Yipee kiyay mother effer

Some of the best nights are when manimal and I have driven margaritas on a hot summer day and we watch the equivalent of of movie junk food. Tonight, after getting home from work at 7pm, getting there at 8:30 am this happened!

BOO!

So often, I find myself home alone during the week due to husbunny's work schedule. And though I have 50 thousand things on my to do list, I find that I am super excited to curl up on the couch with my glass of on-sale cabernet watching horror movies. Last night was no acception. Even with the impending mother in law visit, I sat, adequately buzzed, watching Aliens. Totally content with my two asshole kitties curled up on either side. I used to be a real wild child, just completely bonkers. And now I find pleasure in the simple joys of life. Am I uncool? Am I lame? Do I care? No, no ,and hell no. I am in love with my life. I really wouldn't trade it for most anything. Lovin on some awesomeness. Being a positive person being thankful for the awesomeness that is happening due to all my hard work. And Damn it, Sigourney weaver kills it!

Crawling

Why is it, when there is ABSOLUTELY nothing happening at work, the day slows down to a crawl?  But those last 15 minutes seem to fly by in the blink of an eye?

I feel like i have seen everything on the internet, twice today.  All of my work was done and I am in a holding pattern until I can start the next project.  So today was all about what I could find online to entertain myself.  I did come away with this little gem:
When looking for items on Craigslist, search the term "moving".  It will sort out a lot of good deals as people tend to sell good stuff cheaper when they need to skedaddle out of their current residence.

Like this super sweet shuffleboard table.  Apparently, they don't have room in their new place for it.  Weird. hahahah!

Totally distracted by shiny things

I have no excuse other than I totally blanked out on the fact that I have a blog!  I was so into reading the other blogs that inspired me to write my own, I FORGOT TO WRITE MY OWN!  However at this point and time I am only talking to myself as I have no followers.  I am the crazy lady talking to herself!

For the past three days I have completely immersed myself in separating out a box of beads that had somehow become one giant hodge-podge of a mess.  I really kinda zenned out on separating all the little seed beads into color groups. That is what has had me distracted.  My insane developing psychosis of anal retentiveness that keeps me up at night if beads are not in organized.  Yup.  That's pretty dumb.

Tonight, however, I get to be social with my friend Ashley.  We are going out to dinner and will partake of the yumminess that is PHO.  Yes, I live in the part of San Diego that has 5 Pho restaurants on one block.  But it never gets old.  That and I have been pretty anti-social lately, so its time to reconnect.  I am pretty excited.  Husbunny will be staying behind so that I may have a girls evening and he will be handsomely rewarded with dinner being brought home.

mmmmmmmm pho

Passive Aggressive Panda

There is one personality type in this world that makes me claw the walls and go deep into my primal side.  I want to club this personality type over the head, Flintstones style.

Not to get all Freudian, but I am pretty sure it stems from my relationship with my PA Mother.  No, I do not mean Pennsylvanian.

I left my favorite job ever, because of the new cubical buddy they gave me that they refused to move (me or my buddy).  He was so passive aggressive, and sat all of 2 feet from me.  With no walls.  I need a wall to deal with that shit.  So I said it's me or him.  You move me and I will work here for you until I die.  I love this job.  They said no moves.  Not me, not him.  So I left.  It was really hard to do.  I thought it would be for the  best.  I don't need to go to jail for strangling this dude.

My new position was, well, not what they said it was going to be when I agreed to take it.  It was not the paycheck they promised by a long shot.  And the hours were no where near what they said in the interviews and in the signing.  As in, Hey, guess what, you are going to work your ass off from 8:30am to 5:30pm then we will keep you here until 7pm working hard.  We will let you go home, then at 8pm you are ours until you pass out from exhaustion.  This will be the norm, not a "sometimes thing".  But hey, even that I could do.

Then I get another Passive Aggressive Princess.  But this one is a little more tolerable.  She sits on the far side of the floor.  I only have to deal with her occasionally.  She likes to lament about how hard her life is, and how much work she does, as she calls out sick for what feels like every other day.  "But why do you even care if she calls out sick?".  Any other scenario, I wouldn't.  Except I am her coverage,  Yup, I get to hear about how busy she is, and then I get to do her work for her, on top of my own.  SWEET!

