Well, the judging for my company’s costumes and pumpkins is over. There was a decent showing this year. Three departments did themes—we had an Alice in Wonderland theme, which won best collaborative costumes, a 1950s theme complete with old records, movies, costumes, typewriters, books, etc, which won best department decorations, and the Nightmare Before Christmas, which didn’t win anything despite one woman dressed as Sally who had detachable parts of her arm and everything.

In the pumpkin category there were 6 entries this year, including mine. This is 2 more than last year, so there was a little more competition. They were all creative—one even had a little pumpkin piece carved out like a tongue and placed inside.

The overall pumpkin winner was one that was made to look like Yoda, complete with fuzzy hair. There was originally going to be only one pumpkin winner, but they decided to have multiples at the last minute. The other winners were one carved to look like William Shakespeare and………

MINE!

Since the prize was sorta scrounged up at the last minute, it consisted of one free movie pass. Cool and all, but who knows when I’ll ever use it, since you pretty much can’t use it on any new releases. I think I still have 2 other passes I’ve been trying to use but have been unable since every movie I’ve gone to see didn’t accept them.

Oh well, while I didn’t have the overall victory, I still won something!

Happy Halloween everyone!!!!

Just so people don’t think I’m dead (since I can’t think of anything to say and don’t have any blog-worthy weekend plans) I am going to put up a meme. But, since I like last week’s questions better than this week’s, I’m going to cheat a bit and do those instead. :)

Don’t Fall For It

Last night I went and picked out what will hopefully be my prize-winning carved pumpkin. I went over to Lane Farms in Goleta on my way home from work and pondered over pumpkins for over 45 minutes in the drizzly weather.

I didn’t want to wait until later in the week to get a pumpkin, as I didn’t want to have only the crappy left-overs to choose from. As is the case anyway for the most part, each pumpkin was slightly deformed in its own way. The one I chose didn’t look too hideous on the backside where it lay while growing and has a nice enough front side to show off the carving. Of course, now that I have it I think that maybe I could’ve gotten away with a smaller pumpkin. That would mean less of the gross insides to clean out; however, that would’ve required more searching and I was anxious to get out of the light mist and stop walking on muddy ground.

So now I have a big pumpkin just waiting until Sunday night to turn into a beautifully carved object. I better win—otherwise my shoes got all muddy and I will be grossed out by pumpkin guts for nothing!

Hooray, I finally got to hang out with Kevin! We did lunch yesterday before I headed back up to SB. I drove out to his place, so I finally go to see the apartment as well.

It was quite sad though. As he was telling me directions I could NOT find a good pen, and so was forced to write really hard in the hopes that I would be able to read the indents in the paper. It actually wound up working, as I didn’t get lost, and found all the appropriate streets with no problems.

It was a short visit, as he had other plans later in the afternoon, and I didn’t meet his new girl (too bad, since I’m sure she’s super cool, given how many things she has eerily in common with me), but it was still nice.

Glad we got to hang out (finally)! :)

Since Steve will be taking me to Vegas (yay!) for my birthday, I have come home to LA two weeks early to celebrate.

This morning I woke up earlier than I might have in order to go get part of my present—a haircut. It is a little sad to note that the last time I got my hair majorly cut/highlighted was almost exactly one year ago. My mom trimmed it a couple times since then, but that’s about it. Re-doing the highlights was WAAAY overdue.

The hair appointment took almost 2 hours and after that was done my mom and I went to go get my grandma and I got to see her new apartment. It’s been a little over a month since she moved out of her house and into the retirement community, and she seems to really like it there. After picking her up we drove to her house so that she could see it all finished. It really does look like a totally different place with the lighter paint, no more wallpaper, new carpet, new fixtures, and refinished hardwood floor. Oddly enough, as we were about to leave, someone stopped by to look at the house. My aunt had just posted an ad on some real estate board and I guess they found it. Lucky we happened to be there, so my mom showed them around. It would be cool if they decided to rent it because then it could all be over with quickly.

