August 13, 2008
Please excuse the lack of posting, I’ve been back for a couple days but inundated with work and work-related issues.
The travel was a bit insane, as evidenced by the 14 delays and overbooked planes, but thankfully the return trip was much less eventful. They only asked for volunteers, they didn’t actually have to bump anyone. Call it foolish but I actually put my name in thinking that it’d be great to get two free round trip tickets from the one free trip. Of course, it’s just for mainland travel, so I couldn’t finally make a free trip to Maui or anything, but still, it’d be cool.
We had a great weekend, but more on that later. I’d forgotten my camera so I had to take pictures on my cousin’s camera.
August 4, 2008
I’m heading out to Portland for a long weekend starting on Friday. My cousin and I are making this a girls’ weekend (aka: no family visits) but since I’m normally only up there to visit family, I have no idea what else Portland has to offer.
We’re going to go hiking, and I’d like to visit Powell’s City of Books since I’ve never been. I don’t want to buy anything, I just want to wander around the books and ogle them.
I’m not looking for touristy things, necessarily, just fun, frugal things to do or see. Does anyone have suggestions?
Is it because I’m tired, or because I did too much this weekend that I can’t remember Saturday?
I can’t tell, I’m too tired.
Starting from Sunday, then.
Finally got a load of laundry done, it’s been too long. Spent a lot of time on the computer doing work stuff (like … bloggy stuff), and then ran out to take my cousin to see Dark Knight for her birthday. Luckily, I’d purchased a bulk lot of cheap movie tickets last year for $5.75 right before the prices skyrocketed, and so our movies were paid for. We shared a bagel sandwich with water for $6.99. I smiled because she’d brought a huge bottle of Gatorade and snacks with her so she wouldn’t have to buy drinks or candy. There’s a girl after my own heart.
Then we did a typical cousin hangout at her place: her mom had cooked random Asian foods, we (I) ate too much, noshed on fresh mango and carrot cake. We lolled about reading comic books from the library, played her brother‘s iPhone app games, and gossiped. I also loaded up on free calculus books so I could start reviewing some of the concepts in case I need it for the GMAT or biz school. They were destined to be donated to the library, so I’ll take them there once I’m through with them.
Spent the rest of the evening having dinner (#2) with East Coast friend and her family. EC friend is only in town for a day as she’s stopping here on her way to spend a whole blessed week in Hawaii with her family. *sigh* Lucky, lucky girl.
Oh I remember Saturday, now. Errands, mostly. It cost $50 to nearly fill up my tank. Spent $11 on personal grooming, another $6 on postage for the keys, exchanged some particularly noxious lotion at Bath and Body Works for a much more pleasant scent, and spent the entire afternoon at Borders. Half the time was spent on catch-up work because I’d gotten completely distracted on Friday by news from EC friend, and half was spent doing some background reading, related to the news from EC friend. I can’t really talk about it, not for a while, but I’m super excited about it. Also, nervous.
Had dinner at Cheesecake Factory, shared a pasta dish with a friend’s friend so it should have only cost $8 per person with tax and tip, but friend picked it up before we could contribute.
All told, I spent $24 out of pocket this weekend, and didn’t manage to tame my shaggy locks.
July 6, 2008
Whew, I made it. The past two days have been positively crammed full of activities and obligations, so much so that I wasn’t getting to bed until after 1 am. Am I getting too old to hang? š It’s actually been so busy that it wasn’t until after I checked the fluids in my car and cleaned house for a while that I realized I haven’t posted anything for two days!
Friday was fantastic fun. Hung out with best friend’s entire extended family for most of the day, networked with one of the relatives and may have a project lined up for several months from now. The cool thing is that I’m slowly putting some feelers out, very carefully, to certain acquaintances and friends to explore freelancing opportunities. I don’t plan to go freelance full-time, I definitely plan to keep my day job because I need my health insurance but this is another way of maintaining my sanity for right now.
Also, we went to Sonic Burger. Have you seen their silly shake commercials? I’ve seen a few, but the only thing that actually sticks with me is that they have tator tots. I love tator tots. Handily, I actually had cash on me to reimburse the person who put the meal on his credit card because I keep forgetting to make a bank run ($7).
