Here it is, a Saturday afternoon—the last of September. Lately I haven’t thought of anything especially witty or observant to write about, and it seems that most of my recent entries have all been “hey, look, I hung out with someone!”

I AM in theory supposed to hang out with someone this weekend, and hopefully take some more pictures. Speaking of pictures, I am thinking of buying another lens for my camera. I am persuading myself this isn’t a bad expense because I am definitely getting more use out of my camera now that I have someone to share the hobby with.

In addition to it being a not-so-bad expense is the fact that my company offers a profit sharing program, and on Oct. 1 I am getting my first quarterly profit check. Woo! It’s a decent chunk of money—enough that I can ponder buying a few semi-expensive items and stuff have enough left over to put into savings or my Roth IRA. And then of course, there’s always more to come next quarter (provided we do as well or better as this last quarter). I’m also pondering buying Steve something that he really wants. Hehe I wonder how long this money is going to stick around my bank account!

Posted at 2:11 PM | (2)

3 members of my company are in Vegas today, meeting with a client. I’m SOOO jealous I didn’t get to go too, although I know at least part of the reason is the fact that I’m the only girl. If I went, they’d have to get a separate room just for me. Oh well. They aren’t there for long, and probably don’t have too much time for fun anyway.

It was amusing though. My boss called me a little while ago, and the first thing he said was “Red or Black?” I told him to put it all on black, LOL! :)

The other random thing of mention is that I can feel it getting colder. I actually had to put on some flannel pajamas so that I could work without feeling like I was cold. I know Fall just started, but sometimes it seems that Winter really is just around the corner.

Posted at 12:57 PM | (1)

This actually happened a couple days ago, but I just remembered that I didn’t post it.

So, I’m walking down the street and a bunch of cars are stopped for a red light. From one of the cars I hear some music BLASTING, like, super duper loud. I realize it is coming from the white convertible with its top down that is stopped.

Now, normally I sort of look around and try to figure out who is blasting music, whatever the genre (although, usually it seems that it is some dude trying to be all badass with his hard core rap). What caught my attention was that the youngish male in the convertible was blasting….I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith. That’s right, the Armaggedon love song.

And when I say blasting, I do mean it was very loud. And the song had just started and he didn’t turn it down or look ashamed. Maybe he thought he was performing some modern day drive-by version of Say Anything? Or, the dude’s just weird. Not that there’s anything wrong with that song—I mean, I like it and all. It’s just an interesting selection to have cranked up that loud if you’re male.

Posted at 8:37 AM | (0)

So last night I went to an event called Nights at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. It was the last one of the season (they do it every summer). It’s pretty much one of those events where all of the “beautiful people” or wanna-be-beautiful-people show up all decked out and prove they are social and cultured and stuff.

At any rate, it was actually fun. They have drinks and activities and music. Each Nights has a theme and this one was ancient Greek. I made a necklace, drew on a wall, and played some game where I won a button that said “This is the face that launched a thousand ships” (Helen of Troy reference). Despite the fact that I don’t know tons of people in this town, I recognized 4 people. I also got hit on kinda cheesily by two guys.

After that we went to a few other places, but only stayed for a decent amount of time at Velvet Jones and Tonic. While in Velvet Jones Steve called saying he was out and about as well, so I got a hold of him and he met us at Tonic, getting his roommate to come as well. For the most part they stayed sorta separate from us, I guess determined to watch us do our own thing.

It IS a rareity that I go dancing with girls—pretty much every time I’ve gone has been with guys. So, it was a bit strange to find that suddenly all these guys were coming over to dance with us. A couple were pretty persistent and stayed around for awhile. I would’ve been annoyed, but I think I drank enough to not care, and I knew I could always go find Steve if I wanted. So, I kept dancing. It was also weird that they seemed to pay a little more attention to me than my friend, as last time we went barhopping, she got all the attention.

At any rate, we danced for awhile—including up on this little stage area, and I now wonder if anyone saw my underwear, as I was wearing a skirt. Hehe, oh well. To end the night we all crashed at Steve’s, and he drove us all to work the next day—everyone showing up for work wearing exactly what they wore the day before, LOL. (Including me, but of course, I just changed when I got home and I don’t actually work with anyone, hehe).

