rock the block

okay, so i *have* experienced earthquakes before. but i usually either sleep through them or i am driving or something so i just don't feel them. until now ...

not sure how many of you heard about this one, but here are the details:

chino hills and diamond bar are about an hour and a half away from me, but i *did* feel this earthquake. i was at work and whining about my lousy raise when the whole building began to shake. guess it added a bit of drama to punctuate my compensation complaints. anyway ...

but it was the coolest thing ever! i am only not saying "let's do it again" because that would really be asking for it. ... but, i dunno, it was kinda fun. can i say that? am i actually allowed to say that? if we were to have another one, which i am not going to wish that we do, but *if* we do ... i think it could be fun to feel an earthquake again. yeah.

arguments anyone?

perhaps

after finding my blog a couple months ago, a friend of mine had the following reaction:

"you have an obsession with chocolate and men --
which makes you like 99% of women in the world"

hmm. i'm not sure i like that. and i thought about it a lot, actually. see? well, i probably am obsessed with chocolate. i'll give you that. i mean, with a blog title like mine, i think that's probably a given. but obsessed with men? dunno. hmmm.

for those of you who don't know me in real life, i don't know that i really want that to be the impression you have of me. and for those of you that do know me, i hope you realize that i have to write about entertaining things -- y'know, to keep readership up. but i kinda decided that i was going to change the topics of my posts.

so, i did. i haven't been writing about chocolate, like at all. (i wrote about beef, yes. but no one ever suggested that i was obsessed with beef. did they??) and i really haven't written anything about men.

... and my blog has been a little dry. admittedly.

i am getting a bit tired of trying to make my work life seem *really* interesting -- well, at least interesting enough to not fall asleep while writing about it, let alone reading about it. which is really exhausting! i'm sorry, but accounting just really isn't that exciting. (hope nobody slits their wrists because of that revelation. if so, i'm sorry for that, too.)

and so, i'm changing my mind again. we will soon be welcoming posts about chocolate, posts about men, and maybe even some posts about chocolate *and* men! ooo! this opens all kinds of doors!! so sit tight kiddies, this will be fun.

oh -- and if any of y'all want to think that i am obsessed with chocolate and men ... well, perhaps ... you might be right ... but i guess there's not much i could do about that, anyway. so i might as well just write what i want. right?

fifth time's the charm

that's what they say, anyway. isn't it? well, that's what i say. or, rather, i *hope* that's what i will be saying in about 6 weeks. i hope, i hope!

today was my 5th attempt to pass this blasted tax test. seriously, friends. i don't know why this has been so ridiculously difficult for me. i took a couple of tax classes at byu -- one was even entitled "advanced corporate taxation" --wouldn't you think that such a class should prepare me for some silly cpa test? i mean, i just have to get a 75 to pass. a 75! it doesn't seem that hard, does it?

i kinda stopped blogging about this whole process because, really, it was starting to get a bit embarrassing. some of you may have been privy to my track record, but for the benefit of all and because i am an accountant by trade and in love with excel, i have put together the following chart of my progress:

attempt # 1 -- score: 45

attempt # 2 -- score: 49

attempt # 3 -- score: 68

attempt # 4 -- score: 74

you'll note that i am improving over time -- getting ever closer to that red line of victory. let's hope i cross it this time, and don't just bounce off and head south again.

i'll find out in about 6 weeks. again: i don't have any idea why it takes so long to grade this thing. i have to take it in 3 hours. they should have to grade it in a similar period of time. my opinion. but apparently i don't rule the world. not even the cpa world. drat.

a cherry on top

i submit that a "fat day" only gets worse with this:

especially when you look at all the other cars around you and no one else got one.

... kinda makes me want to go get a big ice cream sundae ... cherry and all.

a bum

at what point do you have to start introducing yourself as a bum? i slept in my car on saturday night.

"hi, i'm christianna. nice to meet you. i'm a bum."

saturday was a *very* full day. i woke up in a panic at 7:15 -- i was supposed to be at the red cross at 7! dangit! quick pit stop in the bathroom to pull a comb through my hair, then i was out the door. i started the car just as my phone rang: it was the red cross asking if i was okay and if i was coming. "yesss ..."

after getting there, i crossed my fingers through the whole donor intake process -- well, except for the part where they prick my finger -- just hoping that my iron levels would be high enough to donate. (ever since i started this no-beef thing i just can't keep enough iron in my blood! anyone have any suggestions for that? i have recently started taking iron supplements, but those don't always work, either.)

i passed. yippee!

so i spent the next two hours reclined, smothered in blankets and hot rice bags, and enjoying juno. i gave a double-unit of platelets. pat myself on the back: pat, pat, pat.

from the red cross, i drove straight to the church building for ... enrichment super saturday!! where i made this:

on the way back home from enrichment, i called jenn to organize our beach outing, then called my sisters, et al, to pass the word along.

got home. got showered. got back in the car. got drove -- err, i mean -- drove. parked. walked. found jenn. laid out my towel. grabbed my boogie board. got tossed around in the waves. landed really hard on my shoulder on the beach. saw a big bruise on my shoulder. got out of the water.

then my sister, et al, arrived and we set them up and got back in the water. it was fabulous! so much fun. i love going to the beach!!

after a few hours in the sun, we packed up, walked back to the cars, and headed home. where i showered once again, cleaned the boogie boards, and got back in the car to drive up to eden's.

we met up with some friends of hers for pizza and blue grass at vincenzo's pizza esperienza in new hall, ca. a fun blue grass band plays there every saturday night. it really is a pizza esperienza. really.

