02 May 2010 – 02 July 2010
Hey guys! I just wrote a freaking novel this summer. Well, practically. If you’ve been with me since the beginning then you’ve had the pleasure of reading my ~57,000 word epic adventure. In the publishing world, that word count is the equivalent of an average length novel. If I were to put my blog in manuscript form with the standard 250 words per page in Courier font, I’d have a 228 page ‘script. In short, I’m feeling a wee bit burnt out on the daily blogging front. I made it up to my mom’s place in the Seattle area after a 14-hour drive from Berkeley on the 2nd of July. I’ll be home visiting family and friends for about another week, then I’m heading back down to Yuma to work on a ranch with my friend before school starts in late August. So, while I still have a month of bouncing around without a permanent residence, this last month and a half isn’t really a full on crazy random road trip anymore. That isn’t to say that my daily adventures aren’t still crazy awesome of course.

So, to my adoring fans: Thanks for taking this journey with me!
~Xtina

Ok, yeah, those aren’t the words, but sometimes they should be. I woke up before my alarm, had time to freshen up in the parking garage and grab a few bites of still-remaining cake for pre-breakfast and walked up a block to the meeting place for orientation. I was about 15 minutes early and a few handfuls of people were already waiting in the courtyard. I popped inside to use the bathroom then went back out to the courtyard to loiter with the others. Then I felt a breeze. In my crotch region. Mother eff. Some things are very hard to do in an inconspicuous and nonchalant manner. Recovering from being left hanging during an attempted high-five… robbing a bank… and zipping up a forgotten fly in public. You have to like, do it quick and then pretend like you meant to be digging your hand into your pocket to get something. “Oh, there’s my chap-stick. Found it!” Crisis averted. Soon thereafter the official events were to begin. We lined up according to last name and waited for the doors to open. When they opened the doors and told us to enter a great cheer went up inside from the volunteers as they welcomed us to UC Berkeley. Awwwww, they love us! Once we had our welcome folders, schedule, wristband and name-tags we got to head into the dining hall for breakfast. After our eats we were all herded into a lecture hall for our welcome speech. We were also instructed to take a few minutes to introduce ourselves to someone sitting next to us. And here is where I should probably explain that there are multiple orientation days over the summer, split up for transfer students and freshmen. I’ve never been to college. And yet, I was admitted as a non-junior transfer student because of my college credits from learning Arabic in the Navy. It’s very abnormal. So, anyway, I had to sign up for transfer orientation, where everyone else there was a junior and I was either a freshman or a sophomore. I had no idea. So, when we were instructed to say hello and make a friend, the first guy I greeted was also a Computer Science major like myself. Cool. Then he got really excited and asked me, “What’s your favorite programming language?” Uh, wut? Hahahaha, how precious. Thus began my day of explaining that I had no idea about all this transfer stuff or anything about my supposed major yet. After that we were split up into groups of ten with our assigned student counselor for the day. Groups were assigned based on major so my group was all Computer Science majors. The rest of the day was spent attending different informational lectures about meeting University graduation requirements and study abroad and meeting with major advisers. I also went to the meeting for veterans where I got some great info, met some fellow Cal veterans and got a free t-shirt! You know how I love free things.

Where all the big CalSO (Cal Student Orientation) sessions happened.

We were fed lunch at Memorial Glade, the big grassy area in the center of campus. During the second half of the day we finally got to sign up for our first few classes and get our student ID cards. Hurrah!!! Then a few of the CalSO counselors killed time teaching us a few UC Berkeley cheers. Hurrah again! After the long busy day there was a last closing ceremony to get us all excited about attending Cal (as if we weren’t already?) and to remind us that we are now official rivals of anyone from Stanfurd. Yes. With a U. At the very end they surprised everyone when the band came marching in onto the stage up front and played through a few songs while two UC Rally Committee guys waved ginormous Cal flags. Then the band and flag wavers told us to join the band and played themselves out to the courtyard where they said they would be playing for a bit longer. We were then dismissed to go back and have a final meal at the dining facility. We passed the band playing in the courtyard and I stopped to watch for longer. Then, suddenly all the nearby CalSO counselors put down their bags and started doing the dance as the band played Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. That seemed pretty freaking random at the time, but afterward my counselor told me that doing that dance is actually a Cal tradition but that he had never actually seen the movie. I guess I’ll be learning the dance in my future. At dinner my Computer Science group all sat together and we Facebook’d and two of them showed off their shiny new iPhone 4s and then the day was done. I walked back to my car with a spring in my step. It had been a glorious day. I can’t wait for school to start!

