Well, today is Halloween, smack in the middle of the week. Some time today, I will be carving my pumpkin. Ben seems a little skeptical as to the awesomeness of my carved pumpkins, but I will show him. Oh, yes.

Does anyone have any fun plans for the holiday, and do these plans involve dressing up?

Posted at 12:02 PM | (2)

Last night Ben and I headed down to Ventura to attend a Halloween party. Everyone was in costume (I was my old stand-by Harem Girl that I’ve used a zillion times before, and Ben was a vampire), and there were some good costumes, including the 2 sisters who had matching orange outfits that signified they were suppoesd to be pumpkins but looked like they were retro 60’s chicks, a girl who was a tequila bandit, and a married couple who were Sonny and Cher (the wife, with her short dark hair was Sonny, and the husband was wearing a dress and a long black wig).

I wound up talking to a couple people in the backyard for pretty much the entire night, until pretty much everyone went home. Then when I walked inside, I discovered that there were still more people left, and that they were all doing karaoke. At one point, I decided to do a song, and next thing I know, no one else would take a turn, insisting instead on just being my backup dancers. So, I wound up doing quite a few songs. This particular machine scores you as you sing, and I’m not sure what the criteria are, but probably singing the right words at the right time, and possibly even how well it thinks you did? I’m not entirely sure, but I DO know that I achieved a high score of 92 at one point, which I thought was pretty darn good. I can’t tell you what song that was on, because I did so many. The karaoke was fun though, with the small group of people dancing around and singing and whatnot.

We wound up leaving pretty late, after having fun at the party. I’m glad Ben decided to go, considering that the party was not exactly next door.

Posted at 7:56 PM | (5)

Today Ben picked me up at my place as he was headed down to Carp to meet up with some of the people who attended the camping trip I went to over Labor Day weekend. We stopped first at a local brewery where they tried some of the beers, and I ate pretzels, since I’m not a beer drinker. Next we walked down the block and ate at a little Italian place. I think we picked the wrong time of day, as the service was a little slow, but overall it wasn’t too big of a deal.

After the meal we all headed to the pumpkin patch where Ben and I picked up a few pumpkins. He is keeping my pumpkin for the time being, and I will go over so we can carve pumpkins together. The pumpkin I got is a little on the large (and heavy!) side, but it had a nice smooth side to it, which should work nicely for whatever design I decide to put on my pumpkin this year. I will probably do my staple “Happy Halloween” one, since I really like that pattern, but maybe I’ll be adventurous and try something else. We shall see.

I had fun just hanging out and going to those couple places. I can’t wait to carve my pumpkin and show Ben how awesome it is (I mean, there IS a reason I won the pumpkin carving contest at my old job 2 years in a row, after all….)

Posted at 6:25 PM | (2)

Last night I went out and met some friends at EOS, a bar that has been open for awhile now, but which I had not checked out since it changed names and ownership (in this town, that happens often with some of the bars here, due to high rent and such.). This particular location is not on the same street as most of the other bars, so it has changed ownership at least 4 times since I’ve lived here.

The place was remodeled, the large dance floor area being cut down, everything rearranged, and a patio area created. The layout is a lot better now, because before the bar area was accessible by a kind of narrow pathway, and it was the only way you could get to the other areas, making it feel a bit cramped. This layout is a lot more open.

Anyway, I hadn’t really gone downtown lately or hung out with the girls, so it was nice to get to do both. And now, today is Friday, so the weekend is almost here, hooray!

Posted at 8:16 AM | (0)

Wow, I can’t believe how many fires have erupted in SoCal over the weekend. Tons of areas evacuated, and lots of homes lost. And to think, I was just down there. It’s probably going to take awhile to get all these fires under control—their sheer number and the lack of any real rainfall for the most part is baaad news.

Take a look at this Google map, made to show the locations of the fires. If you click on them, you can read updates on them.

One of the fires is up in Santa Maria, but for now, that’s far enough away from SB. Though, the Zaca fire started above Buellton, and that one got a little too close for comfort…

Posted at 3:15 PM | (4)

Last night Ben and I arrived at my sister’s housewarming at around 4:30. It was set to begin around 4, but as most people in my family are fashionably late, we were among the first to arrive. Not too long after, more people drifted in, and the house was soon filled with the loud chatter of a large group of people.