then we went back to eden's friends' house to play ... dun dun dun ... rock band!! i must say that the several performances of the members of the troupe were quite impressive. but i think the "best of show" prize definitely goes to clint, for his vocal stylings in our home-grown rendition of iron maiden, "the number of the beast".

we finally retired the drum sticks and bass guitar at 1:41am, and, after assuring my bro-in-law that i was "fine" to drive home, i got back in my car and found the freeway.

however, i soon discovered that my eyelids were much heavier than i have ever known them to be -- it must have been the junk food i'd been nibbling on all day -- and so at 2:22am, i found a parking lot, locked me in my car, set the car alarm, and crawled into the back seat. at 3:34am, i woke up (much pleased that i was still in the backseat of my car and not kidnapped) and drove the rest of the way home -- about an 8-minute drive -- where i assume i crawled in my bed because that is where i was when i woke up the next morning.

and so, you see: i am a bum. i don't think i can argue that now. i slept in my car.

p.s. -- yes, i remember *exactly* what time things happened. i'm an accountant. i am good with numbers. apparently.

of all the random ...

okay, so friday i met up with my sisters, bro-in-law, and cami (a real australian -- yeah -- in real life) to go down to 3rd street promenade for some good old-fashioned people watching and foot slaughtering. (eden even asked me before we went if i wanted to put on my flip flops. but i wanted to be cool in my snakeskin shoes, towering over the rest of the party. i'll admit that was a bad idea. because it was.)

so after a couple hours of walking around, and maybe one more limping around, and then another one waiting hopelessly at a restaurant that only had open seating -- which can be okay unless you happen to be in a party of 6, in which case, open seating is such a bad idea -- so, after all those hours ... we finally gave up, decided to find food somewhere not at 3rd street promenade, and limped back to the car -- well, okay, i was the only one limping.

on our way down santa monica blvd, my bro-in-law saw a denny's! yea for denny's! (did i really just say "yea for denny's?" uh huh. i did. just checked. mmeh, oh well -- we were really hungry.)

so after we got seated there, i had to go wash my hands. (we really should take a tip from the brasilians here: let's put a sink out in the restaurant reception area so we can all be a little more hygienic. don't you agree? c'mon, who's with me?)

so as i hobbled to the restroom with my frizzy-because-of-the-santa-monica-humidity hair tied in a knot and held in place with a sharp stick, i saw a familiar face. took me a couple seconds to flip through the catalogs of "familiar faces" in my head, but finally found him:

umm, airplane boy.

whoa, weird.

shoe issues

i got home from work around 10:00pm a couple weeks ago, lugged my junk to my room, and noticed something interesting:

evidently, it had been a long day.

(don't be too concerned for my mental welfare -- i keep a pair of flip-flops in my car for driving because i hate wearing shoes, so rest assured that i didn't pass the whole day in such a state of fashion faux pas. however, i *did* make it all the way from my car to my bedroom without noticing that anything was amiss. so what does that tell you? hmmm.)

on a more interesting note: i want a pair of red shoes. after spending an excrutiating 25 minutes at dsw, i found a pair i loved.

but because i not only hate shopping, but i also hate spending money, i didn't buy them. but a full month later, these shoes were still on my mind. so i went back and bought them.

but evidently i seem to be unable to make snap decisions like i used to, so i kept these shoes in the box a full month after buying them, trying them on and walking around my room every few days -- but i just wasn't sure if i really wanted to spend the money and also not sure if they were the right size.

well, i went back last week to see if they had a half-size bigger. nope. but they did have another pair of red shoes that caught my eye ... so now, because of my newly-discovered indecisive nature, i am still torn.

what's your opinion?

red patent leather and square toe? or red snakeskin alligator-skin and pointed toe? (i think i decided they are alligator, not snakeskin. i think.)

so many choices ...

eesh ... life is so hard ... :P

movin' on up

got a call from one of the partners on thursday ... "we just wanted to let you know that you are being promoted to senior. the official announcement from ed nusbaum will come on july-14 and then you'll find out about the compensation adjustment at the end of july, but we wanted to let you know as soon as we could. congratulations!"

the sun, moon, and stars

(amy, i stole your blog title. it was just so fitting!!)

to celebrate the birth of our country, i took advantage of every single minute of this day off.

having gotten home from my sister's at around 2:30 am the night before, pulling myself out of bed at 7am was a bit difficult. but i had groceries to buy and eggs to fry. so ... decked out in my pajama shorts and my i-mess-with-texas t, i headed for vons. (i'm still keeping my distance from ralph's, unfortunately. besides that, vons is closer to my house. yeah.)

after the quick outing to the grocery store, i came back home and cooked eggs for our ward fourth-of-july breakfast. dropped those off at the church and came back home to shower and get ready for the day.

unfortunately, i took too long. by the time i got back to the church with my stomach growling, my glass dish was empty and already washed and the only edible thing left was some maple sausage. so ... i grabbed a couple of those and drove home.

the sun

soon my phone rang. it was jenn. she gave me directions to zuma and told me they were by lifguard station 4. half an hour later, so was i.

jenn and her boyfriend had been there for maybe an hour already and were taking a boogie board break. but as soon as i arrived, they were ready to go in again.

the moon

i haven't ever been boogie boarding before, but, oh my goodness, i had such a good time! and i have the bruises all over my ribs to prove it!

oh -- i found out that my swimming suit bottoms are a little too big. which was a bit unfortunate for all the beach-goers at zuma that day. oops. sorry.

the stars

the evening was spent under the stars up in valencia after a delicious barbecue with my sister's friends. the city put on a fabulous fireworks show. my nephew loved it and clapped after each really big one. he's such a fun kid.