So the moral of story when it comes to Happy Feet is if there is a species of animals out there that are on the brink of extinction, a gimmick will increase your chances of survival exponentially. Making your pack/herd/swarm/gaggle dance in a choreographed manner won't hurt either! Mwhaha! I have to admit though that I liked this movie a lot. Abbie suffered through at least one movie that totally sucked, and I owed her this one. haha! It's always interesting trying to place the voices of cartoon characters. Some we got, and some we failed miserably on guessing. It took me all of 10 minutes to figure out it was Savion Glover doing the tap for/with the penguins. I would definitely highly recommend it to anyone!
So John and I ditched Cami to head downtown. What ensued was total comedy.
The first pitcher was at Sharkeez. Safe enough.
Then we headed over to the Santa Barbara Brew Company for pitcher #2. Where the night took a turn. I look over my shoulder and walking over to us are 3 coworkers I used to work with 4 years ago. At a place, I was NOT happy to be working at!! It was there I learned my intuition extended to the work place too. I got a bad vibe from the whole joint from the instant I stepped through the door, but I needed the money and you gotta do what you gotta do right? That only lasted for so long.
So of the 3 people I ran into...the first gal was really really sweet. She was really the heart of the whole group. Then there were the other 2. She was gay and deep into some dramatic chick she was dating. He was married with children. NOW...they are engaged to EACH OTHER. Fuck me sideways. Oh yea, he was one of her direct reports. So in the last 4 years...he got divorced, she got straight, and they got together!? I couldn't make this shit up even if I tried.
After that encounter I needed a shot. So I introduced John to the car bomb...mmmm. Oh yea, so there was this totally hot blonde...big boobs, push up bra, low cut shirt, jeans so tight they looked sprayed on...nice booty though. She was pressing all up on this older, overweight, dorky Bill Gates looking dude. John and I were like WTF? So I asked this guy at the bar who seemed to know her, what the deal was. He looked at her, then looked at the dude, and looked at me and said...he owns the place and she works here. The light bulb went off. It made total sense
Then we walked around the corner to Chad's. I was feeling waaay under dressed rocking running pants and my Old Navy pullover. John walks in the joint asking for Chad. Chad looks at John, then looks at me and was like...how do you guys know each other??? We explained that we have been friends for like 8 years. And I had to explain that I didn't mention I knew them to get a freebies. I hate when people do that crap. Riding on the coat tails of others is eck. Chad the true host he is offered us drinks. I told him to surprise me and he had Jodie (sp?) the bartender make me one of their martinis. The damned thing had 99.9% vodka and .01% cranberry juice. Where we met some tender ronies that reminded I need to meet some real women.
After that it was off to Mad Dog a hot dog joint on State Street. Did I ever mention that I talk shit about people after I've been drinking??? OMG and there was much fodder on the streets. Girls who thought they were hotter than they were, and guys who were clearly not cooler than they were too. Not to mention I had to talk John down from pelting people with a ball he fashioned out of napkins! Of course he would throw the damned things, and people would look at ME! Like I told John, I am NOT trying to get arrested! hahaha!!
Good times!
On the way up to Santa Barbara I drove through/by/around a bunch of places I used to frequent when I live in LA. But no, I do NOT, love the 405!!
Hawthorne exit...used to live near here. I was also introduced to In-n-Out near here too!!
Marina Del Rey...man. I would catch the bus to go to my JC at Fox Hills mall. Me and this kid named Carl would hang out at the video game store and play Street Fighter all afternoon after class. After I got my first car, I would go to the movie theater in Marina Del Rey and the arcarde there. That's where I ran into Wesley Snipes.
Venice...ex-gf exit. I think I sped past this one.
The 10 freeway. One direction I had to work, the other direction I head to my old church.
Last night/this morning I had a dream that I cut my locks off. In the dream, I was looking at myself in the mirror with a head full of locks. Then as the dream progressed the locks were being cut off. May be this is related to the Sampson/Delila conversation Asaunta and I had a few days back? After this last session of retwisting I noticed my hair is defintely at my shoulders and a little past in the back. From the Summer I left SB I've always wanted to have locks. So I let me hair grow thinking one day I'll get them. That was almost 3 years ago. About 2.5 years ago I started twisting and that began the process. However the last 10 months have seen the most growth within a time span.
I've come accept I don't like calling my hair 'dreads'. Allegedly, some legend held that European visitor called the hair 'dreadful' and as such the name stuck and later became 'dread locks'. Back home we often refer to them as 'knotty dreads'...it's pronounced way better than it looks. Still the name dreads doesn't sit well with me. It's amusing though walking around people who notice me, with good and bad looks, and say s'up. Steph thought when she first met me I was going to be a really fun person by virtue of my locks. Go figure, because I've heard that from a few other places too. I wonder why that is?
