Vicious & Wreck: Road Trip (Part 2)

I can hear you all think to yourselves, finally!, and Dear Readers, I don't blame you.  Here is the long overdue conclusion of the recap of the road trip we took six months ago!

Day 2

Fort Bragg is adorable.  Did you know that?  My coworker K never seemed to mention that, but look at the evidence:
We bought socks at a place called Pippi Longstockings
We at breakfast at a Wizard of OZ (book) themed restaurant called Egghead's
We browsed around the Triangle Tattoo & Museum

Our experience at Egghead's rather epitomizes our eating adventures.  Both of us were ravenous by the time we got seated and then we both stared at the menu for ages – really, we only wanted basic things, but we kept getting sidetracked by the dishes with theme names like, Ruby Slipper Scramble, or Aunt Em's Potatoes, or whatever.  I think I finally ended up with a special which was nearly identical to a non-theme-named omelette I had my eye on, but had Flying Monkeys in the title.  The food was awesome.  And, at the end of the meal, I followed the Yellow Brick Road out of the back, and to a bathroom in a separate small building labeled "The Emerald City."  So rad.

After breakfast, we were on the road again.  Shortly after we left Fort Bragg, we discovered "Perfect Beach."  We have no idea what this beach was called, but weather was amazing and the coast line was nearly empty with mist rising off the waves.  We basked for a bit, Vicious recorded some wave sounds, and then we kept on heading north, winding our way back in-land.

This part of HWY-1 was beautiful in a totally different way than the first day.  It was just as empty, but now we were weaving in and out of trees rather than beach towns.  As we got further into the trees, little shacks started popping up here and there, complete with collections of rusty tools and old tractors.  We dubbed these buildings "Murder Shacks" and did not stop to investigate.

When we finally met back up with 101 we were in Leggett and so we headed for the Drive Thru Tree.  I let Vicious drive so I could take pictures; I'll never live down the fact that I trusted Vicious – Vicious – enough to drive my car – a car – through a tree – a tree.*

We got out to walk around a meadow and pond, and then wandered into the woods to record nature sounds.  The redwoods were immense, and the day was warm, and for a while we could hear the buzz of traffic.  Then suddenly everything went quiet, and just like Merry and Pippin in Fangorn: "A queer stifling feeling came over them, as if the air was too thin or too scanty for breathing."  We said goodbye to the trees and headed back to the car.

Did you know that this part of Northern California gets really weird.  Like freaky weird?  On the way to the Avenue of the Giants, we tried to stop and use the bathroom at a tourist trap (of which there is one ever few miles on 101 at this point).  This one had chainsaw art outside and a house built into a tree.  We entered the gift shop and there was a man talking to the woman behind the counter, and he said, "I had to shove it back inside my body, it was like water balloons of blood."  Vicious and I looked at each other and high-tailed it back to the car.  We used the bathroom at Confusion Hill (home of a Chickalope?!) instead.

After driving through the beautiful Avenue of the Giants, we realized we were starving and headed back toward "civilization."  We passed through Willits, where we could have stayed in a Teepee (the possibility was discussed), and ended up scarfing down Thai and finding a motel in Ukiah (where I may or may not have been super snarky to the hotel clerk, who I'm pretty sure thought Vicious and I were a really weird lesbian couple).

It was the night before Vicious' 30th.  We sat with our feet in the bathtub, and talked about Serial Killers, German Cannibals, and British men with black hair.

Day 3

We decided to spend Vicious' birthday in Wine Country, which is amusing because Vicious no longer drinks, but we had this idea that we needed to go to Yountville and check out all the fancy restaurants.  On the way, we stopped in Geyserville to grab some caffeine, and then we got dristracted for a very long time in this amazing Vintage shop.  While we were at the coffee shop, however, the best exchange happend:

Barista: Do you two know where Coppola Winery is?
Me: Um...
Barista: Oh, are you guys old enough to drink?
Vicious: It's my 30th birthday today! THANK YOU.

From there we wandered into St Helena, and decided that we required ice cream.  We found this place right off the main street called The Big Dipper, and it was run by two gay vampires (probably), who would not take off their sunglasses while they were behind the counter, and told Vicious that the sorbet was too cold.  She gave them a filthy and went, "yeah, it's supposed to be cold." And then we found some benches under an archway at a church to enjoy our treats (where Vicious inadvertently solidified by vision of her as Halleluiah from The Hold Steady album Separation Sunday).