He’s a snappy dresser too

My light post, just through the tunnel on the way to Pacific Grove

After the overwhelming fun of a morning spent at the dealership, and me not having the foresight to get my laptop out of the car to use the free wireless, I headed to Pacific Grove for my facial. Getting to PG from Monterey requires going through a short tunnel. A task that I did not successfully accomplish late one night back in 2002, resulting in my having to pay for the replacement of a light post that I sort of, you know, hit and knocked over. Light posts are expensive. I only wish mine were in a place more easily accessible to pedestrians so I could get out and tag it or something, claiming it officially. Apparently the city of Pacific Grove has been hit hard in the economic downturn, being a small tourist city. The spa I used to go to had to close, so I was visiting the former owner at her home to get my facial. It was still as awesome as ever though, despite the change in location. My favorite part is always the extraction. That’s where you squeeze out all the dirty nasty crap from your pores. It’s hard to do for yourself, being a two-handed affair and also being quite painful if you are really getting in there for a thorough job. I used to get facials done once or twice a month when I lived in Monterey, since I have very acne-prone skin. At first I considered the extraction as good training for if I were ever to be captured and tortured. Yes, it hurts that much. The spa owner used to tell me that most men cry and tap out in the middle of getting it done. I’ve gotten to the point though where I enjoy it. Kinda fucked up, eh? Anyhow, she and I caught up a bit and the whole process ended up taking extra long due to all the chatting. It was nice though. From there I headed a few blocks up to complete a mission: Compagno’s for lunch and pictures of it for my friend who requested it. I got a whole #2 and a slice of German chocolate cake to go and drove down to one of the parks on the waterfront to sit and enjoy my feast. Are you ready, friend? Here comes your food porn:

The ordering counter. What are the odds that they have the same freaking gun bottle of alcohol as the little place I ate at in Santa Margarita? 1 in 1 apparently!

My view at the park. Oh, right. You are waiting for the food porn part…

What’s that you say, turkey-bacon-onion-avocado-provolone-tomato-lettuce sammich? You want me to eat you out? Naughty sammich…

Oh, you have a twin? Kinky…

Curious voyeurs surrounded me, hoping for a piece of the action…

Hey there, big boy. It’s been awhile since I’ve had my chocolate fix. You’re so much bigger than others I’ve had before…

You’re so big I can only fit a little of you into my mouth at a time. Mmmmmm….

Aaaaaand I’m spent. In truth I was only able to eat half the sammich and maybe a quarter of the cake. Seriously, that $5 slice is HUGE. Before heading out I figured I should at least change out my rear plate, so I did it the lazy way and sort of pulled the bike rack an inch or two away from the car to unscrew, remove, replace, and rescrew my license plate. I tossed my front plate up on the dash visible out the front window. Ready, set, go! Off to Berkeley! Yay! I arrived around 5ish and drove through the campus once, then stopping when I found some free street parking on Piedmont Street just off of campus. I realized I should probably re-read the email about orientation to make sure I had whatever I needed. I read it on my phone and then face-palmed myself for forgetting to print out the papers I needed. Now I had a mission for the evening. I grabbed my bag and laptop and headed down the hill to Shattuck Street to find the Fedex. Happily I didn’t have to pay the ridiculous Fedex charge for using their internet as it was still close enough to campus that I was picking up the University’s free wifi. I got my shit handled and went out to wander the street and find a cafe to sit and blog at. I went to one just a block away, ordered my mocha and sat down. And wouldn’t you know it, same distance from campus but I wasn’t getting the free wifi signal. And Peet’s does the whole 1 hour of free internet per purchase thing. I was entirely too lazy to stand up, walk to the counter, and ask for a 1 hour internet access code. So instead I just typed up a blog offline to upload later. I stayed there until almost closing, at 9, and then walked back up the hill, this time going up the street where the parking garages are that I would need to park at tomorrow during orientation since the street parking was limited to 2hrs during the day. I also walked by my future home, the Oscar Wilde coop, which is super close to campus. Oh, right, so I just found out that I’d been accepted to the coop when my mom called me when I was at trivia in Monterey and told me that the paperwork had arrived at her house. Basically a few hours after I just got my car registered to a different address and didn’t get my driver’s license. Good timing, eh? Oh, well, not like I can have mail sent there until school starts in August. Anyway, I’m stoked about the coop and the location and that now my housing situation isn’t still pending and I don’t have to hunt for a room or apartment to rent. I can just show up and move in. I walked back to my car and debated where to sleep. Sleep in my car where I was currently parked and have to wake up early in the morning to drive the few blocks to the parking garage and risk it being full, or drive over to the parking garage now and not worry about it in the morning? I decided on the later. The parking garage didn’t require a ticket to enter it just had a parking permit machine to print out permits. So, my sneaky idea was to wait until midnight and buy my all-day ticket, if anyone came and saw me in my car and said something about it before then I’d just claim that I’d just pulled in… So that’s what I did, waited to midnight (snacking on the other half of my sammich and more of the cake), then went and bought my ticket. I was feeling pleased with my clever thrifty self until I looked at the ticket and saw that it expired at 2am. WTF. I checked again. Daily parking was from 5am-2am and there was supposed to be no overnight parking. Balls. That was a waste of $6 for two hours of parking. There were other cars still parked in the garage so I figured the danger of being awoken and yelled at at 2 in the morning was low. I set 4 alarm clocks to wake me before my 7:30am orientation start time. Sleeping in the day of orientation was not an option.