The only reason I am whiny blogging about this is today, she is on FIRE!  She is the best Passive Aggressive Princess she can be today!  She could medal in it, I swear.  I just had to vent it out before I went all post-apocalyptic warrior on her.

I am calm now.

Hello my name is SIMON...

 

And I like to do drawerings!




Add to the list of the things I am trying out, I am going to a weekly drawing gathering. Actually I have no idea what to call it. I go to a pub on Sundays where they bring in a live model. We sit, we draw, we a have a pint. This sounds like the best hobby I have picked up yet!




I used to draw for fun years ago. Then life and work, well, mostly work, got int he way and I hadn't picked up a pencil to draw in over 10 years. My friend is hosting a drink and draw night and I went to my first one. UGH it was fun. That's an "ugh" for it being fun and easy and therefore a reason to get off my couch to go be social.

Time keeps on slippin slippin.....

And another huge block of time between posts.  What can I say?  Life happens.  It's more like work happens.  I barely took any photos, but I did however, have myself a great little time this past weekend!  After the horror story of having to step in and cover a sound gig for Husbunny (not my lack of skill, their piss poor attitudes), I was rewarded by a friend with a ticket to San Diego Comic Con!  SQUEEE!

Or so I thought.  I am completely appreciative of the pass.  I was totally disappointed with the con.  The toys were not new, or interesting, and I could buy them online!  The comics were few and far between.  It was all just very MEH.  I will not be missing it if I never go again.  Sad really.  I had such fun 7 years ago when I went!

If you are debating whether or not you need to go to Comic Con in San Diego,  don't bother.  You can come and enjoy all of the stuff they have outside, that you don't need a badge for, for free. Otherwise, don't bother with the ticket stress.

After Comic Con, I joined a friend for her weekly Drink and Draw event at bar in our 'hood.  I haven't sat down and purposefully drawn anything in 10 years.  I really enjoyed it!  It was so freeing to not need to please anyone, help anyone with a problem, fix anything, or be done by a certain time.  I had a pint, a pencil, and a pad of paper and just sketched the figure model they had come in.  I will definitely try to do this more.  Its a Sunday night, but I will make it work.

Other than that I have just been working my buns off!  Boring I know.  I get bored with blog posts that have have no picture, so here is a totally unrelated one for your viewing pleasure.

WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?!?!?

Wow, not that is a hiatus!  The Husbunny took advantage of the fact that most of the people at my work were coming down with holiday-itis, and we left Tuesday night for another one of our adventures.  These are usually a vague direction or end point that we may or may not reach, with no real plan to speak of.  We packed up clothes and snacks for a week, sleeping bags and the tent, and took off!

Only to come to a screeching halt at Camp Pendelton. Apparently there were 2 or 3 car fires keeping us from moving forward.  Being stuck near the military base meant that there was no way to go around,  no where to stop and wait it out, no way to be able to get off the freeway and head back home to try again in the morning.  Husbunny was not amused.  I had downloaded a super sweet app earlier in the day called Waze.  It is basically a social network of people letting one another know what kind of gnarly traffic lies ahead, where the cops are, and how long you are going to be stuck waiting.  Like Google maps, but more detailed.  The handy dandy app renewed faith in Husbunny and we trekked forth.

We ended up in Camarillo, Ca, where we stopped for the night and grabbed a hotel.  The next morning when we got up there was a wafting smell of bacon (vegetarian I know, but sometimes it just calls to me) that entered our nostrils.  Around the corner from our hotel was a little restaurant in a strip mall called Eggs N' Things .  This was awesome!  And the people were so very very nice for a busy 4th of July morning.  It was packed but were were able to get in about 10 minutes after we got there.  Apparently, if you order breakfast, they bring you out a crepe as you wait for your order to be prepared.  However, they neglected to let us know this, so when our crepes came out, Husbunny and I frantically waved down our waitress to let her know we didn't order these.  On the house!

