Christmas and Santa Barbara

Fun Fact: Eggs is meat!

Alright Grandma… you told me these are still too long so this is my attempt to make these blogs more reader friendly.  Unfortunately by granting your wish for a shorter blog I will have to ignore your request to curtail the poop talk!

So as you all may or may not know - Christmas was this week!  I don’t really remember anything we did all week leading up to Christmas so I will start on Christmas Eve.  We went to the movies and saw “The Big Short” starring Steve Carrel, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and MOST IMPORTANTLY Brad Pitt.  It was about the housing crisis in 2007 and was based on a true story.  It was a good movie but the fact that it was based on reality and it pointed out that nothing has really changed since then it makes you pretty sad when you leave!

Speaking of movies!  You’ll never guess what we did on Christmas!  We saw the new star wars!  Spoiler alert: I enjoyed it and thought it was a great movie!  I would say it was better than The Big Short because I didn’t leave having lost some faith in humanity!  There’s also lots of fun action and lasers and stuff!  It’s so fun!  We saw it with some of the people we went to beerfest with (see post from early December-ish).  Afterwards we all went to the bar and enjoyed some beverages before finding out that the bar we were at was not serving food because the kitchen was closed.  Thankfully the Asian restaurant owners of Orange County understood the predicament we were in and we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner before coming back to our apartment and playing some Jackbox games until we were laughing so hard we were peeing our pants with excitement!  (Sorry grandma… I have a problem with bathroom talk that’s only been exacerbated by the fact that I was told not to do it).

Saturday (December 26) we woke up and jumped in the convertible (with the top up because it’s colder in OC than RI… which is really just more annoying than anything) and headed north to Santa Barbara.  Santa Barbara is north of Los Angeles just past Malibu!  Unfortunately due to a wild fire we were not able to drive through Malibu so I was unable to make any clever Mali-booty references - the ride up also took about 4 hours rather than the 2 hours it would have normally taken.  We ended up getting there around 2pm and went to State Street which is where lots of the touristy things are.  We walked around for a while until we found a winery!  That’s where I took this picture!

  

 After we left the winery we went to dinner where I took this picture…

THEN we left dinner and went to another winery where I took no pictures!  We did however get some wine and a couple cool wine glasses (one of which made it home unbroken)!  After our stroll around town we headed to the Airbnb where we stayed the night in a lovely room in a house owned by Charmaine and John… they were very nice people who offered us a California King size bed in a room with a city view!  We watched the road to the NHL winter classic on the laptop and dreamed about the hockey game we would be seeing six short days from then!

Sunday we woke up and went for a hike on a trail in the hills of Santa Barbara.  It was about a two and a half mile hike before we worked our way back down to Santa Barbara Brewing Company to get some breakfast and watch the Patriots game!  I had a breakfast pizza that included eggs, peppers and onions, and chorizo!  It was a yummy distraction from that train wreck in New York.  After the game we walked around town a little more.  We went to the historic courthouse and I took this picture.

After we left the courthouse (we didn't get married mom... don't worry) we got back in the car and headed home.  Luckily the fire was contained or maybe put out by the time we were driving home and we were able to take the highway home - which allowed for awesome ocean views!  After we got home Carissa made us go out and buy another dresser for me so she can have another arts and crafts project and so she can take another step towards making me an adult.  It’s like she doesn’t even know me.

That’s all for this week!  I did have a doctor’s appointment today which was my first trip to a doctor that wasn’t Dr. DeAngelis.  It was a sad moment and again - another trip towards the adulthood I’ve been trying to put off for so long.  It is Monday in California and Tuesday in RI which means I will be home in 2 and 3 days!  Hopefully we will somehow manage to see all of you in the few days we’re home!  I am excited to see you all and until then, may your poops be plentiful!

That Time I got Food Poisoning (and more!)

Fun Fact: Slurpee Machines to make frozen beverages were invented by Omar Knedlik in the late 1950s. The idea for a slushed ice drink came when Knedlik's soda fountain broke down, forcing him to put his sodas in a freezer to stay cool, which caused them to become slushy.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRIAN! (and Sarah I guess… but your birthday is old news now)

Hello!  It’s me!  I’m in California dreaming about who we used to be!  When we we’re younger… and freeee… (that’s enough Adele for one post).  So it’s been a couple of weeks.  I was busy last week and I figured if I just texted my mom instead she would know I was alive so I wouldn’t need to make any more coherent words.  So yeah last I posted I was mentioning that we had gone to beerfest and that Carissa’s family was stopping by so I will fast forward to Thursday when they got here (since nothing really happened last week that I can remember).

