Question

Is it wrong that I find it so funny to read that Ty Pennington was busted for DUI this weekend?

Man that dude is annoying.

I Heart the Internets

I made a random comment on a person's website (Hi Heather!) about how much I love Chili's (you have to read her post) and I left my blog address in the comment.

Well, lo and behold, she visited this site. And then visited The Boyfriend's site.

And then, she visited the site of our sitcom - Life From the Inside.

And she loved it! And she posted it on her site!

And the best part - she doesn't even own a tv, but she loves our sitcom! Now that is a good endorsement.

So - you will see there is a new link over on my sidebar for "Oh My Stinkin Heck" or OMSH. Go and visit her site and give her some love. Seriously, I love her writing. Like this story about a snake encounter. Very funny stuff.

Plus, she likes the sitcom, so she obviously has good taste!

Ahhhhhhhh!

I'm 30.


Well, not officially until around 5 pm.

Segway

I just booked a 2-hour guided Segway tour of Long Beach. I won a raffle at Christmas and this was one of the prizes.

The Boyfriend and I are going on my actual birthday and we get our own Segway to tour around Long Beach for 2 hours. How awesome is that? We will start the day at the Acquarium of the Pacific (a place we've always wanted to go but never got around to) and then we will end the day with dinner - most likely at our favorite restaurant in Huntington Beach.

So yeah, 30 is going to get a great start. I'm looking forward to it.

Update

My ear is still ringing. I haven't gone insane yet, but there are those that will argue that I was already insane to begin with.

I started writing a big long post, but like most things lately - I got distracted half way through it. So, I guess it will be for another day.

Oh, and I finally got called for jury duty for the very first time in my entire life. For the week of my birthday. How nice! Luckily I was able to postpone it to June. But I am actually excited about the fact that I may get to serve on a jury. I have always wanted to know what that was like, and I have to report to the criminal courts in downtown L.A.

Is it weird that I am excited about that?

Ringing

I know, I know, I promise all these pictures of my various injuries and then I don't follow through. I'm sorry. I will make it up to you.

The problem is, you can't take a picture of my latest injury. My left ear started ringing/feeling "full" after having drinks with the people from The 'Burg on Wednesday night. And it hasn't stopped. Not once. Not even for a second.

So, on Sunday, I decided I should probably go in to Urgent Care as I had started getting dizzy and nauseous feeling. So I decided to wait until after the opening of the Oscars and I would make my way to the doctors.

Little did I know, this would be the best idea I have had all year. Apparently, no one needs to see the doctor during the Oscars, as I was in and out of there in under 35 minutes. Usually, you can bank on at least 2 hours for the doctor and another 45 minutes waiting for a prescription.

But, alas, there is nothing physically wrong with my ear. Apparently when you have bad allergies like I do, your ears can start ringing when new things happen to make your allergies mad. Which is the case with my ear, they have decided don't like the weather around here lately.

So, I am taking Sudafed every 4 hours. I am going to acupuncture tomorrow. And I am slowly being driven insane.

They Ain't Kidding

So, I just figured out the hard way that those expiration dates they put on the Diet Lipton Green Tea with Citrus are not just a suggestion. And, it only took me 1/2 the bottle to figure out why it tasted so bad.

I am going to wash out my mouth now.

Query

According to K-mart (and pretty much every other commercial right now) a woman should be getting a "Heart-Shaped Diamond Necklace" for Valentine's Day - or any other myriad of Diamond things (seriously, I HATE THE HOLIDAYS because suddenly all commercials want you to believe that women are all diamond-grubbing whores who will not love you unless you buy them DIAMONDS) and men, men should receive a $6 pair of boxers with hearts on them. Or a box of candy.

How is this fair? So, in order to balance the universe a little, I will be buying The Boyfriend some horribly gaudy diamond-like heart shaped necklace for Valentine's Day. I mean, don't guys deserve to feel pretty every once in a while? How else will he know that I love him if I don't buy him something expensive? What if he stops loving me because I didn't buy him DIAMONDS?!

You're Gonna Love This

Yesterday I ran half of the park and my ankle held up nicely! No extreme swelling, no pain, nothing. It was very exciting and I was very much looking forward to using this week to building back up to running the whole park.

But life had other plans for me as I fell this morning in the parking lot at the park, re-injuring my ankle and scraping the crap out of my left knee. Luckily, my phone survived the fall after I slammed it into the curb. Apparently, I must never get rid of this phone. The ankle, on the other hand, I would love to replace.

So, I will post some pictures later of my new lovely injuries. The ankle is definitely not as bad as last time, it is very swollen right now but I am in more pain from the scraped shin than I am from the swollen ankle -which I am taking as a good sign.

