It’s hard to believe that it’s already Tuesday and that the long weekend is already over. As far as hanging out goes, when I did any, it was with Ben and his family. Ben was out of town last week, and by the time he got back some of his family (dad, sister, brother-in-law, niece) had come in from out of town.

On Sunday afternoon though, I headed over to his place, from where his family (minus dad who was only in town for one night) and I would then head out to wine country. We got off to a bit of a late start because we had to stop to drop off some stuff that we would need for camping with his friends later that night. We hit up 3 wineries and the weather up there was so much nicer than in SB, which has been pretty gloomy every day until like 3pm when it finally burns off and turns sunny. For instance, we camped by the beach and when we got there to drop off the stuff it was super cold and gloomy, but when we came back after finishing with the wineries, it was beautiful and sunny. Of course, it got pretty cold at night though, and those few of us who were in tents instead of campers definitely felt it.

After returning to Ben’s house we dropped off the camping gear and Ben took care of some work stuff while the rest of his family went out and about. We met up with them for a late lunch/early dinner and had some drinks as well. When we finished we returned back to his place where we sat around and talked.

It was nice to meet his sister and her husband and they both seemed very nice. Hopefully they liked me as well. Anyway, I now see that this post is kinda rambly and probably like a laundry list of events, but I find that I like looking back at some point in the future and seeing what I did. Of course, if it was soley for me, I would probably put in more details to remember, but that would be even more boring. Hope everyone else had a nice weekend as well.

Posted at 8:22 PM | (1)

Sad, sad news in the entertainment world over the weekend. Charles Nelson Reilly died on Friday at the age of 76.

Those of you who have read for awhile know of my affinity for the Match Game (and of course there is the Drinking Game I made, with many of the items on the list pertaining to Charles specifically.

Though he may not have wanted to be best known for a game show, the fact is that he was one of the best things about that show, helping to make it one of the most fun game shows to watch (and probably to be a contestant on, I’m sure).

I don’t normally write about celebrity deaths or other entertainment news, but I loved watching his game show appearances so much that it really is quite sad that he is no longer around.

Posted at 8:51 AM | (1)

A few days ago I went grocery shopping and when I returned home, I threw the receipt and attached coupons on my desk. Today I decided to feed my paper shredding addiction and get rid of these useless pieces of paper. For the most part I consider the coupons that print out with your receipt pretty useless, because they are generally for the same type of item you purchased, but a different brand.

Now, for the more frugal shopper, this is probably a great opportunity to save .30 cents. However, I am not a frugal shopper. Money is not my primary object when I shop—what I like is. For instance, let’s say I am buying little frozen pizzas to eat for lunch. I will buy the ones that don’t taste like cardboard—therefore, giving me a coupon for a less edible (to me) brand of pizza is not going to help. I would rather pay more in order to somewhat enjoy my lunch. There is usually a reason behind what brand I buy, so if you’re going to give me a coupon, I would rather it be for the brands in my shopping cart.

That said, I still glanced at the coupons before I was going to resign them to their fate of being shredded into hundreds of tiny pieces. I wasn’t expecting to see anything worthwhile, BUT this time, I DID! Thanks to my favorite frozen pizzas, I got a $3.00 off my next shopping order, and thanks to the impending arrival of summer I got another coupon for $10.00 off my next shopping order. Neither one of these stipulates that you have to buy a certain brand, so how sweet is that??

To think, if I had just assumed that these pieces of paper were worthless, I would be missing out on $13, which is pretty significant savings when you consider how many normal coupons you’d have to bring in, and spend all that time comparison shopping to obtain otherwise. I guess it is true what they say about people who just assume, huh?

Posted at 5:10 PM | (2)

Because I seem to have nothing of real substance to write about lately, I present a meme, taken from Kevin.

A book that made you cry: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.

A book that scared you: I am generally a wuss when it comes to being scared, so I tend to avoid things that I know will scare me. But I was given a book of ghost stories once that I read, despite the fact that it freaked me out. I had to hide the book when I wasn’t reading it though so I wouldn’t accidentally gaze upon the scary cover.

A book that made you laugh: Hmm, I think I’ll just steal Kevin’s answer here and say Hitchhiker’s Guide. I’m sure at least part of that was the fact that I listened to the audio book read by Douglas Adams himself.

A book that disgusted you: Why would I continue to read such a thing?

