It’s the classic story: Girl meets Boy. Boy proposes to Girl. Girl’s outrageous Riverside family meets Boy’s Irvine power elite parents. With wedding planners running amok, budget problems and scheming aunts, will it be happily ever after?

Wait, WUT?

“Outrageous Riverside family?” is that code word for trailer trash or something?

And “Irvine power elite parents” made me snicker.  Not to diss Irvine, but when I think of Irvine, the phrase “power elite” does not come to mind.

Ah well, they’re out of Long Beach.  Should have known.

So instead of those nasty double yellow lines we’ve got dotted white ones pretty much all the way through. 

I love being able to go around the 87 year old set of grandparents (bless their hearts) who are going 62 mph on cruise control, instead of having to fume behind them for a couple of miles.

Everybody wins!

Now if only all of the HOV lanes could be like that. 

I mean, Arizona has In N’ Out carpool lanes, for chrissakes.  And when Arizona has managed to one-up us, then we know we are way behind the times.

I’ll be spending it primarily in Huntington Beach, where we will all probably freeze our asses off.

Last night we took our eight year old son to a flashlight egg hunt in Yorba Linda.

I iz old, because we certainly did not have these back in my days as a young ‘un.

My husband thinks it is a bit pathetic for 12 year olds to be still hunting for eggs (the age limit for the event went up to 14) but they actually had iPods as prizes.

As my dad said, HE would go egg hunting if it meant he might win an iPod.

So, Happy Easter to those who celebrate, and happy spring day to those who don’t!

One day I get an email saying that Metblogs is no longer, and a few days later, another email saying that there are plans to spin some sites off into their own domains, as blogging.la has done.

Now, is Orange County on the list of spinoffs?

I have no idea.

Until then, I guess I will keep on posting here until notified otherwise.

Sorry for the back and forth, I can only relay the news as I hear it.  As you can tell, there is quite a bit of behind the scenes fomenting that has been occurring and I’m fortunately not privy to all of that. 

So, let’s see if perhaps we can get back on track somehow?

Let’s start by begging Jon if he will come back.  I don’t know about you, but I think that Jon is one of the bestest writers ever on the OC Metblogs.

Hey, they say flattery will get you everywhere.

The sites are going offline, and I just wanted to pop something in your feed reader before the site went poof.

I have really enjoyed writing here at Metblogs, the last year or so notwithstanding.  I met some wonderful and not-so-wonderful people, but that is life, is it not?

If you have stuck with us so far, many thanks.  My personal blog can be found here, if you are so inclined.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Electric cars have come a long way, but one company still leads the pack when it comes to pure electric vehicles. That company is Tesla Motors.

Today, I had the opportunity to visit one of Tesla’s newest stores inNewport Beach. In a place like Orange County, where we don’t have to worry about 12 inches of snow, most of our worries are over traffic and where we left our sunglasses. Newport Beach is a great location for Tesla to have a store, right on the water, not far from Fashion Island, and close to the innovative companies headquartered nearby in Irvine. Tesla doesn’t call them dealerships, but uses the term stores, as they are more then just a place to purchase a car. They welcome the public to come and visit and to learn more about electric vehicles. Walking in to the store, you’re greeted by a clean and crisp showroom with the Tesla Roadster 2.5 and the Roadster Sport 2.5 presented in the middle. The maintenance bays are surrounded by glass and are visible from all angles (missing the noticeable stains of grease and oil that one would find in a high school auto shop). If you treat your roadster right the only time it will ever see these bays is for the once yearly check and every ten to replace the battery pack. In addition to the services at the dealer, for those of us who live busy lives, Tesla will come to you for servicing of your roadster and will work with your electric company to install a high-power wall charger (similar to a high power outlet for a dryer) for you to “top-off” your roadster with electricity.

Since one of my favorite shows is Top Gear, let’s talk numbers. The Tesla Roadster 2.5 and the Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5 both only have 12 moving parts. That’s right 12, that last line was not a typo (you can even fact check it here). I can say from a test drive that 12 moving parts was more then enough to fling my athletically-average American male body down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), slingshot it through Laguna Canyon, and then back up PCH, but more on that later. Both of the Roadsters are a marvel of modern engineering, but the third generation on display today is even better.

