OakMonster’s Den

When you’re only one story off the ground.

Was watching So You Think You Can Dance when it felt like a giant just tapped the house with his toes….or a Hummer just ran into our building.  It was a THUD that moved the couch and the window at the same time.  No swaying or anything.

Enough already with the shaking!

Earthquake!

5.8 magnitude in Chino Hills.

We were all rocking and rolling all over the 34th floor over here. Not so much of the nervousness, but motion sick. Felt like I was on a boat. Twitter reports from Long Beach. Family reports in from all over So Cal.

Verizon is out. AT&T is out. My office phone I can’t even use.

Fun.

Oh, and yeah. I’m okay.  I did run over to the stand in the doorway.  Apparently I was the only one doing that…

Welcome aboard the most patriotic bus in the region!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy ID4!

Me? Not doing much. Just chillin’ here with the hubby for the day. The biggest plan of the evening is me cooking up a couple of filet mignon for dinner.

However, you can see from my Twitter history that last night at Master Greg was quite fun.

I went to the party with Aurora. Poor thing, Dresden was a little brat all day apparently. Well, until we were leaving the house when he was in an absolute bliss, laughing and cooing all over the place. So it was a good few hours off for mommy.

But of course, Mommy got tired so we had to go. But then Shane and Tamara showed up, so I stayed behind and hitched a ride home with them instead. I haven’t been up until 2 and feeling buzzed for a long, long, LONG time.

Rum + Orange juice + 7up = My new favorite drink. Hmm. Rum.

Oh and so many gay boys to gawk at at Greg’s party. And even a few straight ones! At some point, Tamara and I were on rooftop, being introduced to someone’s straight guy friend as “the other token straights”. Now that guy was soooo good to stare at. LOL.

And speaking of hot, as we were telling Greg about being the token straights, he started to tell us that one of his friend wanted to know who the “straight hot bear in a hat with a goatee” was. Then he kind of squealed.

“Oh my GOD! Shane! He was talking about YOU!!”

The hot bear in a hat. He’s NEVER going to live this one down.

My eyes are half opened but I want to post this before I go to bed.

My fantastic adventure as a humble blogger attending the Fresh & Easy store grand opening.

Highlights include meeting the CEO Tim Mason and finding out that all their execs know the Temple, and me taking a swan dive outside of the store in front of like a hundred people.

I should be proud that that was possibly the biggest crowd I’ve ever tripped and fallen in front of…

Oh wait. No.  There was always that one night of performance of the Nutcracker at the National Theater where I tripped on my unraveling ballet shoe ribbons as I landed a cartwheel and ate it on stage…

It was hot as hell at AIDS Walk Long Beach. But we did it.

Yey, us!

We gather here in California today and onward to witness the joy of MARRIAGE FOR ALL.

[Image from the LA Times]

Hooray!

In “Day After Tomorrow”, a massive tornado ripped through Los Angeles.

Yesterday, a baby one touched down in Riverside.

Miraculously, nobody got hurt.

If you look at my Twitter history there, you’ll see my weather report from atop the 34th floor of Downtown Los Angeles.

After the week of heat, we were cooling down again.  And then suddenly, yesterday, rain clouds came out of nowhere and the rain poured for a good 10-15 minutes.  As in, sheets and sheets of it.  Looking out the north side of the building, it looked like snow.

Then it was sunny again.

Then it started to sprinkle and mist with the sun still out…but just on the northwest corner of the building.  I saw the sun was out so I was going over to the east side to spot a rainbow.  It was all sunny and dry on the other side.  Not even a trace of a mist.

But outside of the north east window, the super dark clouds loomed in the distance.

A few of us were thinking it, but didn’t say it.   With all of this weirdness in the weather, if the Big One hit, we wouldn’t be surprise.  Instead, we joked out loud about brimstones would be next to fall from the sky and that the Four Horsemen are on their way in from Riverside, but got stuck on the freeway.

I had a horrible time carpooling in to work with a bus buddy lady, and even worse when my colleague drove me home.

Completely wiped when I got home, I forewent making a batch of Absolutely Weevils cookies, and settled in on the couch for some pizza and my jug of cranberry juice.

And here we are again, back in the weird weather central, waiting for some light shows of promised thunderstorm and rain.

It’s too scary outside, y’all.

My Vista weather-a-mabob said it’s 82F outside.

My hair still damped from a shower half and hour earlier when I stepped outside to take out the trash at 2 p.m.