29 June 2010
Luckily for J and I, there was a big tall broad tree between us in the tent and the rising morning sun. That allowed us to both sleep in a little longer and also probably saved us from roasting and getting sunburned in our sleep before we awoke. When I finally got up I had to pee like a mofo. I’d gone in the bushes away from camp the night before, but looking across the dirt parking lot, what do I see? A bathroom. Of course. No way I’d have seen it in the dark all the way over there. Oh, well, I could use it now. I headed towards it. And left the shadow of the tree. And started to burn. Why was it so far away? I thought of turning back… getting my car and driving to the bathroom. But I was halfway there already. Ugh. Finally, I made it. Bathroom. Well, more like glorified port-o-potty. Still just a hole in the ground but it was a real building with a real toilet and toilet paper. The walk back too forever, too. Funny, because it really wasn’t that far away, but it felt like it in the ungodly early morning heat. J had the same experience when she walked to the bathroom after me. We got the site taken down and packed up and cleaned up in no time and headed back into the nearest town for some breakfast. I followed her back up and over the bumpy dirt road out to the highway, where I saw for the first time that we had been in Los Padres National Forest. On the way back into town I swear every animal around tried to hari kari itself under the wheels of my car. Squirrels, rabbits, lizards, all of them, dashing across the road in front of me. I think they all survived…

Proof that they exist!

Bottle of hard liquor and home defense all in one

Once in town, our choice of eatery was simple: there was only one. The one next to the post office and the liquor store. Yes, it was that kind of a town. Santa Margarita. The pictures above? Yeah, that’s what decorated the room we ate in, along with the requisite longhorn bull horns mounted on the wall. After eating I hit up the post office to get a stupid $10 money order and mail it in as my stupid $10 parking fee from that night in San Diego. We hung outside talking for a bit longer, watching the locals come and go. There were a lot of men with mustaches and beards, everything ranging from crazy to crazy awesome. Then it was time for me to hit the road again. J said she was going to keep hanging out there for a bit until she thought of something else to do. She’s random and fun like that if you couldn’t tell already. I bid her farewell and headed north. My intended goal was San Francisco or Berkeley. My orientation wasn’t until the 1st but I could wander around and get a feel for the area. I also have an aunt in San Fran and I debated giving her a call on my way up as my couch surfing requests had resulted only in a “maybe” from one guy who then never got back to me. My path took me through Salinas, the big farming town inland of Monterey and I wondered if I should pop over and say hello to my former California home were I attended DLI for two years. The freeway exit came and went. I decided I’d have plenty of time to revisit Monterey as it was only a few hours from Berkeley. As I passed through Salinas I posted, “Why hello there Salinas…” on my Facebook. This innocuous statement immediately turned into a long commentary with my friends reminiscing about the dangers of the Salinas Walmart. I also received a request that I go eat at Compangno’s, a place just of post where the sandwiches and cake were delicious. He said he’d pay me for pictures. And one more friend, M, reminded me that he is back at DLI right now for a refresher course and that he and a bunch of people would be going to trivia that night at London Bridge if I wanted to join them. That sealed it. I was already 15 or 20 minutes past the exit for Monterey, but I turned around and headed back. This is why not having real plans is great.

My first stop in Monterey was actually at the DMV. My Georgia car registration had been expired since my birthday, and at first I was thinking I had to get my Cali registration done in the same county as Berkeley, but then in a flash of brilliance I realized that that is how they do it in Georgia, by county so that you get plates with the correct county on them, but in California all the plates just say California. I knew where the DMV was so that made it easy for me to decide to pop in and see what I needed to do and if I could register anywhere. Did I need some form of a bill or mail with my California address to prove where I lived? Did I need to change my driver’s license at the same time? That was my biggest concern, since I obviously wouldn’t have bills with an address and I didn’t want to get a driver’s license and have to change it as soon as I got my address at Berkeley. For now I planned on just using my aunt’s San Fran address. The wait wasn’t too long for me to get to the help desk and she informed me that I all I needed to do was give them my money and tell me the address. Perfect! Oh, and I needed to go around back with my car and get it “verified.” A kind of mini-inspection where they just check that your car’s VINs all match and that your odometer is correctly listed. Seemed pretty pointless to me. I got it done and headed back inside to grab a number to finalize it all. When I was called up I handed over my papers and waited as she typed all the info in. She asked if I had my smog inspection papers. I told her the car was a hybrid. Then she got really apologetic and started explaining how because my car was so new and blah blah blah, yeah lady, just tell me the damage. I already knew the bullshit about having to repay my sales tax to Cali even though I’d obviously already paid it to another state. Jerks. $700. Ouch. She assured me that next year it would just be the regular $150 registration fee. We will see, lady… I got my plates and with joy in my heart I skipped back out to my car, a resident of California! I still had some hours to kill before meeting M for trivia so I drove up to my old neighborhood to park and go stroll the beach. I did that for a bit and then arranged to meet up at my friend’s place so I could ride with him and his wife and his wife’s sister to trivia.

