I guess I’ve slacked on updating over the past couple days. On Tuesday night I had book club, so I skipped my kickball game. Wednesday I went to Pub Quiz, where we didn’t win any rounds, but we did achieve our all time high score since the team’s inception, which is pretty cool. We are slowly building to victory, I can feel it!

On Thursday I played kickball, and my team lost by a demoralizing margin of 13 points. In all fairness, there were a couple bad calls made at 3rd base, one of which would’ve been the 3rd out for the other team, but instead let them stay in the inning long enough to score 6 additional runs, which completely sucked. I am hoping that this will by far be the worst game of the season. The bad thing is, the team we played isn’t even all that good, so I’m not sure what happened. I mean, both times I kicked, I made it to 3rd base, so how good could they possibly be?! Unfortunately, by the time I got to 3rd, there were always 2 outs, so I never got a chance to score. Oh well, I was just excited I was able to make it to 1st—making it to the additional bases was just that much cooler.

Last night I went to go see a show consisting of a bunch of bands playing 80’s songs. Each band performed 3 or 4 songs from the 80’s. Some of the groups were just OK, but a couple were pretty good and/or fun to watch. I watched all of the acts, and the ones that got the best crowd response were those that picked songs that people knew the words to. One band, for example, picked all metal songs that no one knew, so eh, that wasn’t as fun to watch.

Today has been a pretty relaxing day. Not sure about any plans for the rest of the weekend yet.

Posted at 6:50 PM | (0)

Yesterday after work I met up with a couple people at Enterprise Fish Co. to surprise the guy who shares are birthday with J. We sorta celebrated both birthdays on Saturday, but since the party was mostly J’s friends, we did a little something for him yesterday.

Some of his friends took him wine tasting and he somehow still thought that he was going to be going into work, up until he arrived at the restaurant. We had some appetizers and mingled for a bit before moving the gathering to one of his friends houses where we ordered some food and hung out.

He was surprised, and is the type of guy who prefers things low key, so he was happy I think to just sit in an apartment with a few friends and eat some food, rather than have a huuuuge gathering downtown or something. It was a nice little evening, and there were cupcakes with lots of frosting, which always rocks!

Posted at 5:39 PM | (0)

Yes, my title is correct, I did mean to say “birthdays”. Last night I attended a party for two friends who share the same birthday. We met up around 8pm for some cocktails and appetizers and hung out for a few hours until it was a decent hour to head downtown.

We went to Tonic and hung out, danced, etc. until closing time. There were quite a lot of us in attendance, so you couldn’t walk around the club without running into someone affiliated with the party in some way.

It was a fun night and it was nice that so many people came out to help celebrate. In the morning a few of us ate breakfast and hung out until the early afternoon. The rest of the day has been pretty low-key. How quickly the weekend is over!

Posted at 10:13 PM | (0)

This week is already over!

On Wednesday night I did Pub Quiz again. While we didn’t win any rounds, we did set a new record high for our team, which is cool. What is also cool is that this score was only a few points below that which gave another team the victory. We are getting closer, it seems!

Last night was the Thursday Kickball game. This week we played a team that was started by a former member of our team from the Spring. She was very anxious to beat her old team, and her group played VERY well! They beat us 4-0, and even though they were mostly new too, they had down a lot of the tactics that make for good kickballing—namely knowing how to kick, getting to base quickly, and knowing when to run for that next base. Our team still has quite a few growing pains to go through, but by the end of this last game we were playing a lot better than in the beginning innings, so there is hope.

Before the game, I went over to J’s and picked up a bike that she decided to give me. She had a mountain bike, but then she bought a beach cruiser. Since she no longer rides the old bike, she decided she didn’t want it cluttering her patio and offered it to me for free. Seeing as how I had no bike, and had been procrastinating on getting my own cruiser or something, a free bike I could pick up a few mere blocks away is awesome so I quickly said yes! Another friend fixed the brakes and the grips (apparently whoever first assembled this bike ages ago did it incorrectly) and I was supposed to pick it up on Monday, but he wound up being unable to drop it off. I hung out with J that evening anyway, I just did not ride home on a bike.

Now the weekend is here, and while I am not booked full of plans, I am looking forward to tomorrow night, when there will be a large gathering to celebrate J’s birthday!

Posted at 4:24 PM | (0)

Last night we played our second game for the Tuesday division. We played against a returning team that did pretty well last season, and contained several people on the board, so at least you know they will definitely be playing by the rules.

