Coast To Coast

I'm not entirely sure where to start this post, so I guess I'll just dive right in.

On September 20th-ish, I'm moving across the country to Florida. Crazy, right? Here's how that came about. The company I work for has locations all over the place. I applied for a job at the Jacksonville, Florida business unit, and I got the job. Which is awesome, since it's in a new department and I got a raise. But now I have to live in Florida, the state where much of the nation's more amusing stupid criminal stories originate. Plus, hurricanes.

But then again, no earthquakes.
Everything still feels mildly surreal, and September seems like forever from now, even though it is only seven weeks away. I've been looking for an apartment, but not really applying anywhere. That mostly has to do with my sucky credit, which I've made serious progress on these past few months. I've gone from "high-risk" to "medium-risk", but it's still not pretty.
The thing that has suddenly made everything seem very real is that there is a person coming to look at my car today and potentially buy it from me. I posted an ad for it two days ago, thinking that it would take a while to sell a Ford Escort, even if it's in good condition, but I got an almost immediate response. So now I'm trying to figure out how Ricardo and I would work around having only one car for over a month. Fun times.
We also need to go through everything in storage and get rid of stuff. That is mainly going to be Ricardo's job, since he literally has giant bags of clothing in there. I don't get it either.
Another pressing matter is figuring out if it will be feasible to get married before moving to Florida. Obviously, it would be nice to get married in Santa Barbara, since more people would be able to attend. But we don't really have traditional views on marriage in the first place, and it's not at the top of the Shit We Need To Do Before We Move list. And as easy as it would be to hit Vegas on our way, I'm pretty sure that several people would crucify me. So I feel a list-making session coming on. Even if is it physically possible, it still might not be financially. Well, okay, actually getting married would be easy. It the rest of it that would be costly and take planning. Even for the small-scale "wedding" I want, which basically ends up just being a reception, but more cocktail party-esque. Ugh, I just don't even want to think about it.

More Than Words

Oh HELL yes, there is going to be Rock of Love 3!

http://blog.vh1.com/2008-07-16/rock-of-love-3-its-onwith-bret/?source=hp_blog

Oh sweet baby Jesus, they're going to film it on a tour bus.

Did they say...Truck Stop Olympics?!?!?

Ooh, shiny...

My cat totally watches tv with me.

Not even Animal Planet. We were watching So You Think You Can Dance? She watched almost half of it, but then one of the couples danced a really boring routine and she lost interest.

Sunshine (Come On Ladies)

Last weekend most of the girls I've lived with came to Santa Barbara for our semi-annual Roommate Reunion. It was a blast. After people arrived, we headed down to our favorite Italian place for lunch and stuffed ourselves on garlic rolls. Mmmm, garlic...Then we headed back to Pamala's at a very leisurely pace, stopping at the store for provisions. The evening was spent drinking Mai Tais and scheduling cooking around the power outages, thanks to the raging forest fire about fifteen miles away. We managed to grill it up though, and had a feast. We tried to play a board game (how exciting are we?), we even set it up, but no one could focus long enough to understand the rules. We ate and spent many hours talking. More on that later.
Saturday we breakfasted and then went wine tasting for a few hours. We saw an amazing white trash couple while we were drinking too. They both had long super-frizzy hair, the guy even had bangs! He wore the requisite faded, torn-up and stained jeans, while she wore short short jean shorts that had been rolled up so as to be even shorter than they were intended to be. But the best part was her "shirt". She was actually wearing a bandanna tied around her chest! I had never seen that in real life before, and I grew up in a town where people lived in tents in trailer parks! They were made for each other, I tell you. After wine tasting we had a quick lunch and went and lounged at the beach. Two of the ladies took the Longest Walk on the Beach EVER, and when they finally came back to the rest of us, who were huddled together and shivering, we went back home to change and head out to dinner.
Dinner was at a new restaurant for us, which has subsequently been removed from the list of acceptable places to eat. Our waitress may have been legitimately retarded, and later that night three or four of us didn't feel well at all. After dinner, we ended up at Tonic, per usual. Pamala's boyfriend (she actually called him that yesterday!) Chris and his pals showed up, and Ricardo joined us later. When we first arrived, we quickly noticed one lady in particular, as she was rather difficult to miss. She was a somewhat larger person, wearing an unfortunate white tube top dress that came to just past right there. She was even more unfortunately attempting to pole dance and give a lap dance to a couch. We shook our heads at the rampant lack of self awareness and went about our business. There was dancing and laughing and drinking and going outside because it was too hot. One of the times I went back inside was a shocker though. I wandered a bit until I saw one of my girls, who then ran over to me and said, "Oh my God, the crazy girl hit Emily in the head!" Apparently the erstwhile amateur pole dancer had taken offense at Emily for no discernible reason. Tube Top was shuffling through the crowd when she spotted Emily and suddenly changed her trajectory. Tube Top gained momentum and launched herself up and punched Emily in the side of the head, which is amazing in and of itself, since Tube Top was about five three and Emily is about five nine or ten. There was much restraining on both sides, Tube Top was kicked out, and Emily was taken outside to cool down. She was totally fine, if a bit confused and shaken up. The rest of the night was uneventful, and the next day we said our goodbyes until our next event.
I love those girls.