Happy New Year’s Eve, everyone. Anyone got any good plans? I don’t have anything definite planned, and frankly, I don’t really know too many people who do. I guess everyone is over the whole “do something cool for New Year’s” thing.

Anyway, I hope you have a New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, and I’ll see you all in 2004.

Posted at 2:11 PM | (2)

I just took my car in this morning for its 15,000 mile service. It’s kinda weird to see that I’ve put that many miles on it in less than 2 years, considering that it never seems like I go anywhere!

Anyway, whenever I take my car in, I always drop it off at 7:30am and then catch the 8am bus straight to campus. Usually there winds up being quite a few people on the bus, but with the holidays, there was almost no one.

While waiting for the bus though, a mentally challenged woman came up to me and demanded to know my name. After I seemed uninterested in conversation, she walked away and then proceeded to scold her backpack on wheels. When it apparently continued to misbehave, she started to beat it, while yelling “STOP IT!!” Luckily, she wasn’t on my bus.

The last part of my adventure involved learning that the fare had increased from $1.00 to $1.25! When did this happen?!

At least I don’t need to ride the bus too often!

Posted at 8:46 AM | (2)

Why is it that every time I go bra shopping, I can never walk out with just one or two? I went into VS intending to merely replace the 2 bras I wear the most that have seen better days.

Instead, not only did I buy those two bras, but I also bought 2 more—a black one to replace the one I misplaced somewhere, and another just because I couldn’t decide which I liked better—one was super comfortable and the other gave awesome cleavage! I also bought 2 pairs of underwear just because they were cute.

*Sigh* At least everything was on sale!

Posted at 6:36 PM | (4)

It figures.

During the entire 5 nights I was at my parents’ house, I think I slept a minimum of 12 hours each night—I probably would’ve slept much more, except that my mom decided that it was wrong to sleep past 1:30pm and would come in and wake me up. I contend that I was just making up for the lack of sleep I normally get during the work week—on a good night I only get 6 hours or so anyway.

Anyway, as payback, I came back to SB last night and went to bed by 12:15am. And I lay there until almost 5am, when I think I finally fell asleep for like an hour.

Guess I’m not all “caught up” on sleep anymore! :(

I don’t feel like doing the Friday Five this week, and I don’t think I’ll have any opportunity to do Photo Friday, so I will leave you with the annual picture of my family in front of my Aunt’s Christmas tree at the large Christmas Eve family gathering.

Posted at 9:06 PM | (4)

Merry Christmas Everyone! Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday, and that you got tons of great stuff.

I had my loud and hectic holiday gathering last night, and will have a much smaller one tonight. Got some cool gifts and ate some good food. Perhaps I will post pics from my mom’s digital camera if/when she puts them on disk for me.

Fröliche Weihnachten!! Feliz Navidad!! Happy Holidays!!

Posted at 1:24 PM | (2)

EARTHQUAKE!!!

Around 11:16 am, we here in SB felt a 6.5 that was centered in San Simeon, near Hearst Castle.

Nothing bad happened here—only a minor loss of internet here in the library. They made us evacuate for about 20 minutes, but other than that, no big deal.

Most people just thought they were going through a dizzy spell, and it’s only when other people started commenting and it kept going and the walls started creaking that we knew otherwise.

So anyway, everyone is OK here in SB that I can tell. SLO and other places north are a little worse, with no power.

Anyone else feel it?

Posted at 11:48 AM | (2)

Happy First Day of Winter, everyone. About the only good things I can say about it are that Christmas is soon, and that daylight will last just a little longer each day, bringing us that much closer to the sheer seasonal perfection that is Summer.

Posted at 8:55 AM | (1)

This weekend I got a new cellphone—the Nokia 6200. My old 8390 had a bunch of bugs, which hopefully this new one won’t. My old phone used to refuse to acknowledge a signal if it was out of range too long, would freeze if I pushed the buttons too fast, and a few other quirks I can’t think of at the moment.

This new phone has a color screen, polyphonic ringtones, java games (I already downloaded Bejeweled and Q-Bert!), ability to send and receive picture messages, speaker phone, radio, and hopefully none of the aforementioned quirks! Only time will tell on that though.

I’ve gotten a new phone every year since 2001, so next year I’ll get something better—hopefully a camera phone with a bigger screen, more tones in the polyphonic ringers, more colors in the screen, etc. So far I like this new one, although I haven’t gotten any phone calls on it yet. :(

Posted at 5:56 PM | (4)

Last night I became one of the many, many people who have seen Return of the King since it came out at midnight yesterday. The Arlington was packed, as I think it is the only theater in SB showing the movie (that’ll probably change come Friday).

The showing was sold-out (so said the parking lot attendant)—which was evident by the lack of many empty seats, and the crowd yearning for scenes featuring Legolas or Gandalf kicking ass. Orlando Bloom is cute! He was cute in Pirates of the Caribbean as well, but I digress.

I went to the 7:30pm showing, which meant that I didn’t get home until after 11:00pm. It’s a very long movie, which didn’t become evident to me until it neared the end and started to wrap things up. It seemed like it could’ve ended at any of 8 different points, and just when you thought it was over, the screen would flash to another scene of tying up loose ends. I suppose that’s fine since it is a very long novel and this is the last of the movies.

Anyway, I liked it, even though I’m one of those people who have never read the books. I was a little hazy on some of the stuff going on, because I haven’t seen the other 2 movies since they were out in the theater. It’s all good though.

On a parting side note, who do you think is cuter? Aragorn or Legolas? I pick Legolas. I think the audience did too—when he came on screen all the girls were like OOOOOOOOOOOH. But when Aragorn came on…..pretty much no reaction, hehe.

Posted at 8:39 AM | (4)

Brrr!!!