Saturday was crammed with visiting: with friends for French Toast brunch in the morning ($1.50 for a dozen eggs), had a baby shower in the afternoon ($20 for baby-related gifts), and dinner with the cousins in the evening. I was literally running from one event to the next, and trying not to sweat too much. Ew. Spent the late night hours watching SNL, and gossiping with the kids. I guess I can’t call them “kids” really, anymore, as I was giving college and driving advice …. me? I’m experienced enough to give advice about college? Yeah, I guess so. Welcome to the almost real-world!
Finally hit the sack after 1 this morning, and luxuriated in my well-earned rest.
Today? I meant to work on my car’s lock but my car friend never showed up. Just checked my fluids and loaded the cargo net and emergency kit back in the trunk. All’s well there.
It was good to spend time with people I hadn’t seen in forever. Notably, family friends, friends from out of town, friends who are so busy working that I never see them, friends from former places of employ. There might have been a touch of stress from all the travel and shuttling about, but ’twas nothing a little cleaning workout today couldn’t work off.
I hope everyone had a great weekend!
June 29, 2008
’tis noon. ‘Tis noonish, and there’s a very light cool breeze gently sneaking through the window every so often to keep my room nice and comfortable, but not enough to do more than jiggle the leaves on the plants in the courtyard.
It’s just about perfect out there. So what am I doing inside??
I just can’t decide what I want to do, and in what order.
I’ve made my grocery shopping list for this week’s lunches: whole wheat bread, some tuna, cheese, salad kit, half pound of sliced roast beef. When I worked out the math, the deli meat is cheaper than the packaged sort, even when it’s on sale. Go figure. I think this week’s lunch list (and breakfast) will run about $15.
iPhone has a new bag of tricks: it claims it has at least 3 bars of reception and drops every single call I make from home. Every. Single. Call. The other day, it just shut off in the middle of a call, and I couldn’t turn it back on. Twice. Visual VM wouldn’t work, half a day. *sigh* I DID get all my contacts entered into Yahoo, so I’ve got to go to the Genius Bar and beg them to give me another one. Or something. ‘Tis a frustration.
Must check on friend. Poor thing has panic attacks, and I spent an hour giving her a massage last night to try to ward another one off. I think it worked! Well, unless she had one after I left, but I think she was ok. My muscles feel like man muscles now, though. At least, what I imagine man muscles would feel like after exertion: all sore and worked out. I shouldn’t mind looking a bit more muscley, I could use some meat on my bones. We watched the track and field Olympic trials last night, and those girls had some very impressive muscles. They weren’t scary and gross like bodybuilders, they just looked terribly terribly fit, with very lovely, toned muscles. I like athletic bodies, they look so healthy! Oh, and if anyone has suggestions for warding off anxiety/panic attacks, your advice would be MOST appreciated. I don’t mind giving massages in the least, but even my fingers and arms get a bit worn out after a few of them. And I don’t actually know enough about it to be really helpful, my approach is just to distract her, make her laugh, or make her relax. That’s sort of a limited repertoire.
Laundry and ironing. Um, I just don’t want to iron. That’s all, just don’t want to. Cause I’m laaaazy.
And I’m awfully tired. It’s so odd, I woke up at 3:15 this morning, convinced that someone had bitten my shoulder. Uh …. noooooo ….. I was so confused, and then confusedly amused, that I couldn’t get back to sleep for about 30 minutes.
I think I’ll take my usual approach: Worst things first. I’ll go iron and start a load of laundry. Go to the Apple store later this evening, take friend along if she’s up for it so she can get out of the house for a short jaunt, and stop at the grocery on the way home.
April 28, 2008
Every so often, I forget that I’m writing a PF blog, and completely leave out the financial aspects of whatever I’m posting about. Sometimes, it just doesn’t occur to me, and it seems like a fine thing not to be obsessed about the money instead of the experience.
But, this is a PF blog, and I’d be remiss in skipping over the costs of the weekend, few though they were.
Gas: $58, round trip. I still had a quarter tank of gas left, so it wasn’t quite the whole $58 for the trip. Thank goodness my car gets great gas mileage! BF even insisted on giving me some gas money, but we’re to consider it a deposit on the next trip up š They’re so weird.
Meals: $1. Saturday’s dinner and Sunday’s lunch were BF’s husband’s treats, and I threw in a supplemental tip but that’s all I was allowed. Breakfast was muffins and cake at home.
Beach: $0. Parking cost a couple of quarters since we got a late start on Saturday. There weren’t any beach fees, and the tidepool beach was free on Sunday as well.