Despite feeling a little crappy this morning, I still had a lot of fun. It’s too bad Nights is over for the year though.

Posted at 3:40 PM | (0)

Last night I met another new girl from that online ad. Since she said she was up for anything and didn’t care if it was coffee or drinks or whatever, I picked Happy Hour, because I figured most people are less shy after a few drinks.

I picked Left at Albuquerque again because as far as Happy Hours go, it is one of the better ones in town. I was running a little late because of work and the fact that I waited too long to shower and then had to rush around. At the last minute I decided to wear cuter shoes than flip flops and so grabbed a pair of socks and ran out the door.

I walked very fast to make it on time (though was still a little late) and as a result, I got some blisters on the bottom of my feet—both on the heel and on the ball. Fun stuff. Anyway, talking to the girl is fun, and while she isn’t too crazy, I think she is someone who would appreciate having someone to hang out with and going downtown occasionally, so that could be cool for me.

Speaking of downtown, I am going out again tonight with the barhopping chick. We are going to the last Nights event at the local Art Museum, and then probably getting a few drinks elsewhere when it’s done. Should be fun, I think. My biggest worry is walking. I want to look cute, but I honestly have no idea how my feet will hold up. We walked a lot last time, and I wonder how much we’ll do this time.

Guess I’ll find out. Stupid shoes. I wish the entire world only wore flip flops…

Posted at 1:46 PM | (1)

Today, a little more than a week after I dropped it off at the Auto Body shop to get fixed, I got my car back. They removed the scratches to the hood as well as some that weren’t from the flying metal object but looked like they could’ve been and it looks awesome. They also fixed my broken windshield wiper and detailed the outside of the vehicle, so that’s pretty sweet.

I’m actually kinda glad it took this long for them to finish, because over the weekend everything outdoors got totally coated in massive amounts of ash from the Los Padres fire. Of course, the fire still isn’t quite contained, so it’ll probably still get ashy, but oh well. I am kinda glad I don’t have to drive the crappy rental car anymore.

Next on my list is to finally get the cracked windshield replaced. The crack is slowly getting bigger and bigger, so I hope the VW glass stops being on national backorder soon. I just called to check, and they have to call me back. Maybe I’ll get it all done before the flying metal incident hits the 2 month mark.

Maybe…

Posted at 1:29 PM | (0)

Yesterday I met up again with Marika, the girl with whom I had already hung out twice. She just bought a new car (which unfortunately had a bunch of ash on it from a nearby forest fire, but most of it flew off upon driving) and so we drove to Leadbetter beach to get some food and take pictures.

Then, wanting to both take more pictures and have somewhere else to drive the new car, we went over to the UCSB lagoon, taking the longer way of driving down State/Hollister instead of taking the freeway, in order to maximize driving time.

It was a fun little outing, and when all was said and done we hung out for several hours before she had to go to a dinner function with her boyfriend’s family. She’s pretty cool to hang out with—perhaps because she reminds me so much of some of the friends I already had—ones who are unfortunately sort of far away.

So I did manage to have some fun this weekend and get out of the apartment, which is good. And now, here we are again at another Monday.

Posted at 8:28 AM | (1)

Earlier in the week I got an email from the girl I went to Happy Hour with last week. She was inviting me to see a local band play at a club downtown. I agreed to go, thinking it might be fun, especially since I’ve been trying to do this whole get out more often thing.

The outing was supposed to happen tonight, but when I emailed her this afternoon to see what time she wanted to meet up, she said she was sorry but had to cancel. Since she both goes to school and works full-time she wanted to get caught up, so she thought she should stay home. So, no outing for me, tonight.

Anyone got any cool weekend plans?

Posted at 10:45 PM | (1)

Last night I went to my first meeting of the book club that PF1 told me about. I knew there would be at least 3 of us because the organizer seemed determined to have a group, I knew PF1 would be there, and I intended to show.

