Hodgepodge of photos

Since I've been talking a lot about my adventures, I figure I'd post some photos for you all to see. These aren't really turning out full size... I'll see if I can figure out how to make them smaller. In the meantime, here is the link of all my recent photos on facebook. You can get the actual size there!

Enjoy! Hope the holiday weekend treated you all well :)

Moules frites and my new kitchen/dining room!

J.D. and me at my alma mater: UC Santa Barbara!

Wine and cheese tasting in Santa Barbara. That was soooo delicious!

Santa Barbara crew at another wine-tasting room and jazz house! I had such a blast :)

Oops

Still haven't taken/loaded photos of the new place. Or photos from the county fair this past weekend.

Oh well.

This morning I just ate my very own home-made fruit, yogurt and granola parfait which is actually the salvaged remains from last night's dessert. With a few very ripe plums from last week's farmers' market, I decided to cook with them. So I tossed plums, strawberries and raspberries into a ramekin and mixed up a crumbly and crunchy topping to cover the fruits while baking. So I took a couple of cups of instant oats, flax seed, water, butter, brown sugar and cinnamon/nutmeg and folded it all together for the crisp upper layer.

Well, with an impending road trip tomorrow, I made the decision that all leftovers must be quickly consumed. So breakfast today with a bit of yogurt and banana slices, and then I'll have it as dessert again tonight. Possibly with ice cream this time?

But about that road trip.

J.D. and I are headed off to SANTA BARBARA for a long, holiday weekend! On Saturday the baseball team I worked for in college will be having a 4th of July free game at the harbor, while the municipal Independence Day Parade will take place around lunchtime through the beachy city streets of Santa Barbara. Then street festivals and.... fireworks!


All very exciting things to look forward to. Especially since I haven't set foot in Santa Barbara in exactly one year. But it's still crazy to me that where I spent four magical years of my life is someplace different, strange and new to me. Crazy.

"What is UC Santa Barbara?"

Ummmm did anyone see Jeopardy! tonight?!

More specifically the Christmas-themed category, "Let's Go To Santa"? The $800 question, I believe was, "It is one of two University of California campuses that begins with the word Santa."

I would have owned that question and the Final Jeopardy question; I keep getting those bad boys right. I might consider trying out someday in my life I think.

Oh how I loved my undergrad.

It's not a rivalry unless.... wait, it's not at all.

Obviously since I've graduated from and spent many years at UC Santa Barbara, my athletic loyalties lie with the GAUCHOS. However, this is somewhat difficult to manage working for another Big West Conference team in the University of the Pacific.

When I was first hired on board here in the athletics department, nearly everyone inquired as to where I spent my undergrad years because I am one of the few non-Pacific alumni to secure a job here. Apparently they like to keep it all in the family, especially with the grad assistants.

Anyways, most of the coaches shunned me, my boss almost didn't hire me and many other employees downright told me they were upset with me, solely because I used to be a Gaucho. (Once a Gaucho, always a Gaucho, right?)

After his resignation, the men's tennis coach even told me, "If that's your car with the UCSB sticker, I wouldn't be surprised to one day find a brick in the windshield. And you can't do anything about it because I'm moving back to Europe next week."

For a little bit of background, UCSB has won the Big West Conference championships for many sports over the years. Pacific, who historically has had a really good men's basketball program, only had a handful of teams finish above .500 last year. Not looking very good when measured against Santa Barbara's success last year.

So long story short, a bunch of coworkers have told me they don't like Santa Barbara because we're simply rivals.

However, as a fervent Gaucho supporter who attended/worked at many athletic events in my four years at UCSB, I never noticed such a rivalry. In fact, the only team we vehemently hated was Cal Poly because of the geographical location of the two schools. Last I checked, Stockton is five and a half hours north of Santa Barbara and less than an hour from UC Davis, another Big West team.

Did I miss something here?!

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.

Where has the time gone?

Being back in Santa Barbara for a week of non-commitment is extremely bizarre, like I've been constantly reiterating.

But more so now, because I see all the incoming freshman excitedly getting lost around campus during their summer orientation sessions.

What I would give to be back in their shoes. Lisa asked me if I would do anything differently, going back to relive freshman year in the dorms, knowing all that I know now.

My answer then, and now, was no. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to go back and do it all over again. Every single moment over the past four years, the good, boring and the disastrous, has made me exactly who I am today. I regret none of it.

But I do have this wistful feeling of days past. Knowing where everyone is at right now and how in the very near future, everything is going to become so intricately different from anything I've ever known. Are the best years of my life behind me? I sure hope not! But it did fly before my eyes and I would give anything just to hold on to some of those moments and live them over in slow motion.

These freshmen have no idea what they're in for. It's going to be a life-changing ride for all of them. And I'm pretty sure I still have a few more of those up my sleeve in the next upcoming days, weeks, years...

Can you tell the difference?

Is this the American Riviera, or the French Riviera?

Santa Barbara or Nice?

The Santa Barbara Harbor or Le Côte d'Azur?

California or France?

...All I know is that these images are imprinted in my mind. It's all I can think of and I cannot wait to go back after a two-year hiatus!