OakMonster's Den

I’m not safe on a bike. Never have been.

But I insist on getting on the thing so I can spend time with Brandon.  Not to mention that it’s fun.

Y’all remember my little blue Townie?

After the stunts I pulled yesterday, I now have a name for the bike.

Wallbait.

You’ll see why here in a bit.

Feeling ambitious on Sunday, I proposed that we rode from our place to the Alamitos Bay Farmers’ Market in Long Beach so I can pick up some fresh veggies.  After all, Brandon hooked up my cargo department so my little bucket won’t come flying off like it had before.  This would be the perfect time to go play!

And so we did.

On our way there, we rode down Los Alamitos/Seal Beach Boulevard over the 405 freeway and down Westminster/2nd Street.  I did pretty well all things considered with a few stops to rest my tired legs.  We got to the market in one piece.

Oh, the market.  The. Market!  I *LOVE* farmers’ market.  So much good stuff.

Thank GOD we had a limit of buying only what I could carry in the bucket. Well, Brandon did help carry a few other things. Like a satchel of lavendar. And our $10 a pound ground bison.  Yes, bison. Tatanka. Bison.

We then rode to Seal Beach for some Z Pizza.  And then it was time to head back.

With my haul, Brandon suggested that we rode back on the San Gabriel river bike path for easier terrain.

However, we underestimated the extra weight on the back of my bike going through all of those underpasses.

Coming down one of them, my cruiser hit a patch and it wobbled. Hard.

I was *this* close to losing control and spill.

Not that a beach cruiser is know for its agility to begin with, the extra weight also contributed to a few more near-disasters I had all the way home because I couldn’t stop fast enough.

A sudden stop coming back from the trail onto Katella resulted in the peddles hitting me (and left a bruise) on my calf.

A sharper turn back down our street, I was caught between “going to fast in a turn and I would totally crash” and “not slow enough, oh my god I’m going to launch off the sidewalk!”  With enough time to strategize how I was going to crash, I slammed the bike into the metal sign post: wheel to the left, handle to the right, and my right hand wayyyy out of the crash zone.

With all these odd maneuvering, y’all, I am sore in places I didn’t know existed.

However, I must admit…

It was hella fun.

Happy Earth Day.

I’m not much of an environmentalist but I’m slowly becoming a plastic bag usage nazi.

I have canvas bags in my car and use them for my grocery shopping everywhere, and I refuse to take any plastic bags whenever I can carry my own loot out of the store…which was met with a LOT of  “Are you sure?”

Yes I AM sure I can carry my prescription and a bottle of Nyquil out on my own.

Yes I AM sure a loaf of bread, a pack of sliced cheese, and 2 tomatoes won’t need a bag.

Yes I AM sure I won’t need a bag for ONE bottle of Dr. Pepper, doesn’t matter what size it is.

It’s not just us shopper who need to change. It’s the shopkeepers as well.

I do recycle bottles and cans at home because we have a recycling trailer thingy close by.  And with the amount of sodas and Yakult consumed by Brandon and I, respectively, it would be ridiculous not to recycle those.

However, if our apartment has a full recycling trash pick up like those in private homes, I would recycle everything possible.  I think it is worth the time to recycle.

Finally, my biggest environmental guilt.

I am a big guilty for not bringing my coffee mug down to Starbucks.  I was doing that for a while and ended up with up to 3 unwashed mugs on my desk.  Now that I’m doing Starbucks latte type only once a week, I probably should pick that habit up again, and bring a plastic bottle in for my occasional iced tea treats.

Now only if we can do something about garbage BAGS we put all this stuff in.

And it wouldn’t be Earth Day without this.

Oh yeah. Friday was a HELL of a day.

It actually started Thursday night.