Right, so you want numbers, the motor kicks out the gasoline equivalent of 248 horsepower and 276 foot-pounds of torque, which powers the rear wheels via a single-speed direct-drive transmission. The Roadster Sport has 288 horsepower and 295 foot-pounds of torque. All of this equals a 0-60 time of 3.9 seconds in the Roadster and 3.7 seconds in the Roadster Sport. Trust me, it was more then enough to beat a gas-powered Lotus off the light near Fashion Island, but more on the test drive in a bit.

Both roadsters include a special system to keep the Panasonic 18650 battery pack (which contains 6,831 individual cells and are much like the type of battery found in a laptop) at a constant “room temperature” instead of using traditional air-cooled systems. Air-cooled systems may prevent an electric car from starting in extremely cold or extremely warm weather environments (so if you ever
take it up to Big Bear or to Las Vegas, the Tesla Roadster can handle it).  The Sport also has three way adjustable roll bars and a mostly carbon-fiber body, which did seem to flex occasionally on tight turns, but when you have a thousand pounds worth of batteries you have to cut weight where you can.  If a catastrophic event occurs the car will disconnect the power system immediately. Braking in the car also took me less then a minute to learn, but once you do, you’ll rarely touch the brake pedal as the Roadster captures energy while slowing to a stop.  Both Roadsters also offer various settings via a center touch-screen console to improve the range of the charge in the vehicle.

The presenters of Top Gear may have an abandoned airfield in the United Kingdom to test cars, but nothing compares to the Pacific Coast Highway and Laguna Canyon for a test drive. Top down, temperatures just two-degrees below seventy-Fahrenheit, clear skies, and very little traffic were ideal conditions to test the Roadster Sport 2.5. Before pulling out from the store, I was even given a briefing on the on-board navigation system, the sound system, and the essentials in a car: the iPod/iPhone dock and the cup holder (which is more like a foldout claw). Three minutes into my drive in the Roadster Sport, with the amplified 400–watt 7 speaker sound system playing a song by Flogging Molly from my iPhone, the inevitable happened, a person stopped to gawk. Yelling down from his Escalade he asked how I liked it. I told him so far it was great, and then he stated how he was excited to buy stock in Tesla. After basically making a stock-sale for Tesla, by just driving the roadster (no actual sale was made), I gave the Roadster Sport more juice to the rear wheels and cruised down the Newport Coast towards Laguna Beach where I rolled up the windows to hear the distinct-roar of the car. While making the bank curve downhill into Laguna Beach I decided to test the Roadster Sport out on the roads of Laguna Canyon.

Leaving the coast behind and charging inland, the flexibility of the carbon fiber paneled frame disappeared at sixty-five mph while the low frame hugged the curves of Laguna Canyon Road. After reaching the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park, I made a tight u-turn back through Laguna Canyon to PCH where the car handled the tight turn with ease and flung my body right back through the canyon.

When I mentioned that braking in a Tesla is different then a real car, it really is. In a normal car, energy is wasted when you hit the brakes and the car slows down with your foot off the gas but not
enough to stop. In the Tesla taking your foot off the gas kicks in the roadsters braking system, which captures the energy that is being spent from the motor sending it back into the battery packs, It’s not
a sudden stop, but if you plan it right you can take your foot off the gas and come to a stop for a light with only a light tap of the brakes. The energy being returned to the battery (or “regen” as it is
called by Tesla) is the energy from the cars torque and not the action of the four-wheel disc brakes.  The positive to this system is seeing the needle on the dash go from the discharge to the green charge zone as you brake showing that some power is being returned.