From there we ventured further down Hwy 101 (we thought, yea lets travel the Hwy 1 all the way San Francisco!  I guess it doesn't go all the way through), when we came driving through Santa Barbara. And I do mean driving through. There it goes! We headed up into the hills to bypass some coastal traffic and to hit up Solvang! I had never been and the call of the kitsch beckoned. It is a little town founded by Danish school teachers and is built to look like a little Danish village. AWESOME!

We got in just after the parade ended and opted to park in a residential area and ride our bikes around. SOOOOO glad we did that. There were so many cars, and a ton of zombified people on the sidewalks. Riding bicycles gave us the opportunity to not sit in traffic and not have to walk slowly behind people unaware of their surroundings. We went to a quaint little thrift shop and looked around. I bought a cute little pair of slip on sandals. We went to a cuckoo-clock shop where I bought a wee little clock and Husbunny bought a stein ( I know, not Danish, shut it.)



We rode further down the street and and bought glorious Danish pastries that the girl wrapped up for me so as not to crush them in my backpack. I already had a clock, a stein and shoes in there! We went to a little cafe and had refreshing beers. Husbunny got the Carlsberg and I got the Krooenberg. De-lightful! We got back on our bikes and rode back to the car.

Hell yea I want to drink at Viking Garden!

mmmmmm beer

Husbunny likes his beer

I love Husbunny!  He is so patient with me and my crazy.  He also indulges me when I get wild hairs up my butt and want to do some off the wall stuff.  Case in point: Ostrichland!  Just outside Solvang, and I do mean like a block or two, is an Ostrich farm that allows people to feed their birds!  Yes please!  It only costs $4?  C'mon Husbunny!  You are going in with me!  Oh yes, we did indeed feed us some Ostriches and Emus. And I may or may not have screamed.  Best $4 I have ever spent in my life.

I love the matter of fact signage. Why Yes! We DO indeed like to bite! hahahha!

These little guys were the Emus.  They reminded me of the characters in the Dark Crystal.  I kept expecting one to come walking around the corner wearing robes.

Ah! Ah! Ah!  They are so fast!  Wait! Wait! Husbunny!  Don't laugh!

See?  They come at you all quick like!  Like velociraptors with no arms!

They were all very concerned about where we were going.

 NOT a low angle shot. These guys were TALL.

                        

  Indulging me = these









We got on the road and continued to the coast to get back on to Hwy 1.  We stopped over in Pismo Beach to be able to drive around ON the beach!  Not like in a parking lot next to the beach.  Nope.  We actually drove out ONTO  the beach itself!  That was a whole new experience.  Driving along people who were bent over, collecting shells.  It was really cool.  We passed by people on dune buggies, and in big 4x4s, families walking along, campers driving, people playing Frisbee.  It was unreal.  Husbunny offered to pull over to let me run around in the sand.  That's when my brain started cranking.  Hmmm.  Cars on the beach.  Cars leaking all kinds of fluids, people peeing all willy nilly, along with all the crap you usually find at the beach.  Naw, I am good, lets head out to another location.

Just driving on the sand, no big deal!

Our drive out on to Pismo Beach,

               And the drive back










The next stop was Morro Bay.  Google said we had to stop and look at Morro Rock.  I am not one to disagree with Google.  By this time I was getting that old familiar HANGRY feeling.  A feeding was due upon us.  We stopped and took a few pictures and were lured over (hahah get it?  LURED?) by the amazing smells coming from Giovanni's that we walked over and stood in line.  The short lined lulled me into a false belief that I would be eating soon.  No sir, I did not.  We stood in line while a family of wait-until-we-get-to-the front-of the-line-we-have-been-standing-in-for-20-minutes-and-THEN-try-to-figure-out-what-to-orders, did just that.  When it was our turn, we ordered the clam chowder and the soft shell blue crab sandwich.  We like to split stuff.  That sandwich was the BOMB DOT COM.  I had never had soft shell crab before, and I can tell you it will not be my last.  We sat at the picnic tables and ate.  Sadly, there is no picture of the sandwich as we mowed down our food as the seagulls watching wished they could have.  It was soooooo goooood.  