As it turned out, there were 5 of us. When I arrived, there were only 2 of them there, and I didn’t know who they were, but they instantly recognized me as belonging to the group since I was carrying the HUGE book that was to be the topic of discussion.

We did a round of introductions—who we were, what we did, etc. and then we actually talked a bit about the book and stuff. It was fun, although I wonder if I got too English-major on them in stating what I thought about some of the events in the book and such. They all nodded and stuff, but who knows. It’s been so long since I’ve read anything, really, and ages since I’ve been involved in some sort of literary discussion.

At any rate, I thought it was fun and interesting, and all the girls seemed nice, and so we have planned to meet again in 3 weeks to discuss the final half of the book. The next meeting will take place at the house of one of the girls (the girl I already knew, PF2.)

Should be fun, I think. I do think it’s cool though to have found a book club comprised entirely of people in the same age bracket.

Posted at 11:07 AM | (0)

Yesterday afternoon I went on a second outing with PF2. Since we only live like a block from each other, we met on the corner and then walked up to State Street for some lunch. After lunch, we walked over to the Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden to take pictures with our spiffy cameras (she has a Pentax DSLR).

It was fun actually going around taking pictures with someone else. We also made it a point to take pictures of people, since that is totally the hardest thing to do in public—take candid pictures of strangers without feeling like they are going to come over and yell at you.

She took a lot more pictures than I did, in part because she utilized the continuous shot feature, which i think next time I may have to do when taking the people shots, since, people move! I did still get some good shots that I will begin posting though, so that’s cool.

PF2 was a lot more daring in her people-taking shots than I was, even taking a shot of 3 people walking towards us on the sidewalk. Surely they saw it being done, but they just kept walking on. Maybe some day I’ll be brave enough. :)

So I had fun, and at some point I think perhaps we might try other locations such as the zoo or something.

And on another note, last night I randomly decided to take another girl (what is this now, PF5 I think?) up on an offer to go to a “Star Party” put on by the Natural History Museum. You basically go and they set up a bunch of telescopes and you look at things like Jupiter, other planets/star clusters, whatever. They also showed us Pluto. Poor Pluto…

Posted at 1:16 PM | (0)

So I went out with PF4, meeting up with her at Left at Albuquerque for Happy Hour at 5:30pm. We were both running a little late, but I arrived first, and ordered a margarita while I waited (though I didn’t have to wait long).

We sat at the bar and talked, and she was really friendly. While there we ran into Steve’s roommate, which is surprising considering I didn’t know he went there, and I don’t know a TON of people, so what are the odds? At any rate, at least it made it look like I actually KNOW people, right??

After Happy Hour ended we headed over to Joe’s, but it was still a sort of in-between time of last of the family dinner crowd, but not quite time for the people who come for their drinks. We had a waiter who was perhaps slightly annoyed by us, perhaps because he sensed we wouldn’t order very much? We shared some pasta and drank some water so that we could counter any ill effects of having 2 margaritas each at Happy Hour.

Walking by Velvet Jones, we were encouraged to come in for the free comedy show that was going on, so we obliged and ordered a drink there. The first act we saw was just ok, but the last act, the guy that told us to come in, was funnier.

We then checked out some places briefly, such as Nu and Rocks, but didn’t see anything worth staying for, and so ended up at Old King’s Road, next to Joe’s. There she saw someone she knew, and got hit on by some late-20’s surfer/skater/writer/artist/jobless/living-at-home-with-parents/slacker dude. Quite the catch. But, entertaining nonetheless.

At this point it was probably around 11:15pm and I decided to call it a night. Since I had walked and Steve had called earlier to check up on me and see if I would need a ride, I called him back so he could drive me. I wasn’t drunk or anything, but I suppose a ride is better than walking by myself, right? He also gave PF4 a ride, saving her the $40 in cab fare she would’ve otherwise paid, since she lives pretty far in Goleta.

All in all it was a fun evening, and she seemed nice and like she liked hanging out with me. I think she was pleased that I stayed out with her so long and didn’t mind where we went. She sounded like she’d want to hang out again, so we’ll see.

