If You Can't Stand the Heat....

...Go to the kitchen ....
  1--Soak bath towels in cold water, wring until not completely drenched.
  2-- Fill 2-3 plastic zip lock bags with ice cubes.
  3--Go back to bed and drape yourself in wet towels.
  4--Place bags of ice on top of towels.
  5--Position fan so that it is blowing directly at you.
  5-- Rotate one ice bag from behind your neck to on top of your head every 5 minutes or so.


And that's how my Monday night went...  The thermometer in Los Angeles measured 113 degrees....before it broke.  Who knows how hot it really got down there.   All I know is that on my way home from work at 6:00pm the car thermometer measured 104.  We decided to take advantage of the unusually warm weather and so we went to a friend's house to have some beers outside in shorts and tank tops.  I think that was the only time I have ever been hot at night in Santa Barbara.  At midnight it was still 98 degrees.  It was windy, which you would think would be a relief, but this oven wind felt more like a fire breathing dragon. And so we had our 2 days of summer.  The rest of the summer has been mildly cool and usually cloudy. Today was back in the 70s.

And that's all for the weather folks.  No other news to report here.

Lady Madonna, Your Rooms are Oh So Neat!

For 4 years I've been saying I wanted to go to the Madonna Inn.  We drive past it on the 101 every time we drive up to the snail house or to San Francisco.  It's a couple hours north of Santa Barbara and something about it always caught my eye. .. maybe because it is decorated white and pink, located in the middle of no where,  and called the "Madonna" Inn.  It has to be cool!  I mentioned my desire to go there to a friend and found out it was way more awesome than I could have expected.  Everything is decorated pink or very colorful.  Huge boulders were used from the local landscape to build  rock walls, fireplaces, showers, even waterfall urinals out of stone.  The most exciting part is that all 110 of the hotel rooms are decorated with a different theme...  I mentioned the Madonna Inn to my snail house friend, Sally, and we booked our reservations.

Here are a select viewing of my favorites but to see more check out the Madonna Inn website.  Pick out your favorite room and make your reservations to come visit!  WARNING: you can view a picture of almost every single room.  This is super-addicting so make sure you allocate enough time to view them all!

The KrazyDaisy was the room my friend had stayed in and was my first glimpse of how awesome this places is:

The Krazy Daisy

The Romance Room

The Madonna Suite

Vous- part of the Ren-De-Vous room series

The Caveman Room

 And the room we ended up staying in.... THE OLD MILL...

The Old Mill

 ...complete with functioning waterfall powered mill wheel and cuckoo clock type statues that moved around in circles through the structures above the bed.  The green wall paper was super-sparkly and the toilet seat was warm (it was strange).


Here's what the steakhouse looks like where we had dinner Saturday night:  All the booths, chairs, table clothes etc. were bright pink.  I was in heaven...

Stay tuned... more photos to come!

If Facebook Existed Years Ago...

Disclaimer: Pardon the fowl language and any religious offenses...

Multi-Purpose Advice

Trevor: I'm having a hard time getting any work done today.

Me: Maybe walk around the block then go sit at the computer with a glass of juice and ice cubes for a couple hours and see if anything comes out.

Trevor: That sounds like a remedy for constipation.

A Month in a Nutshell

Well it's been a little too long since the last time I've written.  I blame sheer laziness.   Luckily, I think I got it out of my system.  Apologies all around.  Now to re-cap the end of summer..... Brace yourself, this is a long one...

Like I mentioned in the last post, our weekend at the Snail House in Santa Cruz was a memorable fun-filled friend reunion.  Here are the long-awaited pictures:

Trevor and friend Jed on the drive up to Santa Cruz:

THE SNAIL HOUSE:

Joe Joe playing piano, Trevor singing inside the Snail House:

Sally and Jason

Alice and Trevor

Wha happened?

hmmm

Joe Joe and Jimmy ...brothers from different mothers..

Beard shaving time...

 Trev's got the best seat in the house:

 Smudge and JOe JOe

Pics compliments of facebook:

Not sure what happened the next couple weeks, but the week before August 20th was spent prepping for Trevor's 27th birthday....