While Tesla only has two roadster models in production, the future for the Palo Alto based company is starting to take shape in the Model S and at the former NUMMI plant, which is now known as the Tesla
Factory. Once the Tesla factory opens it will eventually produce 20,000 vehicles. The Model S, when it enters full production, will have a 17-inch infotainment cluster with wireless Internet access allowing for connected navigation, Internet radio, and points of interest. Sedan sized with room for seven, five adults and two children. The battery pack system will be a liquid cooled, floor-mounted lithium-ion battery pack with a single speed gearbox. 3,000 reservations have already been placed for the Model S, which entered the Alpha testing phase in 2010.  With all of these improvements the base price for the Model S will start at $49,000. When it finally hits the road it will be the perfect environmentally friendly sedan, with the 0-60 time of a roadster, and a dashboard that looks straight out of Star Trek.

What was once science fiction became science fact today on the roads of Newport Beach the moment I looked up and noticed, right off the light, that the gas powered Lotus Elise in the lane next to me, was square in my rear view mirror.

I for one, although I do love me our OC shopping malls, tend to avoid shopping on Black Friday.

I have never, ever slept outside in a tent or lined up at 4AM to be among the first to get into a store.

It just isn’t that important to me. 

I think this year everyone (except the kids)  is going to get my homemade scones.  Everyone I know has pretty much everything they need, so why wrack my brain to buy them something they never knew they wanted?

I think the only time I’m going to hit a mall between now and Christmas is when I take the baby to see Santa.  Which is either going to be a lot of fun, or end up with someone in tears.  Knowing my daughter, that will most likely be Santa.

Mel Distel of the EQCA office put her own recap of the incident on Facebook Here. Clearly in the wake of the suicides of troubled gay youths in recent weeks this isn’t exactly “no hate crime committed”. In fact can someone explain to me how this is any different than if it were attached to a black man’s home? Or a nice local Temple? The actions of the police officers would have been quite different, of that I am certain.  Riding with my own local PD I know they would have treated for what it was, a hate crime.

Clearly this was meant as a way to intimidate the staff at EQCA.  So I ask you OC, did the officer act appropriately?  What should have been done differently under these circumstances?

You know, one of the few perks of being a blogger is the fact that sometimes, you get some fantastic swag, and even though many people wouldn’t necessarily consider tickets to Disneyland swag, I do. I’d take an experience at Disneyland over cereal or detergent samples any day, even if I got free cereal or detergent every month.

I was lucky enough to be invited to Mickey’s Halloween Party, this year happening at Disneyland proper rather than California Adventure, where it has been held for the past few years.

Being the traditionalist that I am, I was very happy to be at Disneyland. One of my very favorite rides at this time of year is of course the Haunted Mansion, all done up Jack Skellington style. Seriously, I could go on that ride ten times in a row and not get tired of it, or probably see everything.

I’m sure you’re thinking, but is there candy? Why yes, Virginia, there is candy! Good candy, too. Throughout the park they have trick or treating “trails” where you are able to pick up mucho sugar at stations placed about fifty or so feet apart. I have to say I preferred this to stations scattered around the park, because then you had a lot more flexibility in manuvering around. And I’m all about the manuvering, you know.

Then it was on to view the fireworks show, which has Jack Skellington, Zero, and Disney villains. It’s one of the best I’ve seen from Disney, and I’ve seen an ungodly amount of firework shows there. Although note to lady holding your (admittedly cool) balloon- don’t be surprised when someone asks you to lower it during the show, as we are all looking up to see the fireworks, not your (admittedly cool) balloon. And don’t act all put out about it, either. Sheesh.

I don’t know what it is about Disneyland and the holidays. My inner Martha Stewart, which is usually quite repressed, takes such joy in the decorations. She certainly doesn’t have anything to be impressed about at home, so she has to get her fix in at Disney.

A big hit with the men the particular night we were there were these very cool skull necklaces. When you are in the dark, it looks like a huge disembodied, talking skull is coming at you. They are only fifteen bucks, use regular batteries, and can also be used as a window decoration. Win! And of course, I bought one.

My family had a wonderful time at Mickey’s Halloween Party. You will too. I promise.

And if you happen to be a person who does not like Disney, then stay home, drink your haterade, and leave the fun to the rest of us.