Wednesday, June 22, 2005

In keeping with tradition...


Every time Mike leaves on a trip (he's on travel for work until Friday), I've done something to alter my appearance. Usually something with my hair, 'cause that seems to be the easiest. He jokes that he's coming home to a stranger every time. But that's kind of hot, right??

Anyway, I'm getting my hair cut on Friday, right before he comes home (no room for error, Sara!) and I was going to get it colored too (current dark roots = very bad) but that would have made me run low in the finance dept., with a week to go til payday. I've missed being the exotic beauty with the black hair (always makes me think of a wild gypsy girl), so I decided to go back to my brunette self. My inner wild gypsy girl steers me in to the local Wal-Mart (like you do) and I picked out the exotic wild gypsy girl color of "black." All the reds and browns were called things like Cherry Bliss, Sinful Cinnamon Sensations, and Hot Mocha While Wrapped in a Quilt on a Rainy Day. I guess you don't get to be too creative with black.

So anyway, now I'm a "black-head." Do me a favor and don't spread that around, okay??

Also... thanks to Fussy for providing me with this link. I was reading it at work and trying not to laugh too hard. Not that I was very successful...

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Parking Spot or Coffee Pot?

Which is more important? Is it the cup of coffee to jumpstart your day? Or is it the parking spot at work, in a lot with too many cars and not enough spaces?

This morning, coffee won out.

You can tell those of us who spend the extra 15 minutes on the commute to work, stopping at Starbucks or whatever coffee place is closest to home. In a sea of dragging, weary, non-caffeinated cubicle monkeys, it’s easy to spot those of us with a spring in our step and a cardboard sleeve-encased cup of joe in our hands. But it is also us, the tardy coffee drinkers, so charming and affable at our desks, who become sharks as we pull into the parking lot; circling the rows, able to smell a freshly vacated space or the exhaust of a newly started car, backing up, from a mile away. It is also us, the java imbibers, who are forced to finally admit defeat and park, dejectedly across the street.

This morning, I thought I could resist… but in the end it was futile. As I parked my car and walked across the street, I reflected on the rich brown liquid warming my hands and energizing my step and thought to myself, “It was worth it.”

Coffee = 1. Parking Lot = 0.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Lots of wine & some disturbing naked images

Okay, so here's some weekend notes...


Temecula Valley Balloon & Wine Festival


Hmm.. you would think that any affair with the word wine in the title would be a fabulous time, right?  Well, there were a few issues that didn't sit so well with me:


The admission price was $18... and that's what you got.  Admission.  Why not call it Temecula Valley Admission Festival - Balloons & Wine optional.  To be fair, that price did include live music, but aside from a couple B-musicians (Oooh!  Eddie Money!  Wow!  It's the former lead singer of Foreigner!) it was kind of like that Muzak in the elevator of a stuffy office building or that music when you're on hold and you think to yourself it would be so much better if it was just a silent hold so you could play your own music.  Something like that.  All of the balloons! and wine! were more moolah...


Then I discovered the fair organizers were practical jokers.  Mike & I decided to shell out the money for the wine tasting and found one we really liked.  What is the logical next step in this equation?  "Let's buy a bottle or two!" or if you're like us, "A case!"  I inquired into the purchase of said tasty beverage only to be shot down by the wine-tasting tyrant, "You'll have to come up to the winery to buy a bottle since we aren't allowed to sell it here."  WTF?  You can't sell WINE at a WINE FESTIVAL?  I felt like pulling a Miles (from Sideways**) when he wants a full pour and the wine tasting dude won't give it to him, so he chugs the swill bucket.  GO, GO, GO!


Aside from these irritations, it was a good time.  (If your idea of a good time is being herded into a heavily guarded, enclosed area and getting shit-faced with a bunch of strangers.)  Mike and I people-watched, tasted a bunch of different wines from the local vineyards, ate Fair Food - which is guaranteed to make you die a slow, agonizing, painful, coagulated death someday, but is oh-so-tasty - watched the "Balloon Glow" show and played around with the new digital camera.  Yep, fun stuff.


The ties that bind... and gag


My brother and his family were in town this weekend for a surprise visit.  It's always good to see them - it doesn't happen very often.  For one, they just bought a house in Utah and I will probably BURST INTO FLAMES if I step one foot across that state line.  So, I look forward to our twice-a-year visits from them since now that he is grown up he is no longer a pain in the butt and I actually enjoy hanging out with him.  I was also very happy to discover that my Utah Niece is finally as cute as my California Niece (daughter of my brother who lives locally).  I was worried for awhile that I was going to favor Cute-One over Not-as-cute-one , but since Utah niece caught up, I can continue to spoil them both equally.


Nekkid


So, my dad made a life-altering decision this past weekend and decided to shave. This is monumental only because for as long as I can remember, he has had some kind of beard/goatee/facial hair covering no less than one third of his face.  All the men in my family are follically challenged, so I believe this was some sort of over-compensation for that trend.  Anyway, he was bald on top for awhile, but still had some hair around the edges and the full beard going-on.  Then he decided to shave his whole head, but kept the whole beard thing.  Now, the only hair he has left north of his neck is his eyebrows.  He's still stunningly handsome (where do you think I get my good-lucks?) but the verdict is still out on the whole naked-face thing.