After leaving the house we went to dinner at Outback and I got the rest of my presents—some clothes from my mom and a Mr. Potato Head complete with tons of unique accessories from Disneyland. Hey don’t laugh at the Mr. Potato Head. It kicks ass. Seriously. The last time I went to California Adventure I TOTALLY almost bought one just because I was tempted by the whole “pay one price and get as many accessories as you can shove into a box.” It also didn’t help that they offered a TON of accessories, including Disney-fied objects like Minnie bow, Mickey Sorceror’s Apprentice Hat, Mickey Mouse glasses, etc. etc.

That’s about it so far. Tomorrow I’m supposed to do lunch with Kevin or something, and then I guess I’ll go back home. 2 weeks until I turn 26. Yikes.

Last night I came *this* close (insert image of thumb and index finger really close together, to indicate how close it indeed was) to playing in last night’s basketball game. However, some extra players were scrounged up at the last minute and so the team was not subjected to my lack of skill.

Not knowing this before I showed up, I was all dressed for the part. I had my hair in a ponytail, cute little pink basketball shorts, a grey tank top, and the most athletic shoes I own. I must say that I looked pretty darn cute, and I might even have fooled someone into thinking I possessed some athletic prowess!

Anyway, after the game Steve and I shot baskets for a bit, and then played Around the World. And guess what? I BEAT HIM!!!!!!!!

Ok, so we played the game 3 times and I only won the last one. And the lines I shot from *might* have been just a teeny tiny bit closer to the basket than his. But I’m sure that didn’t make a difference. :)

The other night I was picking up a few things at the grocery store and went to stand in line. I don’t normally pay much attention to what other people are buying, but the guy in front of me stood out as a bit unusual.

His entire purchase consisted of: 16 large bottles of soy milk. Nothing else. Just lots and lots of soy milk.

So now I have to wonder what he’s going to do with all of it, why he needed so much at one time, and why he bought it late at night.

Does anyone else find it a bit strange?

I occasionally do some freelance web work for a couple different people, and included as a bonus to my last payment, one of the guys I work for included a $75 gift certificate to Soho, a restaurant/music club in downtown Santa Barbara. I of course took Steve to make use of the gift.

What follows below is a somewhat long rant on our experience at this place which took place last night.

While the food was pretty decent, the service and ambiance left a little something to be desired. This restaurant provides live entertainment nightly, and last night was a Jazz band. Jazz is ok I guess, but this band was really loud and disjointed-sounding. This definitely wasn’t an atmosphere for a quiet place to talk. It was either too loud to be heard, or when they were in between songs, the other diners were so quiet that you felt you couldn’t say anything at all. The privilege of seeing this live entertainment also requires a cover charge of $12 per person.

Apparently this is the type of atmosphere where you go to dine, but mostly you go to sit and watch the band all night. I suppose this makes sense since you’ve just shelled out $12 for the honor and want to get your money’s worth, but it means that the waitresses aren’t too concerned about turning over tables in a timely manner. They took our order fairly quickly and the food was received without too much delay, but after we were done we sat there for at least 40 minutes after finishing our dessert and there was no sign of our waitress.

When she finally did reappear, she didn’t give any indication of coming with our bill, and another chick must’ve known that we wouldn’t be leaving any time soon because she refilled our water glasses several times after we were completely done eating. When the waitress finally walked by, Steve was able to ask her for the check. She asked if we paid the cover charge already, and since the guy at the front said we could just add it to our food bill, the answer “no” popped out of my mouth instantly. In hindsight I probably should’ve lied.

When she brought the bill I saw that the total came to around $82 for everything, including the cover charge. Since my gift certificate was only for $75, I also included my credit card for her to charge the difference. After being gone for quite awhile, she finally came back and told me that the gift certificate doesn’t apply to cover charges, so $58 of the certificate was applied to the total cost of the meal and tax, and the credit card was charged $24 for both cover charges.

