At least 7.5 random things about California.

I challenged Bezzie and now I shall have to make good on my deal. 1) The Center of the World is in Felicity, California. I have never been there durring hours when it's open but Edina and I have climbed to the top of it and also pulled open the double doors to get inside after hours. They made those things lock into each other but not bolt into the ground, if you yank hard enough they just come open. Of course, they may have fixed that by now and it's not like there's anything inside it to take or anything so maybe they weren't worried about it. Eh, here's a photo from a postcard that some guy got on his trip. I have no idea if that girl got the duck at The Center of the World or if they just have a random duck walker or something. It's a weird place, who knows. 2) The largest and oldest wooden building in California is the Hotel Del Coronado on the island of Coronado here in San Diego county. It is also the second oldest remaining Victorian resort in the world. One time my buddy Dan and I wandered around the Del for several hours while he pretended to be a tourist of undefined Eastern European or Germanic origin. He kept shouting about shoddy American beer ("I have been in your country three weeks and have not yet been drunk! What is this piss you call beer!?") and asking people if they knew where they sold hot nuts (The Del used to sell hot roasted peanuts but must have stopped sometime before that particular trip). Also, most locals refer to it as The Del as opposed to The Coronado, which make no linguistiacal sense really. 3) This is a real street sign that is used on numerous freeways around San Diego. A huge deal was made of these things when they first went up and people from other states have told me they don't believe that these are really up on I-5. I see three of them on my way to drop off my husband at work every morning. In the 27 years I've been alive I have never actually seen anyone running across the freeway. Ever. 3.5) If California's economic size were measured by itself to other countries, it would rank the 7th largest economy in the world. 4.5) The U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition is held annualy in my hometown of Imperial Beach, California. Imperial Beach is considered to have some of the best sand in the counrty. I find this amusing since the beach has been eroding like crazy for the past 10 years. There's like half as much beach now as there was when I was a kid. If I owned a beach front home I'd be pretty worried. Anyway, after the competition the sand on the beach is totally displaced and for two days while it washes back out to normal it creates two sets of breakers in the water with a big, calm area in between like a swimming pool. The picture at right is actually from the amature division of last year's contest. The winning team for the main contest sculpted a giant hand holding a royal flush that was way detailed. Those people are nuts! 5.5) No one seems to know where the word California actually originated but everyone seems to have an opinion about it. (Wikipedia has a fairly good article about it.) Personally, I like the idea that it was a slam on Hernan Cortes. I find it amusing. 6.5) The only one of California's 21 Missions I have ever been to is Mission San Francisco Solano, the final mission built by the Spanish and the one farthest away from where I live. The first mission was Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala it's right here in town and though I've been by it a number of times I'm pretty sure I've never gone in. Churches wig me out and they still actually use the mission as a church. It is beautiful though, check out the picture over there. They also have a legend that if you hear the mission bells in the middle of the night you shouldn't follow them because you'll never return. You know, good old follow the bells to your death stories. Which will take me to the last fact... 7.5) According to the Travel Channel's show America's Most Haunted the U.S. government actually keeps a list of the most haunted places in our country. The number one house on that list is Whaley House in San Diego's Old Town area. If you stop through town, I'll take you there. Afterward we can go over to the Haunted Coldstone down the street. Okay, so Coldstone isn't haunted but we say it is since it's located in between Whaley House and the graveyard where Yankee Jim is burried. Although there's plenty of skepticism to go around, I have to admit there are many weird things that go on in that locale. Not the least of which being that if you park your car over the grave markers in the road (the cemetary line was moved back ages ago and some of the graves are under the paved road, there are small brass plaques simply stating "Grave Site" where graves have been paved over) your car won't start. It doesn't always happen and it doesn't happen to everyone but it happens just enough to be really odd. The photo below is of my sister Shaniqua and my cousins Irie and Hawkeye at Yankee Jim's grave. And thus ends my 7.5 facts about California that are mostly about San Diego since that's where I'm from. Since I mostly talked about SoCal, I think CPurl17 should tell us about NorCal. On the knitting front, I'm working on a pair of socks for Entrelac that I will show you just as soon as I'm sure they're looking right. Lastly, my baby girl is THREE years old today. Yikes!

