I already did this once back in 2006, but I figured it might be fun to once again take a look back at the past year as seen by pasting the first sentence or two of each month. So without further adieu I present to you, 2008 in review!

January
Ok, so I’m a day late, but I didn’t have a chance to get on my computer the last day or so.

February
So is there anyone else out there besides me who isn’t really planning on watching the game today?

March
Last night as I was about to fall asleep, I thought of some of the sounds I sometimes hear that are kind of annoying (prompted by hearing item #1, no doubt).

April
Well, I didn’t get around to writing a funny post or anything in time to make a joke worthwhile—I guess I will have to do some better planning if I hope to do it next year!

May
I don’t know what it is, but lately I’ve been finding little tiny gnats (or gnat-like bugs) flying around my apartment.

June
In one short hour my kickball team will be playing in the first round of the playoffs.

July
Today after work I drove over to Leadbetter Beach to meet up with Ben and grab something to eat at the Shoreline Cafe.

August
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.

September
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.

October
Damn, it appears I’ve been slacking again! On Tuesday I played kickball and our team lost by 1 point.

November
Thursday did indeed bring another kickball loss—although we had several of our key players missing and there was an accident on the freeway that kept the equipment from arriving in time, thus making us use shirts as bases.

December
Wow, hard to believe it is December already! I don’t even want to think about how few shopping days remain until Christmas, as I’ve barely purchased anything yet!

To sum up, I’m not sure that listing the first sentences happens to give an accurate picture of what I’ve been up to, although it does seem to convey that I did play an awful lot of kickball this year! I can’t be sure of what 2009 will bring, but there is one major change that will be occurring—more on that in the New Year!

Posted at 2:09 PM | (1)

Tonight Dave and I played the last pub quiz of 2008. Our team actually did pretty well, even winning the first round with a perfect 10. The rest of the rounds we did not get a score lower than 8. We did not, however, win the opportunity to try for the jackpot.

The funny thing though, is that the quiz master noted that we had lost by half a point the last two weeks. He told us that if we did it again, he’d give us a free round of drinks. At the end of the night we had a 34.5. The winning team had a 35, so we did it again and promptly were rewarded with our free drinks. It’s pretty funny that we managed to do it again, considering that you don’t really know how other teams are doing in the course of the 4 rounds unless they had the highest score during any particular round.

Luckily the winning team did not get the jackpot, so we have a chance to try for the larger amount of money next week. Perhaps next year will be even better in terms of pub quiz victories!

Posted at 11:56 PM | (0)

Well, another Christmas has come and gone. On Christmas Day, my family went over to my sister’s house, where we gathered with her husband’s side of the family. We opened presents at my parents’ house in the morning, and I got many cool things like a baking cookbook, a knitting book, and a trivial pursuit game where you can download additional questions for specific categories—perfect for pub quiz studying!

Today I went shopping with my mom at a few places like Target and Michaels before heading back up to SB to check on Dave’s cat while he is out of town visiting his family. Overall it was a good Christmas, even though it still didn’t really feel like it was that time of year already. It’s also hard to believe that’s already over! Where does the time go?

Posted at 11:32 PM | (0)

Merry Christmas Eve!

I started off the Christmasy celebrations by attending a Happy Hour with some friends yesterday right after work, before heading over to pub quiz. We were having the pub quiz a day earlier than usual because I’m sure no one would really show up on Christmas Eve.

I drove down to my parents’ house last night after finishing up pub quiz. We actually thought we won the game last night for a brief moment, before another team contested and were found to have scored an extra 1/2 point more than us. So, no overall victory for us, but we were awarded a free round of drinks for the mixup. The drinks I think were a better deal, because the winning team failed to draw the winning token and thus did not win the jackpot. So, free drinks > no money.

I got to the house around 11:45 and then went to work wrapping my family’s presents.

Today we had the usual gathering of 20 or so people with much food. We did our now annual tradition of exchanging gifts among the cousins, although this year we used a method akin to that which might better be known as White Elephant or Yankee Swap (a la The Office). We drew numbers to see who got to pick first, and then made the stipulation that each gift after opening could only be stolen twice. When all was said and done, I walked away with a set of 8 martini glasses, which are cute and I think will definitely come in handy.

Tomorrow is Christmas Day festivities at my sister’s house, after gathering around my parents’ tree to open our presents!

Posted at 9:25 PM | (2)

Well tonight I finally finished my Christmas shopping. It is something I always procrastinate doing, but this year I think I waited a little more last-minute than usual. The last items I had to purchase were for my mom and for the cousins gift exchange, which was harder this year, because we were getting a gift not knowing who will receive it yet.

Dave and I exchanged gifts this evening, since he is flying out to be with his dad tomorrow afternoon. He gave me a couple pairs of cute earrings, so now I have a few alternatives to the boring hoops that I always wear by default. I gave him a useful universal remote, which will also benefit me since I won’t need to wonder which of the 7 remotes controls the volume or something. As I write this, he is configuring the thing for each of his zillion devices like TV, xbox 360, receiver, etc.

It still doesn’t really seem like Christmas is only a couple days away, although at least the weather has been cool enough to indicate that it could very well be winter after all.

