A pic from our trip! (thanks, blogger, for letting me post pics!)

Pretty, no?

(Don't steal it, it's copyrighted by me, jerk!)

I have many complaints

Wanna hear 'em? Well, unless you stop reading right now, you're gonna!

1. There are too many people in this city. And they're all slow, dumb, and in my way. (Many of the following complaints involve them.)

2. I am not eating El Pollo Loco right now, as my belly dreamed about doing all day, because I ran out of patience in the drive-thru after waiting several minutes in a line at least 7 cars long without moving. I lost my shit and got out of there when a woman cut in front of me to "return" something she'd just gotten out of line with.

3. Adelphia is all fucked up. I hate it. (Right now I'm stealing someone's nearby wireless because my Adelphia's "high-speed" internet takes too long to load. If this is your wireless account I'm using, thanks so much! I'll be off in a minute.) They also keep changing cable channel locations so my TiVo is going NUTS! I get a new "lineup change" message every day--EVERY DAY!--telling me something's been moved, deleted, or added. Poor TiVo can't keep up (though it thinks it can, so I wind up with a "Seinfeld" that's actually a CNN report).

4. Stop talking out loud to yourself! If you need attention, just start a real conversation, please! You don't know who you are because you wouldn't recognize yourself (and you don't know about this blog), but it makes me feel better just writing it down.

5. What's the deal with Hotwire? Why is it cheaper if we don't know what hotel we're getting? What is the hotel gaining from this charade (I'd prefer if you'd pronounce that "sha-ROD," thanks.)? Is it embarrassed to let us know how cheap they'd give it away for? I don't get it.

6. Adam, you yelly three-year-old (I'm guessing) in the apartment building next door, SHUT UP! Why are you always yelling? Sure, you sound happy-go-lucky, but do I need to know every time you get into your mommy or daddy's car? Why are you so LOUD? Don't you want to know why I know your name? It's because your parents are loud-talkers too! Shut up, all of you!

Not a complaint, but an interesting fact I just learned from David Letterman: Julian McMahon's dad used to be the prime minister of Australia! Who knew? (Well, probably an entire nation in the, er, Oceanic part of the world...)

That's it. My complaining's getting on my nerves, too.

Look ma, no cavities! (Is that a saying?)

Is there anything more humiliating than sitting in a dentist's chair? You can't see what's going on; you've got a light shining in your face; your mouth is stretched to its limit; because you're such a drooling slob, a loud-ass machine is sucking the crap out of your mouth for you; your own spit and blood and plaque are splashing back up into your face; you can only grunt to answer questions; you're afraid to move or wince or uncross your legs for fear of accidentally bumping the dentist's arm and therefore cutting open your gums; and you're completely at the mercy of some guy or woman you only see once a year, if that.

Seriously, I just had the worst dentist chair experience ever, and this was only a cleaning and check up! I don't know what that chick was doing, but it felt like she was shoving tiny little needles under each damn tooth's gumline! I've never had pain like that during a cleaning. It got to the point where I shut my eyes and pretended I was a soldier being tortured for my country's secrets: I'm strong enough to handle this! You foreigners can't break me! Bring on more torture! Luckily, the pain was over before I had to really test my limits. In an actual torture situation, I don't think many secrets would be safe with me. Unless they were just doing a quick cleaning.

My three-mile drive home from the appointment was almost more painful than the appointment itself. What idiot decided that closing the onramp to the 405 AND the 101 at Sepulveda and Ventura was a good idea? That friggin' detour backed up Ventura Blvd. for miles. And confused jerks can't drive! Just so you know, I HATE you confusing driving jerks. None of you all know how to drive. Period.

Up the coast without a paddle

We're back! Did you miss us? Actually, we were only gone two nights, so, yes, that WAS us you saw at the Chinese seeing Batman on Saturday! Here's the rundown of our adventure...

We started out Wednesday morning driving up PCH. The weather was a little overcast and bleh, but we ventured on nonetheless, getting sidetracked somewhere around Oxnard and Port Hueneme (Coastal Scenic Route, my ass!). We stopped in Carpenteria for lunch. Back on the road for another couple hours till we hit Pismo Beach. There, we checked into the very retro Kon Tiki Inn, "where every room features a panoramic ocean view." Unfortunately, when we got there, the view was of an extremely overcast and chilly sky. BUT, after a little bit, it cleared up, and we enjoyed a lovely private "cocktail hour" on our balcony (you all travel with your own cocktail kit, too, right?). N even went for a swim. Then we watched the fog roll back in and sort of mess up the sunset. Still nice, even so. THEN, we went for a fabulous dinner at The Cracked Crab, where they dumped a huge bucket of shellfish on the table in front of us. Glaaaauughhhh. It was fantastic...except for the misleading printing on the menu, which led us to believe we were adding an extra crab to our bucket for 8 bucks, when in fact, it was 28. We still don't get it, but whatever, we were on vacation!

