The Labor Day weekend is not yet over, and while it hasn’t been non-stop activity, I suppose I have done quite a few things so far.

On Thursday night I had a book club meeting, of which we had a somewhat smaller gathering than usual. This was probably because it is summer and everyone takes trips or is otherwise busy. Last summer I recall we didn’t hold meetings one month because no one was going to be around.

On Friday night I attended a BBQ of a dude who will be on both of my kickball teams this season. He has a pretty awesome house up on the hill over by the mesa, and since his roommates are out of town this week, he decided it was the perfect time to throw a little party.

Yesterday I went with a bunch of girls to Butterfly Beach, where we spent quite a few hours. It wasn’t terribly crowded—perhaps everyone is out of town, although I think the lack of blue sky and sun may have also played a role. Even though it was overcast, it wasn’t cold—if anything the humidity made it feel quite warm, especially later in the afternoon when the marine layer broke up a bit. The water was pretty calm and not too cold, and when you went in, you could see the bottom, which was pretty cool.

After we left the beach, I took a nap, and later on went out to Indochine with a few people who will be playing kickball with me this season. We mostly just sat outside at a table in the patio, but it was a fun time.

That’s all so far!

Posted at 2:42 PM | (1)

Last night I decided to partake in the pub quiz again. I was joined by the two people I’ve been hanging out with a lot lately, as we were all planning on getting together anyway (the guy is going on vacation out of the country starting this weekend) later on.

We again didn’t wind up winning or anything, but the 3 of us newer people did a pretty good job. I helped the team almost win one of the rounds, coming down to the tie breaker, of which I picked the wrong length of a song. Doh.

Overall it was fun, and my recruits seemed to enjoy it as well. J indicated that she plans on doing it again next week. The guy (whose name also begins with J, incidentally) also did an excellent job, and knew some of the answers that the rest of us had no clue about.

Afterward, we 3 hung out for a bit at J’s, and watched some Family Guy. Pretty chill evening, but fun. Can’t believe the weekend is almost here again.

Posted at 4:44 PM | (0)

Tonight was the pregame for the Tuesday night kickball team I’m on. This season I decided to be crazy enough to do both the Tuesday AND the Thursday offerings! I really just wanted to be wherever I would be around the most people I knew, but it will also be nice to meet the new people that will inevitably turn up.

Tonight I met the members of my team—most of whom I did not know and who are new to kickball. We had about 16 people show up, which is a good number. We played an informal game and while we did not do awesome, we did seem to perhaps show a bit more promise than our mostly new team last season. Although, the people we were playing seemed to be mostly new as well, so perhaps it’s just because we were somewhat evenly matched that it didn’t look so tragic. We shall see.

Still it was fun—I got to 2nd base, one of our guys got a home run, and some good effort was exhibited. I think these people might be spirited enough to try hard to win. We’ll find out next week when we play our first real game!

Posted at 10:44 PM | (0)

It seems I’ve been fairly busy lately, hanging out with that girl I met through kickball, who I suppose I will now call “J”, since her name starts with that letter, and that is amusingly how she signs her emails.

Anyway, on Thursday night I went over to her place to eat some pizza and stay up late watching the Olympics. On Friday night I went out with her and a couple other people to Arigato where they all got sushi and I got some kobe beef dish with mashed potatoes that was pretty good. Afterward we got gelato across the street and then did a quick stop at Eos, since one of the girls in our group was supposed to say hi to people there (who weren’t there, so after a little while we left!).

Yesterday J and I got up early to go on her weekly excursion to the Farmers Market, stopping afterward for some breakfast before heading back to her place to watch Cocktail and random stuff on Youtube. A Battle of the Bands took place last night at Stateside, and she and some other girls know guys in one of the bands so we all went to go cast our vote for them. We listened to the bands, had some drinks, and then headed to Tonic and finally Statemynt where we stayed until closing.

So, I’ve stayed up pretty late these last couple nights—I mean, I don’t go to bed before midnight anyway, but I’m not usually all that active before bed, so the result is that I am a bit tired. I should probably end this entry now and catch up on some sleep since tomorrow is back to work, and my evenings for this coming week are also looking fairly busy.

The outing went pretty well. There was a decent turnout, and the group consisted mainly of kickball people, since a lot of these people were friends before joining the sport.