This means that almost $17 was still remaining from my gift certificate, but they didn’t provide me with any of this balance, either in another voucher or in cash. Steve was very upset by this and wanted me to refuse to pay the charges on my credit card, walking out without signing the receipt and leaving no tip, since in theory they have $17 from us that they are withholding.

I would have preferred to discuss it with the waitress and figure out what could be done, but of course she was nowhere to be found, and I didn’t want to wait 40 minutes for her to re-emerge and then another 40 minutes for her to sort it out. I also didn’t want to essentially leave without fully paying by not signing the receipt and leaving behind a note. I suppose part of the reason I was reluctant to make this a big deal was because I didn’t pay for the gift certificate, and I am not even sure the guy I got it from paid for it. I have no way of knowing if any cash exchanged hands to buy this certificate or if it was donated for some function by the restaurant owners.

So in the end, against Steve’s inclinations, I signed the receipt and left a $6 tip, making the total I paid an even $30. Given the extra money from the certificate he didn’t want me to leave a tip either, but I felt bad doing that too. Not to mention, they now have my name and credit card number. A $6 tip was shorting her by at least $2 but her service wasn’t that great, we were made to sit and listen to music we absolutely didn’t care for—made a captive audience by the fact that we waited so long for our bill, and of course the whole situation regarding the unused portion of the gift certificate.

The dining experience turned out nothing like I had hoped or planned. I was just hoping for a nice evening with Steve in a somewhat pricey restaurant where we had never been before. Instead we both left the restaurant a little bitter, though for not entirely the same reasons. I was more upset by the issues caused by the stupid certificate and how it ruined the end of the night than by having to pay $30 to take Steve out to dinner. He was of course more upset by the principle of the restaurant not honoring the full value of the certificate and me not fighting it. But since it was my money and certificate and not his, he conceded that I could handle it however I wanted. Of course, this evening most likely would have had an entirely different outcome if he was the one with the voucher and payment.

Maybe his method for handling it would have been better, but I suppose I couldn’t bear to walk out, disputing the charges, when my name was attached to the encounter both on the certificate and on my credit card. I also didn’t want to potentially battle with the credit card company if the restaurant still ran the charges through and I decided to continue the dispute.

So in conclusion, I most definitely DO NOT recommend Soho unless you are a fan of the music, plan on staying the entire time, and do not come attempting to redeem a gift certificate. For me and Steve it was just too loud and the service too slow to make the food worth it. We will never go there again, which is too bad, because they did have a good chocolate pudding cake.

If I was really clever I’d figure out which songs I own that mention rain (since it’s raining here), but since I don’t have that kind of time at work, I am just once again listing 10 random song lyrics. Guess them if you are bored at work (or elsewhere!)

1. I wonder why you’re so moody. Is it cuz you’ve got no booty?

2. I’ve learned not to say never else I’ll seem the fool. 29 by Gin Blossoms guessed by: Steve

3. Maybe I’d impress her by being in a band, and maybe if I act real tough she’ll let me hold her hand. Wasting Time by Blink 182 guessed by: m-unit

4. All you know is when I’m with you I make you free, and swim through your veins like a fish in the sea. Follow Me by Uncle Kracker guessed by: Lisa

5. The girl in the alphabet shirt, covered in dirt, lives on the hill.

6. Take the time to get to know me. If you want me why can’t you just show me? Never There by Cake guessed by: Steve

7. I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me. Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen guessed by: Kevin

8. Good times come and good times go. I only wish the good times would last a little longer. Story of My Life by Social Distortion guessed by: Kevin

9. Why she had to go I don’t know, she wouldn’t say. Yesterday by The Beatles guessed by: Raena

10. It’s dark and I think that I would do anything for you to shine down on me.

Dammit, the stupid White Sox won the ALCS pennant. I guess that bad call back in game 2 really did make a difference. Oh well, maybe now the Sox can get their day. They are 2nd only to the Cubs in length of time since their last trip to the World Series.