Movie: $0. We watched a DVD they already had, and have a few more movies lined up for my next few visits.
Snacks: $0. We brought our own water and granola bars, but were having enough fun, and it was cold enough, that we didn’t even need them.
Souvenirs: $0. Didn’t need to buy a darn thing. I did pass several really nice outlets on the drive … but that’ll be for some other trip, some other time. It’s such a long drive that all I wanted to do was get to their house to hang out, and then get home the next day. Stopping to go shopping doesn’t sound appealing in the least.
All told, the weekend was plenty cheap and totally worth the gas money.
Finally! I’ve finally visited Best Friend and her husband!
I was feeling rather low and lonely on Saturday so BF urged me to come visit them. They are two hundred miles away, so I felt my usual reluctance to splurge that much on gas with prices bounding ever closer to $4.00/gal, but she pitched me a sell I couldn’t resist.
It’s hot? We’ll go to the beach.
You have laundry? Bring it with you.
You’re bored? We’ll take you to the Strawberry festival, watch movies, and hang out.
I also still had their wedding gifts and anniversary cake that I’d been keeping in our freezer for them. And magazines for her to read (recycling my Lucky mags). And … I hadn’t seen them in three months. Hadn’t seen their puppy since I puppy-sat.
I threw a bag of overnight things together, gathered my laundry (hey, it’s got to get done somehow!), gathered their gifts and cake, and went to take my hit at the gas pump. $31 later, I was on my merry, spontaneous way up to the Central Coast! The funniest part of the drive was not really knowing anything about where I was headed: I’d just asked her to email directions so I could check them on my iPhone, but I’m crap at geography so I never did really know where her new home was in relation to everything else.
I left at 1pm and got there after 4, so we played with the dog and cleared up some mess in their backyard before heading out to dinner. They had clam chowder in bread bowls and I had a calamari steak sandwich with a salad. I wish I liked clams, their chowder smelled great!
We walked the pier, and then on the beach until sunset, and her husband took about a dozen pictures of us, our dirty bare feet, and the ladybugs that were swarming the tideline and festooning our hands and feet.
We had a truly lazy Sunday: we watched her husband play video games, I played with the dog, BF read her magazine and drank her coffee. Eventually we had breakfast and headed out tidepooling. I made the mistake of dressing for the real beach in my bathing suit, tshirt and shorts, and darn near froze to death out on the rocks! I chased the dog up and down the dirt track for a while to warm up, and huddled in my beach towel for a while until the sun warmed up. We found half a dozen starfish, and the dog pissed off an entire colony of hermit crabs when she went splashing through their pool. She didn’t land on them, just on the rocks they sheltered under, but they all started scurrying around, some waving their claws as though they were scolding her. It was cute.
We had delicious Cajun Bacon Cheeseburgers for lunch, though I couldn’t tell you what was Cajun about it, and spent part of the afternoon cleaning up our mess, the dog’s yakked up lunch because she’d swallowed so much salt water, and going through junior high and high school notebooks. We had good giggles over how silly we were as kids, and ruminated about how things have changed over the past fifteen years. We’ve been together a loooong time …. it’s so weird to realize that we’re old enough that she’s married. With a house. That she lives in with her husband. I know it seems an elementary concept to most people: you get older, meet someone you care about, get married and move out. Or some variation on that theme. But consider the oft-dramatized notion of the best friend as collateral damage of weddings; there’s at least a little grain of truth in that trope. It’s not quite that traumatic, but I have been within walking distance of her/parents’ home for as long as I’ve been social enough to have friends (5th grade). We walked home from school together, went riding, went on field trips, went through all kinds of childhood and pubescent drama, we did everything together for years. We even went to college together. And now she’s two freaking hundred miles away and I have to drive at least 3 hours just to see her in person. I really miss being able to just drop in at her house up the street and hanging out until she got home from work, or knowing that I could call her in a crisis and that she’d be there in less than ten minutes. Now … now we’re adults. It’s definitely taking some getting used to. She’s got a great husband, bless his heart, and there’s no one I’d rather have “lost” her to.
Whoops, this started out as an ode to the weekend, and has transformed into a rather maudlin ode to the passage of time and friendship. Oh well, it’s part of what made the weekend good; remembering our journey up to this point as we both enter new stages in our lives. We talked a lot, and it’s been a while since we’ve been able to do that.