We started out at Statemynt around 8:30, and when we entered we were seriously like the only people in the place. One of the members of our party had connections with the bar, so we secured a large roped-off section of the place. After hanging out there for awhile and listening to some live jazz that they had, a few members of the party decided that it was time for them to be in bed or something, because it was a weeknight.

The rest of us headed over to Tonic, where it was also not very crowded—it still being fairly early and mid-week, I suppose. We got a drink there and a couple people danced briefly before we decided to move on and try our luck at the Wildcat.

Once we got there we found that there were a decent number of people there, and apparently it was 90s night or something. So we hung out there in one of the outdoor booths for a bit, before heading inside to dance a little.

We left maybe a quarter to midnight, which I suppose is late for a Wednesday, but considering that I’m up until at least midnight on any given night anyway, it wasn’t that bad for me. All in all it was a fun (and funny) mock party.

Posted at 5:59 PM | (0)

It’s already mid-week. Time flies when you have all that Olympic watching to do. Other than watching all those competitions I recorded and having Ben come over last night, I’ve helped the girl I hung out with this weekend prepare for a “bachelor party” that will be taking place this evening. The guy in question isn’t getting married, but he’s been in a long term, long distance relationship, and his girlfriend is finally moving to town this weekend, so a bunch of us are all going out as a sort of joke now that his life is going to change dramatically. ;)

That’s about it for now—I’m going to be late, so perhaps there will be a recap later.

Posted at 7:23 PM | (0)

This weekend I hung out quite a bit with one of the girls that I watched SYTYCD with and played kickball.

I hung out with her and watched some of the Olympics, joined her at the Farmers Market, looked for possible accessories for an upcoming party, chilled at Butterfly Beach, and joined her later after dinner at Joe’s and Eos. It’s safe to say I saw a lot of her.

While we were at the beach we saw some French people setting up for a massive beach party, complete with a gas-generated sound system with massive speakers playing House music. We also saw a wedding being set up before we left.

When we went out for drinks at Joe’s, we watched the last 4x100 relay with Phelps and Lezak, once again winning gold. It was fun to watch it in the bar, because everyone was glued to the TV and cheering for the USA, which made it a bit more exciting than watching alone at home. The cheers when we were ahead, the boos when Australia took the lead on one of the legs, and the excitement as the Gaucho alum once again secured the win while swimming anchor was pretty cool.

At Eos we discovered that the House music French people were actually DJing there, so we heard some of the same music that we had experienced earlier in the day. Deja vu. Overall it was a fun time, and it was nice to hang out more with this girl.

Posted at 4:19 PM | (0)

On Wednesday evening I accepted an invitation to join a group for the weekly pub quiz that goes on at one of the bars downtown. There are 4 rounds, and the winning team of each round gets a free round of drinks (did I use the word “round” enough in this sentence?). The team that has the most points at the end gets another round of drinks, and the chance to win the money that has accumulated in the pot.

The team I was on didn’t come anywhere near winning—some of those questions were really hard! But, I did know a few of the answers, including one of the ones that no one else knew, so that was pretty cool. I guess I proved my usefulness, so that was cool! Proving you know things is fun, so I may do it again.

Other than the pub quiz, I’ve mostly just been watching the Olympics, as I said in my post from earlier in the week. Wooo. :)

To get into the other part of the title of this post, a random tropical type weather system has hit SB. It was pretty humid yesterday, and there was a bit of rain, which led to some pretty cool rainbows being spotted. Also, last night after I turned off the lights, I saw a TON of lightning flashes in the sky. Some of them must have been pretty far off because I couldn’t really hear the thunder, but a few of them rumbled almost immediately after seeing the flash of light. It’s been awhile since we’ve had rain, let alone a lightning storm. I guess it can’t be 75 and sunny every day!

Posted at 12:28 PM | (1)

Last night I watched the finale of SYTYCD—almost a week later than everyone else who watched it live. And, for those people who do watch it live, using various social media to broadcast your opinions about it in real time kinda sucks. I tried to avoid reading about it, but with no sort of spoiler alert to warn me, I stumbled across the name of the winner. So that sucked in that I could not participate in speculation as to who would win based on the final dances. I mean, who even watches live TV anymore?! :(

Anyway, so we watched the finale and it was entertaining, although a bit long. Good thing we could fast forward through the boring parts. Although I hadn’t watched all of the season, I was entertained by the episodes I did watch. Tuesday evenings just won’t be as exciting now without outfits to make fun of and other ridiculous things.