A book you loved in elementary school: Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. One of the few novels I re-read several times as a kid.

A book you loved in middle school: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.

A book you loved in high school: Emma by Jane Austen. The movie, Clueless, came out not long before and it was fun to see all the ways this classic book was made into a great, fun, modern-day adaptation.

A book you hated in high school: I will say The Stranger by Albert Camus, but only because I had to take a written test on it to get into AP English and I failed! I got into the class, but only because I petitioned. Teacher loved my work after that, go figure. Maybe I’m just no good at existentialism.

A book you loved in college: Pride and Prejudice. Ok, I technically read this in High School first, but I took a College seminar on Jane Austen, so it still counts, dammit!

A book that challenged your identity: I don’t even know what this means. I don’t think I have an answer for this.

A series that you love: I don’t read too many anymore, but as a kid I loved the Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, Boxcar Children, Sweet Valley Twins, Anne of Green Gables. I guess I like Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series (at least in part because they are in a fictionalized Santa Barbara) and yes, even Harry Potter.

Your favorite horror book: My favorite horror books are ones that stay far, far away from me.

Your favorite science fiction book: I don’t generally read sci-fi. Does A Wrinkle in Time count? I loved that book as a kid.

Your favorite fantasy: Don’t generally read these either, but I’ll say Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, simply because it was probably the first one I read, and I did actually get into the concept and characters and read some of the other books in the series.

Your favorite mystery: Ooh, I actually do have a love of mysteries after taking a class on Detective Fiction. I like pretty much anything, although I do remember being quite amused reading Skin Tight by Carl Hiaasen.

Your favorite biography: I don’t really read biographies (or autobiographies).

Your favorite “coming of age” book: I dunno. I’m just gonna cop out a bit and go with the Anne of Green Gables series, because she does grow up during the books, so that must count?

Your favorite classic: Oh my goodness, how to answer! Classics are my favorite type of book. I’m going to say Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.

Your favorite romance book: Pride and Prejudice! Oh that Mr. Darcy! :)

Your favorite book not on this list: I like lots of books! I’m going to say Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte though (sorry Kev, I know you hate this one). Hmm, or I suppose I could say Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence? Would that be better?

I will end in the same manner as Kev: if you give this a shot too, post it or the link to your blog in the comments!

Posted at 4:20 PM | (1)

Well, I finished the tank top yesterday and tried it on and….well, let’s just say that without anything underneath it, it was bordering on indecent. It was like I entered a wet t-shirt contest, only I was nowhere near water.

The thought of ripping out all that work made me sad, but knowing that I would never wear it as-is, I decided to give the tank top another chance to work out. Luckily I decided the bottom portion was ok, so I only had to rip out half the work, and not start completely from scratch.

I did the whole thing in a week, doing it just nights and on the weekend, so I know I will have this done soon enough—even if I have to start over a 3rd time or something I could still have this done before my trip.

Hopefully it will turn out better this time. It would be a shame if after all this trouble I still didn’t consider it wearable. Though, at least it would be a learning experience I suppose, and I do happen to just like knitting stuff for some reason. Who knew? Most hobbies I pick up I don’t wind up doing for very long, or at least not on a consistent basis. And this one I’ve stuck with for 2 years already.

And just for Colleen, I promise to post a picture of it if it turns out suitable for all audiences. :)

Posted at 11:53 PM | (1)

For the past week, I have been working on making a cute little white tank top, which I figure will be a good addition to the clothing I plan to pack for the Hawaiian Cruise I’m going on next month with my family to celebrate my parents’ 30th wedding anniversary.

Since I normally tend to get gauge for projects, and since I was anxious to start on the project so that I could finish it in plenty of time, I decided to forgo making a sample swatch to see if my knitting was coming out to the proper dimensions.

It turns out that this tank top is quite a bit smaller than the listed measurements—however, it still kinda fits, although in a way that seems to be quite a bit more form fitting than the pictures show. I have debated ripping it all out (frogging—hence the title for you non-knitters) and starting over with larger needles or perhaps even the next size up, but part of me thinks it might be better this way. I won’t know for sure until I get far enough to see how it covers things up on top. It’s only taken me a week to get a good portion of the way done, so perhaps there is time to do it, see what happens, and go from there. The biggest concern really isn’t that it will fit, but rather how see-through it will be due to it having to stretch more to fit around me.