A Glimpse

The best part of acupuncture this weekend (besides the fact that they magically made my ankle stop hurting!) was listening to the words "put the needles (in these 2 places - I am paraphrasing here) to get the evil out". How cool is that? There is evil in my sprained ankle!

Of course, when I told The Boyfriend about this afterwards his response was "If they only knew how many needles they would need to put in you to get ALL the evil out."

Lileks

When I worked at iNetNow - a very nice guy named Brandon introduced me to The Gallery of Regrettable Food and I became instantly addicted.

I love this site and I now own all of his books. I haven't visited in awhile and when I had some downtime today I found myself wandering back to the site to see if anything new had been added lately. Lucky for me there are new fun things and I have been giggling all afternoon.

This is by far my favorite line yet -

"Come to think of it, "Washed the Rabbit" sounds rather naughty. Use it in conversation today, won't you?"

Do yourself a favor and head on over to Lileks. It's a nice way to spend an afternoon.

A Story

One morning I was getting ready for work and it was just "one of those mornings". The kind where I drop everything, I can't find anything to wear to work and even though I got up a little early, I was still running late.

So, in the middle of rushing around - I knocked over our toothbrushes and they fell into the bathtub. Swearing profusely at the annoyance of knocking yet another thing over, I picked them up and stuck them back in their holder.

I finish getting ready and I am off to my day at work.

Fast forward to that night when The Boyfriend and I are getting ready for bed. He starts brushing his teeth and makes a very weird face.

"Did you get soap on the toothbrushes somehow? Mine tastes awful."

Me - "What? How would I get soap on the toothbrushes? Of course I didn't!"

Cue to me realizing what must have happened and beginning to laugh hysterically.

The Boyfriend is really not believing my story and can't believe I tried to lie to him.

I was just so taken by surprise I couldn't stop laughing so the conversation didn't proceed much further as I was in complete hysterics. I mean, come on! How many people does this happen to?!

Luckily when I start laughing that hard The Boyfriend laughs as well and that was pretty much the end of that except for a few more "I can't believe you lied to me's!" and "I can't believe you got soap on my toothbrush and lied to me about it."

For Lisa

'Cause she know what time it is.

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/06/peanutbutter.html

Ankle

This is a picture of day 2 of my ankle injury. Notice the lovely bruising - you can't actually see all of it in the photo as most of the top of my foot is turning a lovely blue as well. And, it's still swollen as all heck. Tonight I will take a picture of both of my ankles so you can get an idea of how swollen my ankle really is!

Such Fun!

Ouch

So, in light of the fact that I was finally feeling like I was winning the battle over the flu - The Boyfriend and I decided to go hiking with Kathy and David this yesterday.

(I just want to jump ahead and say it was an amazingly beautiful hike and I had a great time despite my clumsiness!)

We headed to Topanga Park and started on 1/2 mile hike to a fork in the road. To the right - a hike to a Waterfall. To the left - a hike to some Ranch House that I can not remember the name of.

Kathy and David left it up to us to decide which way to go - David suggests the Ranch House hike. I, of course, pick the Waterfall hike because it is "easier". So we head out.

It was a really great day for a hike. After a couple of wrong turns that took us straight uphill, we get to the interesting part where we are hiking through the actual creek bed, instead of next to it. It's still fun as I make a joke about "Maybe we should have called someone to let them know where we were going" as we traverse over slippery rocks.

Then we get to the biggest rock that actually has a rope for you to climb up the rock with. I was very proud of my upper body strength at that point, plus the fact that I hadn't gotten my feet wet (seriously, some of those rocks were slippery!).

So, we are about 100 feet from the waterfall when it happens. I slip and fall. And I swear I hear a nice snapping sound on the way down. Robb and David were behind me, Kathy was ahead leading the way. I begin crying immediately from the pain and then I proceed to hate myself for crying. Fun, huh?!

Total damage - I had twisted my right ankle and skinned my left knee. Thanks to David's suggestion I immediately take off my shoe and stick my foot in the ice cold creek water to stop any immediate swelling.

Well, the good news is that it's obviously not broken. The bad news is that I get to hike the 1 and 1/2 miles back to the car on a bum ankle, including climbing back down the rock with the rope helper.

Here are pictures from last night - but I should let you know my ankle is much more swollen as I type this...

I am pretty proud of myself for making it back to the car. I know I didn't have much choice, but I also didn't whine to whole way about how badly my ankle hurt. Plus, no matter how badly I hurt, Kathy was in way worse shape and she was very upset at the fact that someone she had brought on a hike was hurt. It was the first time that had happened and I honestly think she is more traumatized by the whole thing than I am!