Still would’ve been nice to have the Angels win again though…

Man, it sucks. For the past few days my laptop has decided not to recognize my wireless internet. Well, actually, that’s only like 9/10ths true. See, every once in awhile it’ll decide to pick up the signal for like 2 minutes before dying again.

It’s not a matter of distance—I sit on my bed, no more than 3 feet from the wireless router, and it’s never been a problem in the past.

I also don’t think it’s the router, because the wireless adapter connected to my Tivo still picks up the signal just fine. It’s just so strange though—I didn’t change any settings. I simply closed the laptop lid, putting it into sleep mode like always when I leave, and when I came home I opened the lid and connected to the internet as usual.

However, after a few minutes, the signal got a lot weaker and then, instead of picking back up, it died. It seemed to like it better if I put it in an ummoving position on my desk, but lately that doesn’t seem to work anymore.

I don’t know what’s wrong with it or how to fix it. It looks like it’s still constantly searching for a wireless connection, but all the while it’s showing a “WEP key error” message, despite the fact that I haven’t changed my password or anything. Not to mention, in the past it would pick up my neighbors’ wireless connections, and now it’s not doing that either—unless it’s during the 2 minutes it recognizes my own connection.

Anyone have any idea on what’s wrong or how to fix it? It’s a bit frustrating, to say the least.

In case you’re bored at work (not that that would ever happen, right??) here is a simple, yet so totally addictive website. I should probably also mention that some of the contents are beyond cute. In fact, I am making that a disclaimer: THE CONTENTS OF THE SITE MAY CONTAIN IMAGES OF UNBEARABLE CUTENESS. VIEW AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Kitten War

If that’s not enough for you, I present Cats in Sinks

I know I’ve shown these sites to a few people, and I can’t remember where I got them, so if they are a repeat to you, I apologize. I just randomly remembered their existence and I can’t. stop. clicking. And I’m not even much of a cat person!

So there you go, enjoy.

Well, I had a few topics I could’ve written about this weekend—none of them earth-shattering, but ones which would seem pointless to expound on in great length days after the fact. I wasn’t home much this weekend, so I didn’t get a chance to write any of these things. Instead I will just provide the “highlights”.

• The very heavy bottle of water that has been lurking outside my door since I moved into my apartment last November has been removed by Steve. He stole it to use for a runner’s gathering and sent the remainder to someone who might actually have use for such things. This saves me from having to worry about it any longer.
• On Saturday I walked to the library to pick up an audio book that was on hold for me. On the way I saw firefighters hosing down State Street with a soapy substance while Park Services looked on. Someone said they were called in to drown a large angry swarm of bees. I believe this claim has some merit as I saw several bees circling the fire truck, and also noticed that the firefighters were wearing protective material over their faces, much like a beekeeper would wear. Plus why else would Park Services be there as well?
• I did laundry, but forgot to bring my towels and dishcloths.
• Steve randomly bought me a mini calendar full of cute pictures of puppies. It will go quite nicely on the wall next to my desk here at work. The puppies are soooo cute.
• I am trying to convince Steve to buy a puppy. It would be sooooo cute. :)
• I spent the entire day on Sunday at Steve’s, which was quite nice. We did a lot of stuff.
• I assembled a piece of furniture to be used as a coffee table with his new couch. While the assembly wasn’t difficult, it took a bit of time due to all the prep work—screwing, glueing, etc.
• He also rearranged his living room, and now that it’s done, it looks quite a bit more spacious.
• We also tacked the cable cord nicely along the walls so that it won’t be in the way.
• Later on that evening I walked a mile around the college track while he ran.
• I watched the Angels v. Yankees game last night. Damn Yankees, why did they have to tie up the series? I hope the Angels win tonight—it’d be cool if they made it to the World Series again.

