Friday morning when I got into my car to head to work, my coolant light started flashing and my car made a weird grinding noise. On Saturday I took it to the dealership to have them take a look at it, since my old lady is getting well, old. I had the entire day to kill so Richard picked me up from the dealership and we went on all kinds of adventures. While waiting for him – I meandered over to Home Depot to check out paint swatches for a spice rack that I plan on turning into a toy display that I got at the Goodwill for a whopping 2 dollars. I am dreaming of a gradient color scheme, but I think I am overestimating my painting abilities – we shall see.

First we hit the bank so that I could deposit my paycheck and then Noah’s bagels for a delicious pretzel bagel. Those are so good, as long as they don’t over toast them. Richard asked me if I had ever been to the cement slides and I told him no – which ended up with him giving me a horrified look and he proclaimed that we must go. We hit a grocery store to pick up some wax paper to slide down on and stopped in a nearby party supply store to check out what (little) Halloween stuff they had in. We made our way across town to the cement slides. Let me just state that those things looked really shady and I thought for sure that this was asking for injuries.

Richard told me that you could either use a slick cardboard box or waxed paper to slide down the slides and we both opted for the box option since there were plenty strewn about from previous visitors. I decided to add another level of danger to my sliding adventures by attempting to hold my phone while holding the box and sliding down a cement slide. Luckily it all panned out.

The cement slides and my delicious lunch at LaBou

After the cement slides we hit Fry’s Electronics to browse. Then to Dimple records where I was shocked that we didn’t walk out of there with a single thing. I attribute this partially to having stayed away from the used record section. That always does me in. After that we hit the 99 cent store to see what Halloween stuff they had (are you noticing a trend here?) We went across the street to LaBou for lunch. Everyone always rants and raves about how good this place is, but with its short daytime hours I can never seem to make it over to one before they close. Luckily we ducked in about a half hour before. I got a delicious bowl of tomato soup (pictured above) and Richard got a baguette and dill dip – man that was SO good. By the time we had finished lunch they were done with my car – so we went over to pick it up. Had a nice little scare on the way home because the shop DIDN’T SHUT THE HOOD OF MY CAR, so it started bouncing up and down as I was driving down the road – luckily I was able to pull off on a dirt shoulder and Richard jumped out and shut it all the way. JEEZ. After dropping his car off at my place we went over to Effie Yeaw to take in some sun and sit by the river.

Looking up the river
Looking down the river
I thought this leaf looked like a heart
Neat branch and mini waterfall near where we sat
   My legs and some pretty flowers behind where I was sitting

The view from my little spot in the rocks

I have no idea what kind of flowers these are but they reminded me of lavender

Dead crawdad and the view of the park behind where we sat.

It was nice to spend some time down by the river. It was perfect in the shade – We watched a guy trying to impress a girl by attempting to skip rocks and he fell down twice in the process by throwing them too hard and losing his footing. I did my best duck quacking at a couple of ducks and they came up to us. I like to think it was because of my quacks, but I’m pretty sure they are just overly humanized and were waiting for food from us. Richard spotted the crawdad pictured above in the water (it was dead) so I promptly got a stick to poke at it a little and flip it over to check it out. On the walk back to the car we spotted some dear and watched a little bunny chow down on some greens. He was beyond cute.

Out in the parking lot there was a large group of deer including one baby fawn. They got a little spooked by the people walking on the bike path and turned to head back out into the large field behind the parking lot. There was a U shaped fence around the section they were in and all of them with the exception of the fawn managed to navigate under a steel rope and back out into the field. The poor little fawn couldn’t figure out how to get around on the other side of the fence and was crying. Richard and I decided that we needed to give them a little help. He went to explore to see if the fawn could get to the group from the left side of the parking lot while I slowly walked closer trying to encourage him to walk to the right. Richard said that there was no access to the left so I started to make a large circle around to the left to push the fawn to the right – keeping my distance but close enough to get the fawn to move. He kept getting himself trapped in the corner of the fence and kept crying which was breaking my heart so I moved in just a little closer before he finally went all the way right and under the steel rope to be back with his group. Richard and I high-fived for good karma.

Did you do anything exciting this weekend?

Yesterday my roommates got married and they asked me be a bridesmaid. After 8 months of planning the big day was finally here and they had an awesome photobooth set up that we took advantage of. Pictured below are all the bridesmaids (sans one) getting goofy.

 

   
My fancy new hair and Junior!