We’ll see. I haven’t been up to much else recently and I should have a good chunk of time this week to get it done. Speaking of things I need to get done though, I really ought to go grocery shopping and pick up the next book for book club!

Posted at 4:22 PM | (1)

Few things have struck terror in my heart like those 5 words above. I downloaded my transactions into Quicken this morning only to find that it didn’t updated my BofA accounts. The explanation given by Quicken was “Your account has been closed”.

Thinking that perhaps Quicken did not know what it was talking about, I logged on to the banking site only to find that my accounts were not listed on the main screen and that attempting to go to the Bill Pay tab informed me that I had no accounts with which to use this feature.

This freaked me out just a bit because I had used an ATM yesterday without incident. Did someone somehow get my info and close my account because of that? I have to pay rent tomorrow, what if someone stole all my money?! I was hoping for a glitch, but fearing the worst, because I have a credit card from BofA that was still listed under the accounts—it was “merely” the checking and savings accounts that were missing.

A call to customer service and some of the longest 8 minutes of my life on hold later, I found that most of their computer systems had gone down and that was indeed the reason that my accounts did not appear online. I logged in just now and see that all is again as it should be, with my accounts existing and containing their proper amounts.

But seriously, in this age where everything is electronic and one rarely physically touches the money they have, it is a bit freaky when it disappears in an instant, especially with the horrible tales of identity theft. What would I do if thousands of my hard-earned dollars suddenly disappeared? I could use credit cards, but what about when those came due?

That thought is horrifying, but luckily one I don’t have to fully realize at this moment in time—hopefully it’s one I never do.

Posted at 11:19 AM | (1)

For Mother’s Day I sent my mom and grandma flowers (though my grandma apparently moved 2 weeks ago and no one told me so I had to scramble to get the right address so they could be delivered on time), having them arrive a little early so that they could enjoy them a little before the actual day.

On Saturday morning I prepared to join Jenn at the Renn Faire near Ojai. She originally wanted to go at 9am—knowing her I expected her to be late. Sure enough, I got a text at 7am saying we’d go at 11am instead. Then at 11am another saying it would be noon. We wound up arriving at the faire around 1pm. While it was a little frustrating being kept waiting in a sense for 3 hours, it turned out to be a good thing we didn’t get there so early—the event was pretty small and there wasn’t much to do. So after a short time of walking around, looking at costumes, browsing items for sale, and eating and drinking, we left to look around “downtown” Ojai for a bit before heading back to SB.

Later that night we went to celebrate Megan’s birthday at her apartment. Ben joined me later in the evening and he along with a few others of us stayed till the very end. The birthday girl went to sleep at like 12:30am or something, when there were still a bunch of people in the living room. So people continued talking and listening to music and drinking margaritas until about 3am when the party finally broke up.

Waking up on Sunday it was time to head to El Paseo for birthday brunch at 10:30am. Our reserved table was up some stairs and sat higher than anyone else’s, making it seem more like the head table for a bridal party. It was also funny that our table was next to all of the “Mom” balloons that were decorating the restaurant, considering that we had quite possibly the only table that did not contain a single mom. The brunch was pretty good and was all you can eat/drink, the drinks consisting of things like mimosas, margaritas, and champagne. The birthday girl drank a ton of mimosas and then attempted to steal the glass pitcher that was on our table. It was pretty amusing to watch her exchange with the waiter when she announced she wanted it, especially since he later came and saw it was missing and just sorta laughed and asked us if she was always a klepto when she drinks.

To add a bit of randomness, it turns out that one of the people at the brunch, a guy Megan works with, was a housemate of mine when I lived at my old place. I thought he looked familiar but couldn’t really place him until I heard his name. I normally would remember such things, but he moved in not long before I left, and it wasn’t like I had anything to do with picking him as a housemate, so since it was several years ago, I didn’t recognize him right away. Apparently he still lives in the house and things are the same as always. It truly is a small town—making it even smaller is the fact that Megan is moving and has apparently randomly selected to live in an apartment with a girl that Jenn used to work with. This town is a little freaky sometimes.

Anyway, after all the festivities, while I didn’t have a ton to drink (unlike some people celebrating this weekend) I was still super tired and so returned from brunch around 2-something and promptly took a 4 hour nap. This weekend flew by and now I shall have to prepare myself to get back into work mode tomorrow.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend and wished your moms a Happy Mother’s Day!

