As you can imagine, there are tons of perks to working from home, one of which is being able to wear whatever the heck you want. Including things like yellow flannel pajama pants with cute little stuffed bunnies printed on them.

The hazard of wearing such pants is when the electrician rewiring your whole apartment building needs to see inside your apartment and he and your landlord knock, and you are forced to answer the door wearing said pajama pants.

Neither my landlord nor the electrician commented or looked too appalled at my choice of attire, and I cheerily pointed out how many fire codes I’m probably breaking and how I need more plugs. The good news is I will now probably get several circuits just in this one unit! (Instead of 4 upstairs units all sharing one) I’ll get one for my fridge, one for the microwave and other kitchen stuff, and at least one for miscellaneous living space stuff. Yippee!

But, I did mention HAZARDS of working at home (note the word in its plural form). My landlord broke his leg several weeks back, and is now on crutches. Being that he’s old, he apparently can’t do things like, put on belts. And, I think he lost some weight from being immobile from the leg. So, while hobbling around on the crutches, his pants fell down! I didn’t see anything that would haunt me for the rest of my life or anything, thank goodness, so it just gets chalked up to the weird things that happen when you’re home during the day.

If I had an outside job, I would’ve missed all the fun of feeling like I’m living my own Sims game. And who doesn’t like all the wacky hijinx that ensue in The Sims?

Posted at 2:51 PM | (0)

For some random reason I have just remembered an equally random comment I made a few weeks ago, and thought I’d share.

I was in possession of Steve’s car and we were about to head out of town with it. He asked me if the car had enough gas in it to get us where we were going.

My reply?

Yes. The tank is only 1/4th empty.

He thought that made me a pessimist, since I didn’t say the tank was 3/4th full. I thought I was being optimistic in saying it wasn’t THAT empty. What do YOU think? Do you see the tank (glass) as full or empty in general?

Posted at 11:03 AM | (2)

Well, ok, I wouldn’t say I’m actually MISSING it, Bob. But I am back from my long weekend, and took today off, not knowing when exactly I’d return. So, I get an extra day of relaxing.

I had a nice Thanksgiving—a lot more people showed up than I thought would, considering my grandma’s party was just 2 weeks before. I think Steve had a nice time, considering that he doesn’t really know any of the dozens of people who showed up. He got to play with my little cousins, and they seemed to take a liking to him, hanging on to him and getting him to put them on his shoulders and stuff.

The Vegas weekend was mostly good. A few things that kinda sucked like it being extra smokey inside the casinos and me getting a huge headache and feeling all spacey on Saturday. Overall though, it was a nice long weekend with Steve—one of the longest amounts of time he’s been stuck with me, I think. Oh, and we saw Derek Jeter playing Blackjack at a table he reserved. It had been awhile since we’d seen a celebrity.

It already seems like Thanksgiving was so far away. Now I guess it’s time to get started on all that Christmas shopping. I have to buy gifts for the immediate family and then we are apparently doing another gift exchange among cousins, which is actually cool, because it sucks to watch people unwrap tons of gifts while you get none!

Well, back to not working I go! Gotta do important things like clear off my Tivo! :)

Posted at 1:58 PM | (1)

Hopefully within the next half hour Steve and I will be on our way down to my parents’ house. Tomorrow we will go to my family’s usual festivities at my aunt’s house. From there we will go on an extended Vegas trip, which involves taking Monday off! Hooray for 5 day weekends! :)

This means I may or may not have the opportunity to post again this weekend—depending on if our respective jobs call and demand some work from us. In that case, perhaps we’ll pay for some overpriced hotel internet or find a free hotspot.

Otherwise, I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, whether it’s a holiday for you or not! :)

Posted at 9:26 PM | (0)

Hey, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday this week, Tuesday is like Thursday! Anyone got any big plans for the weekend? Going to have a large feast with lots of family? A small, quiet dinner with just immediate family and/or your significant other?

Today is like, way colder than it was yesterday. Yesterday it was 80 degrees. And it’s almost December. Craziness.

Posted at 11:24 AM | (2)

Steve is out of town again and although I went out to Tonic last night with some girls, I am not doing much today. I thought about reading my book for my book club meeting, but every time I pick up the volume, I can’t seem to get very far.

Don’t you hate when you have to read a book you’re not all that into? I feel bad, cuz the girl in charge of the meeting keeps saying how much she’s been enjoying it, and here I am, after more than 2 weeks, still stuck on page 60. I have a little more than a week left to finish the 400 page book, but it remains to be seen if that will happen. I really hope the next book is more interesting, but I guess you can’t like them all, right?

Posted at 3:02 PM | (0)

Wow, it doesn’t seem like 3 days since I last posted. For some reason I thought I had posted on Sunday or something.

At any rate, I had a nice weekend, and on Sunday I got to pick up Steve at LAX. I know, “got to” sounds like “yay, I love navigating traffic in LA to get to a very large airport!”, but the traffic wasn’t TOO bad, and picking him up meant he was back!