Posted at 2:22 PM | (0)

So how many of you out there are watching the Olympics? This year the network carrying the coverage has spread it out over several channels, so there is plenty of opportunity to watch your favorite events. My favorite events are beach volleyball, swimming, diving, track, and gymnastics.

It’s still early in the competitions, but so far the swimming has been super exciting. Does anyone wonder how it’s still even possible to keep setting world and olympic records? I mean, there has to be a limit where it’s just not possible to exceed it, but clearly those limits have not been reached yet, as was evidenced by the men’s 4 x 100m freestyle a couple days ago, where the record was smashed. I mean, how often do you see the previous record beaten by teams that didn’t even finish fast enough to medal! Mikey already posted about this a few days ago, but he wrote before I got the chance to watch the events myself (I’ve been Tivoing the events I want to watch and then watching them the next day, so I can fast forward through commercials and commentary that doesn’t interest me).

The US victory over France was totally exciting, especially since it was so close and we weren’t expected to win. Add on top of that the trash talking that France had done just prior to the race, and it was an exciting win. Here is a link to the video in case you somehow managed to miss it. The cool part of that victory is that fact that the guy who swam anchor in that relay is a UCSB alum—go UCSB! :)

Sophie posted over on Leonieke’s blog about why the Olympics is so exciting for her, especially coming from a smaller country that does not send as many athletes to the games. Regardless of how our team does, it is indeed pretty cool that all the best athletes in the world come together and compete. Just the fact that you get to compete means you’re awesome.

Anyway, yay Olympics! There are still many events to come, and it will be interesting to see how many more records will be shattered and by whom. The best part is that if you miss any of it, you can always just go catch the video online! :)

Posted at 1:04 PM | (1)

Happy 8-8-08!

Ok, so the day is almost over, but here it’s not midnight yet, so it totally counts!

This week has been more mellow than the past couple, although I did go out and do a few things. On Tuesday I went and watched SYTYCD again. Next week we will be watching the finale—it’s sad that I just started watching the show and now it’s already going to be over for the season. Oh well.

Tonight I wound up meeting up with some of the people I watch that show with. We went to go see Pineapple Express, which I knew nothing about going in. It turns out that it is a movie about pot smoking and the hilarity that ensues while they are high and running from trouble. Surprisingly, it was really funny, and the whole theater was cracking up during it. Being in our late 20s and early 30s, we were all totally the oldest people in the theater—the average age seemed to be high school, but it was cool.

After the movie we headed over to a restaurant where some other friends work and ordered a bunch of desserts to share. We were lucky that the restaurant was still open, since it was after 10pm and everything closes early in SB, but they still let us order—probably because they knew us. We weren’t the last customers to leave the restaurant, but it was clear that the place was closing down, so we headed out and then went our separate ways home.

I am not yet sure what the weekend will bring, but I hope ya’ll enjoyed your day of triple 8’s!

Posted at 11:39 PM | (1)

So, today Fiesta comes to a close. I participated in the activities more than previous years, although probably still not as much as some people.

On Friday night I got a call from one of the girls I went out with on Wednesday, asking if I wanted to do a repeat of that previous night. I said sure, and so we went out again, although it didn’t wind up exactly the same as Wednesday. We wound up hanging out at Old King’s Road for most of the night, avoiding the places that had massive lines and/or cover charges.

When I got home, I left a trail of confetti all over the place. One of the guys in our group bought 34 confetti filled eggs and decided to launch them at the entire group all at once. The result is that everyone was totally covered in confetti. What was worse, was that this happened while the group was eating their meals at Joe’s. When the confetti landed, it completely covered most of the food, and even got into some drinks! OMG. The confetti is always impossible to completely get rid of while you’re walking around. The next morning I found it in my bed, on the carpet, all over the bathroom, etc.

On Saturday, I attended a Fiesta party at the same place I went to for Solstice. The party was fun and mellow, and best of all, the host brought out the Rock Band again. I did the vocals again for awhile, but then I got my chance to do some drums again. I still kinda suck at the drums, but they really are fun!

Overall, my Fiesta was fun—I’m glad I got to get out and partake in the events a little more than in previous years. For instance, this was the first year I actually made it out to the Mercado. Viva la Fiesta!

Posted at 3:13 PM | (1)