Big Love is warping my brain.

I'm totally hooked on HBO's Big Love. Edina has the first season on DVD and I've been watching it incessantly. I've now seen the whole first season at least three times and damn it if it isn't all I can think about. Every conversation I have seems to suddenly veer left into polygamy and then just hang out there ad nauseum. I think I've alienated or otherwise weirded out all my friends. I think everyone was much more comfortable when I'd hijack the conversation with my fear of the zombie uprising. Also, I've seen enough of Bill Paxton's ass for this lifetime. I could go on but I have a feeling I shouldn't. I only have the two readers as it is...

Not Irish

I'm not Irish. Not even a little bit. Nope. So of course last night I went out to celebrate St, Patrick's Day with the horde of other non-Irish people who use it as an excuse to drink copious amounts of all manner of booze and throw up in their friend's cars/lawns/beds etc. I didn't see a single person throw up this year so I consider it a majorly successful evening. I also remember most of the stuff that happened so another success right there. Of course I was dead to the world until well after 9am today but the kids didn't complain too much about their late breakfasts. Anyway, every two days after the ides of March one of my oldest friends both literally and chronologically, in fact for the blog here we'll call him Methuselah, throws a party to celebrate his drunken heritage. He happens to be Irish but he also happens to be a drunkard and that second thing is what he's celebrating before you get your hackles up and get all pissy about Irish bashing or some such (and by the way, Methuselah's little brother The Cowardly Lion also just as Irish and somehow never as drunk, I'm just saying). I see I've lost my point, has anyone seen it anywhere? I seriously doubt it but hell, it never hurts to ask. Oh yeah, Methuselah threw a party as he is wont to do. Methuselah's parties are generally the most random I've ever been to. You never know who you'll run into from what phase of your life. Sometimes that's cool but more often than not it's incredibly awkward. Occasionally it leads to Lucky Champagne having a throw down while Napoleon and I scream insults at people. I gotta tell you, that's some role reversal, Lucky is much more an insulter and Napoleon and I are not shy with the face punching. Moderately amusing aside, the throw down mentioned above took place for a number of reasons which mostly involved some idiot punching Lucky in the stomach for no real reason but also because Napoleon decided that some other idiot wasn't allowed to talk to or about me in the particularly insulting manner in which he had been. I find that funny because the last time I got into a fight it was partly because some bitchy girl was talking about Napoleon in a similar manner (also I punched her boyfriend for grabbing my ass and she was pissed about it, you know, like you do). See, this is why none of you six or seven readers would really want to know me in the real world, clearly I don't abide there. The more I blog about my life instead of my knitting the more charming I sound, right? So last night Red Todd Kidd, Lucky, Kaylee, Edina and I all head out into the unkown of Methuselah's place. I'm happy to report there was no fighting not screaming of insults and we all had a pretty good time. But then again, I haven't heard from anyone yet today and it's entirely possible that my version of events has nothing to do with reality, it wouldn't be the first time. I bet you're wondering what the hell this post is about and what it has to do with anything. Sadly, there is no point. I was just posting because I had a few minutes and it's been awhile and also if I ramble about this I won't have to dig out the pictures of RTK's socks I've been meaning to post for hella days. I hate loading pictures.