How is it already Monday!? This weekend flew by. On Friday, Richard and I went and saw The Dark Knight Rises. I have only made it about half way through the second movie, so there were massive spoilers in the beginning, but that was OK because I am not a die hard fan. I do love the Batman franchise, but not to the point where I was disappointed to hear the ending of the second movie. Much like the first movie, there were a few parts where I teared up a bit got some dust in my eyes, and I really enjoyed Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. One thing I could not get used to was Bane’s voice – I’m sorry but it was awful. Richard begs to differ.

The early portion of Saturday was spent looking at potential apartments. I currently have until the beginning of October to find a new place to live and apartment/house hunting has become quite the daunting task. I have yet to find a place that really sticks out as somewhere I really want to live, but I have not given up hope. We toured 3 places and will continue to keep looking on rent.com and craigslist to see if I can view a few more before making a final decision.

Our evening was spent seeing Iron -fucking- Maiden in concert. I was exceptionally excited about this not only because I was able to plus myself in with the group that I volunteer with, which is always nice not having to cop up the cash for a ticket, but it was IRON MAIDEN! Coheed and Cambria opened for them, which I thought was a weird choice, but they were decent. I don’t really consider them my cup of tea – but they sounded great. Iron Maiden was no joke and tore it up for a good 2 hours. I really enjoyed all the different stage backgrounds and the various Eddies. I am pretty sure that when Bruce made a reference to Pink Floyd during some banter between songs, that Richard and I were the only ones that got it. It tried to rain on us but luckily it held out until we made it to the car. On the way home we saw some seriously awesome lightning and I confessed that I am afraid of thunder.

Sunday was spent hanging around. After cutting my hair I had planned on going back to black at least until after my roommates wedding, so I did a quick color on my hair. We had intended on going to a massive yard sale thing near my house, but by the time we got there, there was no sign of yard sales at all. I was majorly disappointed but something tells me my pocket book would say otherwise. We went to Jalisco’s for lunch and it was so delicious. I got the chicken tacos (pictured below) and smothered it in Tapatio. The little girl in front of me ordered an apple juice and it sounded really good. I can’t even recall the last time I had one, so I also enjoyed that with my tasty food. After that we hit up A-1 Comics to browse around. I was good and picked up the new Guild graphic novel – Richard on the other hand left with a nice stack of comics.

We crashed out for a nap before heading over to our friend Jonny and Julie’s place. Jason was in town and James was also over (that’s a lot of J’s!) and we spent the evening watching the Mars landing, playing SNES and NES games, debating various nerdy topics, and giving Junior, their cat, catnip and watching him drool – he is so cute! We had a great night and called it at around 1AM. This coming weekend I head to Outside Lands!

   
My tasty lunch from Jalisco’s and watching the guys play video games

How was your weekend?

   
Our view from our table at The Place & their awesome neon sign
On Tuesday, Richard and I decided to hit Downtown Tuesday Night in old Roseville. It’s been ages since either of us have been there so we thought we would check it out. The city shuts down a portion of the main road in town and various vendors set up booths selling goods and food and there is a stage where different musical acts perform. Further down the street classic cars park for all to admire. We made a few trips up and down the street checking things out – I was disappointed to find that most of the booths were premade items or services offered through out the city, instead of crafty type stuff, but thats Ok. I really enjoyed admiring the old cars and can’t wait until I get my hands on my Dad’s ’64 Chevy.

Our delicious Americana pizza
We decided to grab a bite to eat after we were done wandering around, and had noticed a pizza place that we had never been to. From the outside you would never know how ritzy it is inside, but we had already committed by saying hello to who I am assuming was the owner when we stepped foot in the door. She was extremely friendly and kept complimenting my clothes and tattoos and the like, and she stuck us right in the window. She was even kind enough to move their big sign so that we could people watch as we ate. We settled on sharing an Americana pizza, which consisted of aged pepperoni, provolone cheese and mozzarella cheese. It was really really good. We also couldn’t beat the price of just $13 dollars for our meal. I would definitely eat there again.

Unbeknownst to us, our friend James was meeting a lady and her friend at the market as well and we saw him wandering by. For some reason we both forgot how to communicate in the real world and were trying to figure out if we should bang on the window or figure out how to dial on my cell phone, when Richard just finally bolted out the door to catch him. It was a pretty funny display I am sure if anyone was watching. James joined us for a beverage and then we met up with his friends. We did a couple more laps up and down the street before parting ways for the evening. All in all it was a beautiful night and I had a great time spending it with friends.