Thank You

Last night I went to a surprise party for a friend. It wasn't his birthday - but he finally got his piece of paper for the degree (the coursework for which was completed years ago, hehe), and his wife went all out to have this surprise celebration for him - although I guess he was kind of suspicious and he didn't seem so surprised, heh....she had to tell him his family was going to be there, but I don't think he knew about everyone else. She brought his freshly acquired degree to the restaurant and even got their son a cute little tyke-sized sweatshirt from our college. Congratulations on the degree Jon!

Anyways - it just got me to thinking about - even when it seems like life sucks - how awesome parts of it can be. I was thinking about how lucky we all are to have people who kick ass in our lives, or people, like at this gathering, who will drive for an hour or two to what feels like a remote and random place (as does where I live!!), to celebrate a friend or family member. I'm old enough now to where I've gotten to the point where I realize that life is too short to keep people in your circle that don't bring something positive to your life (and hopefully you bring the same to theirs). I may not have as many friends as I had back in the day - and the phone may no longer ring off the hook, but these days those friends I do have really bring positive things into my life. The other parts of my life may not be where I want them to be, and that has a really powerful effect on me at times - but I have some amazing people in my life.

I lucked out with a kick ass family (something I know not everyone gets), and my friends are phenomenal on so many levels. And another cool thing is when they marry or otherwise attach themselves to significant others who are also damned cool (as is the wife mentioned above and the counterparts for some of my other pals - like the fiancee of one of my best friends, and the husband of another).

Thank you to all of the amazing people in my life....you make it all worthwhile.

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(Still to come in the near future - pictures of THE COOLEST TOY EVER!!!!)

My Weekend

It may be midweek now, but I still need to talk about the lovely weekend I had. Upon realizing a couple weeks ago that I'd be having an extra long weekend (both Friday and Monday off), I decided it was time to pay some of my L.A. pals a visit. I drove down on Thursday night to stay with my friend Laura who was supposed to have Friday off (they rescheduled a meeting so she had to go in for that). We had a good mellow day and hit a park that had a massive assortment of birds (I've never seen so many pelicans at the same time).

Friday night I headed over to Santa Monica to stay w/my friend Manuel. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized just how cool his neighborhood is. We went to get coffee in the morning and then we walked to the beach - which was a whopping four blocks away =-). It was a gorgeous day and we walked along the beach-side path for a while before hitting the 3rd street promenade on the way back (it has all sorts of trendy little cute shops, dinosaur topiary's and you can walk in the middle of the street). Later that day Laura met up with us and we went to the Ashes and Snow exhibit (http://www.ashesandsnow.org/home.php) which was in an amazing space. It was a very impressive exhibit. That night we headed back to Manuel's space and got our "cook" on =-p. Hehe - the last time I was down, Manuel had decided he wanted to learn to cook or something - so he and Laura had acquired all sorts of cookbooks, and this time (as before) he did the main course and Laura and I took care of dessert. Sort of. One of our desserts turned out damn cool - but the other was a flop as we didn't heat the oil as much as we were supposed to it seems. The other one is tasty and easy!! It was "Phyllo Dough Nests" or something like that...but we couldn't find phyllo dough, so we used egg-roll wraps instead - hehe....sounds raunchy but it worked!

Sunday I headed out to enjoy yet another lovely day and Manuel stayed behind to do some writing. I walked to the beach and then rollerbladed down to Venice Beach. Hey - I know it's L.A., but I was not expecting to see so much LOVELY eye candy!!! YAY eye candy - WOOHOO!!!! It was so great to be out rollerblading on a gorgeous day right near the beach, skating by all sorts of tasty treats =-p. I switched to my sneakers once I got to Venice Beach and headed out to the water so I could take some pictures. I decided to climb these cool looking rocks - not realizing with how pointed and slippery they were that it would be a real pain in the ass. I was out towards the farther end along with a couple of other guys when a lifeguard in a truck got on his speaker to announce that we were not allowed to be on the wet rocks - only the dry ones. Ooops. So then I trekked over to the shop area, and I just love Venice Beach. There are all sorts of random people and cool/quirky shops and lots of cute dogs! I wish I had more time - but I was running late (although I did manage to do some shopping - hehe).

I bladed back to Manuel's because we had something else to do that night....we had a game to go to! His sister couldn't use her tickets, so we (Laura and I) got to fill those seats at my first ever NBA game!!! Yay!!! I don't even care that it was the Clippers - they were awesome seats!!! I like watching basketball (I got to watch a lot of it during all those benchwarming years =-p), and it was just awesome being able to go to an NBA game =-). Very cool indeed.

I said my goodbye's to each of them Sunday night as they both had to go to work, but in the morning I went back to this groovy toy store at the 3rd street promenade and bought myself THE COOLEST TOY EVER!!!! It's a combination of a bear/bull/bumblebee/and a devil. I know - hard to picture - hehe. I'll probably give it a photo session soon - but it's very cool!!!!

As I headed out I needed to first stop at a store, where I totally got hit on - which is always an ego boost. Of course, I wasn't feeling well and was buying some ibuprofren and really didn't want to be bothered, but it was still an ego boost. Mind you, I don't think the poor guy believed me when I said I didn't live in the area (I should have shown him the driving directions that I had in my hand), but it was entertaining. There's a bit more to the story, but I'm not going to tell it here - hehe.

I arrived back up North Monday night with a happy glow from my trip (or was I just sweaty? Hehe). I've always had a thing against the L.A. area - but my goodness, I loved Santa Monica! Loved it! Being able to live that close to some very cool things would be great. And my friends know that I am in a fairly transient place right now as far as where I want to live and what I want to do - so they made the offer that if I wanted to try out the general L.A. area that I could switch off staying at their places. Hmmmmmmm.....I never thought I'd be an L.A. girl, but I'm thinking about it!! We'll see what the next couple months bring, but who knows.

And now I'm back to my reality up here, but I had a great weekend =-)!

V-DAY

Happy Valentines Day!!! For all of my friends who allow this day to get them feeling down - cheer up!! If it makes you feel any better - I adore you and think you are fabulous =-)!!! So go buy yourself some chocolate or just go to a restaurant and steal someone's box of it when they get up for a bathroom break - hehe =-p. Know that you are terrific whether or not someone else happens to be your Valentine on 1 of the 365 days out of the year!!!

Piercings

I was talking to some little girls last week - 2nd graders - and we were talking about pierced ears. One of them had hers done, and the other had had hers done but had decided she didn't like it so she had taken them out....but was now ready to get them done again. I told the girls how my parents hadn't allowed me to get mine pierced until the 5th fricking grade! And as I talked to them with their pierced and soon-to-be-pierced-again ears I couldn't help but be reminded of the fact that it had felt like a hellishly long time to wait until the 5th grade, especially when you have fellow classmates prancing around with the ears they've had pierced since infanthood. So, all these years later I still think making me wait until the 5th grade was overkill! But I guess I made up for the wait by adding piercings at 18 and thereafter, much to the disappointment of my folks =-p.