Tag: driving

A Weekend Away

I spent my weekend up in LA with my family and had some time with my BFF Amber, her boyfriend & her sister. It was her sister’s 30th birthday so that was celebrated on Friday night. Saturday night was a going away dinner for my brother who’s going back to Texas to be retrained in a different job for the Air Force. He leaves the Sunday after Thanksgiving and will be gone for 2 months or so.

Unfortunately I learned on Saturday that a friend from Sardo’s passed away earlier this week from a massive heart attack. He was a very jovial man who was passionate about performing and was always so nice and snazzily dressed in a handsome vest and slacks. He was 49 years old. The last time I saw him was a few weeks ago when I’d gone up with Devin for his dad’s birthday. I’m glad I got to see him then. He’s already very missed. I just couldn’t believe it when I saw an update from another Sardo’s friend. I was definitely shocked. :(

I’m now back in San Diego and relaxing after driving home in rain and poor visibility. Thankfully there wasn’t too much traffic; I made it back in less than 3 hours. I did think I had a flat tire at one point, but everything was fine. It was apparently the freeway surface making that kind of sound/feeling. I’ve only had a flat tire occur once while driving, thankfully, so I’m not too attuned to what it sounds/feels like to have one. Thank God I have AAA now! Just in case, you know!

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On Sleepless Roads

It’s been quite a while since I’ve driven a decent distance late at night. I used to do it ALL the time when I was younger. Primarily, being young with a driver’s license and a car just pushes you towards going out and doing anything and everything with friends. I can’t count the times I drove so much and would be out so late, I’d be so damned tired driving. Not OF driving, just… tired. Falling asleep, almost. It sounds bad and dangerous, and there may have been a few times where it really was.

The husband and I drove up to my parent’s house for our weekend (which consists of Monday & Tuesday right now) so we could attend the anniversary of a special weekly theme night at our bar here in LA. I didn’t get off work until 10:30pm, so we didn’t actually start heading up until 11pm or so. I took to driving since the husband was up early this morning for work and I slept in way too much.

It was pretty amazing driving so late up the 5/405 freeways and going through the various scales of cities along the way. The way the city lights are still bright as hell, but not as bright as they are earlier in the night. There’s something about the hours between midnight and dawn that puts a significant quiet on everything. You can still sense the bustling life of the cities after dark, but there’s a subtle change that I can feel even when driving around LA late at night where things go just a bit more silent.

There were certain emotions/memories I felt driving through the hills between San Diego and Laguna Hills. Then, reaching Irvine was a different set, next was the Port of Los Angeles/Long Beach. And of course, up over the hills that separate the San Fernando Valley (home) from the major Los Angeles area and driving down, seeing the signs for the 101 interchange.

None of this was without music, of course. A decent mix of songs that just fit for night driving – though, not all on playlist or CD. Putting together a deliberate mix of night driving music has alluded me for quite a while. Those perfect mixes are pretty accidental – considering some may come off of a movie soundtrack, a mixed CD from a friend, or the radio. If you change over from one source to another, looking for an appropriate song or sound to fit how you’re feeling or your surroundings, you risk ruining the flow of how it all comes together in the first place.

Tonight, though I had some angry & melancholy emotions floating through me from time to time, was just right.

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Mechanics & Technology – How Conveniently Inconvenient

I’m back home in SD. The husband was out all day before our drive home with friends at a pub watching the damn World Cup. That’s cool, whatever floats his boat, but I thought we’d be headed back down earlier than 2pm! I mean, having to be at work by 4:30pm is kind of crunch and the later it got, the more likely it was we’d hit some sort of traffic. We hit patches of it and there were idiots in the fast & carpool lanes going slower than 60MPH which was ridiculous. Slow traffic stay RIGHT, assholes! Luckily I got home with enough time to hit the toilet, change quickly and head the 5 minutes down the freeway to work with a few minutes to spare.

We’ll be needing some maintenance to the car SOON. The brakes sound AWFUL and while we haven’t hit the average mileage for the first brake job, we’ve driven this car through a lot of LA traffic, cross-country and through all sorts of up & down terrain coming up & down between LA & SD. Not to mention some of the belts need to be replaced since they’re looking aged and cracked. We definitely don’t want something more expensive to occur because we neglected to change that shit out.

