that rosebud girl

i’m surrounded!

it’s a small world after all….

(and no, please don’t get that annoying little ditty in your head …… aaaaaaaaaaaaah ……… noooooooo …….. too late ………. )

okay, i digress.

so anyway, i’m sitting at my desk at work and i happen to have my USC backpack hung over the side of my cubicle because there’s nothing in it at the moment. i usually keep it on my desk but because it was so limp and empty, i hung it up.

well, this girl comes up to my desk because she sees the backpack and she’s like, “did you go to USC?” and i said i did. she introduced herself as doan. she’s thuy-doan le….business reporter…i’d seen her name in the paper before. and i’d always thought, i swear i know this chick and went to school with her. and now she’s standing next to my desk. and sure enough, she worked at the DT too, the same time i did. and we knew some of the same folks. crazy.

she also proceeds to tell me that judy lin (another DT chick….good friends with elisa…..and someone i know too) interviewed for a job here at the bee in metro. holy crap.

you really can never get away from trojans. especially now that i’m back in cal.

melting in murrieta.

chillin’ in murrieta with my cousins and my bro….i flew down to san diego this morning.

all the adults are out at some casino. i decided to hang out with the kids. ’cause they’re cool, you know.

went to the mall, did a little shopping. went and raced some go-karts too. that was a blast. the first race, i caught up to my front-running cousin steven but i couldn’t pass him. i got close, we ran neck and neck, but he smashed me into the rails twice and i couldn’t get past him. he kept cutting me off at the turns. damn. that bastard. the second time, my brother caught up to me and passed me. we ran for a while, but he eventually outdistanced me. man. i was pissed. but it was cool. it was like mini nascar. freakin’ sweet. and at least i didn’t spin out or get stuck or get in any accidents like my cousin jay-jay did. ha.

we also sweated up a storm at the arcade playing dance dance revolution. man, i suck at that game. so sad.

tomorrow, i’m not sure what’s up but we may go to auntie vicky’s in san diego. and probably eat somewhere. woohoo.

my only gripe is that it is hella hot here. stupid semi-desert. and i was hoping to escape sacto heat.

it’s a frying pan!

i always said i was wary of ever returning to arizona (to live there, of course) because of the heat.

well, no one told me it got so friggin’ hot in sacramento.

we are in the middle of a heat wave. now, heat waves are nothing new to me. i went through my fair share of oh-my-god-it’s-a-hundred-degrees-and-the-humidity-is-friggin’-killing-me heat waves while living in delaware. now those sucked. humidity is the bane of my existence. but still….

it has been over 100 degrees for like, the last week here in sacramento. it may have been somewhere above 105 today. all i know is that i rode my bike to the farmer’s market this morning (a hefty 16 blocks or so) and that by the time i got back with all my veggies and fruit, i was totally soaked. and that was at 11 a.m. then i rode my bike to work a few hours later and felt like i was on fire. ouch.

i want the heat to end. some rain might be nice. all this heat is keeping me from going outside. it’s like being in a frying pan, for crying out loud.

coming together …

everything is falling into place here…..

i have tv. woohoo!

i have internet (as of yesterday). woohoo! my new computer is up and running and super sweet, and my wireless network works like a charm.

now, all i need is cash….i am so broke that it isn’t even funny. stupid money. making the world go ’round and all. but i am supposed to get my first (half) paycheck today.

remind me to never go an entire month without pulling in a paycheck again. ugh.

stupid bills….what really killed me was that i had to fork over almost 2,500 bucks to my landlord for moving in, rent, etc. holy crapola.

i have a new employee lunch to go to in about an hour and a half and i have to sort out all my moving expenses. blah. at least i get free food for lunch, which is always a redeeming factor. but doing expenses are a pain. huge pain. at least i may get the influx of cash i desperately need….

otherwise, things are okay. my cats are fine. ed was in town for a couple of days, which was awesome. but now he’s gone.

ahnold …

seen today outside a store in old sacramento….

that is freakin’ awesome. and hilarious.

there was this great shop that sold a lot of movie memorabilia in old sac, but they also had some really random things. like a bunch of presidential action figures (george washington, bill clinton, jimmy carter, a few others i can’t remember). and they had a bunch of govenator mugs and even an arnold bobblehead where he’s wearing a shirt that says “the govenator.” i loved it.

i want to get dawn a mug. i think she would be amused. i want the bobblehead. just ’cause. and i have to go back to that store sometime to pick up some great movie stuff (like scripts…and maybe a poster or two).

but that was my morning adventure. i had gotten my bike fixed (woohoo! new tubes! my bike is no longer perpetually flat!) and started tooling around midtown, then decided, why not go all the way to old sac? so i did. hung out at the triple-a all-star fan fest a while, watched people take cracks at the wiffle ball home run derby. tons o’ fun.

well, now i have to get back to actually reading stories. d’oh!

a hard lesson.

the sacramento adventure continues….

if you are a cat owner, here is one hard lesson i learned: never, ever, ever, ever put clumping litter down a toilet. EVER. i made that unfortunate mistake yesterday and wound up clogging the toilet at barbara’s house. how was i supposed to know this? i don’t use clumping litter for my cats. but as i was fiddling with the plunger and panicking, a thought struck me: here i am, barely a week into my new job, and i go and clog the deputy sports editor’s toilet at her house. and force her to call her plumber. i felt like a total idiot.

that aside, i did manage to get my cat and the borrowed litter box to my new apartment. and i am now officially settled. movers came (albeit three hours later than expected), moved crap and now it’s sitting all over my house. i have no internet and no television, but well, i do have my own space. woo.

today, i broke out my bicycle and rode to the post office. man, i am out of shape. i only had to go about four or five blocks and was wiped out. plus, my tires suck. i sit on my bike and they go flat. but i get off and they are pretty stiff. maybe that is a sign that i am fat. but yeah, i need to get into bike riding shape again.