Last night was the first game of a 6 week basketball league that Steve joined. Well, I’m technically in the league too, because the rules required that at least one female be listed on the roster, though I will probably not see any playing time. I’m sure this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I’m not very good.

The rules also state that a female must play a couple minutes during the game or else your team starts off minus 10 points. Despite this rule, the team decided to take their chances and take the 10 point penalty. It turned out not to be much of a risk, since the final score was something like 38 to 108, meaning they totally crushed the opposition. When you consider that the other team started off with 10 points, Steve’s team actually won by 80 points. That’s really quite sad.

Of course, the other team didn’t stand a chance. They were a team formed by coworkers of some tech company—full of a bunch of short asians, an early-middle-aged has-been with a mustache who still thinks he’s all that, a super-skinny tall awkward guy, and a couple girls. Actually, their team was kinda crazy—they had like 16 people on their team, compared with 6 on ours (um, 7 if you count me though!). Their team really lacked a lot of skill, grace, and coordination—the only reason they scored as many points as they did was because our team didn’t have to play too hard to beat the other team.

So as it turns out, I totally could’ve played last night and just messed around and still totally decimated the other team. As it was, I was slated to keep score, although that unfortunately didn’t wind up happening. I had to drive back to Steve’s quickly right before the game to get an extra jersey for one of his teammates—10 miles or so roundtrip. By the time I got back, the game had already started and I had been replaced by someone else’s girlfriend.

So anyway, hopefully I’ll get to keep score next week—I hope the other girl doesn’t think she’s the new permanent scorekeeper. At the very least some of the future games should be more interesting. Some of the other teams have a few decent players, including some girls who played basketball for UCSB on scholarship.

Ok, so I have Cingular as my wireless provider and every once in awhile they send you marketing promotions via text messaging. I find these annoying and never participate in their giveaways, nor do I vote for the next American Idol (which would be difficult considering I don’t watch the show!). However, despite the opt-out message tacked on to the end, I never took the time to do so, not wanting to spend the time or money on the effort.

Today I finally decided to opt-out when I got a message saying to send as many text messages as I could in order to win $$. To opt-out, it said, send a message saying “end” to the number 3711. So I type a message saying “end” to number 3711 as specified. I then receive a message back saying “Sorry. Didn’t understand your request. If you want to stop receiving promotional text messages reply STOP.” (Their emphasis, not mine. I’m not sure if they are pointing it out to show my inability to follow proper directions or just to draw attention to the key phrase needed)

So I then reply to THAT message saying “STOP” (Done all in caps, because heaven forbid it wind up being a case-sensitive opt-out.) and get back a reply saying that my request is being processed.

Good lord though! This almost seems like a conspiracy on Cingular’s part to take as much money from you as possible before allowing you to opt-out. Thank goodness I was an ATT customer and so don’t pay for in-coming text messages or else this exchange would’ve cost me $.50 instead of $.20 (though if I were being charged I would’ve opted out long ago). Ok, so I know that it’s not a lot of money. But that really isn’t the point. I suppose the point is that their initial message was misleading and I can only hope that it was by accident and not design.

At any rate, I hope to never get those lame promotional messages again, though I’m sure the people at American Idol will be sad to lose the opportunity of having my $.10 opinion.

What do you need??

Heres what you do:
Go to google.com and type “(your name) needs” Then pick the 5 funniest ones there.

If your name is James, you would put this in to the search engine: “James needs”

You got the idea

Then copy and paste this into a new bulletin with your answers filled in

1. Jennifer Needs a cold shower - I’m sure you all needed to know that!

2. Jennifer needs not only the title of president but also the authority to … - YES, I am all about power and authority!

3. Jennifer needs to better understand Trump’s business - I suppose that WOULD help me in my quest for world domination!

4. Jennifer needs to be in a mental health facility right now - But…the voices tell me I’m OK??

5. Jennifer needs to decide which of these many important things is the very most important to her as an individual. - Not just the most important, but the VERY most important. Remember that.