It turns out that pretty much my entire family showed up—which is quite amazing when you consider that they don’t even all get together for Thanksgiving or Christmas anymore. So, Ben got to see the large amount of people that are related to me, though of course I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t remember their names or who is the sibling or child of whom. He got introduced to a lot of them, but probably not all, and he even got mistaken for one of my other cousins briefly at one point, which was a little amusing.

Hopefully he didn’t think they were all crazy. We spent most of the evening talking to my cousins that are closest to my age, which isn’t surprising given that everyone else is so much older. Several college football games were on as well, so Ben talked to some of my sister’s friends who showed up who were also watching the game.

We wound up staying until about 10:30, and then we headed back up to SB. It was pretty windy up here when we got back, and a lane on the freeway was closed because a giant tree limb had fallen into it and the police were trying to remove it. There was also ash everywhere—it’s been so windy that all the ash from the Zaca fire apparently floated down from the mountains and onto the town.

Today was nice and warm, with only a slight breeze, so I headed down to the beach for a few hours to read my bookclub book, get some sun, and people-watch. Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

Posted at 5:15 PM | (0)

I haven’t been up to too much, but tomorrow my sister is having a housewarming. She moved in about a year ago, but my mom has helped fix up the place A LOT since then, so it’s probably more impressive to hold the party a year later. The house looks way different and has a different feel than when my grandma lived there, when the decor pretty much hadn’t changed in 30 years or something.

Quite a few people should be in attendance, including Ben. Hopefully all our crazy family and friends of family won’t scare him off—though I suppose it might be better to get it over with and find out now than later, right? ;)

Posted at 8:47 AM | (0)

I just got the chance to spend a couple of days with Ben down in SD. He’s had a lot going on with work and stuff, so we hadn’t gotten to hang out too much lately. He had to go down to SD and when he asked if I would like to join him, I of course said yes. :)

It was really nice getting to hang out and spend some more time with him. We went out to dinner and drinks and got desserts and even saw a movie. We saw The Darjeeling Limited, which we knew nothing about going into it. Well, actually we pretty much had no idea what any of the movies that are currently out are about—I guess we haven’t really paid attention to commercials or trailers or any of that. The movie was interesting. I liked it and there were lots of scenes that elicited chuckles from the audience, but at the end of it, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you about a specific plot, instead being only able to tell you that it’s a journey movie with 3 brothers.

Anyway, I had a really nice time down there, and it’s so weird how the weather can change from day to day now that summer is over. It’s gone from being sunny and warm, to being rainy and cold, to back to being sunny and warm all in the span of like 5 days. Weird.

Posted at 9:37 PM | (3)

A few weeks ago, one of the keys on my laptop randomly flew off—I have no idea how it happened—sure the keyboard got pressed, but not seemingly in a way which would cause keys to take flight. I had never had this happen before and so freaked out a little, worried that I might never again be able to comfortably type the letter “K” again.

When the key came off, I was pretty dismayed by how much lint and hair and other miscellaneous particles were hiding underneath the surface. I cleaned off what I could now see, and was relieved when I was able to pop the key back in place. Today I was looking at my keyboard and noticed just how much crap was under the rest of the keys, so I got motivated to purposely remove some more keys and clean it out a bit.

So, I did that, glad that this time I was INTENTIONALLY removing keys. But then, a little while later, I happened to glance at my cell phone and noticed that there was a large gaping hole where the number “6” used to be! Guess it was too much to expect only intentional key removal! I had walked around to a few places—not a lot, but enough, so that it could be on sidewalk or asphalt or in a room.

Luckily I found the key sitting on top of the desk in the room when I went to go check—of course, I looked all around the floor first, growingly increasingly dismayed that I didn’t see it. But I DID find it—and thankfully I didn’t lose it outdoors! So, I reattached it and now all is well. I am getting really good at reattaching keys now!

Posted at 8:31 PM | (0)

Well, after signing up back on August 15, I finally received my Ravelry invite this afternoon! This meant that I spent this evening taking pictures of things I had not previously photographed and entering all of my projects into the site. It’s a pretty cool site, and everything is all nice and Ajaxy and interlinked. If you enter a project in there you can instantly see who else is doing, has completed, or is contemplating the same project. You can also see who has the same yarn as you and what projects they are using it for. Projects and yarns are also rated so you can see how popular and well-liked they are, and you can also add a little emoticon showing your level of happiness with the project.