also, on my way to work, i must have changed gears too quickly and the chain slipped out on my bike. that sucked. here i am, stopped on a sidewalk, trying to fix the darn thing. i had grease all over my hands but managed to make it into work on time still. sheesh.

we are in between editions and i’m just chilling. i only have one late thing to read. it’s amazing how less crazy things are here. although i made one slight oversight in a story: it turns out there are not 193 countries in the world (the state department says there are 192 or something like that).

you learn something new every day!

what to do?

so i am thinking to myself, i finally get to stay in my own place.

then i realized: holy crap, i won’t have any phone service, no internet (comcast isn’t coming until next week, and well, no phone means not even crappy dial-up) and no cable. yikes! not that any of that stuff is essential, but well, i’d probably go pretty crazy. so, it appears i will be at barbara’s at least one more night. i may have to book it to my new place pretty early in the morning to make sure i beat the mover there, but if all my stuff is there, at least i’ll feel a little more comfortable, even without the amenities. sheesh.

i’m thinking i’ll move the last of my stuff there and run some errands. and look for a futon store.

i also went and ordered a new computer from dell today. yikes! i couldn’t resist. it was such a good deal. i guess ed will inherit a better computer in august, after all. i am stoked about the computer. i finally get built-in wireless. and it means i may be selling tons of crap on ebay later this month….

i found out yesterday that my first paycheck will not arrive until july 15. july 15! that’s an eternity. i need money NOW. grrrr…..

okay, back to figuring what i’m going to do on this day off….

my first day …

life in sacramento is coming together…..

i had my first day of work today….it was mostly filling out a ton of paperwork, being given a ton of paperwork to look at (which i will do later, over dinner)…..being trained on our system, which actually isn’t hard to figure out at all. pretty laid back day. i met a bunch of new co-workers, mostly reporters i hadn’t seen on previous trips but whose bylines i’d been reading. everyone seems really nice. it’s kind of laid back there. i didn’t have much to do so i went home early.

i was also given the keys to my new apartment. woohoo. i moved some of the stuff in my car there….didn’t take everything because it was so damn hot and i didn’t feel like walking up and down those stairs a billion times. i have a day off tomorrow so i’ll probably get the majority of moving done then. i also got a call from my mover saying my stuff should be in on thursday. sweet. i get to have a bicycle. i may have to wander around downtown in the morning hours and stuff.

right now, i am trying to get my utilities set up. man, i forgot how much of a pain in the ass that is. ugh. i have decided not to get regular phone service because i figure i can survive on cellular exclusively, at least for half a year or so. that, and sbc was being a bunch of retards….not letting me order service online. so bleh to them.

my 4th was pretty laid back and cool. i went to scott’s because he was having a little neighborly gathering. i didn’t see fireworks (i’d done that the two previous nights anyway) but i got to spend plenty of time in scott’s pool. woohoo. i am jealous though — i want a pool.

i did have my retarded moment of the year here in sacramento already, though. when i got home from scott’s, i parked on the street at barbara’s. i had moved some stuff around in the back seat and opened one of the rear car doors….and something promptly fell out, bounced on the storm grate i was parked on top of….AND FELL IN THE GRATE! i was like, crap. i had to take a flashlight to see what fell down there because it was so dark and it turned out to be one of my case logic cd cases with like, 20 cds in it.

so here i am, freaking out over losing something in the grate….and bemoaning my terrible luck. i mean, of all the things that could fall out…and the fact it bounced just the right way to fall into the friggin’ storm drain. i called the sewer people but they said that no one could help me at the moment since it was nighttime and it was a holiday. so i had to call again this morning. and to their credit, someone came out in about half an hour. guy just lifted the grate, hopped in the drain and got my cd case out. it was kind of wet and dirty and nasty, but it looked okay. i left it on the doorstep to dry out and came back home to see it was indeed dry, but it was still pretty dirty, so i didn’t bring it in. but that is my adventure for the day.

end of the road!

it’s finally over!

friday’s log:
the stretch: salt lake city to sacramento (with a two-hour detour around one side of lake tahoe in between)
miles traveled: 724 miles
random observations: there is a town named battle mountain along the 80 in the middle of nowhere in nevada that proclaims itself to be “the armpit of america.” i really wanted to take a picture of the billboard but well, i was driving. didn’t stop there, either.

i am so relieved to finally be in sacramento, and a day early at that. i was going to stop in reno, but was making such good time on the road i decided to go all the way. that was, of course, before my gigantic detour around lake tahoe. well, the lake was there! i wanted to see it. so i did. luckily, it was still daylight because some of those drops and turns and crazy roads scared the living hell out of me. at one point, you drive on a tiny two-lane road that has no guardrails, and all you see on either side of you is a sheer drop and water and boulders below. yikes!

the views, though, are spectacular. i really want to go to the lake sometime. i did, however, discover that i am kind of a gutless driver on mountain terrain. *sigh*

right now, my apartment isn’t ready, so i am staying with one of my co-workers who has one of my cats anyway. i’ll probably be here about a week. but everything is okay so far, though i can’t really unload the car. i think i’m going to just chill this weekend. maybe do some shopping. maybe go to a river cats game (or two…there are fireworks all weekend). maybe go to goldilocks and get some mamon or some other filipino goodies. maybe go to the asian grocery next to goldilocks and buy a real wok. maybe stop by the office and drop off some stuff that will wind up on my desk anyway (so i can get some crap out of my car). whatever. the joy of not having to really do anything.

i’m excited to be here and can’t wait to start working. being a bum is nice, but well, i really need a paycheck. such a technicality.

hopefully i will get the picture backlog out of the way in the next couple of days. but i’m finally here!