Drivin' down the 101

The circular red itinerary is what I'll be doing in just a few minutes!

ROAD TRIP from:

Alamo

to San Luis Obispo

to Goleta/Isla Vista and Santa Barbara

to Los Angeles/Newport Beach

to Bakersfield
(Sorry, I couldn't find any good pictures. This is the best I got.... pretty accurate, actually.)

and then back to Alamo!

Though, as excited as I am, I'm realllly not looking forward to driving through the (multiple) armpits of California. Beginning tomorrow with Greenfield, King City, and pretty much anything between San Jose and SLO. Then again, Wednesday's going to suck going through and beyond Bakersfield, then near Kettleman City where they probably raise 85% of all McDonald's beef on about less than a square mile of property. Don't you envy me right now?

Biggest joke of our drives down 101, "What exactly is happening?" Welcome to Steinbeck land, my friends.

I'm so excited to see all my friends from college, most of whom I haven't seen in about a year now. See the rest of you next Wednesday, when I'll be back to scrapbooking, reading, and overall avoiding any possible GRE studying.

Topsy-turvy

It seems everything has changed since I once began making initial life plans for myself!

And it all started with college [insert flashback noise and images here]...

Since visiting the campus my junior year of high school so many years ago, I've always known that I wanted to someday live in Los Angeles. Despite my extensive activities, honors, high gpa and test scores -- I was denied entry into that school.

At the time, I thought Santa Barbara was the shorter end of the deal and I was settling. Oh how wrong I was! The past four years have been incredible and I'm really glad I got to experience them. (Keep this theme in mind for the rest of this post).

Even though I have encountered some setbacks to my original life plan, I'm still moving along rather smoothly. While I again was denied my heart's desire for a job in major league baseball, I still was able to land a job in professional beach volleyball that I've grown to love as the months go on.

Even though I most likely will not be going on to France -- something was initially mixed up and confused about, but later grew to want that and only that -- I've been tentatively offered a chance to stay with my current company and perhaps land a full-time, salaried position!

Which means, I finally get to circle back to where I originally wanted to be, by moving to Los Angeles in the next month and a half (or so).

Life has a funny way of dropping you in places you want to be and it seems like it has a different agenda and schedule planned out for me than I had for myself. Oh yeah, and, Manhattan Beach, here I come for the final Southern California AVP Tour stop in 2007.