Wow!

I have recently been receiving feedback from my readers. First of all, I HAVE READERS, this alone is so unbelievable to me, and I am so grateful - THANK YOU!! You really can't know how much I appreciate it or how much it means to me. I will do my best to live up to the kind words you have shared.

The feedback has been so thoughful and has touched me so deeply, thank you for taking the time to visit my sites, and for sending me notes and comments, they are the greatest gift I could have asked for or received.

Blessings to you all!!!!!

A few days off

I am taking a few days off from work, it has been a really long time since I have taken any time for myself. This morning is the first time I have woken up (in literally years), with nothing I had to do, and no real stress pending, how cool is that?! :O)

I have officially turned in my thesis, viewers and feedback are necessary, so please visit and comment at: bare feet walking

I was hoping for a little more sun during this mini vacation, but the weather is not cooperating, its been very stormy, yesterday we even had thunder and lightning, and the news said we got about 4 inches of rain. I have a creek in my back yard, its resembling a thin river today and the rush of water is actually louder than the ocean down the street right now.

I always get excited about the upcoming new year, it seems like a fresh start, an opportunity to begin anew and create on a blank canvas. I am very excited about the possibilities of the upcoming year. I have worked very hard and set many things in motion, and I am hopeful that some of those things will begin to grow.

whats not to love?

A special note of thanks to a little angel

One of my readers is partially responsible for my blogs. It was because this angel encouraged me to tell my silly stories, that it occured to me to start writing them down again. Thank you! Wherever you are, I hope you are well and that your life is happy. And you can now groan at my pathetic attempt to write in Spanish: Muchas gracias Angelito, Felize Navidad a tu y la familia :O)

Surfer Repair

By the time the story finally reaches the last townie, I am sure it will be EPIC and of mythical proportions, because that is how all good surf stories go.

My role is pretty small actually, but I think its entertaining enough to write about.

Sunday morning, I decided to go into town and treat myself to a mocha. It was a glorious weekend here, so bright and sunny. As I was walking back to the car with my friend and neighbor Barbie, we noticed that the water near the pier was full of surfers and some pretty awesome waves. So we decided to walk out to the pier to watch for a while, and enjoy a little sun. One of the things that always brings a smile to my face about watching surfers is how it spans generations, races and genders (still more boyz than girlz though). It is so cool to see the older folks out there and the small kids getting braver and everyone smiling.

I digress.

When we were really ready to go, I stopped to throw my cup in the trash and as I did so, I noticed one of our friends sitting on the retaining wall. He looked kind of out of it and as we got closer we could see that he was injured and bleeding. Turns out that the night before a bunch of locals had road tripped north to a secret spot and he got into a thrashing fight with a reef, puncturing his suit and making a gnarly hole in his leg. Not pretty.

He was clearly in shock, and not looking very well. Having done a lot of first aid in my life and knowing these guys only go to the doctor if strapped to a freakin stretcher, we offered to get the wound cleaned and get him to some kind of health care professional.

Wound cleaning consisted of peroxide, warm water and the most important item: beer for the patient. I am not the most sqeamish person, but I can honestly say that I about passed out, that hole was nasty, skin just isn't supposed to look like that. While doing this, the patient was trying to get a hold of a fellow local who is not only a die hard surfer but also an ER doctor. More proof that my town is small, we flagged the doc down on the road!!!!! And not only did he stop, he couldn't have been nicer!

Doctor gave us props for the clean up, called in a prescription for antibiotics because there looked to be an infection starting already (lots of bacteria in the ocean, don't you know) and told us to bandage him up. We did so and then dropped him off at a friends house for more beer painkillers and of course the Raiders game (we won, oh ya!!) .

A few hours later, I stopped to check on him. The story had already grown, and presently includes things like: "Dude, I was in the water another hour after I got pummled" ; "I surfed one more perfect barrel before I called it quits" ; "I might have died if the girls hadn't come along when they did, I couldn't even feel my leg" yada, yada, yada....

And a new local surf legend is born!

Wahine, why all the surf, sister?

Whats up with all the surf posts?

Well, there are good reasons for this.

First and foremost, I live in a very small coastal town, and a lot of the residents are surfers and several of my friends surf professionally. With only 20 businesses in town, at least 10 are directly related to surfing and water sports, and with hundreds of surfers along the beaches in our general area all day, it is pretty tough to ignore.

I have always been a beach girl, spending as much time near the ocean as possible, and thus have always been plugged in to surf and beach culture. These things alone could be explaination enough, but there is actually even more.

Without revealing anything that could get me fired, I work for a company that has just won a huge surf company account, and have spent the past few weeks logging over 8 hours a day on surfing sites and conducting market research. I literally eat, breath, think and sleep surf right now, so it is no wonder I can scarcely think of anything else to write about.

