[PrintOwners] Greetings from Beautiful San Diego

[Jeff Daghir]

Greetings to all my printer friends from beautiful San Diego. My wife
and I decided we deserved a long weekend away from the monsters -
excuse me, I meant to say our children - so we left the kids with my
parents and flew out here Friday. I'm writing this now from a private
balcony off of our hotel room that overlooks the bay and I'm enjoying
a nice glass of Californian Merlot while I listen to the seagulls and
the seals and watch the boats go by. It's unbelievably beautiful here.
We rented a convertible to get around and it's obvious that
convertibles were invented with San Diego in mind - the weather is
absolutely perfect. I spent Friday afternoon with Scott Cappel at shop
picking his brain and soaking up as much knowledge as possible.
Saturday we did some shopping at a large open-air mall and toured the
extensive gardens around the San Diego Zoo. Later we met with Scott
and his wife Elsa and enjoyed a long walk along the beach followed by
good food, good drinks and best of all good company at a beach side
bar. I'd like to publicly thank Scott and his wife for being such
gracious and entertaining hosts. Today we went down to another beach
and shopped and people watched for several hours. We also went out
onto the pier and waved and cheered with several hundred other people
as one the Navy's helicopter carrier ships came back into port after a
tour of duty. I'm not terribly sentimental or overly patriotic but I
have to admit it gave me a bit of lump in my throat to see that huge
ship with all of the sailors in their dress whites lined up along the
side of the ship, escorted by a couple of helicopters overhead and the
American flag flying high above it all. There was also an air show
going on and the military had some fighter jets in the air. They came
in low and slow over the crowd at a steep angle of attack and then
they hit their afterburners hard and jumped straight up into the sky.
The sound we so loud and physical you could actually feel it inside of
your body. It was loud enough that it set off several car alarms every
time they made a pass overhead. After that we took a tour of the USS
Midway aircraft carrier which has been decommissioned and turned into
a floating museum. We spent over three hours walking around that ship
and still only saw a small fraction of it. Even though it is old that
thing is HUGE! No wonder the rest of the world sits up and takes
notice when a carrier group moves into the area. I did notice one area
on board that was marked as the print shop but there wasn't any
equipment left in it, just some old photographs of sailors standing in
front of cases of type. And right across the bay was the newest
carrier in the fleet, the USS Ronald Regan. A very impressive day to
say the least. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and
tomorrow afternoon we'll have to head home.


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Jeff Daghir
MPS Printing, Inc.
"The Ink & Paper People"
Madison, IN
www.mpsprinting.com
jeff_daghir at mpsprinting.com