After St Helena, we headed to Yountville and I nearly died of bliss eating a macaron from Bouchon Bakery, and we wandered over to an old grave yard where Vicious took a picture of my ass me looking at an old headstone.  Neither of us were drinking on this trip, but we decided to go look at Chandon, because Vicious has a celebrity crush on the head chef there? I think? I'm a little fuzzy on the details – I was still in a bliss coma from the macarons.

We rounded our final day in Sonoma, eating a stupid early dinner at a the Swiss Hotel Bar and Restaurant, since we are both bad at eating regular meals despite the fact that Vicious turns crazy without food, and I just sort of wither into a grumpy mess.  We also found a few super cute shops, where Vicious picked out an amazing star dress.

And as we headed back to the Peninsula, we played Yellow Car (you're always playing Yellow Car), and were tired, but still felt amazing.  Because how many friends do you have that you can spend 36 hours with continually – most of which are spent in a car or hotel?  If you do have friends like that, don't let them go.  They are amazing, and you should be leaving for adventures with them right now.



*Please forgive the indulgence, but I had to work in a Cabin Pressure reference here – it was just too good to pass up.  For the record, this is a reference to Ottery St. Mary (series 3, episode 4).

March Photo a Day: Days 1 – 10

Yeah, so I'm slacking on posting again, but I'm keeping up with my photos!  Just think of this as an award for your patience – a whole bunch of pictures at once :)

Day 1: Up
I caught this shot when I was leaving the market.  I've always love skywriters, and these seemed like a great way to kick off a new month of photos! (it's too bad none of the rest have lived up first one so far!)

Day 2: Fruit
I had so many ideas for this and there was fruit around all day, but in the end I nearly forgot to take a picture at all and ended up taking a quick shot of an orange my manager had given me.  It was tasty even if the photo was boring.

Day 3: My Neighbourhood
Another last min/late photo.  I live up in the hills and don't have a typical neighbourhood.  We do have a little block of stores at the bottom of the hill, though.  When I was little they had a pizza place and a movie rental shop where I rented Troop Beverly Hills 800 times – fun fact!

Day 4: Bedside
I don't have a bedside locker or table or anything because my bed fits right between the door into the room and the closet door. I do, however, have a set of drawers filled with accessories and other miscellaneous items, and stacked with the some of the books that I've read since I moved in Nov 2010.  I read a lot.

Day 5: A Smile
This pic was taken by Boyfriend back when we used to work together and had these crazy 7am shifts.  I love this pic of me.  This is a post-yawn smile and eye rub.  I may or may not be about to pound a sugar free Redbull as well.

Day 6: 5pm
My boring but accurate picture of my water bottle and a gluten free bar, for the very exciting task of hydrating and snacking before Bikram.

Day 7: Something I Wore
This was harder than I thought it would be, but only because every other time I've done style photos, Boyfriend always takes them and I wanted to do this myself.  So, here is part of the houndstooth dress and sweater from H&M and my vintage boots that used to belong to my aunt.

Day 8: Window
At my Mom's house there are these amazingly old stained glass windows.  It's just too bad that I waited until dark to take a picture of them, but believe me, they are so pretty!

Day 9: Red
I had actually planned on paining my nails with my favourite colour "Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ" but I ran out of time.  As I was searching for something both interesting and red to take a picture of, my eyes fell on my Harry Potter box set that my wonderful sister, Bear, got me for Christmas a few years ago.  It's all the British editions, so Year 1 is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. 

Day 10: Loud
This is the opening title to one of my all time favourite movies: Velvet Goldmine.  It's a play on the liner notes to David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (which also happens to be one of my favourite albums), that says "To be played at Maximum Volume."

Feb Photo a Day: Days 1 – 6

So, in an attempt to start updating this more regularly again, I'll be posting the photos that I take for fatumumslim's February Photo a Day Challenge.  All of these were processed and posted with Instagram.

Day 1: Your View Today
This is Redwood City at night.  It's hard to see, I know, but I forgot to take a picture until it was already dark.  In the day, however, you can see all the way to the East Bay though why anyone would want to look at the East Bay is anyone's guess. 

Day 2: Words
This is why my best friend is so amazing.  I can send her a text message like this and without questioning anything, she responds back with something brilliant.  All you need in here is a Doctor Who reference and this conversation would epitomize us both.