The beach, 1 block from my old apartment

So purty

Assuming you could stare into the sun and not go blind, does it always have the pretty rainbow circling it?

The four of us rolled out, downtown Monterey bound. I’d never been to the London Bridge Pub when I first lived in Monterey, but it’s a cool British joint down on the wharf. I hadn’t eaten since Santa Margarita, so I ordered the Pastie & Mash. The menu informed me that it’s pronounced “pah-stee”. It was delicious. And probably the opposite of very healthy, being a meat, veggie and potato-filled pastry with mashed potatoes on the side and all covered in gravy. Our table outside soon filled with other friends of my friend as we assembled our trivia team. I enjoy playing trivia at bars. Mostly for the alcohol and bar food and hanging out with friends. I’m pretty horrible at trivia itself. I don’t have the kind of brain that is filled with facts and information irrelevant to my life. I have a hard enough time remembering my parents’ birthdays, no lie. What was the most expensive baseball card ever sold? What year did this person die? What is the capitol of this country? These are things I can look up if I ever need to know. Well, aside from at trivia, where we weren’t allowed to look them up. In other words, I didn’t contribute much as any time I knew an answer it was because it was such an obvious one that we all knew it. I made sure to nod and agree with other people’s intelligent guesses though. I’d be horrible at Jeopardy. We didn’t win, but we all had a good time. Being a Tuesday and a school night for all the DLI kiddos after our resounding trivia defeat we headed back to M’s, where the couch and slumber awaited.

With laundry done I repacked the car, shuffling its contents to make room for the two boxes of clothes that I had shipped to A when I thought that San Diego was going to be my final destination. I said goodbye to D and S, promising to see them and A again and I set off on the road. Another friend from DLI lived 4 hours away, conveniently right in the middle of my drive to Berkeley, so I had plans to stop and hang with her for the night. J lives in Santa Maria but she didn’t want to spend the night there, so she asked if I was down for camping on the beach at Pismo, a little farther north. Heck yes! We arranged to meet for dinner at a Mexican place in Pismo. When I arrived J informed me that all of the camp sites were full. We brainstormed over dinner. There’s unlimited camping on the beach, but it requires driving quite a way along the beach to get to the correct spot. Neither of us drove cars we trusted not to get stuck in the sand. By the end of dinner J decided we should head up to San Luis Obispo and drop in on a friend of hers at work there. We arrived in town 5 minutes after the place closed. It was going to be one of those kind of adventures… I wasn’t much help with backup plans as J is a local and I sure didn’t know of anything else to suggest. We stopped for gas and to get a new game plan. We would head inland instead and camp at a park where J had been before for dirt bike riding. She said it was less than an hour away and I followed her gamely. The sun was setting as we set off down the narrow winding hilly road. Definitely an exciting drive on a strange road as the light faded and all was dark along the twisting deserted route. We finally arrived at the turn off from the highway onto a dirt road. No problem, right? I started wishing I was in my old Nissan Frontier though as the dirt road became rough and hilly, more suited to the aforementioned dirt bikes or ATVs than to my poor little Prius. As we kept going and going on this dirt road, out in the hilly middle of nowhere, I sincerely hoped that my friend had not become a serial killer in the years since I had seen her last. If she had, the location she took me to was an ideal spot. We finally reached a spot to camp. And by spot to camp I mean we reached a large open dirt area where an RV was at the far end and we figured this was the place to be. At first we were sad that it wasn’t really camp like, no fire-pits, tables, camp site like things. Then we went on a mine exploration with our flashlights to see where the best spot for the tent was and lo and behold: 1 picnic table and 1 fire pit. Score. We moved our cars over and set up camp.

Did I mention it was dark?

The stars were AMAZING! Not quite Milky-Way-visible-to-the-naked-eye amazing, but way more stars than I’d seen in a long time. I pulled out my phone to use my super awesome Google Sky app, which you point at the sky and it tells you which stars and constellations you are looking at…. and would have worked better had I had a signal. Instead I think I just confused the two of us. J and both knew where the big and little dipper were but then couldn’t remember where to go from there to find Orion, and then Google Sky told me Orion was down under the ground and I soon gave up. J suggested an exploratory walk and we headed out under the light of the near full moon. We walked and talked and talked and walked, about who knows what, alcoholic beverages in hand. For myself, a still remaining Joose from Bonnaroo. For J, a mix of gin and sprite. Oh, yeah, I think I was supposed to title this post “Gin and Joose”… but “Werewolves and Porn” just has a much more interest piquing ring to it. And as for the werewolves, while on this walk, J informed me that she has an irrational fear of them. She isn’t worried about mountain lions or snakes or bears around here as much as she fears a werewolf. Irrational indeed! So I made fun of her for that and we continued along a dirt road that looped back around to the other end of our wide open parking spot, near the RV people. Somehow, and I really have no idea how, the subject of my hair came up, and J asked if she could lick it. Lick my hair. The short part on the side. Um, sure? So, J licked my hair. The left side to be exact. She enjoyed the first lick, giggling. Hell, I was giggling. WHO THE FUCK LICKS HAIR?! She asked for another lick. I agreed. She said it was awesome. I guess. She said I didn’t know what I was missing, the texture was great. I figured I’ll be missing out on experiencing the texture of the hair on the side of my head as my tongue slides over it for a while to come. I’ll have to leave that tactile pleasure to others. You hear that, ladies? I’m fun to lick.