Movie Review


I finally got to watch Sideways (that's where the ** comes in since it's all so fresh in my mind) and am happy to report that I finally understand the whole "... alright, but I'm not drinking any fucking Merlot!" reference.  I thought it was a great movie because:


- Sandra Oh is friggin' HOT, HOT, HOT!!! if not slightly mental when enraged;


- the arm out of the car window scene: totally cool;


- the exchange between Maya & Miles on the porch was so intimate and haunting and rich that I wanted to put a straw in a bottle of pinot and suck it down on the spot (wait! when do I NOT want to do this??);


- Jack was basically a dick and Miles was a neurotic pushover.  I was slightly mad/amused when Jack got no other forms of comeuppance besides the broken nose;


- when Miles steals Jack's wallet back from the waitress/husband's house and the husband comes out buck nekkid and not only jiggles and bounces all over the place, but also gets smooshed up against Mile's car - that scene is permanently burned into my brain.  Actually, the part where the couple is in bed is pretty searing too;


- when Miles is drinking the '61 in the diner out of a styrofoam cup.  I loved the furtive glance he gave before pouring himself another.  While we may not have all enjoyed a bottle of that caliber, I know I've totally given the ole lookout before consuming my bootlegged alcohol;


- where/how it ends.  It was a sometimes painful journey to watch, what with Jack being such an ass and Miles so depressed and anxious all the time.  But there were some great one-liners and then you get to the end and wise, calm, normal Maya calls and we see an emboldened Miles knocking on the door - a door of opportunity.. of possibility... of future??


Alright already.. I've spouted on about enough, I'll go before you kick me out...  OVER & OUT!

Friday, June 03, 2005

Laundry List

Yeah, I know. I haven't written in awhile. Shame on me. Go ahead - you can slap my wrist... Hey, what's everyone gettin' in line for? What's with the rulers? SQ, PUT DOWN THAT PADDLE RIGHT NOW!!

Okay, forget the wrist slapping, knuckle rapping and arse spanking... let me get down to business and fill you in with what's new.

Took a short vacation and went to Portland, Oregon. Most people, when they think of vacations, think of skiiing at a mountain resort. Or maybe getting away from it all to somewhere warm and tropical, a place with white sand and strong mai tais with pink umbrellas and pineapple slices on the rim of their souvenir glass. Not me... I go where there's rain. So, no one was more surprised or disappointed than myself when I get up to P-town and nary a drop of moisture falls on my head. Not even bird pee or fly spit. No-thing. In fact, the day I got there, it was in the high 90 degrees. WTF, man? I wanted to head up to the cooler weather. If I had known it was going to be a friggin' oven up there, I could have stayed home and melted and saved myself the greenbacks.

Anyway, it was good fun being up there. I have a few (hundred) cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, in-laws, out-laws and other assorted members of the cast and crew that showed up to welcome me into the Pacific Northwest with open arms, soggy kisses and much cheek-pinching. (I swear - do we have open casting calls to recruit extended family members??) After the introductory to-do, a few select cousins (aka my partners in crime) took me into the seedier parts of Portland, where I felt much more at home.

Speaking of seedier parts of the city, there is a very interesting phenomenon at work up there. I asked to go to a dive bar, much like my beloved Landlord Jim's in downtown San Diego. My cousin, Doug, looked at me, eyebrows raised and explained that their dive bars were in actuality, really bad strip clubs with names like "Jiggles" and dancers that reminded one of one's mother. Factoid: Oregon has more strip clubs than any place in the US... So, they (they being Doug & his brother Danny - hooligans after my own heart) took me to one of the smaller McMenamin's places, since the McMenamin brothers have a monopoly on everything related to beer, drinking and entertainment. Not that I'm knocking that - the places are actually very cool. Everything from rehabbed welfare houses to little hole in the wall taverns - all revamped and redecorated and revitalized. It's nice that the menu is pretty much the same across the board (Yum! Cajun tater tots!). And I like what they've done with the places - very enjoyable. In fact, I wish they had a few of those places down south. Although its probably good they don't because I drank so much beer on my trip that I was perpetually buzzed and water-logged. (Beer-logged?) I guess I can do that on a vacation, but a way of life? No thanks.

Anyway, I attended a family picnic, went to a couple of get-togethers, met up with some friends, went to a Maktub concert at the newly rehabbed Doug Fir (thanks, Sammy!), drinking, drinking and mo' drinking, wandered around downtown taking pictures and spent my final evening watching Eddie Izzard with Danny & Dougie in my drunken, water-logged exhaustion. Yep, good times were had by all... already planning my next trip.

I know I promised to really catch you up on what's been going on lately, but since the trip, everything is pretty hazy.

So, what's up for the weekend? Tonight I plan to go pay a friend of mine to pour hot wax on all my tender parts and rip off whatever sticks. Sounds like fun, huh? This weekend is also the Temecula Valley Balloon & Wine Festival. To you all, it may sound like fun. To us Temecul-ites, it is one method of coping with having to live an hour outside of San Diego.

Next week I am giving a presentation for my mom's church group on "Things to do in San Diego." What do I tell them? "Ladies, here is a list of all the best dive bars in the downtown area." *Sigh* This is going to be more difficult than I thought... Also on the agenda for the next week: Palm Springs and a birthday celebration/potential orgy. Just something to jog my memory and tell you about it...