Day 3: Hands
It's funny that this was the challenge of the day because I painted my nails for the first time in ages on Monday and had posted a picture of my hands then, so I didn't want to do the same thing twice.  Luckily for me, I was out with friends and had my hands wrapped around my drink of choice: a gin & tonic.

Day 4: [a] Stranger
I assume this was supposed to mean I needed to take a picture of a stranger.  Instead, I bent the rules and just used "stranger" and posted a Tour d'Franzia picture because, really, there is not a lot of things that are stranger than this CSUMB tradition.

Day 5: 10am
I had brunch with a good, but seldom seen, ex-coworker this morning, so I had to get my ass out of bed much earlier than I would have liked for a Sunday morning.  This was me after the shower, trying to figure out the strange winter weather we're having in Nor Cal this year.  In the end, I decided on a dress – like I do.

Day 6:  Dinner
Every Monday night a group of us get together for "wing night."  This is in quotes because over the past year or so, we've moved past getting wings every Monday to eating at a variety of places.  Tonight, our friends Nicole and JR made homemade quinoa fried rice, sesame chicken, and salad – and it was all gluten free and super delicious!

Pink Prom 3-D

Did you hear?  My friends, sisters Diana & Megan, threw a totally awesome party for a totally worthy cause: Pink Prom 3-D, A Benefit Dance for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.

This is the 3rd year they've put this event on and the second year that I've gone. This year Diana, Megan, and I all had the same hair cuts and we all wore strapless pink dresses.  How awesome?  Maybe it's a side effect of knowing someone since like 4th grade...

Last year, I went with my friends and asked Mr. Orlando Furioso to be my "date" because Boyfriend was visiting family.  Orlando bought me copious amounts of gin & tonics and I spent the drive home reciting everything that I had ever read on Wikipedia about roller coasters.  Seriously.  Roller coasters.

This year, I had Bear, Boyfriend & and a Betsy Johnson dress.  And I didn't drink too much or rant and rave about amusement park rides.  I did however dance the night away and I had a rediculiously awesome time in the photo booth they had set up.

Allow me to take you through the night in pictures – all photos by the fabulous Gary Sexton Photography!

Our Prom group shot: Me & Boyfriend, Peter & Marian, Bear & Mwongola.  Aren't we all pretty in pink – you see what I did there?  

Here's our first "couple" picture.  Note that Boyfriend keeps sticking his head into the frame with the 3-D glasses – I think it looks like R2D2.  This is before drinks and I'm still jumping into him...
We had to make sure to get an awesome sister picture.  In case you're wondering, me and my sister will challenge you and your sister to the K12 any day of the week.  Just say when.
Then we met a couple and started chatting.  Then decided to take pics with them, like you do.  I also, at some point, started talking about how I used to play Columbia in The Rocky Horror Picture Show hence the sign.  And I decided that the bird Boyfriend his hold is the Maltese Falcon (no one knew what I was on about. How sad).

At some point in the night I started channeling Cha-Cha from Grease when, at the dance, she cuts in on Danny & Sandy to win the Hand Jive competition.  What I'm doing in that last picture is shaking my dress, which was fluffed out with tulle, like she does when they win.  This seemed like a good idea.  Also, Boyfriend started doubling up on glasses...

And then Boyfriend gets artsy and my eyes get wonky.  That last frame is so amazing, I know you are wishing you could be so cool. 
I had a total blast at the party and it was for such a good cause.  Trust me, the photos are just a snapshot of the awesomeness.  And you can check out the website and see the rest of the party pics, too.

So, thanks Diana & Megan.  You ladies rock.

Fashion Friday: March 28 – April 1

Sorry for the radio silence, folks.  And I was doing so well with updating last week. And then I woke up Sunday morning with a itchy throat and was knocked out for the next two days.  Super lame.

 So, I have no style photos from Monday or Tuesday because I figured no one would want to see me in my old pajamas two days in a row.  But I do have a picture of the view from my sickbed.

That's my quilt, my movie collection, and you can kind of see my record collection (at least the 45s).  You can also see (from the left) the complete Harry Potter series & Percy Jackson series, a bunny with a mustache, Clerks Animated & Oscar Wilde action figures, a severed foot autographed by Chuck Palahniuk, and two years worth of Wizard Rock EP of the Month Club EPs. There is a whole lot of awesome (read: nerd) going on here.