May be it's because I'm not used to having long hair, but it gets in the damned way all the time! Unless I want it obstructing my view while eating or driving, it has to have a headband. Every now and then a stray lock with pop into my peripheral vision and I'll think someone/something is there and whip my head around...nopers. It's the locks! Grrr!!! And I want to swim! Getting my hair wet and drying it is a pain! It's a lot of damned hair and it gets heavy!! People reading this who are used to their long hair are probably laughing at me right now...lol.
I have to immortalize this one. Since I missed class last week because of a nap, I decided to make myself stay up and go to class right after work. On the way home I stopped off at Best Buy for some cheap new music. 10 bucks for a newly released CD is damned good, even better than online since the quality is better, you're getting the album info, and you're not paying for a CD - much less the computer you bought to burn the CD. I picked the new Fergie and Akon. $9.99 each. Bite my ass Rhapsody and iTunes!!
Anyway, I jet home, change, eat and head off to class. I arrived about 15 minutes late and just slid into my chair trying to make as little noise as possible. Getting my books out of my bag, I hear the annoying little Mexican/Peruvian/Brazilian whatever boy in the back starting up with his little peanut gallery comments. Yes, he is a little boy, literally and figuratively. He looks barely 5'2 and 100 lbs wet. I swear he comes to class HIGH. And every class he has something to say...every...damned...3...minutes. He just will not SHUT up. I want to walk back there with the textbook and knock him silly.
Then I look up. And I see the teacher. More to the point, I see what he's wearing. At which point I sense, Versace is turning over in his grave. The Queer Eye guys are now longing for women. Cosmo and Vogue are shutting down their presses. This little Frenchmen is breaking all of the few fashion rules I know of, and pretty sure a plethora of others. Let me try to paint this picture:
I. Green pointy boots, that are blatantly fake snake skin. And not just a dark green. Nooooo, my man is rocking BRIGHT Mylanta green boots.
II. Black leather pants. Yes, as in cow hide. And not like it's bad enough that he's rocking them, but they are really a tad too tight.
III. Remember those sweaters from the 80s for guys...kinda poofy, with a button opening off to an angle, with the leather patches on the shoulders? Think that with GREEN leather patches to match the boots and white everywhere else.
It was like a train wreck.
120. That's almost how many damned friggin' pins went into my hair after washing, conditioning and twisting my hair. I feel so damned manly right now. Not. hahaha!!
...well almost nothing. With the weekend being uncharacteristically busy I really was NOT in the mood to do more than sit on my couch. However, I really needed to get homework done. Missing class because of a too long nap is just really, really lame. Called my classmate up to see if she had the CD cause I missed class....guess what...she missed clas too! Smooooooth. So for damned sure I had to do some homework. Her and her dog came over...but he doesn't bark a lick of French. Get it? Ok, that was a cheesey joke. She sure can eat. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.
Tonight was game night and I have to say it was a success. More people showed than I thought would, and had a great time! Which is the point of game night right? To have a good time. About 10-13 folks showed up and stuck around! I wasn't alone finally until about 3AM. The last hour or so, we started watching Office Space but never got through it because it finally sunk in that it was really, really late. Some folks played poker at the table, and the rest of us played Taboo and Catch phrase in the living room. I know better than to gamble, as I have NO luck whatsoever!
All in all it was a really good night! Clean up tomorrow is gonna be a bear!
Jack-n-the-Box is running a new series of commercials now where people are stuck in rut on the roadside, with their car flipped onto one side. I've been in that situation - Nils!! Jack drives up and they say they're in a rut, and Jack proceeds to tell them they should try his new biscuit breakfast sandwiches. My situation is different, but those damned sandwiches sounds pretty damned good right about now.
I feel as though I am in a rut. I feel restless. I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels and not DOING anything. Yes, yes as I look back at my recent entries I see that I've been going to class and I'm very close to finishing my BA. Then I see that I am working towards my fitness goals. Jim Dandy. Herein lies the problem with historically overachieving, ambitous and scattered brained people who can't focus. I always wonder what's next. What's the next big challenge, what's the next big set of goals, what are the things I haven't achieved yet in 2006, what could have been done better, what were failures. And oh yea, November 2006 is barely a week old and I am already thinking about 2007.
One thing is for certain is that I need a life outside of work. A lot of interactions occur with work folks. This is not to say I work with bad or uninteresting people. That's the problem! Most are the complete opposite!! A lot of them are damned cool, fun, great to talk to and party with! So you go out Friday or Saturday with someone, party, drink, spill your guts on whatever sensitive topic(s) and then...you gotta look across at them come Monday morning. Now, that's good comedy.