Yesterday I got a card in the mail from him for my birthday. Ideally it would’ve arrived during the time he was away, but it was still random and unexpected, so it was cool.

Hmm, I don’t really have anything else to update right now. Just sitting here on another work day.

Posted at 11:20 AM | (0)

This weekend I am home once again because we are celebrating my Grandma’s 90th birthday. Her actual birthday is next weekend, but my family didn’t want to have a party that close to Thanksgiving.

I took over 100 pictures with my camera, and apparently I got deemed the “official” photographer (probably because I had the most professional looking camera). Geez, no pressure, huh? I did take a lot of portrait shots and I think many of them came out cute, so we’ll see. This party was cool in that pretty much all of our family was there—something of a rarity these days, as usually there are a few people who don’t come to gatherings.

Adding to the coolness is that fact that some relatives flew in from Germany to attend, and they did it as a complete surprise—NO ONE knew they were coming! Everyone was pretty excited about that, and I got to impress them with the retention of my mad German speaking skillz.

So anyway, it was a good event, and I’m sure my Grandma enjoyed having all her family and friends there, as it was a fairly large event. And of course, I got an excuse to practice using my camera on people, so that’s always a good thing. :)

Posted at 8:48 PM | (0)

Last night I met up with the same group of people I went out with on Halloween. We went out for Italian food, where I of course ordered Chicken Parmigiana. We got a bottle of wine, and since the waiters were told it was my birthday, I was brought a piece of really good, but really rich Double Chocolate Raspberry Mousse cake. We spent quite a bit of time there eating and talking, and then we took a few pictures and headed over to the apartment of the lone male in our group—the boyfriend of one of the girls in the party.

We watched a movie, The Omen, which I worried would be too scary for me, as I don’t like scary or horror type movies. But, it wasn’t really all that scary, so I guess that kinda sucks for that movie, since if I’M not scared….

Below you can see a picture of me taken from last night. I was told to hold the candle, btw, I didn’t just randomly decide to hold a flaming piece of wax. As for the civic duties part of my title, I voted today. Did you? :)

Posted at 4:16 PM | (3)

Yay, I just got to talk to Steve for almost 20 minutes in his hotel room in Paris. My work phone is set up through Vonage, and Vonage has a thing where you can call places like France, Spain, UK, and Ireland for free. So, the call didn’t cost a thing.

Now I think he is off in search of one of the gazillion Italian eateries in town. I will be doing the same tonight, as Jenn has planned for us to meet for Italian food and drinks or whatnot.

Posted at 12:57 PM | (1)

I am now 27 years old.

Posted at 8:03 AM | (6)

I came home for my birthday on Saturday, not leaving on Friday because Steve departed for Paris yesterday and I had to take him to the Santa Barbara airport.

I dropped him off and then headed back to my apartment to pack and head to LA. Right as I was about to hop on the freeway and begin my trek home, I got a call from Steve saying to come pick him up and drive him to LAX—his connection flight from SB to LA had been cancelled to due the flight attendant getting sick (It’s a small aircraft and so only one flight attendant).

So, I turned around and drove back to Goleta, picked him up, and drove him to LAX. It worked out nicely since I was going to be heading in that general direction anyway. After a few setbacks and delays, Steve did indeed finally make it to Paris. He’s never been, so it would’ve sucked if he couldn’t go—he’s been looking forward to it.

Anyway, so when I reached Whittier, I headed straight for my sister’s house since my mom was there fixing up the back house for rental and I hadn’t yet seen the main house since it got drywalled, painted, new appliances, new lighting, carpet, etc.

That night my mom and dad took me to the Cheesecake Factory, and this morning we went to brunch so that we could include my sister (she had to work last night.) Neither one of them had bought me anything for my birthday yet, so my mom gave me a check, and I guess I will wait until I am home next week to see what my sister gets me. I am making another trip home next week to celebrate my grandma’s 90th birthday.

I only have 5 1/2 hours of being 26, and it remains to be seen what I will be doing tomorrow night.

Posted at 6:30 PM | (1)

Last night I attended the meeting of my book club—we went to go watch Running With Scissors, as that was the book we had just read. Although, it wound up that only two of us showed up—me and the event organizer. We still watched the movie and enjoyed it (though the book is much better, but when is that not the case?), it just wasn’t as big of a gathering.

After that I grabbed some food and went home to change into my costume to go out again with Jenn. It wound up being just the two of us this time, and while we intended to head to Tonic, it seemed kinda dead, so we did a repeat of Q’s instead. Since it was Tuesday, it was 80s night, so that was a bonus.

We didn’t get too crazy or anything since it was a work night, but we did enjoy looking at all the costumes. There were way more people dressed up than on Saturday—I’d say ALMOST everyone was. Most were cookie-cutter type outfits, but some showed some creativity.

Anyway, since apparently some people are clamoring for a picture of me in my costume, I shall oblige.

I am supposed to be Sarah from The Craft. You can tell because I’m wearing a turtleneck, LOL.

Posted at 3:36 PM | (5)