Next stop was in Cambria.  We had originally pulled out to see if we could find Nit Wit Ridge, but we got a little turned around in the hills.  There was a HUGE festival of artists and hippies just raging and having a good ol' time!  There was no parking to be found.  Or cell phone service.  Or internet to be able to figure out how to get out of Cambria.  Husbunny pulled down a street that was bordered on one side by the ocean.  We pulled over and went down to the little beach that was at the bottom of some low cliffs.  The sand wasn't sand but pebbles like aquarium rocks!  There were tons of moonstones like at Moonstone Beach just up the way.  It was really cool.  

We drove a little ways more and and decided that we might need beer and wine for the camping we were hoping to do that night.  We stopped in San Simeon and got some libations.  We were heading back out when we noticed a ton of people pulled over on the side of the road looking at something.  We were not ones to be left out!  We pulled over to take a look.  ELEPHANT SEALS!  After the excitement of seeing these sea creatures we never get to see in San Diego wore off, we noticed the stench that Husbunny described as a wet dog, rolled in shit, and vomited on.  These guys STUNK.  UGH.  It was awful.  And they sounds they made were ghastly.  I will quote the ever-so-eloquent Husbunny again on his description of their sounds.  "It sounds like the worst case of the shits you have ever had in your life, but coming out of their mouths."  Thanks, Babe.   



I was very excited for the next stop.  I had read up on Limekilns that were located in some of the state parks along the coast near Big Sur.  They were the ovens people baked the sediments in to make building materials.  Plus they were in the middle of the forest!  We love us some forests!  Trees and this little family are best friends!  We thought we would drive half way up to Big Sur and camp over night in the park!  NOPE!  That was not mean to be.  Every campground we pulled into was full.  So poor Husbunny drove, and drove, and drove.  It got darker and darker.  At first he was amazed by the coastline.  After about 2 hours into it, he felt he had sufficiently seen this coastline and wanted nothing more than to find a hotel.  But that wasn't in the cards.  Not even in the next hour.  It was almost 4 hours of driving before we hit city.  And that was Carmel, which means we could not afford their hotels. So onward to Monterrey. When we finally pulled into a place, Husbunny was so tired, he didn't care that it was right next door to an adult toy shop. We turned in for the night. The next morning we set out for the downtown area. Like in Solvang, we parked in a residential area and rode our bikes around.

I think Monterrey was my favorite part of the trip. We rode our bicycles all along the boardwalk. We passed by Monterrey Bay Aquarium, we saw otters and seals, we played on the rocks in the tide pools. There a section that had the coast guard's dock that you could ride out on. As were were making our way to the end of the dock, we noticed GIANT jellyfish swimming around in the water below. I had never seen jellyfish out side of an aquarium before! And the star fish were amazing!

At the end of the dock (it was a long dock) were hundreds of California seals frolicking and swimming around. It was pretty rad to be able to see them swim so close up. In San Diego they are pretty far from you.

Just as we were completely enthralled with watching them play this huge San Lion pops his head out of the water and barks so deep, it vibrated the wood planks of the dock we were standing on. Awesome.

Jellyfish!  In nature!  Just livin!

These guys were the size of a bike helmet!

The lone crab

Capt. Vibra-dock!

mmm more beer

Abalone - that breaded thing over there

Crab cakes!  Yum!

I am currently in possession of this shell

We biked over to Fisherman's Wharf since I had read that it was almost exactly like the one in San Francisco. Pretty much. Husbunny has never been to SF so I was trying to get him all of the experiences in case we didn't make it to the city.  It was time to eat again and I had set my heart on trying abalone when I found out that they farmed them there. We decided on a cute little restaurant at the end of the wharf and we were seated in the sun room facing the water. We ordered the abalone and the crab cakes and watched seals play until our beers and order came. It was really nice. The abalone was amazing! Husbunny said it was like a cross between scallops and squid. I hate squid, but I looooved this! UGH it was so good. They even left the shell they pried it from on the plate, which I took as a sign for me to take it home with us. As we were leaving the wharf, I popped into a gift shop to grab a memento. Monterrey pot holder? Check. A man with a cooler on wheels with a huge tail sticking out of it walked by as I was leaving the store. He had just caught a Chinook Salmon off the pier. Dang, lucky. Monterrey was amazing. 