BONUS: Ok, I just checked for more because I’m bored, and I apparently should’ve gone beyond the page 2 search results.

Here are a few more good ones:

Jennifer needs a better make-up artist cuz she can’t be looking messy

Jennifer needs to get the phone which has just fallen into a hole in the floor of the scary house

Jennifer needs to change sex.

Jennifer needs to take some advice from Paris Hilton

Jennifer needs to return the puppet to evidence

I don’t know what it is with drivers on certain streets in downtown SB. It seems like people drive worse on certain streets than on others. Perhaps all the one-way streets make people nervous or insane, but that’s no reason to do equally insane things to annoy or endanger other people.

When I leave my house in the morning, I must make a left turn from a one-way street onto a 2-way street. The one-way street has the right of way as the 2-way street has stop signs on both sides. Whenever there is a car stopped at the stop sign to the left of my car where I am making my turn, 99 times out of 100 (sure I could just say 1 out of 10, but my point is that this happens A LOT) the person is over the painted line on the street. I’m not even talking a little over the line…I’m talking like everything but the rear bumper is over the line. This is annoying and a little dangerous. For one thing, the car is now almost sticking out into the one-way street, so the driver going straight would have to swerve out of the way a little. But the reason that it bothers me most is because when you turn onto that street, there are lots of cars parked on the right-hand side. The driver being pulled so far out means that you have to maneuver a lot more carefully to avoid hitting them or the parked cars. ARG!

Another thing that bothered me about this street happened just the other day. The street has cars parked on both sides so you have to be a little more conscious of where your car is when another vehicle approaches from the opposite direction. You don’t want to hit the parked cars, but you don’t want to hit the oncoming vehicle either.

Well, a guy totally swerved into the middle of this somewhat narrow road the other day because he decided to turn his head to look at the girl that was walking on the sidewalk. She wasn’t even all that! She certainly wasn’t worth dying or wrecking your car over! Dude, pay attention to the road.

Gotta love downtown driving. I suppose it could be worse though…I could be driving in IV. Now THAT’S a whole other story!

Yesterday my parents came up and visited me. I think they’ve come to see me at my new place more in the 10 1/2 months I’ve been here than they did in the 3 years I resided at my former residence. Of course, this is partly because the last place was a bit awkward what with only renting out a tiny bedroom and sharing the the common areas with random housemates and the landlady. I’m sure it didn’t hurt though that they’ve been working non-stop after work and on the weekends to get my grandma’s house in shape for rental and wanted to get away from the painting and other various tasks.

We ate at Longboards, which I chose because it is on the wharf. They had never been on the wharf before, so I figured this way they’d get to see it as well as have the whole ocean view while they eat thing. While the day turned out to be decently warm, there was a bit of morning/early afternoon fog which made me wish I had brought a jacket, and also kept it from getting as hot as it was the previous days.

After that we went shopping at both Paseo Nuevo and La Cumbre, partly to pass the time, and partly so that my dad could find some new shoes for work. Overall it was a nice visit, and my mom didn’t even yell at me for the state of my bathroom and kitchen—perhaps because I just cleaned it a few weeks ago. I was hoping it would be hotter, as it gets a bit chilly in the shaded areas of State Street (which is a lot of the street, since there most of the buildings are tall enough to block the sun during the afternoon).

I hope that they had a nice time too, and it’s cool that they now come and visit ME for a change every once and awhile.

To continue the downtown experience, around 11pm I met up with Steve and two other people at Q’s for some drinks and dancing, which was also fun. I totally flung about the contents of my dresser trying to find a particular black tank top I wanted to wear (which I did eventually find, but only after most of my shirts were strewn across the floor.) It’s always hard to find the thing you are looking for when you are trying to get ready quick! Regardless, I had a nice evening.