We Carissa cleaned the shit out of our apartment because the Pope Carissa’s mom was coming to visit.  On Thursday I was given a short list of things to finish before Carissa arrived from LAX with guests.  They arrived around 10pm or something and we pretty much just caught up and said our hellos and went to bed.  Friday I went to work and they went to Newport Beach to get the full California experience.  Friday night we pretty much just hung out if I recall, they went to dinner and I went to a work party where I got a bottle of bubbly Moscato as a Yankee swap gift.  It only exploded twice in the process of opening and pouring it and I almost shot my eye out with the cork only once.

So Saturday morning we took off for northern pastures and decided to give Carissa’s mom (Rhonda) and Carissa’s Grandma (Gram) an authentic look at Venice Beach and Santa Monica in Los Angeles, California.  Now if you don’t know what Venice Beach is the only way I can describe it is the place where beautiful beach, meets a crazy amount of drug addicts, meets street performer’s, meets lots of tourist shops.  It is probably a must see for your first time in LA (granted I haven’t seen all of LA and there are most likely plenty of things to do that are better) but for my money (free… plus the cost of parking) it is a great way to spend an afternoon people watching and enjoying the beach.

This is a picture of Venice Beach I found on the internet... I didn't take any myself

While there we saw a couple people perform, we looked at some of the art made out of various different mediums and Rhonda and Gram bought some souvenirs.  From there we drove down the street (about three miles) to Santa Monica Pier.  There are lots of fun facts about Santa Monica Pier that I don’t remember but my guess is the pier from Rocket Power is based on the Santa Monica Pier.  We just walked around the pier and took in the sights again before heading back down to Costa Mesa for dinner.

I also did not take this picture of Santa Monica Pier because I do not yet own a helicopter... but I'm working on it.

Sunday we tried to go to Knottsberry Farm which is both a farm AND an amusement park (it’s essentially like Six Flags).  Turns out that was really expensive!  So instead we went to San Diego!  We walked around the seaport and midway areas and eventually worked our way over to Coronado Island.  We stopped for an early dinner and walked over to Hotel Del Coronado.

I did take this picture of Hotel Del Coronado - you can tell because Rhonda and Carissa aren't facing the camera.  Candid shots only.

You may recognize it from some movie back in the day that may have had Marilyn Monroe and some other actors in it.  Gram remembered the movie but somehow I don’t remember it.  Anyway going to this hotel actually got me in the Christmas and holiday mood because they had a damn ice rink going on in the back court area of the hotel.  So there was literally an ice rink less than 50 feet from the beach.  Why that got me pumped for Christmas I have no idea but I thought it was amazing that the ice rink was there and it was probably mid-60’s and I took 3 steps and was standing in the sand.

The ice rink at Hotel Del Coronado.  Just beyond those palm trees is the beach.  As you can see there is a bit of a lake in the middle of the ice rink but the fact remains that having an ice rink in San Diego when it's in the high 60's is still pretty awesome.

So after we left San Diego we headed back to Costa Mesa and I went to a local watering hole to watch the Patriots play the Houston Texans.  So when I walked into this place I could tell it was unlike any other time I had been there because there was actually music playing and people inside.  Usually it’s like 5-10 middle aged men who are watching football but this time there was only like 5 of those and the rest were people in their 20's and maybe 30's who were watching football and hanging out and playing pool.  So I sat down and some dude I’ve never seen came over and poured me a beer.  I could tell in one second that this man had been drinking all day, if not longer.  I got about ½ beer and ½ head (the foamy part on the top).  Seeing that he was handing me that half full beer I decided I would take a quick bathroom break just to let it settle so my first drink wouldn’t be all foam.  I came back and he realized what had happened and filled it up the rest of the way.  Needless to say I was thankful but it was really foreshadowing what the rest of my night was going to be.  So I made a joke to the guy next to me about how drunk the bartender was and he confirmed my suspicions that that specific bartender didn’t even work there and that he was the brother of the real bartender… who at that time walked up… and she was just as drunk as the other guy.  So I talked to this bar stranger and he explained that this was a unique situation and how the real bartender doesn’t usually drink (which given the establishment I was at is actually a surprise) but tonight she was really drunk. 