Fire!

Back at camp we decided to make a fire. J is the kind of girl that never leaves home without tent, blankets, and fire-starting materials in the trunk of her car. It wasn’t cold of course, but even with the moon out it was pretty darn dark and we wanted to see. The alcohol was working (had it not already been working when my hair got licked?) and alcoholy-conversations ensued. Do I remember them exactly? No. I think we talked about the good ol’ days. And we talked about how hard core the Coast Guard is. And roller derby. I told J that I had actually just thought of the perfect roller derby name for myself on the drive up. And then I couldn’t remember what it was to tell her. And then Pirates II happened. I don’t know how. We probably started talking about porn, and maybe J said something about how lame porn is. I love porn. I probably said so. Then that naturally led to me telling her about the highest budget porno ever made, which I just happened to have on my laptop in the car. Then that naturally led to me getting out my laptop and starting the movie. There we were, in the middle of no where, camping at some dirt biking heaven, in the dark, just the two of us, sitting on a picnic table, camp fire nearby, watching… porn. According to wikipedia, the budget for Pirates II was 8 million dollars. So this shit has special effects, yo. As the name implies, it’s like a porno cheesy ripoff version of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. With real special effects! J said something about drinking and watching porn leading to her making out with me. Not an unsurprising comment considering she’d already licked my head. It didn’t happen though. That would have been weird… Mostly we talked about other random things and the porno was just going at it in the background.

Suddenly, J announced she wanted to go on another walk. We waited for the fire to die down and then we headed off again, a bit tipsier than before. At the fork in the road where we had previous gone right I said we should go left for a change of can’t-really-see-it-in-the-dark-anyway scenery. J was talking about something. I heard something in the bushes about 50 feet ahead of us. J didn’t hear and kept walking and talking. I told her stop and shuddup. She did. And then she heard it. It was probably the wind. Or deer. Or maaaybe a mountain lion. J shrieked and said it was a werewolf, practically jumping into my arms. I laughed, but she was pretty serious. She grabbed my hand and we ran back to camp. Once she was sure that no werewolves were in pursuit I put away the porn and we clambered into the tent. The tent with an awesome mesh roof so that we could be in the tent and still sleep under the stars.

27 June 2010
One of A’s roommates, D, had just returned from a trip to France (I think?) the day before and to celebrate her return we all went to breakfast at some little local place they all like. We being D, A, S and myself. C went back up for another day of DWELL with A2. After our delicious breakfast we walked to the nearby Starbucks for coffee. Then the three of them dropped me back off at the house so that they could do their communal grocery shopping and buy a BBQ for the upcoming 4th of July weekend. I got to blogging. When the three of them returned S and D hung out in the kitchen making naughty (aka yumtastic) homemade chocolate chip cookies and talking while A was out on the back patio putting together the BBQ. There came a point when A asked for help and the other two laughed and continued their conversation. You know, in the good-natured roommate kind of way, not in the rude jerk kind of way. They picked on her quite a bit actually, which amused me to no end. I came to A’s rescue and (after stealing a cookie on the way through the kitchen) I went outside and helped her finish the BBQ construction. C arrived just in time to miss out on the BBQ-putting-together fun. I returned to my blogging and finished my fourth post while C and A did homework stuff and D and S made turkey burgers on the new grill. When the burgers were ready we all gathered in the living room to eat dinner and watch a few episodes of Bones. Post-dinner and show watching, C and A and I repeated the events of the night before, though substituting the trampoline for a hammock.

26 June 2010
Cheerios covered with strawberries and banana slices for breakfast. Yum! C is an architecture student, so she had plans to go to the DWELL Outdoor 2010 conference up in LA. A and I agreed to go with. It sounded like fun and I like environmentally junk like that, too. We grabbed some Starbucks and headed off, A driving. The drive was nothing noteworthy until we approached downtown LA and actually had to figure out where we were going and where to park. The conference was at the Los Angeles Convention Center, which should have been easy enough what with the signs from the freeway and all but we still managed to miss the first exit and it deteriorated from there, resulting in C and I both trying to tell A where to turn until we eventually ended up on the correct road and in the parking garage near the Center. We headed inside and went to register and get passes. It was a weekend-long event, though we were just there for the day. Entrance was free with student ID, which I obviously didn’t have yet but when I went up to the counter to register the lady said, “Oh, and I see you have your student ID with you…” with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, yeah!” I said. Score. So we all got in for free. Then A and I spent a bit wandering around as C went to go sit and listen to one of the speakers. We checked out some cool displays of homes built with reclaimed stuff, a home built inside a storage container (which I would totally live in!), wall gardens and other things of that nature. Whilst roaming we happened upon a booth set up with four computers using fancy schmancy Wacom touch-screen monitors and larger TV screens overhead so that passersby could also watch what was being done on each computer. I stopped to play with one of the computers and then I overheard that they were actually doing a design contest throughout the day for prizes. I like prizes! I’ve played with Photoshop enough, so I figured what the hell, sign me up! I had no idea what it was for. I probably should have asked that first. The contest was starting in a few minutes and I’d only just found out what the theme was. The challenge was to design an iPhone case for coolcapitals.com.

