Harijan

my husband and I took advantage of the musicals during theaterfest and saw Godspell on sunday night. beautiful show! we got a cheap hotel room at the svensgaard jodge, which was modest and adorable with delicious danishes fresh every morning. there are plenty of places to eat and some of them are ridiculously expensive and some are just right. the places with cheap food also have delicious food. so not once did we feel like we had to pay a lot for a better experience or whatever. the nine million bakeries became art galleries to us. the book store and museums and what not were fun and we ended up buying a lot of books for the baby. we got massages and met some wonderful people along the way. i had a blast and i didn’t spend a crap load of money. sure there are places to go to spend lots of money. for instance, IZOD. WTF?! who shops at IZOD when they are on vacation?! sad thing is, i saw a lot of people walking around with IZOD bags. i don’t understand. you can go to almost any outlet near home and shop at IZOD or go online, but noooo, all the money they COULD spend on Solvang-specific adventures… they spend at IZOD. whatever. consumer whores. god bless america.

i had a blast and i am so glad i live not too far away. we are already thinking of doing another trip up there before the baby comes around. i found an aura photographer and thought it would be neat to take a pic of me while i was still pregnant. and do one with me and my husband too. yay fun!

the line is long. but oh so worth it.
i had a fantastic guacamole hot dog and chili fries and the hubby had this overflowing chili jalapeno cheese dog medley that he seemed to enjoy very much!

i’m going for my birthday! just made the reservations for an adorable little cabin with jacuzzi…. ooo so nice! would be perfect for me and the hubby considering i just spent the whole month 3,000 miles away from him. so when i get home, we can drive down to big bear and enjoy three days of us time. or me time. LOL.. it is MY birthday after all! hahaha.. i can’t wait! and we can bring the dog!

but it’s a cute town. from the 58 into bakersfield, you see miles of factories, warehouses, huge tanks of god knows what, oil pumps and what not. once the 58 hits the 99, though, it’s pretty residential. some parts sorta maintain that industrial look, but other parts seem pretty clean. the people are nice and it’s greener than all of it’s surroundings. which was why my husband and i headed there in the first place. we wanted to find green. we live in the desert and have been green deprived for quite some time… so we figured that we should be able to find some green if we headed north. and that we did, in bakersfield. we were happy. when we move closer to bakersfield, i’m sure i will get more familiar with the town.

there are a lot of cruddy things i can say about the AV, but something good that i can say is… it’s always sunny!

and the one really bad thing i can say is…. it’s always freakin’ sunny! i mean, you know sun-dried tomatoes??? well, in the AV, everything is sun-dried…. the dog poop on the side walk, the bottle of water you left in the car, your friends, your neighbors, your mother… i have to say, i miss the rain. but when we get thunderstorms, they are pretty sweet. hell, we just had 4 tornadoes over the weekend!

so the sucky parts…. it’s becoming excessively commercialized and over-priced for some uknown reason. why the average house is like 400,000 i’ll never know. apparently the “land” is expensive. which all it is is joshua tree and tumbleweed covered desert sand with lots of rocks and snake holes. oh MAN… is that desireable or what! but the excessively commercialized parts are lancaster and palmdale… the further you go out, the less it becomes… to the point of electric and water deprived shanty towns. so, one minute your in modern propogandic civilization or 3rd world country. take your pick. i dislike the hot dry weather. come september, you get sick of 110 degrees… and even then, mother nature still holds so dearly to her precious 100’s right through fall sometimes. i seriously have never been so excited to see a cloud. you know what a cloud means? moisture hasn’t forgotten about us just yet. the culture is kinda bland. all the “cool” kids just seem to suck up current media as if it’s the tree of life.. or fountain of youth… or god. i guess it’s a typical american community overrun by commercialized business that get most of their merchandise overseas.

k, some good things now…. the air force base! i love looking up in the sky almost every day and seeing some fighter jet or bomber or something. i see it all the time, but i still get like a 6 year old boy when ever i see them! and joshua trees. you have to like the joshua tree otherwise the antelope valley itself with loath you. and the views. there are some spectacular views! the sun sets are always awesome. the mountains along the edge or pretty sweet when seeing them from the ground, and being on them provides some amazing views. i’ve driven the length of the antelope valley. from where you get off the 5 and you’re at 300th something street west in neenach, population 850. and all the way to victorville where palmdale blvd turns into palmdale road. it really does lose it’s cool. it gets kinda bumpy and stuff down there. it takes a few hours. and the trip from palmdale up to tehachapi is fairly quick, especially in comparison. it’s worth visiting, i think… to see what the heck a high desert is and learn about it’s tempers and moods and all.

everytime i pass it on the 14, however, i am reminded of the seen in little miss sunshine where they leave from albequrque for redondo beach, and within the first few minutes of their road trip, it’s actually filmed on the 14 passing the vasquez rocks. so every time i pass it, i say we’re suddenly in albequrque!

i used to get the new jersey transit with my mom to hoboken. i remember being here at 7 AM. the sunrises were pretty. and i still remember that feeling when we’d drive over the train tracks to get to the station. it was an excited feeling… i loved the train so much. we’d get to hoboken and then take the subway to the world trade center where my mom worked. i miss those days… such simple joys.

i used to go larping here! what good times…

i went to the first and second shoujocon anime convention with my cousin and brother back in the day. it was so much fun! first time, i dressed up as mei ling from card captors, and second time i dressed up as characters from master of mosquiton. i forgot her name, it was the ice girl and my brother dressed up as the fire kid. i haven’t been into anime for a few years now… i forgot their names. lol… but the costumes were pretty sweet. we ended up winning the second year for most original. considering everyone is dressing up as angel sanctuary, final fantasy, MKR, and sailor moon characters. i had a ball, made a lot of friends, made lots of money disappear by buying bargain vhs tapes of anime and what not… oh yes, and lots and lots and lots of pocky was consumed. those days were a hoot. i liked it better than otakon mostly because it was so small. when i went the second year, almost all the faces i saw were familiar, and it was sorta a nice family bond there. otakon is a lot less personal, considering there are thousands of people a day who pass through booth to booth. considering shoujocon was my first anime convention ever, being at otakon made me feel a bit estranged and disconnected.

i want to watch the sunrise for the first time on january 24th… which happens to be my birthday!