Party at the Creekside:

Presents inscluded:
spider traps
upside down strawberry grower
cucumber seeds
a fitness ball
a swiffer
tickets to weird al yankovich live in concert

weird al was pretty weird to say the least, but all in all a very entertaining show...highly recommended:

The following Tuesday after Trevor's birthday weekend I received an e-mail from a distant Irish cousin of mine saying he is in Santa Barbara with 6 of his buddies who are in the middle of a road trip from San Francisco to San Diego.  They want to meet up.  Fantabulous!  I send Trevor a text that we're going to meet these guys at In-N-Out Burger for take-out then head up the mountian with our burgers to a picturesque look-out point to watch the sunset.   I give Trevor a call at school while I'm on my way home and let him know I will give him a call before I get off his exit to let him know when to meet me downstairs, per protocol.  Trevor just got his new fnacy iphone4.  I call him a couple exits early to give him extra time.  No pick up.  call him again. straight to voicemail.  Call again...and again and again... Then I realize he's probably on the phone and wait till i get there.  He's not downstairs.  Call again. No pick up.  Park the car, run up to the 4th floor of his building, open his office door.  He's sitting there bouncing on his fitness ball drinking a beer.  His first words... "Why didn't you call?"  Damn AT&T and their dodgey service.  Coincidentally, the next day Google comes out with a gmail phone service.  So if his phone is in a no service area I can get in touch with him through the computer, which he is more than likely staring right at. Perfect.

Hanging out with Irish cousin, Darren, & friends was such a nice treat...I  wish they could have stayed longer...  come back!!  Can you pick out which one I'm related to?

The following weekend was my good friend Annika's birthday.  She turned 29 and had a "Dirty Not Thirty" moustache party.....

Also at the party was the iphone "Fatbooth" app...

Here's what I look like with a few extra 100lbs...

Here's fat Reni:

Here's what I'd look like if I were a hillbiilly boy with a few extra 100lbs...

yikes...


The following weekend was the 27th birthday of Your's Truely (me... Julie).   A couple weeks prior to my birthday was a huge festival in Santa Barbara called "Fiestas" celebrating Old Spanish Days.  The bars are packed, the mariachi bands are all over the place, lots of Spanish dancing, confetti, carnival rides, shows, rodeos, vendors..etc.  We came across this one vendor who was selling lots of dio de los muertos stuff (i.e. lots of colorful skeletons stuff).  I really really liked this one apron they had with leopard print material on one side and the virgin of guadalupe (?) on the other (it matches my "mary mother of blankets" blanket).  Unfortunately I only had 10 bucks and the apron was $18.  So I bought a headband instead.  A couple days later was the last day of fiesatas and Trevor asked me in the morning what I wanted to do that day.  I said I dunno, I don't care.  Then I remembered the apron and declared I don't care what we do we just have to go back to the fair and get that apron before the vendors leave town.  Trevor tried his hardest to come up with any reason not to go downtown and get the apron but none made sense and his un-supportive-ness only angered me more.  Fine I will just go by myself, he didn't have to come.  He goes into the closet, comes back into the living room and throws a head of towel at me.  I open it up and bundled up inside is my favorite apron ever!  He had wanted to surprise me with it for my birthday.  Oops, sorry Trev, but I really like it.  That was my first birthday present.  The ones I actually go on my birthday included:

my favorite Mrs. Meyers Soap
cutting boards
deodarant
pens
a pink skull (from the same vendor as the apron)
cool socks
tickets to see Steve Martin play in a blue grass band

The weekend before my birthday, our friend Reni (who doesn't actually weigh 300lbs) came up to celebrate and we went to the local dog show which I also recommend if you ever get the chance.  I don't know what's more entertaining, the dogs or the people.  It really feels like you are on another planet.  The movie "Best in Show" portrays it pretty accurately... lots of uptight crazy people in blazer suites tickling their dog's tail..

Angie!

Exactly what I wanted for my birthday...a cage full of small dogs!

Later that weekend we visited my friend Stephen's new place:

Labor Day weekend was spent in the Outer Banks, NC.  The week leading up to it we were pretty worried that Hurricane Earl would destroy all our plans.  It didn't.  We rented a tiny little cabin at a campsite right on the ocean and within walking distance to the reception.  We shared it with some old college friends and watched another ol' college friend get married:

Buddies