I walked out, down the steps, around the courtyard, through the 6-car parking lot, dumped the trash and reverse the route.

My hair is mostly dry when I came back up.

I mean, after a few months of 3-day heat waves on and off, you have to wonder if it’s really summer yet.  Look at last week!  It was cold during the week and then the weekend shot up to thaw everyone out just to turn right around and freeze us all over again.

From what the weather report is telling me, it’s going to be warm for the rest of the week.

Let’s hope that’s the case.  This packing up the extra blankets and pulling them out again is getting old.

I LOVE Ren Faire.

Much fun and debauchery on Saturday. I mean, how can you not have debauchery when Greg M. is involved! We drank even before we left the house…you know where this is going, right?

I’ll put up the SLIDE show here later, but in the meantime, check out my Ren Faire flickr set.

I had 2.5 cups of mead. Would’ve been three but I didn’t drink the last one fast enough before we had to exit the Faire. Everyone else in our group other than Brandon surely had a LOT more than me.

Oh and we went to dinner in Seal Beach in our costumes (minus my headpiece because it hurt my head). Brandon protested a bit at first, but Greg and I were very persuasive. LOL.

Sunday, I ditched Nora (sorry girl!) and didn’t go to Patchwork arts fair as planned. I was beat. All the drinking and the axe throwing and arrow shooting and the heat and the sun didn’t allow me to want to do much else.

Other than going to see Iron Man.

I LOVE Iron Man. It was AWESOME! First 2008 movie I love so far. I am looking forward to Indiana Jones, The Dark Knight, and Hellboy this summer. Oh, and the Happening too.

And in sadness.

I still got to play with Athena this morning. Possibly the last. The girls are supposed to take her to the shelter by the time I get home tonight. No taker for our little girl. We really hope someone adopts her.

ETA: It breaks my heart that the girls had to dump Athena at Cal State Long Beach.  Apparently they have an effort to feed the feral  and the stray cats outside of their campus newspapers.  At least she will be fed.  Hopefully someone would try to make contact with our girl and at least she would have a few human playmates.  I hope.  I wish.  I pray.

It was good while it lasted.

Bits and snippets vverheard on the streets of Downtown Los Angeles, where the immigration march tomorrow is going to vastly affect everyone’s commute home.

A: Why do they have to pick the rush hour to have an assembly? This is so inconvenient.

B: Um, isn’t that the point of a protest?

A: Yes. But what about MY rights to go home on time? MY rights to not be stuck in traffic? MY rights not to have to take the day off so I don’t get stuck in all of this mess?

You know how we can disperse the crowd really quickly tomorrow? Put up immigration check points along the route with transport buses at the ready.

C: Why don’t we just declare May 1st a holiday every year then, so we don’t have to be stuck in this mess all the time?

D: Because they would just pick another non-holiday day to march.  Like May 2nd.

C: Oh.  Well, they should just march on the weekends when there’s nobody here.

Why don’t we do this? On May 1st, we all head down to Mexico City and block THEIR traffic during rush hour.

Our usual bus route is going to be affected and therefore the bus buddies have been plotting a way to work and home since Friday. We saw the “alternate route” plan on the bus today, and we all had to laugh.

The “alternate route” not only explain how they’d get from the depot, passed City Hall and into my side of town. You know, the City Hall, where the assembly of 100,000 strong is supposed to gather?

The only change on the route is to alter a right turn 2 blocks earlier than the usual route, which still leads into the tail end of the assembly.

OCTA don’t seem to do their research.  That is just sooo Orange County.

But anyways. As for me, as a LEGAL immigrant who paid my way to be here legally–and no, I’m NOT getting into that again–I am working from home tomorrow.

I couldn’t take the bus if I want to get home before, oh I don’t know, 8 p.m.  And driving in is certainly going to be a mess.  Thank god I have a project that is needed to be done but I couldn’t get my focus on.  And then I also volunteer to use the high focus time to attack another project as well.  My boss is kind enough to let me work from home.

I have been having a horrible case of ADD in the office.  It’s not completely self induced but the environmental wasn’t helpful to me keeping my focus either.  So much is going on and so many people are asking for so many things.  Way too hectic (and sometimes just too much damn drama) to concentrate sometimes.

It’s funny that I need to be a home to actually find peace to work.  I am super excited about it.  Can hardly wait to get this project out of my hair!