I am actually considering starting a site about the local surf life and culture here, so as to put all this knowledge to good personal use! :O)

Props

Every morning, on my way to work, for the first few miles I am along side the ocean and a bunch of vehicles parked haphazardly along the bluff. No surprise on the sunny mornings that people are out walking, fishing and surfing - but we have had a lot of mornings that are like 30 degrees or colder lately, and I just have to say that I am seriously impressed with the dedication.

Especially the surfers and kayakers, it has got to be unbelievably freezing cold. Surfers really don't get the respect they deserve as brave athletes, shot put (no offense) has got nothing on it.

If you haven't seen it, I highly reccommend the movie "Step Into Liquid" - I am pretty sure netflix has it - its a great fun documentary and it sheds a nice light on surfers and their culture.

Playin with the band

We (my friend the drummer, and I the singer) have been trying to put the right band together since July, we have played with a myriad of local musicians, all very talented, but the right blend just wasn't coming together...until yesterday. Something really good just clicked with the group that showed up, and I am super excited. It sounded better after one afternoon of newly playing together than any of the local stuff I have heard so far and it sure would be great to
play some of the local pubs and a casual now and then.

**Thanks anonymous for the question! The type of music is a nice combination of some bluesey old country, a little rock from many eras and a few originals from different band members - its good listening and dancing music :O) Our set list from Sunday (that I can recall) was as follows:
Crazy - Patsy Cline/Willie Nelson
Night Life - Willie Nelson
Georgia - Willie Nelson
Picture - Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow
All My Ex's - George Straight
Hotel California - Eagles
Shame On Me - Original - Mike Foster
Give Me One Reason - Tracy Chapman

As each little thing begins to come to fruition, I
feel a little more confident that I have made the
right choices. I try to focus on the positive, but
not all of it has been super easy. Some days it really
is two steps forward, one step back, and I have a had
a few days that it felt more like I slid all the way
to the beginning. Yesterday was one of those days
that I truly felt like I am where I am supposed to be
and that life is treating me well and it was super
nice to feel that way for a moment.

Happy Birthday!!

Happy Birthday Bean!! :O) Hope its the beginning of a wonderful year!! Thanks for being my very best friend for the past 30 years! xoxox

AzhiazheiZ

just whoa!

Damn tourists!

While visiting with friends down at the pub on
Saturday night, the talk turned to locals verses
tourists and one friends latest experience with the
town council meetings.

It seems that one of our elder citizens is seriously
irate about the "rampant jaywalking" that goes on in
town...

RAMPANT JAYWALKING!

having lived in San Francisco the past few years where
almost all walking is jaywalking and everything seems
rampant, I haven't stopped laughing about this for 4
days.

In all fairness, during tourist season and during
street fairs, its kind of a bitch to get around, and
there are a lot of folks who just cross when and where
they feel like it - but we only have one main street
and the speed limit is 35 and really on a bad day we
are talking like a 35 second pause.

Drunk Bee's - give buzzed a new meaning

When I was little we had 2 peach trees in my back yard, and at the end of the summer as the peaches were spoiling on the tree and on the ground, I noticed that every year the bee's began to act really strangely. The would fly into each other, windows, fences, they would hover in random places, tons of them would begin crawling more than flying. My Dad told me that the bee's were drunk, high off of the fermenting fruit. I thought this was fabulous! I like bee's for some reason, one of my favorite things was my grandfather and now my father telling me that I was "the bee's knees, the cats pajama's and the berries"

I came across this article and thought of my happy little friends:

Drunken Bees Act Like Buzzed Humans
-- Robert Preidt

MONDAY, Oct. 25 (HealthDayNews) -- Buzzed bees may help scientists better understand drunken human behavior, say Ohio State University researchers.

"Alcohol affects bees and humans in similar ways -- it impairs functioning along with learning and memory processing," study co-author Julie Mustard, a postdoctoral researcher in entomology, said in a prepared statement.

She and her colleagues gave various levels of ethanol -- the intoxicating agent in liquor -- to bees and studied the effect this had on their behavior.

The more ethanol they consumed, the more difficulty the bees had flying, walking, standing still and grooming. Some of the bees became so drunk they ended up flat on their backs.

This preliminary study was designed to document the effects of ethanol on the bees. In future studies, the researchers plan to use bees as a model for how alcohol affects humans, particularly at the molecular level.

"On the molecular level, the brains of honey bees and humans work the same. Knowing how chronic alcohol use affects genes and proteins in the honey bee brain may help us eventually understand how alcoholism affects memory and behavior in humans, as well as the molecular basis of addiction," Mustard said.

The study was presented Oct. 23 at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in San Francisco.

More information

The U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has information about alcohol's effects on the brain.

Festival of Lights - the boat parade

What a great way to begin the holiday season, a bunch of beautiful lighted boats, floating through the harbor