The next day, despite having looked at a billion "things to do" brochures from the hotel lobby, we just took a walk to the Pismo Beach Pier and then plopped down on the beach under our hotel (accessible by the longest-ever flight of stairs down a cliff, which dammit, I forgot to take a picture of like I said). We were practically the only ones on the beach and it was awesome. Then we went back to the room for another balcony cocktail-hour-slash-foggy-sunset, before heading off for another shellfish dinner, this time at Brad's. We were the last customers standing at 9:30. Let me tell you, Pismo is an early-to-bed town.

The next day was up in the air, so we decided to drive north a bit and see what we saw. What we saw were some very nice views of oceanic things, and then a restaurant with an ocean view. As we sat there, the fog rolled in like you'd never believe! We could hardly see each other through it! (Okay, that was an exaggeration.) We thought we'd drive just a little bit more to check out San Luis Obispo, which didn't impress us, so we decided to head home and make some pit stops along the way. These included, in order, The Madonna Inn, where N peed into a waterfall; Arroyo Grande, which featured buildings built over a hundred years ago (I'm invoking Eddie Izzard here, can you tell?); Solvang, which wasn't as Epcot-y as we would've liked; Chumash Casino, which didn't have cheap enough blackjack tables for N; a just-closing berry stand (dammit, I really wanted those roadside berries!); and finally, back home in LA, Buffet City, where the entire UCLA graduating class was eating a post-graduation Asian buffet. It was a very silly dinner, which even if I tried, I couldn't explain.

All in all, a very nice little trip. What'd you do?

Hold all my calls

We're going on a trip! Tomorrow morning, instead of going to work, I'm driving up the coast with N. And I won't be back to work till Monday! Wooooo! I'll give a full report next week.

Meanwhile, I just watched some extras on The Office Special disk (there's just NOTHING on TV anymore, is there?), and now I'm watching the Freelove Freeway "video" for about the fifth time. Damn, that shit is funny. Problem is, I'll be singing it for weeks, I'm sure. Other problem is, I don't feel like watching or doing anything else, so (hold on while I press Play again) I'm sure that's not the last time I'll watch it tonight. Maybe I'll just go to bed so tomorrow's here sooner!

Where oh where has my little town gone?

Boy time flies when you're not writing blogs. What the hell did I do with myself all week? Well, there was the weekend...

It started bright and early on Saturday with a trip to my dad's to get the cars detailed by my cousin, the detailer. While that was being done, and because my dad flew the coop to get to his weekly Indian gaming destination (seriously, every weekend), I decided to take N on a tour of my childhood neighborhood. I hadn't been there in a very long time and let me tell you, things weren't where I'd last left 'em! We wanted breakfast, so I thought we'd walk to Biscuits & Gravy, next to the Hughes, which is now a Ralph's, but the Biscuits & Gravy is now a Two Guys from Italy. My second thought was Patricia's Tea House, which was on the other side of the Hughes/Ralph's, but is now completely empty. This was just the beginning. The stationery store is now a dog wash. The Royal Dynasty, where we ate almost every week when I was growing up, had awhile back turned into something else, which was now something even more else! The library is 300% bigger than it used to be and the Alta Dena Dairy is now an IHOP (which turned out to be good news, because by the time we walked all that way, we were damn hungry!). Weird.

After the cars were shiny, we went back to N's to await the arrival of his out-of-town friends, who we took to Cat & Fiddle, and then to the Cineramadome to see...take a guess...Star Wars (again)! (By the way, I don't think I need to see it again.) That night, among other things, we caught something on MTV2 called Wonder Showzen. Do a search on your TiVo. You won't regret it. The next day we went to Canter's for breakfast, and then to Santa Monica to play on the pier. These are some partying friends, by the way. I couldn't come close to keeping up with the likes of them! And ya know, it's tiring entertaining people for a weekend (especially when you're letting the cat sleep with you so as to not completely disturb the guests with her antics). When I got myself home, I nearly crashed in the bed right then and there.

Hey, Dockers is using a very old The The song in their commercials now! (I don't see commercials much, so if this is old news to you, ignore me.) That was an ADD moment...the TV's on in the background.

Public Service Announcement: The speed limit is 65! Drive it, Asshole! Thank you for listening.

[Insert title of your choice here]

Is it so wrong to be crying at the beginning of Beaches in anticipation of the ending? Sometimes I can be such a girl, I can't stand it! Anyway, that Mayim Bialik didn't get enough credit as a child actor. She's fantastic! I'm turning off the Beaches in favor of reading a book as soon as I'm done here, I swear.