Usually during patriots games I try to pace myself with drinking because even though I walk to the bar I don’t want to go too crazy (having work on Monday) and I don’t want to spend too much money (even though it’s $4 drafts – which is why I go to this place in the first place).  This Sunday moderation was not an option.  I had about 1/3 of my first beer left and the bartender came over and gave me a second beer instructing me to “drink faster” a command that I initially laughed at but then decided I would obey.  This practice repeated itself to the point that I was concerned about whether I was getting charged for all of these unwarranted beers making a joke to the other bar patron that my bill was either going to be $2 or $2,000 the way the night was going.  So a few beers (maybe 5-6 total?) and four quarters of football later I was feeling pretty good and ready to head home.  I asked for my bill and to my surprise the damage from all of those beers came to $8.  I gladly tipped 100% - making my total $16 for what would normally have been $24 worth of beer (not to mention the shot of Jameson that was slid my way… obviously I didn’t ask for it).  So on the way home I was feeling hungry and I stopped at Alejandro’s, a 24 hour Mexican food restaurant about 100 yards from my apartment.  I got a California burrito and life was great… or so I thought… more on that in a second.  I walked into the apartment and the end of Silver Linings Playbook was on TV and everybody was watching.  We hung out and I caught the end before bed time.

The next morning I woke up to what I assumed was a bit of a hangover, said our goodbyes to Rhonda and Gram and went off to work.  As the morning went on I started feeling worse instead of better.  My stomach had been upset and I had to go to the bathroom too much for it to be only from drinking.  That’s when I remembered the burrito and the questionable yelp reviews Alejandro’s had received.  After about 1:00 I realized I wasn’t going to make it through the day and I decided to leave early.  About 5 minutes from home I felt it.  That feeling we have all felt at one time or another.  I knew I was going to puke.  I made an agreement with my body that if I could hold it in for 5 minutes, I could throw up in the comfort of my own bathroom, rather than on the side of the road.  My body obliged and I made it home, puking about 3 minutes later.  This is pretty much when I figured I was clear from this being alcohol induced and that this was more of a sinister food poisoning situation.  I tried to fall asleep on the couch and I was doing a good job until I was awoken by another bought of puking that my body did not cooperate on… I puked about 3 feet shy of the toilet… it was on the wall… but not nearly as bad as the last time I puked on the wall (sorry Brian).  Luckily for Carissa this was a case of sober Jeff puking from food poisoning, not drunk Jeff puking from being an idiot.  So I cleaned it all by myself and she wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t told her, or left the cleaning supplies in the bathroom, or if I had done a good job cleaning.

This is where this post would have ended if I had written it on Monday of last week… but unfortunately I didn’t so I have another brief section about going to Oakland.  Sorry Grandma (she said I should post shorter blog posts because she’s 85 years old and doesn’t have that much time left… which was really funny because she’s healthier than I am and she’ll probably outlive me… I love you grandma!)

So anyway – this week I went to Oakland for an audit of a hotel.  I was supposed to leave Tuesday morning at 6:45am but due to the whole food poisoning thing I changed my flight to noon hoping a good night’s sleep is all I would need.  When I woke up I felt a little better but I wasn’t 100% yet.  So I sucked it up and boarded a plane knowing I wasn’t contagious and flew up to Oakland.  I got to the hotel around noon and after I was offered food 5-10 times I finally ate the pretzels that were provided on the flight… first solid food in about 36 hours.  It went down ok and actually made me pretty hungry so I had a burger afterwards and everything was good.  We left the audit and I checked into the hotel and went up to my room where I fell asleep around 7:30pm.  It was glorious.

Hotel audits are pretty awesome because they’re not overly challenging and you get to stay in the hotel that you’re doing the audit of.  So it’s literally like you’re working from home… only you have to wear pants.  So I stayed on the 7^th floor and the conference room we were working in was on the 2^nd floor which meant my morning commute consisted of walking out of my room to the elevator (about 10 feet) and taking the elevator to the 2^nd floor.  Then I had to walk kind of far to the conference room.  On the way was the breakfast area though so I got to stop for breakfast on the way.  All and all I would say it was a pretty cool experience being able to audit the hotel I was sleeping in.  As for the city of Oakland I did not see much.  I walked about two blocks in every direction at night (starting Wednesday night when I was on a more normal diet again).  Thursday I went back to being a normal human who ate solid food and my life felt rejuvenated!  I flew home Friday and Carissa and I hugged and high fived to celebrate another successful return of Jeffrey from the San Francisco Bay area!

