Last night I met up with Claire and 5 other people to go bowling. It’s been awhile since I’ve been, so I gladly agreed to go.

We met at the bar and after eating some appetizers, getting some drinks, and having some of the people who arrived earlier finish a game of pool, we headed to the lanes, where we split up into 2 teams. We only bought an hour, which, because we weren’t doing speed bowling or anything, meant that we only got 1 3/4 games played.

I won both games, because I rock, although my scores were way lower than average—I only got a 108 as my high, and usually I can get in the 120 range (still not stellar, but better than 108!).

After the games we headed downtown to a Japanese restaurant, which I didn’t feel as awkward about because there was someone else among us who also disliked sushi and Asian food in general. It’s nice not always being the only one in a group who dislikes the stuff.

I ordered a bowl of ramen, which all told, while mostly just noodles, was still a little weird. Not sure what was in the broth, but it was a little strange, and I’m not entirely sure I liked it. It was also huge, so I didn’t come anywhere near finishing it.

After dinner we all parted ways and I headed home. It had been a few weeks since I’d seen anyone really, so it was nice to hang out—especially in a setting other than drinking and dancing downtown.

Posted at 9:26 PM | (1)

Wow, how is it that I miss so much stuff when it first comes out?

Today I happened to stumble upon a website that announces a 3-day Bahamas cruise with John Mayer in February!

Like, OH. MY. GOD. How awesome would that be? He’d be onboard and performing (along with some other people). And even though there are a lot of people, since he’s performing more than once, you are guaranteed one showing.

3 days.

John Mayer.

Bahamas.

Don’t worry Ben, I swear I wouldn’t run off with John to a little island hideaway. No, really…..why are you looking at me like that?

Posted at 1:24 PM | (3)

I do!

Today (or, well, tonight, to be more specific) is a day (night) to remember. On this date, I have completed the daily online sudoku with a time that is FASTER than the average! I swear, it normally doesn’t matter how fast I do it, I always came up like 2 minutes slower. One time I got close, completing it like 20 seconds slower than average.

But tonight I am vindicated! As proof that the sudoku is NOT always out to get me and just automatically making up a number to imply that I am slow, it told me that I completed today’s puzzle in a time of 11 minutes and 54 seconds, which is faster than the average time of 13 minutes and 45 seconds.

Woohoo!!

Posted at 11:27 PM | (0)

If you’re a knitter who reads knitting blogs or does other knitting-related things online, you’ve surely heard of Ravelry by now. It’s a knitting community site where you can join groups, set up your own profile, list the yarns you have, needles, projects to do as well as ones you’ve completed, etc. It sounds pretty cool, and though I’d heard about it awhile ago, I didn’t decide to hop on the bandwagon until mid-August.

As a result, I still have yet to be able to use the site. You see, it is still in Beta, and they are only slowly letting people in, in the order they signed up. As of this evening, there are almost 7,000 people ahead of me, which is funny to me, as it seems that every single knitter with a blog I’ve come across seems to have been a member for eons. So who are all these people in front of me?? How is it possible that everyone seems to have membership, yet there are so many unfulfilled invites?

Normally I only buy yarn one project at a time, and only work on one project at a time. However, I currently have yarn for 3 projects, which I intend to work on somewhat simultaneously. Thus, now would be a perfect time to be able to start listing things, and fill out the information a bit.

I guess I will just have to be patient. It’s probably for the best right now though, as I actually have stuff I need to work on for my job, and it would suck to be tempted to get lost in what has been called the latest “knitting crack.”

Posted at 8:04 PM | (2)

Well today is officially the first day of Autumn—and ironically, it is hotter and sunnier than some of the last days of Summer. I am sad to see the warm season go, as I do enjoy all the sun and hot weather, but at least it doesn’t get THAT cold here (well, compared to other places in the country. I will think it is cold, but I know that it could be much worse).

On the good side, with the arrival of Autumn, that means that my birthday is now only a little over a month away! And let’s not forget Halloween (hopefully I will carve a pumpkin this year) and Thanksgiving. So, there are some good things to look forward to, but for now I will mourn what will soon be the loss of the little bit of color I obtained by being outside in the warm sun. Though, hey, maybe that just means it will be super easy to dress up as a ghost for Halloween! ;)

Posted at 1:21 PM | (0)

There appears to be some water falling from the sky. They tell me it’s rain, but I really can’t be sure….it’s been so long since I’ve seen the stuff. I believe the last time it rained was in April or something, and even then we ended up being way below average for the season.

