This afternoon my family and I went to the Orange County Fair. We go every year—mostly just to look at the products and exhibits and eat overpriced food (seriously, $12 for a hot dog, fries and a drink. What’s up with that?!). I never buy anything so I don’t care too much about the products, but I do think it’s neat to see the things people entered in the contests and to see what won.

I like seeing the hand-made items—quilts, gingerbread houses, scrapbook pages, table settings, cake decorating, photos, etc. Some of the entries are kinda lame, but some are always completely amazing.

Anyway, in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m home for the weekend. My mom’s birthday is coming up, and this year she’s decided to celebrate it in Vegas. Soo, from Sunday through Tuesday we will be in Vegas. Knowing me, I won’t gamble too much (although my grandma gave me $30 which she insists MUST be spent on gambling), but it should still be nice.

Posted at 10:23 PM | (0)

Anybody trying to access my site for like the last day and a half probably saw the strange message saying that my site was suspended. This came as a shock to me, as I checked my site during the afternoon and all was fine, and then in the evening it was suddenly gone!

It seems that my host suspended the account due to someone hacking some sort of mail script that apparently resided on my site. According to my host, they sent out an extremely large volume of mail, and they received literally thousands of complaints. I guess some other sites were also abused in this manner, and so they had some large meeting and had to figure out what to do about it. I’m not sure what they did, but the important thing is, they restored access to my site!

Hopefully nothing like this happens again. Anyway, I’m back!

Posted at 9:39 AM | (6)

On Sunday I decided that I couldn’t take the heat and humidity inside my room anymore—it’s horrible sitting there waiting until 10:30 pm for the place to FINALLY cool off—and so went to Linens n Things to buy a $10 fan.

I had the fan on all day Sunday, and well into the late evening. Even on the lowest setting it was more than adequate at keeping me cool—as long as I was by the fan, I didn’t feel hot or sticky at all. Of course, the rest of the room felt warm, but I didn’t care much.

Now that I’ve decided to arm myself against the heat, the weather has decided to take a turn. Yesterday wasn’t nearly as bad, and today is completely overcast.

I suppose this could be like my umbrella curse—I swear that whenever I take my umbrella with me, it NEVER rains! Maybe it’s magic! Now I will have to see if the same holds true for my fan—now that it’s near my bed and plugged in, ready to go, I won’t ever need to turn it on again!

Posted at 9:12 AM | (0)

Ugh, SB is unseasonably warm right now. It’s like in the mid-80s or something, with 55% humidity (so says weather.com, due to the remnants of a hurricane). Normally I like the hot weather, but that’s because I like to be hot OUTDOORS, not indoors.

I like to go outside and be warm, and then come back inside and cool off. I can’t do that here, in a city where hardly anyone has air conditioning. I also don’t own a fan, and worry that even if I did, I’d trip the circuit breaker in the old place.

I have the windows open, but the breezes never seem to pick up until it gets dark, which is still over 5 hours away! I’m also sitting around in my underwear, since why wear clothing when I might get all sweaty (hmm, this is not as sexy as it sounds, I swear). I can only hope that the neighbors can’t see in my window! ;)

Ugh, I need a little more breeze and a little less humidity! It’s really the humidity that I hate most—I feel all sticky. (I know, I know, all you people in the South and East Coast are used to this. But in the land of the “dry heat”, no one knows how to deal!)

Posted at 3:35 PM | (1)

In case you were wondering, it’s a bad idea to perch an open container of ranch dip on the edge of your bed. Oh sure, it LOOKS like it’s safe, but then you’ll go sit on your bed and shift ever so slightly, and next thing you know, a quarter of the dip is on your carpet.

Not that that happened to me or anything. But, um, if you were wondering why walking into my room suddenly makes you crave carrots and potato chips that could be the reason…

Posted at 5:42 PM | (2)

Now that I have the iPod, I’ve been looking around to see what titles are available on audiobook. Lucky for me, more and more books have an audio counterpart. Since I’ve taken up the knitting thing, I really haven’t had any time to read a book—I’m not good enough to not look at what I’m doing. I can watch TV while knitting—since you can listen and just look up when something important is happening—but not read.