We are looking for a modern, graphic design that represents and fuses the unique cultures, people, and sensibilities of the coolcapitals cities of Amsterdam, Antwerp, Valencia, Vienna and Zürich.

Uh, right… I didn’t know anything about these places. “Oh, there are files with pictures of each place for you to look at and get inspired!” Thanks. That helped. Not really. Anyway, the contest lasted 30 minutes. Yes, that is correct. 30 minutes to design an iPhone case design from scratch, a few minutes after learning the theme. I had a great idea for my design, but I was slowed down with the transition to working on the newest version of Photoshop, which didn’t have *my* shortcuts setup on it, using a Wacom pen on the actual screen (which is an awkward feeling setup) instead of on my tablet at home, and just generally not knowing shit about these 5 cities. I also HATED that people were watching my every move on the big screen above my head. Talk about pressure. I felt like a total ass who had no idea what I was doing. My roughly sketched concept lost to the guy that just spent his 30 minutes drawing different buildings from the picture help files. Meh. The winner got to come back later for the daily final and the winner of that would win a Wacom something or other, but that wasn’t me so, whatever. Still, for participating and making myself look like an ass, I got free stuff. A DWELL tshirt, a free year’s subscription to DWELL magazine, and a satchel-type bag with last year’s winning contest design. Having watched me and cheered me on, C decided she wanted to try to the contest, too. The spots for later were all full but she kept checking back in closer to the start of the next one and lucked out when one of the 4 people didn’t show up. Of the other 3 that showed up on time, at least 2 of them were there a good 20 minutes early and very much appeared to be prepping for the contest… aka cheating in our opinions. But what can you do? The people running the show either didn’t notice or care. The contest started and C seemed to be off on a great idea, only to delete it and hunt for a different picture to use. She did this a few times and I totally know how she felt. 30 minutes is so incredibly short and you sort of have to pick your first or second idea and run with it, even if you think of something potentially better 10 minutes later, otherwise you end up scrapping what you had and starting anew with only half of your time left. Which, is exactly what C ended up doing. Watching her go I felt like all of her ideas were good and going somewhere, then she’d frown and trash it and start a new one. I suppose it didn’t matter in the end, as one of the *ahem* cheaters won that round. Ah, well. Free stuff! C and I decided to be cool (or super lame?) and put on our matching free t-shirts for the rest of the day.

The blue building is the HQ, but the trees ruined my drive-by photo attempts.

After all the excitement of free stuff we browsed the booths a little longer, with one of C’s school friends A2 joining us, and then we decided to hunt down food. A2 is a vegan so we tried googling nearby vegan places. We found one and headed off in the car. We missed the parking lot entrance and found ourselves driving past the LA headquarters of the Church of Scientology, on L. Ron Hubbard Way no less! We made our way back to the parking lot only to discover the place was no longer in business. Go figure. Then C exclaimed something about an awesome year round farmer’s market that had a really great food selection, and especially a Brazilian place that she was now craving. The catch: she didn’t exactly know where the farmer’s market was. Googling ensued. Who’d a thunk that LA had so many results for farmer’s markets near downtown? We picked one that sounded right and headed off, C at the wheel this time, and me giving directions from the back seat. We did this about 2 or 3 times to different supposed farmer’s market locations, only to discover each time that it was the incorrect one. The rest of us didn’t care where we ate and A2 started naming off places as we passed but C was determined. Finally C remembered where it was, or the correct area and we were able to hone in on the correct location. It was more of an outside mall with one side that had semi-permanent food stands all at one end, not really a true farmer’s market, though it probably had been at some point. Either way, we were there and food was there and we were hungry! And C ended up not even getting the Brazilian food she initially wanted. Then, because we had two architecture students, en route to dropping A2 back off at his car we made a slight detour to hop out and explore the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the two of them snapped a bunch of pictures inside and out. Once that form of entertainment was exhausted we had more fun times driving around in the wrong direction in our attempt to take A2 to his car… because, well, he didn’t know where exactly he parked it, he just knew he walked to the DWELL conference from a few blocks away. We finally found it and dropped him off and made it back onto the freeway heading south back to Oceanside.

The Concert Hall

It’s by the same guy who designed the Experience Music Project in Seattle (which is more fun and awesome I think.)

Back at the house A and C showed me a cool game on the PC called Audiosurf. It takes any song on your computer and based on the tempo and notes etc. generates a course track that you ride on and try to collect colored blocks without hitting the gray ones. There are other game modes but that’s the one we played. They had me try it out sober… then the three of us hit the trampoline again and C and I smoked. I polished off my leftovers from the Cheesecake Factory and then we all took turns playing more Audiosurf before bed.