Thursday night

We had dinner and sampled ridiculous variety of beer with Paul and Lupe at Beachwood Barbecue. I finally had my Mac and Cheese, the BEST I’ve had and lord knows  how many sips of whats I had.  Nice and buzzed, I got home to a monstrous task of trying to watch most DVR’ed shows as I can before we get the box replaced on Friday.  And what a week to have the DVR taken away too!  Since I haven’t been home all week, Brandon practically didn’t even turn on the TV.  Everything we usually watched remain untouched all week.  I was up until 1 a.m. trying to catch up.  I got to watch the rest of House, Heroes, Lost and 2 sections of Castle before I crawled to bed.

Frakkin’ Friday

8:30 – Left the house for doctor’s office on Spring and Palo Verde in Long Beach.  Brandon was up starting to do some transfer of a week’s worth DVR’ed stuff before the cable guy gets in to replace the box.   He managed to grab NCIS, The Mentalist (Rigsby kissing the Red Head under hypnosis…AWESOME!!), and most of Top Gear Vietnam episode.

8:45 – Poked and prodded and got 2 huge tubes of blood drawn.

9:45 – Left doctor’s office. Stopped at Nick’s in Los Alamitos to pick up breakfast on the way home.

10:15 – Ran out to optometrist appointment over by the traffic circle in Long Beach.

10:30 – Air puffed into eyeballs and all that fun. Made appointment for eye dilation test and further investigation to see if I could be a candidate for laser eye surgery.

11:45 – Arrived early to Underground Salon on Stearns and Bellflower.  Brandon decided on purchasing the Samsung Omni, so I’d meet up with him at the Verizon store at 1. Kicked myself for not having thought of this before CA sales tax went up.

New hair cut

12:00 – It was decided. I was getting side-swept bang.  My stylist Shua is awesome and has fantastic sleeves.  It was kind of surreal when a blurry Elvis on her bicep was staring at me in the face.

12:45 – Walked into the Verizon store on Bellflower and Spring with 4 inches less of hair and a side-swept bang.

1:45 – Leaving Brandon alone at the Verizon store to wrap up the transfer to the Omni (with pink silicon case for me!)  to run to the dental appointment over on Paramount and Del Amo.

2:00 – Getting minor cavities fixed.

2:45 – Heading home to meet up with Brandon to go to the next appointment.

3:45 – Arrived at the next appointment at Pine and Ocean.

7:45 – Got back home.

8:00 – Wiped out.  Heard poor Wyatt was the only one at the Long Beach Tweet Up.  And we had to flake out on the pub crawl because we were too damn tired.

8:30 – Crawled into bed.

Saturday morning

…it continued.

9:00 – AIDS Ride benefit breakfast for our friend Greg at Rick & Brian’s Cafe on Redondo with James, Aurora, Lee and Dresden.

Behold, the cuteness.

11:00 – Grocery shopping. FINALLY! After weeks of not having anything in the fridge.

12:00 – Back at James & Aurora for Dresden’s delayed 1st birthday party.

4:30 – Left the party. Took a nap. Worked on some stuff.

7:30 – Left to Celeste’s birthday party.

11:00 – Crawled into bed.

Sunday

…we just hid from the world, getting ready for Monday.  Can you blame us?

It’s a fashion fate, really.

Friday morning, I found myself at a loss as to what t-shirt to wear to work on casual Friday. And I have LOTS of t-shirts. However, some of them starting to get old, as in boring.

Having been introduced to Threadless a while back by Rude Cactus (also @rudecactus), I popped in just in time for their spring sale and got a couple of shirts for $5 and $10.

Cute, eh?

Then yesterday, I checked the mail and the t-shirt I’ve won from a contest put on by LA2Day Magazine a while ago arrived.  It’s a Worn Free and it kicks major ass!

Retail price for one of these Worn Free puppies? $45. And I got it for free.  (Of course, I’m giving them kudos.  I’m not ungrateful…) This is now possibly the most expensive piece of clothing I own…not counting the winter coats.

I’m not going to hurt for a new t-shirt for a while.