It’s pretty extensive and well-functioning considering it is a beta. Now that I’ve pretty much got everything in there, I suppose I won’t be spending hours a day on it, but it will be fun to update it as I make progress on stuff and find new things to knit. The other nice feature of this site is that you can enter all your to-knits in one place—both web patterns and book ones. Pretty much every aspect of knitting is all in one place.

It’s social networking for knitters, and there at last count there are over 40,000 people signed up! That’s just amazing…

Lastly, if you have a Ravelry account and would like to friend me, I’m in there under….Icyshard (shocking, I know!)

Posted at 8:47 PM | (2)

Last night I headed over to the apartment of some friends of Claire’s—an engaged couple I had met last Friday when we all went bowling.

During the course of the bowling last week, the couple had mentioned that they owned a Wii and that they often held little Wii Bowling tournaments on the weekends. I had not yet had an opportunity to play a Wii, so I thought that sounded like fun. When they invited me to come over last night for a little tournament, I said that I would love to come.

There wound up being like 8 of us total, though some people came later, and not everyone stayed the whole time. I got to bowl a few games, and although it’s a little weird using the controller at first (I had a bit of a hard time creating my Mii, since I moved the controller too much or something and the cursor kept going all over the place), I was bowling a few strikes in no time. The funny thing is that, while I may have gotten a slightly higher score than I ever get in real bowling, the ball still rolled in a similar fashion—namely that the ball hops to the ground and then proceeds to go fairly straight, without any sort of cool, intentional curving like you see the pros do. I don’t think I will ever figure out the curve thing, and the recommendation my mom once gave to “shake hands with the lane” in order to release the ball smoothly only ever makes me bowl worse.

All in all it was fun, and I’ll probably go do it again sometime if they invite me. They are going out of the country on vacation in a few days, so who knows when I’ll get to do it again, but it was cool to try out. The sad thing though is that my parents have actually used a Wii before I did (on the Hawaiian cruise).

Posted at 9:33 PM | (1)

Last weekend I did a couple loads of laundry. This isn’t particularly earth-shattering or anything, but it does play a part in my story. As I was folding the clothes to put them away, something occurred to me.

More and more clothing is coming tagless.

This is awesome. Tags are always annoying, and people who have very sensitive skin are always bothered by them. Also, they often have a habit of sticking out, making you look silly without even knowing. Sure, they contain information such as the type of fabric as well as care instructions, but if people are cutting them off for the sake of comfort or fashion, then the information is lost.

Enter the tagless clothing. Someone finally figured out how that they can just print the info on the inside of the clothing, where the tag would normally be. Now the wearer has all the pertinent information without the annoying tag! Sure, the writing may wear off after awhile, but writing on tags eventually fade as well, and at least this way the info has a chance of sticking around awhile since it won’t be cut off.

The only question left in my mind is, why on earth did it take so long for someone to figure this out??

Posted at 9:16 PM | (2)

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day. Not super hot or anything, but definitely nice out, and a perfect day to go to the beach. I went over to Ben’s and we headed to the beach, and met up with a friend of his along the way.

We probably spent close to like 5 hours or something down there (making sure to stay far away from the endangered and fanatically protected snowy plovers!). All in all it was a very nice day—the water was pretty chilly, but once my feet went numb it wasn’t so bad (I’ve felt colder ocean anyway). Within the first 5 minutes my feet were covered in the dreaded, but oft unspoken of beach tar—when I say covered, I’m really not exaggerating—my heels for instance were completely covered in a thick layer of sticky blackness.

When we arrived back at Ben’s, I probably spent a good 5-10 minutes rubbing the bottoms of my feet with oil to remove the tar, but no worries, it all came off as usual. Good thing, because I don’t even want to think about what it would do to carpet.

You can definitely tell that fall is coming, what with the shorter days (boo!) and the noticeable drop in temperature. It’s nice though, that there will probably still be a few days like yesterday.

Posted at 6:54 PM | (2)