It turns out that their team had a good number of new people, since the team was split up by the decision to have two divisions this season. When we played them last night we BARELY had enough people to play—meaning that everyone had to play in the field every inning. The plus side is that we got to kick like 3 times during the game, which never happens if you have a ton of people show up.

We played a pretty good game, and when all was said and done, we tied the other team 3-3, which was pretty exciting since we kicked first and we were down by 1 at the top of the 5th. If we didn’t score, it was all over, but we managed to not only score but also hold them off when it was their turn up to kick. Pretty cool for a new team—especially considering we had quite a few less people playing last night than the other team. Perhaps we are due for a win next?

Posted at 12:38 PM | (0)

Last night I went with a bunch of people to see Stone Temple Pilots play at the Bowl. We met up at Joe’s around 5 for some drinks and dinner before heading over to the venue. We missed the opening act, but it also meant that there was enough open space for us to stand somewhat close to the stage, dead center, as we had floor tickets.

The concert was a lot of fun and the band put on a good show. Afterward, we walked back to one guy’s apartment where we hung out for a bit before heading downtown to Eos. It was a fun night, and this is actually the first concert where I have had floor tickets, so that was cool. I saw STP once at the KROQ Weenie Roast like 8 years ago or something, and we sat so far away that you couldn’t see what anyone looked like. As you can see from the image below, that wasn’t an issue this time around—the only exception being when someone’s head or arms would obscure my view, a downside of being sorta short. Still, it sounded awesome, and the visual effects they had going on were pretty darn cool. A fun way to spend a weekend night!

Posted at 10:48 PM | (0)

This weekend Santa Barbara is holding a 3 days arts and music festival over on West Beach. I believe this is the second year they’ve put on this event, but I didn’t check it out last year. Yesterday evening was the first day of the festival, but I didn’t go check it out until later—in time to catch the main act of the night, which was Jason Mraz.

The concert area is actually set up on the sand, so it’s very cool that you get to stand (or sit on a blanket) on the beach and watch a bunch of live music. Last night was a perfect night for outdoor concert watching—it was relatively warm even though the marine layer had rolled in and obscured any view of the stars.

There were quite a few people in attendance, but not so many that I couldn’t walk up to the performance area right before the scheduled start time and get close enough that I could actually see what the members of the band looked like. Before Jason Mraz began his set, some dude got up on stage and proposed to his girlfriend (who is apparently a huge Mraz fan). She said “Yes”, so that was sweet.

Then, the concert began. Admittedly I only know like 2 of his songs, but the 2 I do know I like, and he put on a good show. The audience was into it and did his little participation things of singing along or repeating back sounds. Overall it was a fun little evening, and I may check out some of what’s on offer today and tomorrow. We shall see!

Oh and my camera phone doesn’t do so well in nighttime with weird concert lights, but below you can see a picture to get an idea of how close I was standing.

Posted at 12:48 PM | (0)

Yesterday we had our first game for the Thursday kickball division. We were matched up against a new team, and we came away with a win. Now, before you get all excited that we kicked ass, the other team actually had to forfeit because they only had 1 girl show up, and you need at least 4 guys and 4 girls on each team to have a game count.

We could’ve decided to play for real anyway, since they had enough players. But, considering that our team is mostly girls, and their team appeared like they frequent the gym A LOT, we didn’t feel it was a fair match up and declined the offer. We did, however, still play a scrimmage game for fun. I mean, we all showed up, and we were all expecting and wanting to get to play. Plus, we have a few new members on our team this season, so it’s always better to get in some actual practice.

If we had actually counted this game, we would’ve lost, but thanks to the forfeit we start out the season with a victory and with no runs scored against us, that is pretty kick ass! :) It may or may not bode well that we would’ve lost this game had it counted. The newer people definitely need to get into the finer points of the game, but on the other hand, it would’ve been really hard for a co-ed team to beat an all-male team anyway, so I don’t feel too bad. Now we’ll just have to see what happens next week!

Posted at 12:42 PM | (0)

Last night both the male and female J accompanied me to participate in the pub quiz. There were some pretty hard questions, and the first two rounds we didn’t do so hot. But then, in the 3rd round, the one where they give questions based on categories you are provide with beforehand, we felt pretty confident that we did well.

