Friday, August 9, 2013

Islands, Sunburns, and Sunsets - Oh My!

Last week, James and I had a day off together where we didn't need to do anything, be anywhere, or talk to anyone, which is a complete rarity lately. So what did we decide to do? Take the bus to Balboa, that's what we decided to do!

You have to understand something, you who may not live in southern California behind the Orange Curtain. Buses are not what one decides to take to the beach. A 20 minute journey balloons into a 90 minute journey, and why would you want to sit among strangers on seats that smell like pee? Because! Once you're on, all you have to do is sit there and watch the world go by. You don't have to worry about traffic. You can give up control. You don't have to find a place to park. Or dig around for quarters or dollars for the parking meters. Or keep track of time so you don't go over your metered parking. You can have wine with lunch. If you're tired on the way home, you can doze off, which is not recommended when you are driving a car.

So, after an hour and a half, we found ourselves on the beach at Balboa.

This bird was wearing yellow boots

Pier Pelican, who may have been either sick or just really bored of all the humans around.
We took the ferry over the Balboa island and walked along what felt like every street and bit of waterfront. We saw a giant raptor sculpture in someone's front yard, a skateboarding bulldog, and many a house that if someone were to give us, we would happily accept. There was also a small dog that got in between James and the wall of shop he was looking into that decided to mark the wall, and some little girl started yelling "Ewww! He peeded on the wall!!" which made me laugh hysterically. We also had a really nice lunch at an Italian restaurant, complete with wine and cappuchinos.

A beautiful, gorgeous day out
The only drawback was that I somehow wasn't thinking much about sunblock the whole day, and my neck and shoulders got super sunburned. And I was supposed to be in a work photograph the following day for an award the gallery will be receiving. And my sunburn didn't actually look like a sunburn, it just looked like a rash that was only on my neck. Oh well.

These are our duck friends we met at the Fullerton Arboretum. We also made some turtle friends, but they didn't want to have their pictures taken.
A few nights ago we drove to a park on top of a hill to watch the sunset, because we've been seeing how pretty it is from our garden and thought it would look even better with a view that wasn't an old fence. This park ended up being great, because there were a ton of bunnies that came out as the sun was going down, and THEN a ton of bats started flying around. They were so close you could actually see their little faces. I don't know about you, but I've never seen bats in southern California, only in England, and only from far away. These were right there. That was pretty incredible!




On a side note, by to-do list for the next couple of weeks is ridiculous. You may not be seeing much of me for awhile.

Friday, August 2, 2013

July Reading

July was one of those months where I feel like I could have read the entire contents of a bookstore. (I couldn't have, really, because that's just a silly idea. A gross exaggeration!) But it was probably down to the mostly "beach reading" type stuff I picked up.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult
Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks
Dear John by Nicholas Sparks - why this needs a student guide I will probably not understand
Night Road by Kristin Hannah
Desire to Inspire by Christine Mason Miller - by far the best book I've read in awhile
77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

This brings my total for 2013 up to 33 books read. Um, what?

In July I also started setting my alarm for 6am in an effort to make more of the day and focus more on making jewelry. So far it's been relatively easy to haul myself out of bed by about 6:15 and get right to work, but we'll see how this keeps up as we get closer to winter. Hopefully by that point this will have become such a habit I won't be able to stop.

jewelry jewelry jewelry jewelry jewelry
Next time I'll tell you about the day trip James and I took to Balboa Island and how I got sunburned but mostly only on my neck. So it looks like I have a rash.