It's easier to do hang out with some people than others outside of work. Some folks are good at keeping what happens outside of work, outside. Some folks on the otherhand are HORRIBLE at it. They insist on bringing stuff up that happened when you were out at the most inappropriate and annoying times. Like it's some sort of cute inside joke. What is that saying...you don't talk about some things among mixed company? And some people act like they're keeping things in one realm or the other, but are fucking guilty of blurring the lines between the 2, while professing to only be about 1 or the other. Fuck me, make up your mind. Better yet, I'll just step aside while you work your shit out.
So I'm getting a lesson in mixing and I don't know why this is such a huge issue for me. It was never a problem in the past. When I worked in SB, I met some of my closest and best friends through coworkers. Hell, some WERE coworkers! I've gone to people's weddings, their kids' birthday parties and have adopted and been adopted by several families. Ditto for when I worked in LA. We were such a TIGHT group in that company. That was over 10 years ago and I still talk to several of those folks. People's kids know me from that company and so on. PA was just an incest fest, but we kept stuff at the pub. At least until people started dating each other. haha! So why is it so different here at this job? Ultimately I know what I have to do, and it's part of the reason why I am bummed. Or may be my angst is localized to specific situations and people. Which my gut is raising flags about too.
What the flying fuck.
My weight has stayed the same (almost), but my body fat percentage has dropped 3%. It is loss nonethess, but a weee bit confusing. Muscle weighs more than fat, ok I get it. And yes, I have a lot more muscle than I did a month ago. Conciously, rationally I am better off than I was a month ago. At the same time I was hoping for some of those dramatic numbers you see splayed across magazines at the check out counter in the grocery store.
The other night I got really vain and took the cliche' bathroom MySpace pic. You know the pic EVERY MySpacer has...them, alone in their bathroom with their camera phone? haha! For women, they have to wear some bikini/bra top and for the men we gotta rock the obligatory wife beater. Yes, I posed off in my bathroom with my camera phone and wife beater. Aside from the incredible vain nature of the picture, I can see some of the areas that have seen improvement. The love handles are slowly being shaved down. Shoulders and chest are getting defined. And my arms...not guns, but they actually have muscle on them. I need to track my progress pictorially too.
That advice we shouldn't weigh weekly seems to be good advice, because a couple of times when I weighed in the past month it looked like I had gained weight. I'm also less concerned about my water. Being hydated isn't a bad thing. I need to kick up the cardio
Oh yea, today, I went for a long walk with Jennifer. It ended up being a long ass loop around Balboa Park. She likes to sprint off and do her thing, but you know what...we were in areas that I had no seen before...but there she was cruising along. I didn't feel anyway about letting her go on up ahead. There was cool stuff to be seen. Then I came home and conked the hell out. Nap time baby.
Suz and I have this thing where we text each other on Mondays. We loathe Mondays. They truly do suck ass. She went and found this funny ass Hallmark card with this office worker cussing his life for coming into working in his cube every Monday. I gotta find the text to that on the Internet somewhere. And then there is the waiting for Friday. Some weeks it takes longer to get there than others.
You know what too...I firmly believe that people leave work earlier because it gets dark earlier. The parking lot is noticeably less filled come 5PM these days. Before people would be around till like 6 or 7 when the days were longer. Now they bounce BY 5PM. Can't say that I blame them. The drive from work is treacherous enough in the daylight, much less when it's pitch black out. And people drive STUPID on that road!! Folks will PASS fuel trucks on blind corners, weave into other lanes to take corners faster and tailgate like they were earning points in a video game. Asses, the lot of them.
87, 85, 83 and a B- on my essay. There were my scores for the past 3 tests in French. See a pattern? I sure do. And the girl I've been studying with got 5 points higher than me this time around. I am for sure slacking. We get to drop the lowest great so that's good. But I really just want to finish this class. I am indifferent about getting an A. I just want to unequivocally pass this class. The time I spend on school is grating on my nerves. Two nights a week are taken up being IN class. Then I spend another night or 2 doing homework. To hell with that. I'm seriously considering going back for my Master's, but dammit it means another 2-3 years of not having a life. Tasha and I were talking about this very thing a little bit ago. 3 years in the scope of our careers that could go for another 30 or 40 years isn't that bad. Still we gotta GO through all of that.
One night I had a flash back to the very very first online date I had back in Santa Barbara. We went and saw, "You've Got Mail". Gawd, the cheese. I don't remember her name, but I remembered her little screen name. I Googled it. Sure enough, found her. What made me look? I don't even know. Boredom? Curiousity? A sadistic desire to find out what happened??? hahah! Anyway, I remember back in the day she was all gung ho about doing Businss School and then go work for some big consulting firm. She always seemed the type to be in some room late at night running multiple shredders at the same time. Sure enough she went to B-school and I guess is working in some big firm in NY. Good for her. I suspect she'll be running the place inside of 10 years, and then up for trial 5 years later.