The last two mornings it has been SO cold outside. I had to spend 10 minutes defrosting all the ice off my windshield. Yes, you heard me correctly—a temperate ocean town has been cold enough to leave ice everywhere.

It actually looks kinda cool (pun intended I guess!), but I am sorely unprepared for this. I don’t own anything to scrape the ice off my windshield, as it happens so infrequently. This means that I have been slightly later to work than usual, since I have to wait for the defroster to work its magic. Luckily most people seem to be on vacation and there is still plenty of parking.

Oh well, time for me to try to warm up now! :)

Posted at 8:03 AM | (3)

In an attempt to either bore my readers to death or keep myself motivated to finish my craft project (feel free to draw whichever conclusion you find most apt), I am posting the result of 1 week of stitching. Mind you, that I am watching TV while I sew, that I only do it for a few hours a night, the X’s are very small and thus the amount of work is deceiving, and that in the upper left portion of my work there is a large amount of white that didn’t show up too well on camera. LOL, basically this is me trying to justify why it doesn’t look like there is much done for a whole week of working on it! ;)

So there you have it! Doesn’t it Totally look like a Lovely Victorian House? ;)

Posted at 11:23 PM | (1)

As much as I love doing those weekly photo memes, Phototime Tuesday, Theme Thursday, and Photo Friday, it seems that I have become quite forgetful regarding them. Where I used to diligently check the site the night before or the morning of, and then take my camera with me to work to see what I could come up with, I now find myself arriving at work (like today) and immediately thinking “Dammit, I forgot to bring my camera and check this week’s theme!!”

Actually, the one I’ve forgotten to do the most is the one that I started doing first—the reason I started posting those photos. Once again I’ve forgotten to do Photo Friday.

On the good side, I think I’m still going to do it, because I have taken a lot of pictures and probably have something in my collection that fits the theme. I wonder how many people use old photos as opposed to take a new one for the theme. I’ve gotten soooo lazy—I used to start out taking a photo specifically for the theme, but lately I’ve resorted to using an old photo (albeit one I’ve never posted before) except in instances where I don’t have one that fits the theme.

Is that bad?? I wonder what the ratio is of people who take new pictures vs. people who use pre-existing photos.

Posted at 8:38 AM | (3)

Why is it that when I go to bed at a not TOO late hour, actually fall asleep right away and sleep through the entire night until my alarm goes off, that I am more tired than if I had stayed up until 3 am, tossed and turned, and woken up several times?

I went to bed at 12:30am last night, which isn’t TOO unusual for me, and yet I am sooo sleepy. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I was mid-dream when my alarm woke me up—that usually makes me more tired. Stupid dream—from what I vaguely remember, it wasn’t even that interesting!

Is it nap time yet??

Posted at 8:48 AM | (2)

I am now officially insane. On a bored whim, I decided to head to Michael’s and buy a counted cross-stitch kit. Growing up, I had completed several such projects, as well as left several incomplete. Why I decided to buy a new kit when I have at least 2 at my parents’ house still waiting to be finished, I have no idea.

To add to the insanity, I think that this project seriously involves at least 1000x more stitching than my previous projects. Will I finish it? Probably not. But if I do, I will have a real sense of accomplishment. Normally I am gung-ho on these things for awhile, and then give up when I realize that even after spending 3 hours making hundreds of little X’s, there is very little progress to be seen.

Below is a picture of what the finished product should look like:

What have I gotten myself into?!

Posted at 8:00 PM | (5)

Oh my goodness! Last quarter after I took my design classes, I wrote on the evaluation sheets that I wish they offered a class that taught PHP with MySQL. It looks like UCSB Extension has answered my wish!

Check out the brand-new Introduction to PHP class!

It seems like this class would offer pretty much everything I wanted to learn PHP and MySQL for—building a site that provides dynamic data, tracking user movement, form data, etc. You can click on the above link for the official description.

My question is….the prerequisite is a basic knowledge of SQL. Basically I’ve only looked around my MT database, used the export and import features, and a few UPDATE statements. Does anyone think I’d need more previous knowledge? I am interested in being able to maybe create my own PHP scripts for my site in the future, as well as having the knowledge to know what exactly all the elements in my site are doing. I’ve implemented several PHP scripts on my site, but I merely modified the code to function on my site—I didn’t write it.

Anyone have any opinions on this class and whether or not I should take it??

Posted at 3:51 PM | (7)

I know I already wrote about my love for the programming on TLC, but after watching many, many episodes of Trading Spaces and While You Were Out, I will present you with the two most compelling reasons to watch these fine shows…

Carter Oosterhouse—carpenter on Trading Spaces. I think he is sooooo cute and I like his personality—I would totally go on this show just so he could show me how to sand wood or use a nail gun. Plus, you gotta love a guy who’s good with his hands… :)

Evan Farmer—host of While You Were Out. Also pretty cute. Overall I think I like Carter more, but how can you not dig a chest like that?! Also a plus is that Evan plays guitar; in fact, he’s even opened for Britney Spears.

Hmm, this may be one of my girliest posts to date, but I don’t care! I’m gonna go watch some more TLC now, and you should too!! :)

Posted at 8:32 PM | (2)

Well last night I finally got the 2nd of my two report cards for the Extension Classes I took this quarter. I got a B+ in Elements of Visual Communication and an A in Internet Essentials.

The B+ isn’t too bad, actually, considering the fact that I did one of the projects half-assed, got a C+ on it, and ignored her written comment to “see her”. I would’ve been upset though if I got anything less than an A in the other class.

So anyway, I guess I’m off to an OK start. I signed up for Photoshop for next quarter, so we’ll see how that goes. This is a class I actually need and want to take because, while I’m OK at doing the basics, I could definitely use some help refining and advancing my skills with this program.

Posted at 2:08 PM | (6)