   

  Bikes, man!

Just put those giant artichokes in the back, Bob.

Ah, Monterrey, we will be back!  Onward towards Castroville!  Why Castroville?  Because it the WORLD'S capital  for artichokes.  And I love me some artichokes.  We were just about to rot in traffic on the 2 lane highway when I spotted a sign that said we were coming up a stand that was selling........wait for it......deep fried artichoke hearts!  Hells yes!  Get in my face, artichokes!  So, the obliging Husbunny pulled off.  Mainly, I think, because he wanted to wait out the traffic.  Doesn't matter.  We stopped.  Oh, the fruit smelled so very, very good!  So we bought fruit and some garlic instead of fried goodness.  The strawberries were picked from the field next door. The apple was the size of Husbunny's fist!  The cherries were dericious!  With an R even!  I was super excited to eat my orange later.  While we got back in traffic, we discussed all of the things we were going to make with the garlic when we got home. 

YUM!

Hey look!  It's Morrissey!  Blvd!

We combined our good thoughts and feelings and summoned all of the good luck we felt we had inside of us, and wished for an open campground in the woods above Santa Cruz.  We didn't even stop in Santa Cruz, we drove straight up into those hills into a place called Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park.  Redwoods?  Yes, ma'am.  Redwoods.  SQUEEEE!  Campsite? NO. UGH!  We ended up parking in an elementary school parking lot, the only place with service, and called around to the area's motels.  Sigh.  Husbunny found a cabin within our budget and we were off!  A cabin!  In the Redwoods! SQUEEE once more!   It was gorgeous!  The little front porch had redwoods as a view and it was so quiet, so peaceful.  We unloaded the car, had a beer and some wine from Paso Robles (omg it was goooood.  Like dangerously good) and we set off to explore.  We found a little staircase that led down to the stream where we sat and talked about moving to Portland Oregon.  We walked down the street and checked out all the houses and (full) campgrounds hoping for a spot for the next night.  We had driven to the State Park entrance earlier and we greeted by a mean and bitter German woman working the little booth.  She let us know that we were stupid for thinking we could find a campground that wasn't full on 4th of July weekend and here was a list of places that were full, but we could call if we wanted to.  Ick.  Negative people give me such a horrible and icky feeling after dealing with them.  But our cabin was amazing!  At night we curled up and watch tv.  We woke up in the morning and ate at a cute little house-turned-restaurant in Felton called Rocky's.  It was absolutely adorable!

                                                                                          

High five weird little bear creature thing!



Wooden Covered Bridge Park, Felton, CA

Husbunny was needing some extreme biking time. We drove around looking for the mountain bikers that Santa Cruz has been such a draw for. This forest was seriously beautiful. We found a bunch of people pulled over unloading bikes from their cars. Husbunny got his bike and made friends with some teenage boys who promised to take him to a good spot. I had seen a thrift store back in town that I was going to park myself at and wait for his call. Sometimes I shuttle him to the tops of mountains so that he can get more riding downhill in without all the peddling uphill nonsense. I couldn't really go on a hike myself, or go chill out in the woods as there was no reception. Nothing really mind blowing in the thrift store. I bought a couple of books I found on Costa Rica (possibly another trip we are going to take). I got the call and went to pick up the hubster. Apparently this was quite the gnarly trail he took! His back disk brake was all bent up and he broke a spoke! Yowza! He said he was cool and done riding, so we drove around the woods for a bit. We started to head in the direction of San Francisco, as it was a whopping 1 hour drive away from where we were, but Husbunny was loving him some trees, so we ventured towards the direction of Big Basin.