Posted at 8:36 PM | (0)

Wednesday night was once again the usual pub quiz. Our team did pretty well—we lost by a point or point and a half (depending on how the quiz master wound up grading us). I am going to play again next week before I go home for Christmas—gotta have priorities, right?? ;)

Last night was my monthly book club meeting (for which I had thought about starting the book, but had not actually read any of it whatsoever (hence the 2nd part of my title)). It was held at the house of a newer member, which was awesome that he volunteered after his first time coming. It probably helped that he came because he had friends already in the group. We actually had 2 guys in the group last night, which is always cool to have some diversity instead of just all girls.

All in all, fun evenings, and tonight is the cocktail party, woo!

Posted at 9:54 AM | (0)

Well, my weekend was indeed low-key, which was good as it gave me a chance to kick this cold. It’s not fully gone yet, but much better than it was before.

Last night I went to a friend’s apartment to hang out and help a little for the cocktail party she intends to throw on Friday. We tasted a few drink recipes in preparation for the event, and she also premade some of the dough for the cookies we will be decorating!

Tonight I am going to try out Guitar Hero World Tour, which should be interesting to compare it to Rock Band. The rest of my week is equally busy as there is pub quizzing, book club, and the aforementioned party. So little time before Christmas, and I still have not finished my shopping!

Also, oh my god it’s cold today! It’s like 53 right now, which is incredible when you consider it has been perpetually 70 all season! I suppose winter had to start coming eventually. First it was the tons of rain we got on Sunday night, and now it’s super chilly! Brrrrrrrrr!!

Posted at 4:00 PM | (2)

Well, it seems like I’m updating less frequently. Sometimes I’ve just been too busy, other times not busy enough to warrant a post. It’s times like the latter that make me wish I still had an office job so that I could encounter amusing things throughout the day. Random things occur less frequently when it’s just you.

Anyway, kickball has been over, so Tuesdays and Thursdays have been less busy. This Tuesday I did a little knitting with a friend while watching Love, Actually. I don’t care who doesn’t agree, but I happen to think that is a great movie!

Wednesday night was once again pub quiz. The questions seemed hard in that we were leaving a bunch of answers blank and filling them in after hearing the rest of the questions for the round. Overall though, we did some good deductive reasoning and came away with a not-too-bad score. Not good enough to win even one round though, so that means that we were falling a bit short of how we’ve usually been doing lately.

Tonight I do not think I will be up to much. Last weekend I started having a sore throat, which went away after a couple days. All seemed fine until last night when I started feeling sniffly, and now I am still sniffly combined with sneezy. This does not bode well. I had thought that maybe it was just a random sore throat and not a cold, but the latest symptoms have me wondering. It sucks, because who likes to be sick?? On the other hand, I suppose better now than on Christmas. It’s also been awhile since the last time I got sick, so I guess if it’s actually happening, that I am due.

Hope everyone is well and doing something fun this weekend. Many people I know have company holiday parties this weekend, but not me. My company is too far away for me to join in a party, if they were even to have one. Oh well.

Posted at 7:26 PM | (1)

On Friday evening Dave and I grabbed some dinner at Aldo’s and then headed down near Macy’s to check out the parade. We watched from near the judging booth, where The Palm was announcing. We watched the parade for a bit, until a little after 8, when we headed over to the Neighborhood to meet up with some friends who were grabbing some food and drinks. There was still quite a bit of the parade left when we bailed on it, but we’d seen a lot of it, and really it all starts to be the same after awhile anyway.

After the Neighborhood we met up with a couple people at Joe’s, but it turned out that a lot of people we knew all decided to congregate there as well. So, it turned into quite the gathering. As I mentioned in the previous post, the grand marshal of the holiday parade was the guy who plays accountant Kevin on The Office (yes, I know his name, but I know most people don’t), and as we were hanging out at Joe’s, the guy walks in.

It seemed like he didn’t really want to be bothered when guys approached him to talk to him, but as it turns out, he was much more receptive when cute girls tried to do the same. He talked to several of the girls in our group for awhile, and some of us did the obligatory take pictures with the celebrity. Below is the picture I was in:

All in all a fun evening, and who doesn’t like to say they met someone that other people will recognize! The only thing that would’ve been more exciting is if I had gotten to hang out with The Palm on Saturday evening, like some of my friends did when they did a pub crawl while dressed in things like Santa, elf, and reindeer outfits. I did not partake in this, so I missed out on the opportunity. Those of you not from SB will not understand the magnitude of this, but trust me when I say I am indeed envious!

Posted at 8:31 PM | (0)

Our annual Holiday Parade is tonight (with the Grand Marshal being the guy who plays accountant Kevin on The Office, woo!), so in honor of that, I am going to do a Christmas meme thingie. Man, I think it’s been ages since I’ve done a meme!

If you enjoyed reading this meme, check out my answers to past, similar (though not exactly identical) Christmas memes for 2005 and 2006!

Posted at 12:48 PM | (0)

Wow, hard to believe it is December already! I don’t even want to think about how few shopping days remain until Christmas, as I’ve barely purchased anything yet!

The last few days post-Thanksgiving have been pretty quiet. For the most part, there wasn’t any going out or other group activities. I’m sure there will be some coming up, but of course, most people were out of town for at least part of last weekend.

I used the time spent staying in to catch up on some knitting! That may not sound very exciting, but indeed it was. You see, I had not gotten much of it done lately, and if I ever hope to complete the dress I am making, then I better get a move on—especially since the more time that goes by, the more cute patterns come out that I also want to make.

My days, however, have been a little busier lately, as work has thrown several things at me all at once. With this economy, that is definitely a good thing, and I won’t complain in the slightest. It just means that I get caught up and forget and/or have no time to do things like update this site! Shame on me! :)