Well hello again, little blog.

Literally 1 of 2 photos I took the entire past 2 weeks.  Field view (and I swear we're closer than the photo looks).

Scoreboard! Loved it because of the Jack-in-the-Box ads.

In no particular order and almost zero explanation, this is what I've been up to the past 2 weeks:

D&Bs. Disgusting beer. Denny's 2-4-6-8 menu. Estate Sales. Greek food girls night. Sorrows drowned in a brownie cake hybrid dessert a la mode. Documentaries. Coffee Bean. WiiFit and Snowball Fight tournaments. Hiking. Seeing burn areas. Being terrified. Libraries. Windansea Beach in La Jolla. Being annoyed by high school girls trying to prove how tough and awesome they are by regaling everyone with stories of being, like, soooooo drunk.  Mexican food and margaritas and piña coladas.  Christina Aguilera's "Bionic" album. Shopping.  Book sales.  Creative havoc in the La Jolla Brookstone.  Reserved Chik-fil-a meals, because we're baller like that.  Padres vs. NY Mets game (18-6 Pads, wooo!). Fireworks shows. Panera drop-ins and writing sessions. Being amused that people are legitimately sad Panera took away the couch in their café. Downtown walking. Viewing parties. Bacon filled pancake tacos. Encinitas. Late night boba drinks. Summer dresses.  Tans (naturally, not GTL style). Grad school researching.

Hmmm...I'm slightly disturbed at how much food is mentioned there.  No wonder why I've been feeling more and more fat days.

Estate sales are really strange.  Fun, but strange.  A friend who found out I had gone to a few was thoroughly disgusted and said it was disturbing and gross, but...I don't really think so.  It's hardly a difference between thrift store shopping, you just happen to know the owner has passed.  What are they going to do with all that stuff, toss it in a landfill??  I suppose I can see the revulsion in terms of their clothing or bed linens.  But anyway, I found I really liked it mostly because it appealed to the journalistic/anthropological side of me.  (More commonly known as the nosy side.) I mean, one of the guys was a shoe repair cobbler and we got to see his entire workshop and all the tools he used! How cool is that?? You hardly find cobblers these days, at least not around these parts.  If I were a collector searching for antiques or vintage things, estate sales would be a haven.  One of the houses had every issue of Life magazine from 1936-1975!

The hike was fun.  I shouldn't even call it a hike, it was more a "nature walk" because holy geez our guide was going incredibly slow and stopping literally every step to talk about the flora.  I was surprised to learn that the trail we went to is in my suburb, right at the north end by the lake; I had no idea such things existed here.  A lot of it was sad, since you could see the burn areas from Firestorm 2007 still.  I almost almost almost made it to the water stream, but I had a massive freakout before and had to turn back, which is pretty disappointing. I was doing just fine, making it through all the weird plants and poison ivy (not through that, obviously, but you know what I mean), caterpillars, butterflies, flies, even the fire ants and the bees!  But then the guide stopped us to show us a trapdoor spider nest and starts telling us about how they trap their prey and all the other spiders that live out there.  I made it a few more minutes on the trail, but I couldn't get past the creepy crawly feeling and everything was making me jump, so I had to give up and get back to the safety of the parking lot.  Spiders...ugh.

Because a few people have asked, no, I'm not at Panera all the time because I adore it and need it and have their bread running through my veins.  While all that may be true, it's mostly because that's where my brother works.  I know all the people working there and I don't feel awkward going to work/write without buying anything.  And sometimes they even give me free stuff =D

And that is why I have been scarce around here.  And anywhere else.  Reader is backed up again, but I'm getting to it all, slowly but surely.  And getting back slowly but surely to blog comments.  I love you all for your patience!

Oh, in relation to that last post with the wrist pictures, I forget that people haven't always been following my blog, or haven't always read what I post, or things of the sort.  To those who asked, I have "the beginning stages of carpal tunnel" in both my wrists, and computer work aggravates it sometimes.