San Diego was in crisis during my trip earlier this month. For the first two days of my visit, the temperature didn’t get above the mid-50s. It was windy. At one point, there was even light rain.

I was bundled up as I walked through the snow in a pristine forest earlier this month. Kids and adults were cross-country skiing, sledding, and playing in the snow. Just an hour later, I was at a patio restaurant in a T-shirt in the warm sun looking for a table with shade.

Las Vegas, once home to all-you-can-eat buffets and gritty gambling grottos, now shoots for the stratosphere with the opening of the 67-acre CityCenter. At a cost of $8.5 billion, CityCenter is the most expensive private construction project in America.

It's not the first image that comes to mind when you think of the Middle East.

A look of shock came across the face of an Argentine woman I met while we were waiting in the subway in Buenos Aires. I had been talking to her in broken Spanish about the Bay Area’s transit system. I mentioned that it costs $1.50 to ride buses and the subway in San Francisco and even more to take BART outside of the city.

Having just sailed on her company’s Alaskan cruise with lesbian rock duo The Indigo Girls, Olivia founder and president Judy Dlugacz is preparing for another trip - this time to San Francisco Superior Court.