This weekend we went to Joshua Tree to go camping!  What’s a Joshua tree you may be asking?  They look like this:

This is a stock photo of a Joshua Tree!  The pictures I took are now on Facebook in an album called "Joshua Tree"

I don’t recall actually seeing any of these but we had a lot of fun.  We met a group of people there that we had never met before but also belonged to the same “orange county transplants” group we joined.  We met some cool people that were also from New England and we all talked about how we were freezing even though it was probably in the low to mid 40's (that’s what happens when you get cocky about the warm temperatures and leave all your winter clothes at home when you move cross country).  So we went for a few hikes during the day and one at night after the booze started flowing.  I’m happy to report no injuries.  We (Carissa and I) shared a tent and slept comfortably (except for the fact that I forgot my keys were in my pocket and just assumed the ground was uneven - when I finally realized I could get rid of the lump by taking my keys out of my pocket things got more comfortable).  I will post 3 or 4 pictures on Facebook so you can see the wonder of hiking in Joshua tree so go look for those if you have any interest!

Minor notes, we survived our first earthquake!  I would equate it to somebody pulling up too far in the garage and hitting the wall very softly.  Or what it was probably like if a T-Rex was approaching.  I saw the ripples in my glass of milk and immediately had to figure out if I should hide due to Jurassic era danger approaching.  Luckily it stopped after about 3 seconds and everything was cool. 

It is December 21^st right now (happy birthday again Bri Guy) and I don’t know where the hell the month went.  I hope you all had a Happy Hanukkah and I hope you all have a Merry Christmas on Friday.  We will be making a brief appearance back up in RI from 12/31 to 1/3 so if you are around text us and we’ll let you know where we are! (We won’t have a car so at least for this visit it’s on you to come to us)  We are also going to the Winter Classic at Gillette while we’re home but that’s at least one or two blog posts away.  Until then, from all of us here in Costa Mesa, may your poops be plentiful!

Beerfest!

Fun Fact: The United Nations estimates that there are over three million shipwrecks on the ocean floors. Lost, destroyed, or deliberately sunk, these wrecks are of interest to divers, underwater archaeologists, and treasure hunters alike.

I’m late again!  I try to post these on Sundays but that has obviously not been the case the last couple weeks… I can only imagine the havoc that is wreaking on my poor mother.  I am still alive and I would even say I am well!

Unfortunately for all of us I didn’t do much of anything this week.  FORTUNATELY for everybody this weekend I went to a beerfest!  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here… on Wednesday we actually saw the new Hunger Games movie and it was pretty good.  It was pretty crazy that Phillip Seymour Hoffman died during the filming of that movie.  I kind of forgot until about halfway through the movie but yeah - overall pretty good movie!

So yeah, that was pretty much everything that happened all week.  Then Saturday came along!  Carissa had found out about this beer fest (called Brew Ho Ho) from some people that she met doing yogurt classes.  We saw the flyer and were immediately even more pumped because there was a band slated to play at the event and that band was none other than Reel Big Fish (you may recognize the name from when you were in middle school - yeah they still play music and yeah its still great!)

So Saturday morning I put on my best beerfest attire and we ordered an Uber to bring us to the Phoenix club in Anaheim, CA. 

Jeff in his beerfest best.

The event was from noon to 4pm and when we arrived casually late around 12:10 the line was not nearly as long as we would have expected, probably only 30-40 people.  So we jumped in line and as we approached the front near the gates we spotted little Johnny Christmas! (also known as John Christianson or John ChrisHanson - the trumpet player for Reel Big Fish).  One of the guys at the gate was giving him the business because he wasn’t able to immediately prove that he was in the band… even though he arrived with two trumpets.  One guy was like “artist entry is around the corner, you have to keep going to the next gate” guy number two was like “just let him in” so guy number one said “do you have any ID or some way of proving you're in the band?” (again… he showed up with two trumpets AND me and Carissa recognized him and were talking to him about being in the band right before this line of questioning started) Johnny Christmas stated again that he had two trumpets and guy number 2 said “dude, just let him in.”  after about 2 minutes of guy one taking his job very seriously he finally cracked and let Johnny through the door - saving the concert for people everywhere!

So we made it inside the Brew Ho Ho area to find that it was everything we could have imagined!  There were beer stands everywhere serving the highest quality adult beverages on this side of the Mississippi!  We obviously started out by making sure we wafted in to get the sweet scent of each brew and then took a small taste before spitting out and grading each beverage in our homemade beer ranking portfolios… and by that I mean I challenged myself to consume as many beers as fast as I can because there’s nothing worse than the first 10 minutes of beerfest when you’re sober.  So we walked around the inside area for a while before making it to the outside area of beerfest where there were even more stands.  We wandered around noting that the stands with short lines usually had terrible beer and the ones with long lines had the best beers!  At one point we also came across this storm trooper and I couldn’t resist taking a picture of this guy who had a much better “meeting a storm trooper” reaction than I did.