A New Year's Eve Warning

We've all done it at some point. Called up a friend or an ex or a significant other while completely wasted. The thing is, sometimes you leave evidence. Sometimes you get the voice mail or the answering machine and your better judgement who was sitting next to you three drinks ago is now passed out on the floor so you leave a message. Everyone else is going to warn you about drunk driving but not me, I assume my readers know better. I'm here to warn you off of the phone this New Year's Eve and I'll do it with these two stories: Only once before had this happened to me and it was a doozie. At a party at a friend's house, the first time I had been out to really have a good time since my son was born, my friends made it their mission to get me so blitzed I didn't even know what country I was in. After several rounds of a drinking game and an entire bottle of tequila between the six of us, I called Red Todd Kidd to tell him I wasn't going to make it home (the designated driver had literally had tequila poured down his throat Tijuana style) and could not figure out why he didn't pick up the phone. You see I called his work number. I actually left an incoherant message while someone whom I'd nicknamed Paddy McMick (I had jumped him into my gang* and that was his gang name, it's another story for another day) was singing Tura Lura Lural at the top of his lungs in the background. I have no idea what I said in this message but true to his awesome nature, Red Todd Kidd has never given me a hard time about the incident. I however, have never stopped giving a hard time to The Single Letter (the planned designated driver) over his two famous quotes** of the night, or the fact that when we did leave the next morning I had to drive. My second drunk dialing incident happened in November at Edina's birthday party (you may know her as belely from the knittyboard). We were out at a restaurant and ended up waiting for several hours for everyone to show up, by which point we had had many drinks and no food. Edina had had twice as many drinks as anyone else since it was her birthday we were all ordering them for her. It began to look like she wasn't going to make it through the party. So we started a pool on when she was going to lose it, and by "it" I mean her lovely dinner of tequila and whatever that peach stuff was. Right now I know you're thinking, "So that's what she's like in real life, what a bitch!" Well, yeah kinda, but it was all in fun and I rarely go out like this so cut me some slack. Anyway, a few days later I check my voicemail and I get this message: Later on when Edina asks why she took a picture of Lucky*** it's because she said, "This is a picture of Lucky losing," after she threw _____ at him because we took bets on when she was going to throw up and he said she owed him ____ [expletive deleted] dollars and [expletive deleted] Napolean _________ [expletive deleted] ___________ and now I've drunk dialed myself. At first I'm baffled as to who the hell it is and the third time through the message I realize it's me. It took four more run throughs to figure out what the heck I was saying. Then I had to call up Edina and tell her about it so we could laugh our asses off. I don't know if the message would be funnier or less funny without the garbled indechipherable sections but without a CSI unit to enhance the recording, I'll never know. I've been waiting to tell this story until Edina sent me the picture in question but I'm beginning to think she never will so I'm just going to post this with old pictures of the persons in question (the ones I chose are one of Edina and Red Todd Kidd from like two years ago because it's cute and one of Lucky with Darth and Lola Beans because it will make you wonder why I let him around the kids, it kinda looks like Lola is flipping him off, and lastly because my first pair of hand knitted socks ever are in the pic) and update you with the real pics (and a bonus pic of Lucky wearing his boxers outside his pants a la Madonna from last weekend) when I finally get them. Because I'm sure they'll be hilarious. *In high school a friend of mine declared that I was the leader of a gang. She called this gang Sarah's Gang or SG. She ran around for a long time punching people and telling them they had been jumped into my gang and then giving them rediculous gang names. Years later Edina and I revived this tradition just for the hell of it at a party one night. It went on for another two years after that. ** Quote 1: Not my boots! Without my boots how can I be southern!? Quote 2: Roll me over, that's how Hendrix went out! ***The heretofore only unnicknamed member of my real life friends, has now been dubbed Lucky Champagne for blogging purposes due to his penchant for Lucky cigarettes and Miller High Life. I know it's a lame nickname but that's why it works.

The OoS make a classroom appearance

A quick aside about the picture: I searched and searched and couldn't find a pic of Edina for some reason. I know I have several I just can freaking find them. Instead of a recent picture I offer up to you this picture of us at a high school formal. Oddly the nicknames I've chosen to obscure the identities of those therein are mostly actual nicknames from high school. In fact four of them. You can guess if you want. My good freind Edina*, lover of all things kitchy, decided to do her informative speech in her Speech Class on knitting. This was mostly so she could spend her spring break sitting around my house learning to knit so she can eventually make purses. Edina loves purses. LOVES them. If she were stranded on a desert island and could only have one thing, she'd totally take her purse. At least she'd have about 12 lighters in it... I'm getting off the subject. Anyway, Edina decided to do her speech on knitting. She's going to discuss a bit of the history, a breif how to, and dispell some common misconceptions. She intends to do all of this while wearing the Overalls of Shame. She explained to me that in order to punch up a speech she thought others might find dull she needed something to grab their attention so we called up my cousin and got the okay to take the OoS on an outing. This will be video taped. Which brings me to my big question: Does anyone know how turn a VHS clip into something I can puit on my computer to share with the lot of you? Because this just seems too good to pass up. *Name has been changed to reflect the true character of the subject.