25 June 2010
“Wanna go to the beach?” Uh, hells yeah! That is how the morning started, before breakfast even. C had come over so the three of us grabbed beach gear and loaded up into A’s car. C asked if I wanted to go to a cool breakfast place she likes that is in a secret location or if I wanted to go for bagels and coffee at some place A likes. I love secrets! C’s breakfast place won. And being in a secret location, what other name could it have other than Hideaway Cafe? When we got there the building was half overgrown with vines, a tiny place not on the main road, but in the back of another building, facing only a parking lot. Definitely secret. And secret breakfasts always taste better I think. That and it was just really good food anyway. Spinach and feta omelet with home fries! None of us were able to finish so we grabbed to-go boxes and I heard C say something to A about reheating all of our taters later in some magically delicious way. We put the food in the car. It was still a bit chilly and not very beach-going-inspiring weather so we took the opportunity to walk around a bit and explore the different stores in the artsy little area we were in. One of the first places we explored specialized in wooden things, everything from solid slab tables and wall-sized carvings of underwater scenes to smaller imported and antique carved figurines from all over the world. Lots and lots of cool things and they had a workshop right there on the main floor where other works of wooden art were being created. We even went down to the basement to spy all of the items not put up for display yet. I don’t exactly know if we were supposed to be down there wandering around in the mess but there were no signs in the stairway saying we couldn’t, though one guy down there gave us a funny look when he saw us. We just acted like we knew what we were doing and were supposed to be there snooping.

This piece would look nice in the bathroom, looking at you, judging.

After wandering through a few more shops the weather finally warmed up. We had just parked where we were because the cafe was there but we decided to check out the nearby beach access to see if we could save ourselves from more driving. We walked down and found it acceptable. Heading back to the car to grab the towels and wake boards we noticed A’s car was looking less black… and more bird-shit white. And not a few spots here and there, oh no. Completely covered. In shit. I glanced up. “Oh, hello there tree-full of nesting egrets.” Egrets being bigger than your everyday city bird, the logical conclusion is that their shit is also bigger. I can confirm this to be true. C and I laughed and A took it in stride. Looked like we would be hitting a car wash on the way home. No point in worrying about it until then though, and more bird shit than was already there wouldn’t make a difference so we left the car where it was and headed back to the beach with our stuff. We walked a ways away from the main beach entrance to get away from the crowd of families with lil brats running around. A nice quiet spot, far enough from other people and far enough from the cliff behind us along which were the overly frequent signs warning of “slippage”. AKA the cliff will collapse and kill you if you sit below it or look at it funny, so please stay a few feet away so that it can only seriously injure you instead. Noted. We grabbed the two wake boards and took turns surfing. Weeeee! So fun. Aside from the time or two I totally got owned by a wave and tossed around of course. Once I took a fist to the face (yeah, my own fist, courtesy of aforementioned owning by wave) I decided to take a lil break. The others soon followed. They suntanned. What did I do? Well, let me tell you. I was playing with the sand, just digging my feet in as I sat there, and before I knew it I was, um, rubbing it all over myself. It made more sense at the time, though now it sounds odd and weird. I was exfoliating! End result: an Xtina covered in sand, looking like a low-tech low-budget alien on the original Star Trek. Awesome right?

Alien!!!

After a dive back into the ocean to rinse off I strolled down the beach to dry off and pick up interesting pieces of seaweed. When I returned and was thinking of hitting the waves again C and A started grabbing their stuff. Aww. Time to go. Back at the car we laughed some more and I photo-documented the hilariousness. As we were standing there putting the stuff away a woman walked up from out of nowhere and told us, “Oh, hey! You shouldn’t park there, there are lots of birds in the tree there…” Did she really not see that we were leaving and oh, hey, the car is already covered in an inch of bird poo poo? I mean, it was nice of her, but her timing was just a wee bit off, eh? We thanked her and headed off in search of a car wash to save A’s paint job from the corrosive powers of avian scat. There was a car wash not too far away. I bet you $1000 dollars you will never guess what it was called. Mohawk Car Wash. The kind of name that causes me to instantly love… a car wash. Whatever, I felt a connection.

The white spots on the ground should have been a warning…

Ohhh, how we giggled!

If only my mohawk were up!

On the way back, but not too far from the beach and cafe we made another stop to visit a Buddhist garden thinger at the Self-Realization Fellowship. Walking through it we enjoyed the vista of the beach, the nice landscaping, and some of the hugest koi-pond fish I’ve ever seen. Ugly bastards. Pretty too in their ugly fishy way though. And because we were already there we traipsed through their gift shop store thing as well. They had a room full of cool drums and bowl-bell things that a guy in dreads was staring intently at as he played them. So high. We peaced out of there and headed back for real. With one more pit stop. Jamba Juice.