Okay, here's the thing I said I was going to blog about and then forgot what it was and then even later (i.e., now) remembered what it was again. Ready? Here goes: When did the Kool-Aid guy get pants?? We were watching the TV over the weekend and caught a Kool-Aid commercial. There he was...wearing pants! Seriously, are we such a prude society that we can't see a pitcher-full-of-punch's bare legs?? A punch pitcher! What might we see, his bare ice cubes? JEEZ!

My pedometer says 4224 (ooh, nice and symmetrical!) right now. Over the weekend, N and I took a 10,000-step walk in one shot! (That's 5 miles to you lay people!) I was hugely impressed with us, as you should be, too! I'm also impressed with this pedometer. It went through the washing machine, didn't work for several days, but now it's back! Way to endure!

My apartment manager just knocked on the door to remind me that I forgot to pay the $7 surcharge that was due on this month's rent. I'm wearing black pants and a tank top when I answer the door (I must've had a premonition that someone would see me tonight; usually I change into PJs as soon as the door shuts behind me). As he stands and waits for me to write the check, he says in his funny little accent, "In dark colors, you look, you look much beautiful!" Sweet yet creepy, eh?

Here's the story

I'm (finally) watching some of The Brady Bunch DVD N got me for my birthday. I started with the first episode, which has commentary from Sherwood Schwartz, who really must be super-old by now, right? He talks as though he didn't know the child actors on the show at all, never referring to them by name, but merely as "the little girl" or "the little boy," as though they're just some random kids who were in a pilot that tanked. Sheesh.

Anyway, what got me up to the computer was that I remembered that as a kid, I thought that the actors playing characters in TV shows or movies who got married actually had to get married to do the scene. I thought the act of hearing the words "I now pronounce you man and wife" and saying "I do" made you married. I don't know what I was thinking.

Even dumber, and this is really weird, so bear with me, was what I thought about cartoons. I thought--I really don't understand my logic on this, so don't ask, really--that cartoons were people dressed up in animal costumes that were smeared in butter. Yep. I dunno, I guess I thought that animation had a buttery look to it. I don't know, really! Either I had a very active imagination or I was a little retarded.

On the active imagination side, I had a list of 30 or so "invisible" siblings, two of whom were my identical triplets. Except that I didn't quite understand what the "identical" part meant, because one was a boy. I couldn't have been too dumb though, because I worked out everyone's ages so it was actually possible, had my mother started when she was a child herself and popped out children every year, to have all those siblings. That being said, I truly enjoyed my only-childness. I think had I had all those siblings I would've run away very early on. Anywho, back to the DVD. That Cindy sure was cute!

P.S. This is something I meant to mention to N the minute it happened, but got distracted: I swear I saw the name Todd Lookinland in the Revenge of the Sith special effects credits. And I'm pretty sure he's Mike Lookinland's (Bobby Brady) brother, who also, if I remember correctly, guest starred on The Brady Bunch at some point. Hold on, I'll go check. Yep, I'm a Brady geek.

"I never thought I would fall for a nerd"

Did you see it?? I didn't plan on watching Beauty & the Geek, but then Kevin & Bean's Ralph highly recommended it this morning, so I decided to give it a shot. Plus, N sent me a boatload of good reviews he read on the internet. Man, am I glad I watched! I loved it! I even heard the neighbors across the alley laughing at it! What a brilliant idea...the geeks learn social skills from hot dumb girls and the hot dumb girls learn stuff they should've picked up in fifth grade. I'm sure there's probably some feminist reason I should hate this show, because it shoudn't be okay to not be able to name two U.S. states that start with "New," but, it's really pretty fantastic all around. One thing, though, the "geeks" are really not as geeky as they could be. It's the total Patrick Dempsey, "Can't Buy Me Love" kind of geek, where he can dress geek, but then turn stud with a touch of mousse and ripped-off sleeves. Even the hot girls thought a couple of them were adorable right off the bat. And there was even kissing! They're re-running it again Thursday night, so please try to catch it so we can share. (Note of irony: After an hour of watching these girls struggle to answer the easiest questions ever, I searched TiVo to add the show to my Season Pass, but I misspelled "beauty." D'oh!)

Speaking of the dumbing down of America, have you heard this new McDonald's Fruit & Walnut Salad radio commercial? It's all "blah, blah, blah, Fruit & Walnut Salad, blah, blah, Fruit, blah, blah, Walnuts, blah, Fruit, blah, Walnuts, Walnuts, Walnuts, blah, blah, blah, Fruit & Walnut Salad at McDonald's. Contains nuts." Contains nuts! Are they kidding? Who's that disclaimer for? Please introduce me so I can kick him in the balls.