So, I’ve determined that if I’m going to “read” it might have to be in audioform. That said, I have already procured a few books. I plan on mainly listening to them at work, I think. I listened to music yesterday and had no problem completing my tasks, so I don’t think audiobook will be any different.

Now if you’ll please excuse me, I have a book to “read”.

Posted at 9:42 AM | (0)

I spent most of the day with Steve today, which was very nice. We went to breakfast downtown, then drove all the way to Costco to, among other things, buy me my new tires. Contrary to the ominous warnings of the VW service guys, my car did not explode or whatever it was they thought would happen if I didn’t get them replaced RIGHT NOW! While waiting, we walked around the store and it was interesting to see the number of people buying….HARRY POTTER! I suppose this is to be expected, since it just came out and was highly anticipated, but I swear almost half (though Steve says MAYBE 1/3) of the shoppers had a copy. For some people, that was their ONLY purchase. The demographics were a little strange too—one old guy with white hair and a mustache got into a truck with an armed forces veteran license plate frame carrying his sole purchase, the Harry Potter book.

From there we went to a computer store to get a video card, and then to Circuit City where he got himself an iPod Shuffle to take on his runs, and….HE BOUGHT ME A 60GB iPOD! I am so excited! So I am now in the process of converting all my CDs to put on there. I think my iPod is better than the one owned by that coworker who ignores me, so perhaps I can show her up!

Of course, Steve reserves the right to store some stuff on my iPod, but that’s totally fine by me! And the other cool part is, now I can have something to drown out the guy in the next cubicle who has a habit of making whisper-like sounds to himself—when he’s not whistling, that is.

Thanks Steve, you’re awesome (or should I say, You rock like an iPod full of music)!! :)

Posted at 8:00 PM | (2)

This is really one of Steve’s observations, but oh my god is it true! Last night we went out to eat, and as they do almost every time, they stuck us RIGHT NEXT to another table. There was seriously less than 2 feet of space separating us from the other people.

Why do restaurants do that? I mean, ok I understand that each server has their own section and that no one person should be stuck with a full area while another server has none. But, in this case, it doesn’t really apply. The restaurant we ate at doesn’t assign you any one server—it is a “team” atmosphere, meaning that anyone and everyone will help you. Not to mention, there are usually tables that don’t have you sitting on a stranger’s lap, but they are mysteriously kept empty.

The hostess last night faked us out by rearranging some tables in the middle of the room, creating a nice distance from surrounding tables. Of course, she didn’t seat us there. So instead I got to hear some guy talk about weird things like “mystical magicalness” (I swear to you this was an actual phrase he used).

On the fun side, we got to do a bit of people watching and observe a guy stop to chat with some girl sitting at a table with what appeared to be her boyfriend. What probably should’ve been a quick “Hey how are you, good to see you, ok talk to you later” turned into a pretty long conversation, which included her playfully hitting the guy. This was probably much to the chagrin of her boyfriend, as he kept pretty quiet and seemed overly interested in eating his pasta. Steve and I agreed it was pretty rude of both parties not to keep it short while out with other people.

Posted at 9:33 AM | (2)

The sound of a tiny bell echoed down the hallway at work just now, and the reason revealed itself…FREE ICE CREAM!!

Our HR people wheeled around a cart stacked with various types of ice cream: fudgesicles, ice cream sandwiches, even those little vanilla ice cream cups with the swirls of chocolate or strawberry—complete with the little piece of wood that passes itself off as a “spoon”.

I chose the cup of ice cream with the chocolate swirls. I can’t remember the last time I ate ice cream with one of those wooden sticks.

Anyway, it was a nice distraction. If I recall correctly, last summer had a lot of food events here, so hopefully this year will prove to be no different. :)

Posted at 3:14 PM | (4)

I’m getting a serious feeling of Groundhog Day at work lately.