View from a lookout in the garden

They were all eyeing me…

Back at the house I showered the beach off of my body. And I really mean the beach. I always find sand in the most inappropriate locations when taking off my bathing suit after a trip to the beach… And that’s all I’ll say. Then C reheated our breakfast leftovers for all of us. Over our breakfast-for-dinner conversation I discovered that C smokes. And A didn’t tell me earlier, even though I had just asked her the night before if she or her roommates did cus I didn’t want to smoke alone. Tsk tsk! Remember that joint I rolled?! We headed outside and the three of us sat on the trampoline while C and I smoked. Great success! Then we headed into the living room to play Flower on the PS3. (Note the video comments from people guessing this makes a great stoner game…) Or more accurately, for the two of them to watch me play it high. I had seen A’s roommate S play it for a bit the first night I had got there. It’s a neat game, a simple to play, make you feel good kind of game. You are a wisp of wind and you fly around picking up petals from all the other flowers you fly over and they bloom and turn the meadow all green. And the play is motion controlled, you tell it where to go by tilting the PS3 controller, like with a Wii remote. My motor control was less than at it’s peak in my condition and I flew in lots of circles trying to get flowers I missed. I played one level and couldn’t handle any more. So then we watched two episodes of Chuck, which has a really weird plot, to cap off the night.

24 June 2010
I stole a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. My friend from DLI, A, had already headed off to her class for the day. I chilled out at her place, getting a few blogs done. When she got back home I showered and changed. One of her roommates, S, is in the market for a new computer, but he doesn’t want to buy one without going to the store and making sure he likes it, like the keyboard layout and such. So, the three of us were going to make a trip to one of the malls downtown in San Diego where they have a Sony store so that S could check out their laptops. On the way there we stopped and picked up A’s girlfriend, C, and her little dog. I was told the dog’s name was Mustafa, but have since learned that he is usually called Moo, or nothing, and that most people aren’t even sure what the dog’s real name is. Interesting. I immediately greeted the little golden long-haired Chihuahua as “Rat Face” and “Giant Gerbil”. Both fitting. C plopped Moo into her purse-bag-dog-carrying-device and we continued on our way. At the mall we headed for the Sony store. S checked out the lappys and the rest of us wandered around. We found our way to the 3D TV demo room. Huzzah? After messing with the goggle glasses contraptions and figuring out how to turn them on we marveled at the super technology of 3D as I raced haphazardly around the track on the demo 3D PS3 racing game. I wish they’d been playing the 3D Avatar or something instead. The 3D was neat enough, but underwhelming as part of what appeared to be a sloppy thrown together 3D racing game. Yes, it’s in 3D, but the quality of those 3D graphics was pretty horrid. I’ll stick to my regular overpriced technology for now, thanks.

When S was done doing his thing we all decided that we were hungry. I’d had nothing since my bowl of stolen Cheerios, mind you. We headed towards the Cheesecake Factory. This required us to cover the full length of the outdoor mall, and in walking along the upper stores, a long long line outside one of the stores below piqued our interest. We couldn’t tell what it was from up above so we went down and did a walk by. There were two lines it turned out. The line at the Apple store was obvious: people waiting for their iPhone 4. The other line was at the Windows store where people were in line for freebees. We saw a lot of people walking out with free skateboards. I found this article about it. Apparently it was the opening day of the 4th ever Windows store. We didn’t have to wait in the line to get into the store though, so we went in to check it out. Or rather, C went in to check it out then came back out to tell us to come in and see something awesome: Surface. C is a mac user like me, and still we both agreed this giant tabletop iPhone-esque PC was pretty sweet. To play with at least. I’m not too sure how practical it is, but hey whatever.

With all of our tummies a rumblin’ we finally bee-lined it to the Cheesecake Factory. Eating ensued. And Moo started squirming in his carry bag satchel purse cage thingy, which was hilarious to all of us but C. If she got caught with her dog in the restaurant we all said we’d stay and finish eating. No show of solidarity there, haha. Post dinner we dropped C and Moo back off and A, S, and I headed back to their place. Once there A asked if I’d tried out the trampoline yet. Nooooo… but I had definitely eyed it earlier. Clearly we had to remedy this failure of mine so we spent an hour or so jumping on their ginormous trampoline in the dark and complaining about how old we are now and too chickenshit to try any crazy flips and tricks. Even so we managed to collide mid-air during a jumping frenzy. The velcro on a pocket of A’s shorts attacked me, leaving a weird 2 inch wide streak of rug… er, velcro burn I guess, across my forearm. Battered and bruised (not really though) us two old people called it quits and left the trampoline for the kinder gentler old-people sport of sleeping.

23 June 2010
Do you ever wonder how I keep track of all of the hilarious and noteworthy things that happen to me throughout the day? What magical form or method do I use to create the awesomeness that is every single XTINAFTW blog? Well, folks, wonder no more! This is what my embryonic blogs look like before I settle down and start writing in prose:

woke up coffee cereal bank walmart packers at J’s internet survey about oral sex minimalism repack car head to oceanside mexican dinner L word bed

Yup, that’s all you get. Everything from the day is there, whether it makes sense to you or not.