This storm is supposedly unprecedented because it has the potential to drop snow and hail and is unseasonably cold for September. So far I don’t think there’s been that much rain though—at least not downtown SB. I did hear some sirens though, so my guess is people got in accidents because they had to gawk at the rain or else forgot how to drive in it (or both).

Even though the drop in temperature meant that I had to put on some flannel pajamas and socks last night, I suppose I don’t mind if it means we get some much-needed precipitation. Besides, things always heat up again in October.

Posted at 5:28 PM | (0)

So, as most swabbies be probably aware, today be th’ annual Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I blogged about ‘t aft in 2003 an’ 2005, so I suppose, what wi’ ‘t bein’ another 2 voyages later, that I ortin’ ta mention ‘t again.

For them o’ ye nay well-versed in shipmatese, ye can check ou’ th’ followin’ amusin’ link, which can be havin’ ye speakin’ like a true shipmate in nay time! `Tis also good fer convertin’ an entire webpage, in order t’ be havin’ th’ full Talk Like a Pirate Day experience!

YARR!

Posted at 1:20 PM | (1)

Magic sunscreen though it is, it apparently DOES make me get enough color to be noticeable!

Last night I went to my book club meeting—the first one I’ve been to since June. We didn’t have a meeting in July, due to too many vacations, and I couldn’t make the one in August because of the 311 concert, so last night I made sure I attended, despite the fact that I hadn’t read any of the book.

When I arrived, the host had forgotten that the meeting was supposed to happen, and was therefore not at home. I found the other regular member on the phone with him, getting him to come back so we could have our meeting. While we stood there waiting, she remarked that I looked tan! I suppose I did get a bit of color during the camping trip, and then on Sunday I was outside at a pool for a few hours.

I think this is the first time that I’ve looked anything other than ghostly white in a loooong time. Just sad that it’s happened at pretty much the close of summer, where it will soon be too cold to be outside without bundling up. Although, at least there is usually a warm spell in October, so I guess it might not yet be the end.

Posted at 11:42 AM | (0)

This week I participated in helping to input items, as well as subsequently bidding on things for a charity auction. There were several things that I found interesting enough to bid on, and had I not been outbid for some things, I might have spent a lot more money.

I had to resist the urge to outbid someone who outbid me, simply because I didn’t like that they bid higher than my maximum! Of course, if I were to keep doing that, I would probably win all the items I wanted, but at what price? As it is, I ended up spending $6 more than the estimated value of one of the items. But, all the money goes toward a good cause, right?

I ended up with 3 items, and as it turns out, they are all food related. I was looking at the list of items and their bidders and saw that there were a few people who seemed to pretty much bid on every food item, and then I here I am, winning only food!

I won some homemade chocolate chip cookies, a breakfast for 2, and a dinner for 2. There were actually 2 different opportunities to win the breakfast, and Ben actually won the other one, so it looks like we will be going out to breakfast a few times (as well as dinner) in the near future! Both breakfast and dinner are at restaurants that I have not yet been to, so it will be nice to get to try new places (although Ben has been to both, so it won’t be new for him. But then, I think he’s been to most places around town, whereas I pretty much only seemed to frequent the same 3 places. I would like to change that, however, since there are so many places to try.)

Posted at 11:55 PM | (0)

Via Cephyn and from Book-A-Rama:

Here are the rules.

Go to the advanced book search on Amazon, type your first name into the Title field, and post the most interesting/amusing cover that shows up.

Posted at 6:10 PM | (1)

For the past couple weeks I have been getting calls to my cell phone from an 877 number. If I answered, it would click and disconnect me almost immediately, so I just resorted to sending it straight to voicemail. They wouldn’t call daily—usually every couple days, and usually at odd late hours like 8:30pm. I googled the phone number and discovered that other people have been harrassed by this number as well, and that it seemed to belong to a credit agency who acted somewhat shadily toward people who dialed the number displayed on their Caller ID to see who it was and who were actually able to obtain a live person.

So, I lamented that I would probably be harrassed indefinitely, but that at least it wasn’t too often. It wasn’t annoying enough to consider changing my number—especially considering that since I have no credit problems and there’s no reason for this company to contact me, that they probably randomly had my number in their system, and might also possibly randomly have any new number I might get in their system too. Since any new number I would get would’ve been previously owned by someone else, there’s no knowing what kind of people have that number.

