Monthly Archives: May 2007

Hey, I’ve been here for almost three years now!

Here’s an entry for the day before I left:
http://sockgirl.livejournal.com/442865.html

I just posted on blogging.la about Vine Bar closing. Bother.

I’ve got nothing else to say except – NOW where am I supposed to go to mope on Tuesdays???

I was talking to Steve “Captain Canoe” Price on MSN this morning. He was in Belgium, travelling around Europe with his lovely fiancee (and another AUS friend of mine) Christina. He’d said a couple things I registered as weird – like knowing I had a nice apartment, or knowing I was on Couchsurfing – but I didn’t really figure out why. Then he told me that he’d run into a friend of mine in Madrid.

“WHO?!?!” I typed. Turns out, it was Deena. Who left for Europe about five weeks ago. She’s over there on a round-the-world trip, making a documentary and experiencing her lifetime dream. And just the other day, I was wondering where she was, and if she was OK. Turns out she’s just fine. And she was staying at the same Couchsurfing.com host as Steve and Christina. How random is THAT?

My connection came up when they all went out for dinner together, and Steve told Deena he was a recruiter for UBC. “Oh,” Deena said. “Do you know about the big concert they have there every year?” Given that Steve is in the ACF Video LYING ON A PILE OF GEOTEK, I think that yes, he is familiar with it. So the connection was made, that all of them, these three random couchsurfers in the middle of Madrid, were friends of me, Jillian, ex-Vancouverite, back in L.A.

Apparently, my reach is worldwide. I should work more on developing myself as a brand.

In 2003, my friend Farshad informed us all about Friendster. We were all so horribly interconnected at UBC that it was necessary. Now, we could track those associations! It was great! Yay, FOAF data architecture!

Then I moved to L.A., and everyone was on the MySpace. So I jumped on that bandwagon instead. My friends and I all added each other. And I’m so glad I WAS on the MySpace, because when Paul and I started dating, he tracked down my profile for extra information before calling me – which is how he knew I was even someone he wanted to date. But over the past year, I’ve really only used MySpace for tracking down new music, as lots of bands add me as a friend when one of their influences/spinoffs/labelmates is on my friends list.

Today, I finally signed up for Facebook, because I was a) bored and b) curious. And holy shit there’s a LOT OF PEOPLE ON THERE. There’s people on there I wouldn’t have expected to see. There’s more of my high school classmates. And, while my college buddies never transitioned from Friendster to MySpace, you people all seem to have happily trapised over to Facebook. And I can see why, because the system actually works – it’s like Twitter and Friendster had a baby! Unlike MySpace, which is totally held together with chewing gum, crappy bands, porn stars, and hamsters in the servers.

I kind of feel like I’m drinking Kool-Aid even typing the site into my Firefox, but I see the appeal, and I see how it works. So I’m on there now. With a network of 38 friends, inside of 24 hours. And in case anyone else is looking for me, run a search.

The people across the street from us have a produce truck. A produce truck with the horm pimped out to play La Cucaracha

We hear it coming home. “La cu-ca-ra-cha, la-cu-ca-ra-cha, da da da-da-da-da dum!”

Sometimes we hear it five times in a row. Sometimes, we only hear one cucaracha. Sometimes, we just hear it trailing off: “La cu-caaa-raaaa-chaaaaa….daaaaaa….daaaaaa…daaa…, like it’s just running out of steam.

Tonight, we were watching the Office when we just hear the “da da da-da-da-da dum!” And that was all. And for some reason, that was just hilarious. The tune may be annoying in its entirety, but somehow – random chunks of it are hilarious!

Last month, I had a Car Scare.

See, Zippy is getting elderly. My beloved baby 3-door Saturn, the car I bought when I was twenty in Amarillo, is starting to fall apart. I took him to Saturn to be looked at, and they told me he needed $1400 worth of repairs.

Well, shit. It’s really not worth putting $1400 into a car that’s as old as Zippy. So I looked into getting a new car. I did research, and test drove a Mini, and decided on a new name for a new car. I want another little bitty car, like a Mini or a Matrix or a Mazda3, in black-on-black. Then I will slap some cobweb decals on it, hang a bat from the rearview, put my “Pirate Girl” bumper sticker on it, and call it Spooky.

But after doing the math, I realized that there isn’t really any way I can afford a new car. Not if I want to have a nice wedding. The amount I’m squirrelling away with Paul right now (we’re starting to each put matching amounts in an ING 4.5% savings account now towards the Wedding) would be equal to the amount I’d spend in car payments. So rather, I could AFFORD a new car. I’d just rather not go into debt from getting married.

I decided to call around instead, to track down a shop who would fix some of the glaring issues. Like the seeping radiator. And the leaking brake cylinders. And the thermostat. And I DID. I found a wonderful place called J & S Smog & Auto Repair, out in NoHo. They were very nice, and fixed everything that Saturn wanted $1400 for – for $524. Zippy was a much healthier car, and sounded years younger when I drove out. But now, the brake cylinder is leaking again. Badly. It isn’t that the shop is deliberately deceptive, I don’t think – they got great user reviews on Citysearch – but we’ll find out for sure when I take the car back on Saturday. It’s mostly just annoying and worrisome.

However, finding a decent mechanic made the difference, and I realized I could keep my car. I was worried about it falling apart, piece by piece, and having to pay Saturn dealership prices on the work. So I decided to keep Zippy after all. My credit rating, after all, is rapidly recovering from the beating it suffered at the hands of Big Scary Mike. And I’d rather have a good rating when I apply for a loan, because that will save literally thousands of dollars in fees and interest. So let’s hope that, when I take the car back to NoHo on Saturday, that they fix the broken cylinder without charging even more for it. Let’s hope that this is a nice shop that will help me achieve that dream of hanging onto one of the last of the three-doored Saturns. They don’t make the Zippy model any more. I’d like to keep him while I can.