, there was a long, white kitchen sink laying in the street, on a hand cart, next to a white plumber’s van.

We wanted that sink.

I pulled over and Victoria went to find the owner to see if they would part with it. We’ve paid good money in the past for stuff like this.

As I was waiting for her, I slowly realized that this was not a sink, but a urinal. Hmmm… I figure it’s at least worth something for scrap metal… Victoria found the guy, but she didn’t want a urinal. I’ve had a much closer personal relationship with urinals, so I urged her to get it. The guy was going to throw it away.

It came out of an Irish pub where they wanted to get rid of it because too many people were throwing up in it and clogging it up. The plumber suggested a garbage disposal in the bottom to fix that, but now it was laying in the street, awaiting its fate. I backed the truck up and in a few minutes, it was ours. You have to admit, this was a huge romantic gesture.

If anyone wants to buy an old, used, 6 foot long urinal from an Irish Pub, send me an email. If not, then it’s going to end up as a potting table in our backyard, or a sink in our backyard, or a fishpond in our backyard, or maybe as a urinal in our backyard. Who knows?