I’ve had my new laptop since, I think, March? Somehow the power adapter cord has melted itself through (or maybe it got under some other hot running electronic) and tonight the laptop wouldn’t acknowledge that fact that it was plugged in. Lo-behold, it’s melted enough through that it’s fricken smoking through the melted rubber/plastic on the cord. *sigh* Looks like I’ll be making a trip to Fry’s tomorrow morning since I’ll be wanting to use my laptop while I’m on vacation (hello movies!). Though it’ll only be half useful without Internet access, having a dead battery with no way to charge it would render it useless. It’d make for a great weight for when it gets windy, though!

So now I’m currently using a little battery power as possible (dim screen, no fancy desktop effects, as few open programs as needed). After I take care of some online business, I’ll be off to take a shower, get some clothes put together for my vacation and head to bed to wake up early for a doctor’s appointment. I have no hope of doing laundry efficiently here since our all-in-one machine takes forever with ONE small load! I’ll have to lug a bunch of dirty (though some clean!) to my parents’ house when my brother comes to pick me up. Thankfully they’ve got the family-sized efficient machines that are only a few years old (at least, the washer’s pretty damn new) ;)

PS: I have a new theme up. I’ve made some personalized adjustments to it but I’m still working on it as a whole! I need to make changes to have it reflect a personal blog and not a “magazine” style website, since that’s what the theme was meant for. I can do this! It’s not like I’m making a theme from scratch and no experience *lol*

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Oh, Fat & Stumpy One

I’ve decreased how much and how often my cat eats and yet, she still manages to be fat. I know she doesn’t get into any other food since the trash can is upright, the cat food is on top of the refrigerator and untouched, and there’s no food in the low cabinets that I know she tries to get into, but she never manages to open the door. I wish I knew what to do to get her more active in our apartment besides getting her a friend. Another cat isn’t an option right now. Any toy we buy her doesn’t hold her attention, however I’ll toss a crumbled up piece of paper and she goes fricken crazy. Unfortunately, it’s not really fun to have what looks like trash all over the floor of the apartment :P

I think I may actually be ready to quit smoking. The past few days I haven’t had a craving to smoke and if this is the case, how awesome! There’s nothing like ending a bad habit and not suffering through forcing yourself to do it. I had to suffer through the stopping of sucking my fingers when I was 10. Yes, I sucked my ring & middle fingers on my right hand until I was about 10 years old. It took an infection near my nail and blistering to make me stop. Even the desire to wear nail polish didn’t get me to stop. I was forced to since I couldn’t well suck an infected finger! I was facing braces if I didn’t stop, too. Thankfully after I stopped, my two top front teeth straightened themselves out.

That didn’t keep dentists from asking me if I wanted braces, though! I have this “snaggle” tooth on the left side of my mouth. There’s a small gap where my canine should be, and the canine itself is actually up a ways on the gum. My brother has the same affliction, but only he has an issue, apparently, with it. You wouldn’t know about the tooth unless I laughed or smiled nice and big. Supposedly it’s inherited from a paternal great-grandmother.

A week from now I’ll be up in the Sierras with my parents, brother, his girlfriend and my grandma & uncle. Unfortunately, the husband didn’t have enough time to take off for the trip so he won’t be joining us – even for his normal days off since two days just isn’t enough for the drive he’d have to make. It’s 5-6 hours (depending on how many & how long the stops) from Los Angeles, so add another 2-3 hours since we now live in San Diego… that’s just too much driving to make, especially alone! Too bad, since he won’t be able to compete in this year’s horseshoe tournament and maintain his winning streak ;) He won 3rd place in the winner’s bracket last year with a random partner, coming in behind my cousin. I played with my dad and we made it to the loser’s bracket but not far enough to rank. Hopefully we’ll do better this year, if I’m his partner, that is!

I’ll need to take books with my that I haven’t manage to finish since I’ve bought them. I have quite a few!

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