After about an hour or so of wandering and trying out some beers we wandered to the other side of the beerfest where there was (you guessed it…) more beer!  But what you DIDN’T guess was that inside of a small building within the confines of this wonderful beerfest was (wait for it…) a shooting range!  Nothing too fancy here… only pellet guns.  But the fact remains, they were having a drunken sharpshooting contest to benefit the same charity as the beerfest (Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County… take note BBBSOS).  Targets were $2 so Carissa and I each got one and although I turned mine in to be scored against the judge’s will I did not win.  Carissa was smart and kept hers as a souvenir.  I got all three shots inside the black center of the target (don’t be too impressed it was only like 20 feet away... and I don't mean a bullseye, I mean I hit the main target) but couldn’t bring home the trophy.

So after we shot we went back outside and got a couple more beers (I think you’re probably getting the idea here) and went to the food trucks they had onsite.  Carissa got a burger I think and I got some tacos I think and both were delicious in their own right.  After we ate we made our way over to the outdoor stage right as the sound check was finishing up.  To our delight and as advertised Reel Big Fish started playing!  As they began to play the crowd got bigger and that’s where a man and a shirt arrived that would change the course of our night.  Now I thought I was wearing a cool shirt to beerfest but this guy totally had me beat.

As you may or may not be able to tell - that is Will Smith (in his Fresh Prince days) surrounded by awesome 80s geometry as well as cassette tapes and those big brick cell phones (or as I call them - Zach Morris Specials).  So the concert continued, Carissa and I screamed our little hearts out and occasionally made a trip over to the nearby stands to get some refills before coming back and screaming more.  As the concert finished up we began talking to this glorious shirted wonder and the friends he came with.

So we got to talking with this group of people and found out that most of them worked for Blizzard (the video game company that I sold a good portion of my childhood to) and that they were going out.  Not only did they invite us to hang out with them I believe the word offended may have been thrown around if we had backed out… either way when you meet a group of people like that at a beerfest you’re invested in hanging out.  So we Ubered to a local brewery to keep the party rolling and after Carissa had spilled about 3 beers we decided to have three of them who were willing come over to play some rock band.

It’s around this point in the day that the timing of everything starts to get fuzzy… I know beerfest was over at 4 and I know from the Uber receipt that we all got to our apartment around 7ish.  I don’t think I paid for the Uber from our apartment back to their apartment but what I DO know is that I skipped the important detail of their apartment having a hot tub.  So we obviously wanted to go hot tubbin’ with these complete strangers.  We got another Uber from our place to their place with bathing suits in hand to go enjoy this hot tub.  We were told that the hot tub had a closing time but that they had gone in after hours before.  That turned out to be false.

Sooooo we got to their apartment and all changed for some good ol’ fashioned hot tubbin’.  We jumped the fence to where the hot tub was and to our unfortunate surprise the hot tub was not hot.  It was actually downright cold (probably not actually cold, probably like in the low 80s but that’s not what you want when you’re ready for a nice hot tub).  Heartbroken and dry as could be the five of us walked back to their apartment with even odder plans in mind.  Being that we were pretty much on hour 9 or 10 of drinking we all decided it would be a good idea to go in the bath tub with hot water since we couldn’t do a real hot tub experience.  So four of us all got in the bathtub together (bathing suits still on) and tried for about 30 minutes to find a way for us to fit comfortably (it didn’t happen).  After that time we just gave up and decided to go watch some TV.  I really have no idea what time it was at this point because from the time we left beerfest we thought it was like 9pm when it was 4pm so we were all still just hanging out watching some TV and talking about whatever crossed our minds.

Again, from an Uber receipt I can tell you that we left their apartment at 12:45 and arrived back at our place shortly after 1am.  I believe we ate pizza and I think I drank too much of their beer (if you’re reading this I probably owe you a six pack).  When we left our apartment at around 11:45am we had no way of knowing the recklessness that would ensue but overall I believe a good time was had by all!

It is Tuesday now and I haven’t really done anything big this week yet but Carissa’s mom and Grandma are coming to visit Thursday of this week so we may have some stories from the weekend of entertaining to jive about!  As always, have a good week and may your poops be plentiful!