There is this older man who seems to find it interesting to chat with me. He introduced himself to me at the last company-wide meeting, wondering if I was new. At that time I informed him that I had already been with the company for about 8 months.

I don’t remember his name, but ever since that meeting, he always stops to say hi whenever he sees me. This is nice and all, as there aren’t many people who talk to me much, but the nature of the conversation is starting to be, for a lack of a better word, repetitious.

He seems to be convinced that I only work part-time, and every encounter with him goes like this:

Him: So what days do you work?
Me: Every day; I work full-time.
Him: Really? It seems I only see you on Tuesdays.
Me: Well, I’m always right over there (point to my section).
Him: Yea, I’m one of the only people who didn’t have to move their desk when my section got rearranged.
Me: Oh, that’s good.

Harmless enough, right? It’s just getting weird because I have this exact conversation EVERY TIME I see him. Sure the wording may differ, but invariably he asks me what days I work and expresses surprise when I say I’m full-time, and though his section rearranged a few weeks ago and he’s told me at least 6 times, he still mentions that he didn’t have to move as though he were casually mentioning it for the first time.

I can’t figure out if he’s just forgetful and honestly doesn’t remember the content of our exchanges or if this is all the small talk he knows how to do. Some time I should try just totally changing my answers and see what he does. Like say that I don’t even work for the company, I just roam around the various departments looking for free food.

Our departments don’t intermingle too much, so I don’t know if this is how he is with everyone or if I’ve been singled out for his deja vu trip. It’s a little amusing, but a little strange at the same time. I suppose though, that it is better than pretending I don’t exist, which is what the girl next to me seems to like to do.

Posted at 11:03 AM | (5)

Last night my mom, sister, and I attended the Sound of Music sing-a-long at the Hollywood Bowl. It was the third time that my mom and I have attended, but only the second time for my sister.

Apparently this year was the 40th anniversary of the movie, so they did some extra things to celebrate. For instance, they first had the great-grandkids of the real-life Von Trapps come out and sing. Next they had the entire cast of children (now of course in their 40s and 50s) come on stage—apparently together for the first time in over 15 years.

They did all the regular things too, like the costume contest, which is cool, but seemed to take a little too long this year. To add to that, there are apparently these groups of Red Hat Ladies—they go around wearing purple shirts and red hats. It seems quite ridiculous to me, but they were everywhere! Some of them didn’t even dress up as anything but marched on stage anyway—I guess they had to have their 15 minutes of fame.

So we watched the movie and sang along. The coolest moment of the film came when the Captain sings Edelweiss—at that moment everyone took out their cell phones (including us), lit them up and waved them around in the manner of a cigarette lighter. This showing was sold out, which means there were about 18,000 people in attendance—that makes for A LOT of cell phones, and the effect was VERY cool when you turned around and looked at it.

I was quite tired when I got home, as it was an all-day event. We left around 4pm to pick up our sandwiches to eat for dinner, then drove to LA to get to our seats. The “preshow” of the singing kids and costume parade started at 6pm, and the movie started at 8pm, but had an intermission. We didn’t leave the venue until like 11:45pm and I didn’t get to bed until 1am!

Yesterday was also my parents’ 28th wedding anniversary, so tonight we are going to dinner to celebrate. After that I begin my drive back to SB.

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Posted at 1:41 PM | (1)

DAMMIT, my stupid stapler just got jammed again. If I don’t pay attention and let it get low on staples it jams. And then of course, it’s scary to remedy the problem because sharp ends of a staple are half poking out, just waiting to shoot through your fingers as soon as you attempt to either pull it out or pry open the compartment. Of course, the compartment only comes open when you pull on it with a lot of force, which always has the potential of causing the staples to fly towards your face.

Ironically, it’s a Swingline model, the favorite brand of Office Space’s Milton. And he said they weren’t supposed to bind as much.