Now I just want this stupid ankle to heal so I can get back to running and hiking!

Happy Happy

Hey, guess what?! I have the honor of getting the freaking flu. Today is my first day back at work since Tuesday and I am freaking tired.

Blargh.

Someday soon I will be changing the template around here as I am sick of looking at this background.

That is all for now.

Angry Driver

On my way to work this morning, I was behind another woman who took every opportunity to do her makeup in her rearview mirror, including using an eyelash curler while driving.

I so badly wanted to hold up a sign for her that read "Stop Making Woman Drivers Look Bad You Whore." but then I thought that wasn't a very nice thing to do to someone at 8:45 am.

But still, what the fricking hell is a person thinking when they decide they HAVE to do their makeup in the car while driving? It's bad enough that they aren't paying attention, but they don't seem to realize that they are at serious risk of losing an eyeball when they ram their car into someone/something else.

UGH! People make me so angry.

Happy New Year

I hope everyone has survived the holiday season. I know that I definitely had a good time, but I am very happy it's over. I've discovered that no matter how many fun things I have planned during the holiday season, I am always a little depressed by it.

Now it's the New Year and I am filled with this want to get rid of things - like clean out all closets and storage spaces and purge all of the crap we hold on to for no real reason at all. The Boyfriend is probably beside himself with angst as he is not always a willing participant when I get these urges.

We bought new running shoes yesterday as we are starting a new endeavor this week of running every day instead of every-other-day. We'll see how it goes as the temperature has been in the 40's in the mornings and that makes it extra hard to get out of bed, go outside and run around a park.

When we started running I found it so nice to have time to just be inside my own head and I didn't understand how people could run while listening to music, but lately I have been in dire need of a distraction while running, otherwise I end up concentrating on how much pain I am in or how my time is that day. My biggest problem is that I just don't think it's safe for a woman who runs (basically) by herself to have a headset on, so I try to find other ways of distracting myself by trying to get a song stuck in my head, or going over lines that I need to memorize, but that only works part of the time. I guess I could buy an iPod and then only put the earbud in one ear, but that just seems silly. Ugh, I don't think there is any real answer to this problem.

Inside Private Lives

I try not to go see theater in L.A. for various reasons, the biggest one being I am usually very disappointed in the end product and feel like I wasted my money.

On Sunday I got the chance to go see a new show "Inside Private Lives", produced by a friend of a friend, Kristin Stone and this time I left the theater very, very happy.

It's not your usual play (and this is part of why I love it so) - the whole idea behind the show is audience participation. Not your usual type though, the actor presents a 20th-century figure (that they have researched) in a 10 minute monologue. Now, at the end of the monologue (or at the beginning depending on the character and amount of controversy they caused) the audience gets to talk to them, ask them questions, make statements. There is no way I could even convey to you how interesting and fun this was. I was so impressed with the amount of research the actors had done, and how well they had "cast" themselves as the people they portrayed. I left the theater wanting to know more about each and every person I had just watched come alive before me. And to me, that's a ringing endorsement - if you can reach someone and make them want to learn more.

So, their show has been extended through the end of January. Please, please, please take some time and check them out.

So Many Things

I have had so many ideas for posts lately, just no desire to actually sit down and write them. Until I read this.

Which reminded me of the time I got pulled over on my way home from work. I was so freaked out because I had just bought the car, I didn't have complete proof of insurance on me, and I have only been pulled over a couple of times in my life so I still get all nervous and freaked out by it. Plus, I had absolutely no idea why I was being pulled over, well actually, directed to the side of the road by an officer waving a flashlight is more accurate.

So, I sit there and try not to freak out and try to be as nice and helpful as possible. Turns out I had turned right on a "No Right Turn from 4-7pm" street. I apologized to the officer and tried to explain that I didn't usually take this way home, so I wasn't familiar with the streets (which was actually true!). He didn't really care and asked for my information. I handed it over, trying not to cry at the fact that my insurance was already going to go up with my new car and now it was going to go up even more with this ticket and how stupid was I?

Anyway, I sit and wait for the guy to come back with my ticket. As he saunters up, I notice that there is another car in front of me, obviously pulled over for the same reason.

"Well, it looks like your lucky day." The officer explains as he hands back my stuff. "We are being called over to Rancho Park for a suspicious persons call. So I'm not going to give you a ticket, just a verbal warning."

I explode.

"But, can you do me a favor? The guy in front of you is getting a ticket. So can you sit here for a moment after we leave and pretend we ticketed you? I don't want him to get angry."

I am dumbfounded.

"Sure!" I reply. For not giving me a ticket, I could even produce real tears if you would like.

And that is the weirdest traffic non-ticket I have ever received.