Posted at 9:56 PM | (1)

Wow, is it really already Thursday? It seems like it was just the weekend, and now, it is almost upon us again.

On Tuesday night Ben and I checked out a new restaurant in Goleta, in what used to be a cafe that was seemingly only patronized by the geriatric crowd. The new place, which just opened on Sunday, is a brewhouse and as expected was full of young 20-somethings. It seems like the type of place that should do decently well, as there is nothing like it in that part of town and the food and beverages were decently priced and pretty good.

This weekend is Mother’s Day weekend, but a bunch of people up here will be spending it celebrating a birthday. Megan’s birthday is on Sunday and she has decided to do a whole weekend of festivities—dancing, party games, brunch, what have you. Should be a fun, busy weekend I think.

Posted at 6:09 PM | (1)

I didn’t end up doing anything last night, but that was ok. It’s not like I couldn’t have gone somewhere if I really wanted. I could hear the sounds of mariachi music and other various indications of nearby festivities, so I could’ve joined in, but opted not to.

Today is supposed to be a nice, hot, sunny day, so perhaps I will make the most of it and go outside in some capacity. It’s still been suuuuper windy at times lately, which is pretty crazy. I mean, I know I’ve written about it being windy here in years past (I know, I checked the archives), but it seems like it didn’t last this long or something. I dunno, just seems pretty strange.

Hmm, can’t think of much to say at the moment, so I guess on that note I will go make myself some breakfast! :)

Posted at 11:44 AM | (1)

This afternoon I attended a baby shower in Ventura for a girl I used to work with back at the UCSB Library. This is her first pregnancy and she is expecting twins—a boy and a girl. Yikes. Anyway, the shower was small but nice. It was a nice day today, so the drive along the ocean was pleasant and made me actually not want to drive as fast as I normally would.

As for celebrating Cinco de Mayo, I am not sure what I will be up to, if anything. I got a call about some party that is actually very nearby, but I’m not sure I’d know anyone except one person. I may end up getting a drink with Ben somewhere, but that has not yet been decided yet—he is supposed to give me a call a little later.

I went out last night though, and so don’t necessarily want to go to a party tonight. I guess I wouldn’t mind something low key or whatnot, but we will see. The night is still young.

Posted at 8:16 PM | (0)

So I don’t normally watch American Idol, but a certain someone has gotten me to not only watch it on occasion, but watch it LIVE (OMG, it is SO hard to watch live TV once you have a Tivo. How annoying that you can’t fast forward!). Anyway, this week has been…..BON JOVI WEEK!!

That is pretty much the coolest thing ever. I saw him in concert a few years back along with the Goo Goo Dolls, and dude, that was an awesome concert, though I am digressing just a bit. My point is that Bon Jovi was, and still is, a pretty good looking fellow (to quote a favorite sock puppet of mine from olden dot.com days of yore). I mean, if I had to do a middle-aged dude, I think he’d be top of my list (hi mom!). Plus, he’s got the whole good-guy rocker thing going for him, being that he’s still married to his high school sweetheart and all.

However, it seems that SOME *cough*Kevin*cough* people are not of the same opinion as me and find him to not be all that good looking—merely old and plasticy. So I ask you, what do you think? Bon Jovi, (still) hot or not?

Posted at 11:23 AM | (4)

Today is already the first of May—man we are fast approaching the halfway mark for 2007. In typical SB fashion, it is overcast out today, living up to the cute designation of “May Gray”, which will of course prevail next month when we have “June Gloom”. Ah, those crazy meteorologists!

I have been getting a lot of hits to my site lately from people searching for various things related to sprained ankles, bruised feet, feet turning yellow, dangers of kites, and so forth, leading me to believe that there are A LOT of people out there with mishaps like mine. It also freaks me out a little when I get hits like “bruised swollen foot won’t heal” because, what if mine never heals?! What if this person has had this problem for 8 months now! Hmm, maybe I should stop checking my referrers for awhile!

Not much new at the moment. I went to a BBQ with Ben on Sunday and spent the whole day with him, which was nice. On the drive to the location I discovered that there is a connection between the hosts and someone who belongs to my book club. Santa Barbara really is quite the small town at times, which always surprises me given that I don’t know hundreds of people or anything. But apparently it doesn’t matter, because everyone is somehow interconnected to everyone else in this place and we don’t even need Kevin Bacon OR his 6 degrees!

Posted at 12:18 PM | (3)