Ok, back to trying to pry open my stapler. If you hear any screams, it’s probably just me stapling my finger…

Posted at 1:58 PM | (1)

Doesn’t it seem that sometimes marketing execs try too hard to appeal to young people? I can’t help but feel that sometimes they are trying so hard to be “hip” and “cool” (used with quotes because I’m sure the marketing team uses these terms, complete with air quotes while pitching their latest ideas).

Take McDonald’s for example. They are trying so hard to be “hip” that I feel like I am completely out of their demographic. There are commercials with country music, people rapping, and a bunch of inner-city youths. Since starting their new campaign, I have yet to see anything that I could even remotely identify with.

Another instance of advertising that sticks with me whenever I see it is for Lay’s potato chips. They use the phrase “Get your smile on”. Undoubtedly, some middle-aged exec heard someone used the phrase “get it on” or “get your groove on” or some variation of the “get…on” phrasing. Despite the fact that these phrases have been in existence for some time, like most popular slang, it is slow to reach those outside the youth demographic. Of course, this doesn’t stop the execs from using these phrases as if they were just invented—after all, the sayings are new to them!

I don’t know, it’s probably just me. No one else probably finds it odd, but I guess I just think it’s strange when I come across advertising that attempts to mimic the terminology of youth speak.

Or maybe the fact that I don’t just accept the message and instead analyze it to death means that I am no longer “hip” (if indeed I ever was!).

Posted at 8:25 PM | (5)

Happy day after the 4th of July! Of course, to my international readers, there is nothing really special about the 4th of July. For us, though, it is our Independence Day, and everyone knows what that means. Yes, another day off work! :)

I went over to Steve’s in the evening and we ate some leftover pizza, watched some Seinfeld on DVD, and waited until 9:15pm when the fireworks were scheduled to start. They did start right around when they were supposed to, so we then headed out onto his balcony to enjoy the view without the hassle of all the crowds gathered at the Wharf.

It was pretty darn cold out last night, and the wind didn’t help. The show wasn’t too long though, so we survived. During the display we were regaled by some drunk neighbors’ renditions of The Star Spangled Banner, done in a round of sorts, as it seemed no single person in that group knew the song in its entirety.

It seems that I was not the only one to take advantage of the holiday. Spammers decided to send me like 100 messages while I was away from my computer. Thank goodness they all went into comment moderation or else everyone would’ve been subjected to a lot of crap. I haven’t been hit that hard in a long time—it seems they worked extra hard this weekend—too bad they had nothing to show for it!

Anyway, Happy Tuesday everyone, and hooray for short work weeks!

Posted at 9:21 AM | (5)

My parents just left to go back to LA. They arrived around 11:30am, after hitting a tiny bit of traffic. It was nice to spend the whole day hanging out with them, and am even a little sad to see them go.

We went and had a nice, leisurely lunch, went shopping for some odds and ends for my apartment (including a screen to keep out my friend, the wasp), walked to the nearby garden with the pond full of turtles, and then continued to walk around downtown.

My mom decided that parts of my place needed a little cleaning, so she did that as an added bonus! It didn’t seem like they were here for 8 hours—time flies I guess! Anyway, I will be seeing them next weekend when I go with my mom (and sister) on our annual trek to the Sound of Music Sing-a-long! :)

Posted at 7:27 PM | (2)

For the first time since I’ve been out of college, my parents are coming up with the sole purpose of visiting me. They have come up a few times before, but there was always another reason—buy a car, move me out, move me in, etc.

I can’t blame them for not coming to visit when I was at my old place. Living with a bunch of random people, including an eccentric landlady isn’t the most appealing setting for just hanging out. So now that I live alone they’ve decided to come visit. They haven’t even seen my place all “finished”—when they last saw it, it was half moved in with a ton of boxes.

Luckily my place isn’t really big enough to have TOO much of a mess, so it’s mostly just me picking clothes up off the floor and washing some dishes. Of course, they probably aren’t even going to be in here all that long as I’m sure we will go hang out downtown somewhere.

They are only coming for the day, and probably won’t stay too late, but it’ll still be cool to have them come see me for a change! :)

Posted at 8:45 PM | (1)