But last night when I got the call again (yes, they apparently also call on weekends), I decided to answer by saying “Hola” instead of “Hello” and was then greeted with a prompt to wait to be connected to a representative. No idea if it was the language thing or just coincidence, but it was the first time I heard this message. So, I waited, so that I could hopefully put a stop to it. When the person came on, they decided to forgo any social courtesies like “hello” or “good day” “or may I speak with” and simply pronounced the name they were looking for.

Who were they looking for? That lovable scamp, Dennis Hughes, who owned my number YEARS ago, and who either hasn’t properly updated all records, or else uses his old number on purpose on things where he doesn’t want to get harrassed. I thought I had heard the last of him a long time ago, but I guess I was wrong. Still, the fact that I was able to tell the lady “sorry, he hasn’t had this number for years” makes me hopeful that I at least got this cell phone number crossed off one more collections-type agency. Down with shady people!

Posted at 1:51 PM | (2)

So I hadn’t been inside my apartment for over a week, and last night was the first night I’ve set foot inside. A few things were different upon my arrival.

For one thing, I noticed that the tenant directly below me had moved out. He had lived here for maybe a month at the most, but since he left while I was gone, I’m not sure of the reason. I guess either he really hated the apartment or he got evicted for some reason, because why else would you want to move right after unpacking? I am kinda glad that he is gone though, because he liked to have his sound system on SUPER loud with the bass cranked all the way up to watch movies and listen to music. It’ll be nice not to hear the boom of bass every evening anymore.

The other thing I noticed was that this full roll of toilet paper I have had a small, perfectly circular hole in the tissue. I thought that maybe something had pressed against it or something, but I decided to investigate further by pressing on the tissue to see if I could determine if anything was in there.

Was there anything in there? Yes.

Suddenly I was confronted with some squirming legs and then this large insect (any insect larger than an ant is too large) with a black torso and red head crawled out! It crawled onto my floor and then I killed it. But no, it didn’t end there. The hole still looked like something else was in there, so I pressed down and saw something else squirming in there. TWO bugs in this same hole! At that point, I immediately tossed the barely used roll into the trash and I am now going to pray that I don’t have some hidden infestation of giant creepy crawly bugs! *Shudder*

Posted at 1:56 PM | (1)

Last night I arrived back in Santa Barbara, but not before making a stop at my parents’ house. You see, they had not yet met Ben, and I think my mom felt left out because I had already met both of his parents.

Since our house is (sorta) on the way from OC to SB, I convinced Ben to make the stop so that my mom would no longer ask me when we were coming to visit. It was almost like a bit of an ambush, with even my sister coming over just for the occasion, but I think it was ok. My mom made my favorite foods for the occasion, and when we were done, we headed on our way. And now, since it is still a weekday, it is time for me to work.

Posted at 8:13 AM | (2)

Well, I made it back from the 4 day camping excursion. It was pretty hot at the camp site during the day (no not in the 100’s like some places in Southern California, but probably in the 80’s or 90’s)—especially when you consider that there wasn’t a lot of shade to be had at the site and the tents were miserable to be in until it got dark. As a result, we spent pretty much the whole day every day at the beach. We even brought a little grill down to the beach one day and cooked up some lunch.

Most people (there were 8 of us on this trip) got quite a bit of color—except for me, because I have the most magical sunblock ever invented. I do have a tan line, but considering that I was out in the sun and water from like 10am to 6pm or something on multiple days, it’s pretty impressive how much I still look like I’ve been lounging indoors.

We had fun in the water, and I got a super mini surf lesson from Ben, in which I merely lay on the board and rode it back to shore—didn’t make it past that, since I didn’t want to attempt to stand up when the board felt all wobbly underneath me. Boogie boards are more my speed I think.

We also made these guns out of PVC that could shoot tiny marshmallows. Since there were a couple kids on the camping excusion, they loved this idea. Many marshmallows were shot, and many many marshmallows were found stuck to people and things once the kids found out that if they put the marshmallows in their mouths first, they would be sticky enough to adhere to their targets.

I think all the people I met liked me, and I found them all to be quite nice and got along with them, which is always a good thing, but even better when you’re together pretty much non-stop for 4 days.

First thing I did upon arriving back in civilization (meaning a place with a real shower and air conditioning) was to take a nice long shower—it’s amazing how sandy and dusty everything is! All in all it was a really fun weekend and I’m glad that I was invited to come along. :)

Posted at 5:13 PM | (0)