There were some questions that we were iffy as to whether we were correct, but we were pretty confident we got a lot right. One of the answers I contributed, I was the only person to study that category, so no one knew if the answer was right or not, but it was the only answer that came to mind, so we went with it. It turned out I was right! With that answer correct, that meant that we got all 10 questions right for that round! No other team got every question right, so that meant that we won the round without having to go to the tie breaker (which we also got right!). Winning the round means that we got tokens good for one free drink at the bar. Yay!

So, we haven’t won the whole thing yet, which would involve a chance to win some money, but winning free drinks is pretty awesome. Winning by being the only team to get every question right that round is even more awesome! We still have quite a ways to go to win the whole thing—the people who tend to win have much higher scores each round and have a broader range of people who probably each have their own niche of random facts they know.

Perhaps in time it will be our turn to claim victory…

Posted at 5:37 PM | (1)

The last few days have been pretty mellow—especially compared to how busy I’ve appeared to be judging by the content of my other recent entries.

On Saturday I went to the Farmers Market for a little bit—bought some fruit and a delicious pie square that I swear must be addictive, because these pie squares are the most awesome things ever and totally worth a trip to the Market for them alone! Later that evening I met up with a few girls and headed to Tonic.

The last few days, however, I’ve pretty much just stayed home and chilled. Cleaned up a tiny tiny bit around the apartment, read a little for my book club, done some knitting, that sort of thing. Today would normally be kickball, but there are an odd number of teams in the Tuesday division, so this week was our bye week. Since we had the week off so early, we will be playing every Tuesday from now until the end of the season. It will still be interesting to see how we do, since pretty much everyone is new!

Posted at 10:38 PM | (0)

Well, it’s already the weekend again. Despite having the 3 day weekend, this week seemed to be just as long as any other, even though I had stuff to do.

On Wednesday I attended another round of pub quiz, and our team did not do that great as there were fewer of us, along with some harder questions. Perhaps next week…

Last night I ditched the kickball preseason meeting thing to go out with a couple girls. We went to Brew Co to meet up with some people J knew would be there, as well as get some food. After eating, we went back to J’s apartment so another girl could shower and change so that she could be ready to meet up with some friends at Tonic.

After she was ready, we walked back downtown and met up with some people J knows at The Pressroom, where we stayed for a bit until it was time for the other girl to head to Tonic. The rest of us then went to Elsie’s where we hung out, had some drinks, ate some popcorn, and played some Ms. Pacman until closing time.

All in all it was nice to get out, and more fun I think than if I had gone to the kickball thing. I will be at the game next week, but since this week wasn’t an actual game, I didn’t really feel like going. I am not sure what this weekend holds. Possibly I’ll check out the AVP stuff or something, but who knows.

Posted at 8:25 PM | (0)

Well on Sunday I didn’t do too much during the day, but a little before 7 I joined J to head over to the last Sunday Sessions of the summer at Tonic. She knew a few people who would be there, so we decided we’d check it out, since we’d never been.

The place was packed full of people—I’m not sure if it’s always that busy, or if it was just because everyone had Monday off! It took like 20 minutes or something just to get out to the back patio because there was a line, and they were only letting so many people at a time. Once outside, it was packed and you could barely move. It took forever to get to the front of the bar, and then even longer to get the bartender’s attention to order a drink. Crazy.

Luckily, as it got a little later (and probably other bars/clubs opened up for the night) the place cleared out a bit and it was a lot less hectic. We stayed for awhile, and then around 11 or so, I joined up with some people to go bowling. We played 2 games, and none of us did too great, but it was still fun. It’s been awhile since I’ve been bowling.

Yesterday I went to a BBQ at some girls’ house around 1:30. It was a nice day—almost too hot to sit outside until it got later in the afternoon. We had some food and hung out. The girls work at the same restaurant as the guy who had the Friday BBQ, and all but one of the girls were working last night as well. So, the BBQ didn’t end, but some of them had to leave to go work. Those of us left decided that we’d get dinner at their restaurant (since the BBQ was more a lunch thing), and so we took a nice little walk over there and hung out and ate dinner for a few hours.

After returning to the house we played the game Apples to Apples, which I’ve never played before. It was pretty amusing, and I almost won even! We played that for a couple hours, before heading home to be around midnight.

Overall it was a decently busy weekend with a lot of fun activities. It is too bad that this pretty much signifies the end of summer, because it IS my favorite season. Hope you all did fun things this weekend as well!

Posted at 3:57 PM | (0)