                             

 

When we got to big Basin, there was a waiting list for the last few campsites that weren't checked in to yet. We had to wait an hour for them to call the names off the list. If you were there, you got to pick from the remaining campsites where people cancelled last minute, or just didn't show up at check in time. We were number 10. We waited the hour. We had camp store sandwiches, we drank water from the drinking fountains that tasted like metal, and we waited. With each passing minute, I knew. I just knew. I KNEW we were going to get a site that night. I could feel it! 5 o'clock. I raced over to the booth where they were to call out the names from. The first 2 names were no shows! YESSS! Number 3 was there. That's cool. No worries. Husbunny came up and asked how many sites there were. I had no idea. But we were getting one. Number 4 was there too. Number 5 was a no show. Number 6 was there. Number 7 was there. Number 8 was a no show. Number 9 was there. YES! Our turn! "Thank you everyone, there are no more sites." I must have looked like a 6 year old who found out Santa wasn't real, because the two park rangers scrambled around trying to see if there was one more site left. Nope. I was absolutely crushed. We got in the car and drove through the beauty of the forest, not to be camped in by us. I would have camped the crap out of those woods too.

Husbunny stopped in Gilroy so we could get an amazing garlicky dinner. Gilroy is home to the Garlic Festival in August. As soon as we got close to town, you could smell the garlic in the air, and different types too! We had found a restaurant on yelp that looked promising. Garlic City Cafe. Sounds good! We ordered the roasted garlic with salmon cream cheese, I got the Penne with Prawns in a Garlic Hollandaise, and Husbunny got the Garlic Seafood Fettuccine. We ordered the clam chowder and the salad as sides. OMG. This was so good, I am drooling a little bit right now just thinking about it. The chowder was out of this world. It was so thick, and so garlicky. We battled over the last bite. My entree was good, but Husbunny's, with the giant pan seared scallops, was divine. We rolled ourselves out of there and into the car. Our breath created a haze on the front windshield as we drove to the next stop.

GO there.  Eat stuff.

Mine.
No pic of  Husbunny's as the camera was put down
the moment this picture was taken.

Mmmm blurry roasted Garlic

We drove to San Luis Obisbo under the recommendation of one of Husbunny's bike buddies. We stayed at a sweet little place called the Peach Tree Inn. The guy who took my call at 10pm stayed in the office until 12am waiting for us to get there so he could give us the bad news. There were no more queen size rooms left like he had quoted us, so we got a free king size upgrade. Poor us. Hahahha! We woke up the next day feeling refreshed. Husbunny hit up the continental breakfast, as I showered and got dressed for the day. It was going to be a hot one, so I wore shorts. The Inn let us keep our car parked in their lot as we biked around the city in search of food. The Hanger was beginning. We ate a place called the The Wild Donkey. It was supposed to be Mexican food. It was good. Not OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING good like the reviews on yelp said it was, but it was good. We ate while people watching. It was already such a nice day. We biked around the city for a bit, until we got bored. There wasn't much there. It was a college town that looked just like parts of San Diego. So did all the landscape. San Diego. That we had driven 800 miles to get away from and discover someplace new. It looked just like that. Pbththth. Lame.


We rode to a bike shop to get Husbunny's disk brake bent back to normal then we headed back to the Inn to get the car. Holy Crap it was hot now. We sat in a porch swing and cooled off in the shade. The delicious smoke form the Church run BBQ in the front parking lot of the Inn wafted over the roofand into our face. Maybe just one rib. I AM on vacation. Oh man! That was some awesome bbq. We got the sampler plate of sausage, tri-tip, ribs, and chicken. It came with a huge scoop of potato salad and baked beans. There are no pictures as we were busy gettin busy with our bbq! We wrapped up the extra ribs the guys running it gave us and headed out of town. We were ready to go home. SLO was disappointing and it kinda bummed us out. So we started on the long drive home.

When we got into LA, Husbunny had a hankerin for those ribs. So he nommed on some ribs while driving through Simi Valley.

Husbunny, hankerin.

And when we got home, the kitties rejoiced in the return of their litter box cleaner and food scooper-outer. And immediately after, not a single fuck was given.

Look at all the fucks Dora gives!