My first day returning to work I did the unthinkable: wore jeans and sneakers... But I still felt like crap.
The jeans are Rock & Republic – hand-me-ups from Bear; the shirt is J.Crew and you can't see it but there are sequins on it; the shoes you can sort of glimpse are Puma and are usually reserved for my hip-hop class :)

You can tell I was starting to feel better by Wednesday because I have a skirt on.  And also, while I was sleeping, it suddenly turned into spring.  I swear I only own like 4 things from Anthropologie and I'm wearing two of them here – the shirt and the skirt, both on sale; the shoes are Me Too from Nordstrom, which I'm breaking in cousin's wedding next week.

The shirt is Forever21 and it's too bad you can't see the super cute flower details on it; the belt is my mystery brand belt from Nordstrom Rack; jeans are Genetic from the aforementioned Blue Jean Bar; the shoes are Lucky Brand also from Nordstrom Rack (I love that place); earrings are from the communal jewelery drawer in my home and who knows where they originated from.

I'm so happy it's spring now.  Can't wait to break out the spring/summer dresses!
Is there something you can't wait to wear this year?

Fashion Friday : March 21 - 25

Don't worry, Dear Readers.  This isn't turning into a fashion blog (yet).  I fairly certain that I am too lazy for that at this point, inasmuch as I don't have the ability to a) pick out a nice outfit, b) take a picture of me in it, and c) write about it every day – but, gosh, I admire those who can!

I have been wanting to keep a record of what I wear to work – despite the fact that Big Computer Company is casual, I consistently wear skirts and dresses, and other more business-y attire while most everyone else wears jeans (in fact, the first time I wore jeans to work, it caused quite a ruckus).  After 13 years of wearing a uniform and then working a number of jobs that required me to put a t-shirt over whatever I wore, I'm embracing the fact that I can wear whatever I want.  And I want to wear cute skirts and boots, usually.

But see, the other reason that I'm not sure if I want to turn this into a daily showcase of what I wear is that 90% of my daily choice of clothes is based on what can be thrown into a gym bag and not get totally wrinkled. Which also means that my clothing choice is either picked out right before I fall asleep the night before or at 5:00am the morning of.  This has resulted in a lack of accessories, strange colour choices, and one time, wearing what I thought was a dress, but was actually a shirt that was inappropriately short for work.

All that being said, this is my attempt to keep track of what I wear each week, and maybe through that process figure out a bit more what works and what doesn't. . . Also it give me an excuse to take silly pictures with Boyfriend, who is the official endlessmeg photographer. Observe.

The sweater and tights, which are footless and the BEST thing in the universe if you have long legs, are from Target; the skirt is J.Crew and the boots are Miz Mooz (from Nordstroms) – both things I picked out and then were gifted back to me in the original shopping bag from The Queen for Christmas; sunglasses are BP and the ring is vintage – my Grandma had the best costume jewelry.  

The dress was surprising find at Forever 21 and the belt is an unknown brand from Nordstrom Rack.

I had been wearing the same boots from Monday, but this was way late at night and I hate shoes, so I had switched into Uggs (which are an annual purchase for me since the days of swim team).

This is one of my most favourite outfits ever.  The dress and belt are from Anthropologie – I used to live on the same street as one of the stores and I walked by every day on my way to work.   This dress was in the window and I tried it on 3 times before I finally broke down and bought it.  The tights and sweater are Target; the boots are Benetton and were a birthday gift 3 years ago (and kind of a long story...); the earnings are from a Gem & Jewelery show.

And some days I like to dress up for no real reason.  The skirt and top are H&M (which I tend to find is very hit or miss... maybe that's what it stands for... hmmm); The jacket is Kensie from Nordstrom Rack; the ankle boots are Steve Madden.  Also, yes, those are bowls on my ears – it was my cone of silence.

First off, I'm dancing in my head to Hall & Oats in these pics.  Now, let me tell you about these jeans.  There is a place on Santana Row in SJ called The Blue Jeans Bar.  You must go there.  First you tell them your size, then what style you are looking for and it's like personal shopping.  These are DL1961 which I had never heard of, but LOVE; the sweater is Banana Republic, from an after Christmas sale 2 years ago.

So that is my week in fashion and silly pictures.  What do you think?  Too many pictures in one post?  Should I try to do every day or every other day rather than once a week?  You tell me.