Posted at 10:13 AM | (0)

In about an hour and a half I am going to meet Potential Friend #4 for happy hour. Hopefully this one goes well too. Of course, there is alcohol involved, which does mean I’ll be a little friendlier and chatty than normal. Just gotta remember not to overdo it, hehe.

We’ll soon see how it goes!

Happy (hour) Friday!

Posted at 4:11 PM | (0)

Yesterday my insurance claim lady finally faxed me the estimate I needed to take to the body shop so that I might actually get my windshield wiper fixed.

Today at lunch I drove over to the body shop to make sure they would honor the estimate so that the insurance could send them a check and the work could begin. It looks like I’ll be taking my car in on Monday to fix it. Yay.

Of course, I bet that that is the exact day when the glass company will call me saying they are ready to install my new windshield…

Posted at 4:55 PM | (1)

As I previously mentioned, I wound up in Whittier again this weekend. I visited with my family, had lunch with Kevin on Sunday, saw the progress on my sister’s house, and worked a little on my album.

Regarding the album, I got my pages on Dublin completed. This sounds a little more impressive than it actually is, since Dublin only consists of 4 pages (2 pages front and back). But, scrapbooking takes a lot of time! And I had to go buy white paper to put the pictures on, since the album only came with patterned pages.

I probably could’ve taken a few supplies with me, to work on the album up here, but all of the good stuff to use is the stuff my mom would miss. Besides, I don’t really have the space to work on it here. So I guess I will work on London next time I am home.

That’s about all I got. How on earth did it get to be September already, though?

Posted at 7:19 AM | (0)

Last night after work I met up with PF3 at the Coffee Cat. It’s close enough that I could walk, but I decided to take my car because I decided I’d drive down to LA this weekend and work on my Europe album and hang out with Kevin.

Anyway, we met up, and we recognized each other right away due to our descriptions. We wound up talking for like 2 1/2 hours, which I suppose is good. She just moved from Kentucky earlier this year, and she seemed nice. She was an English major too and mentioned that she loves to read, so I told her about the book club that PF1 gave me the info on. I had actually gone to the library during lunch and checked out the huge book they chose to read, so I guess that means I might be going to the club. As such, I decided, hey maybe I should get this girl involved too as a way to meet people and read stuff.

So, if that works out, there will be at least 2 people I sorta know there, and of course possibly other people. It also gives me a little more incentive to show up, since I already expressed interest to PF1 and it would kinda suck to have PF3 show up and not have the person who told her about it there.

At any rate, I am now in LA, having surprised my parents by showing up a little after 10pm. Hope everyone has a nice weekend—and for those of you in the US, enjoy the extra day off!

Posted at 12:24 PM | (0)

Last night after work I met up with Potential Friend #2 (PF2) in front of Border’s. She gave me a very good description, and I had seen a picture, so I had no trouble picking her out. We both declared we were hungry, and so we walked off in search of food.

We settled on The Habit, and talked while we ate our burgers. After we were done, we walked over to Paseo Nuevo to go see Little Miss Sunshine. Funny movie, BTW. Also reminds you just how disturbing child beauty pagents are!

After the movie, Steve had called me just as the movie had ended and I walked into the bathroom. I qiuckly tried to find my phone so that its ring wouldn’t keep echoing in the room, and just as I said “hello” the lights went out for a second. Everyone made a sort of collective “ohh” so it must’ve sounded quite strange. I told him I’d call him back. I didn’t want to be the person that chats away on their cell in the bathroom, nor did I want to ignore PF2.

At any rate, to end our “date”, we walked home (neither one of us drove. We don’t live THAT far from Paseo Nuevo and why pay $3 to park my car only a few blocks from where I live?). Besides, we both live less than a block from each other, and it’s not a very scary town, so it was fine. We talked while we walked home.

All in all it was also a good meeting. She is the youngest of the potential friends I am to meet, but she was also the one who on paper has the most in common with me. She seemed nice, and perhaps in the future we can go on some outing to take picture or something (she also bought a kick-ass DSLR a few months ago and likes to take pictures).

Tonight after work it’s off to meet Potential Friend #3.

Posted at 10:42 AM | (0)