Mr. Clean lives in my complex

Yes! That is correct ladies and gentlemen. The very bald man of superior cleaning products lives in my condo complex. I've seen him several times and not only does he like to clean, he his clean shaven. I think he must have used that magic eraser on his chest hair because there is none to be found. The first time I saw this bare chested man he was in the community spa with some other complex residents. I can only imagine that he was giving sage advise on cleaning products and scrubbing methods. Like how to get the soap scum from your shower curtain.

The second sighting of this shiny bald headed man was when we was sweeping the leaves from the porch of his condo. And apparently the best way to sweep leaves is in jeans, flip-flops and no shirt. I mean really why do you need a shirt to sweep?

The third time I saw him was when he was entering the laundry room. And I assumed he must be washing all of this tight white t-shirts because once again he was walking around sans shirt. He probably got them all dirty from all the cleaning he does for other people. I mean he is always showing up unannounced at peoples houses giving them a pat on the shoulder or a wink and a thumbs up.

And JUST this week, I saw the sultan of scrub once again making his way to the laundry room and it seems once again washing those ever dirty white shirts. You would think that guy had an endless supply of t-shirts or had a contract agreement with Hanes but I guess he just always has dirty shirts and doesn't ever have a clean one to wear. Perhaps Mr. Clean ought to look into laundry products. Like "do-at-home" kind of line so then he'll at least have one clean shirt to wear.

But just in case you didn't know Mr. Clean has a tattoo. Yeah that's right his Clean imagine is just a facade. He's really a hardcore bad ass with a tat on his right arm. It looks like the letter 'M' stretched out down his bicep. It's red. I can only guess that it stands for Master Cleaner. After all he does offer a variety of awesome products.

Whore-for-scopes

I have a confession to make. I LOVE Horoscopes! Yep, that's right i love reading general written statements that are so white washed they could apply to just about anyone on the face of the Earth but i'll still read them and think, "That totally describes my life right now." And in some instances the accuracy of association is so eerily close to my circumstance that i think for just a second that fortune tellers really do exist. But what i love most is my friend Suzy likes to read them as much as i do and this year she saved my birthday horoscope. So let us take a journey into my future this next year and dissect the predictions of promise.

"You'll love the recognition and money you get for your individual efforts" Hmmm, well i'm not really sure how the money aspect will apply considering i don't have a job but perhaps i'll become a dog walker and find the money it brings is completely worth the effort i put in? But then money has never really been a motivation for me so i don't know "love" would be an accurate description. Now recognition......that's something i can love. Who doesn't like a pat on the back or a printed certificate from a package computer program that reads "Most Motivational" that is given out at a lunch time meeting with store bought cake and foam cups?

"The group accepts you, but you don't fit in there" Now this one confuses me a bit. i'm not really quite sure what "group" is being referred to here. i don't currently have a work group but let's look at the next sentence. "You'll roam, looking for a "home" for your talents" Now see i'd say the was completely applicable to my work situation 3 months prior. Can horoscopes be retroactive? Are they just validating a decision you've already made in life? For this we will pretend the scrape of newspaper is endorsing my decision to quit work. Let us continue.

"August shows you a better match." Let's see here.....it's the 27th of August and i still have yet to get a job interview or call back. Perhaps my "better match" is this unemployed life i have chosen. Maybe i'll find someone who needs a travel companion and has endless supplies of money to fund this. Let's go with that.

"Unpredictable interruptions, detours and surprises keep your personal life hopping." I would have to agree that my personal life is "hopping" but i don't know that it's necessarily unpredictable, so far I've planned every trip out of town and kind of know it's coming but perhaps when i go to Japan it will come with surprises like i get to participate in a sumo wrestling match and it happens to be the same match where Dwayne Johnson is attending, OH YEAH! And i suppose i do have 10 more months till my next birthday. Ok, bring on the detours, i have a full tank of gas to waste.

"Wedding bells ring in December." I am going to guess these wedding bells are ringing for others and not myself but that i will indeed hear them as a supportive bystander. Or maybe i'll be stealing wedding bells and they will be ringing as i'm running from the angered masses. Do people even have bells at weddings anymore?

"Aries and Leo adore you" Well that's just nice to know. I think i might start asking people their astro signs and if they adore me or not. Survey to be compiled later.

"Your lucky numbers are 47, 2, 19, 33 and 45" Now are those lucky numbers for the year? The month? The next power ball drawing? I have yet to buy a lottery ticket perhaps i should look into this. Maybe that's the money for my individual efforts. Time to get to a gas station.

Thank you Arizona Republic Newspaper for your birthday predictions. Perhaps in 10 months we will visit these again and see whether or not they actually came true. And if the didn't i will stand outside your corporate office with a big sign that reads "YOUR HOROSCOPES GIVE FALSE HOPE"

And for your enjoyment here is an awesome picture of Messier 81 i figure a celestial message should be accompanied by a celestial body.

And now i'm retired

One month and 4 days ago i quit my job of 8 yrs. Yes i realize this seems like the most ridiculous thing someone could do in an economy that's flailing but in light of the circumstances that were around my departure i just couldn't convince myself that a move to Fairfield  CA which is 417 miles away (Yes, I google mapped it because i truly care about accuracy in stories, no Big Fish here) was really the best idea for my personal life. Also i felt sick to my stomach at the thought of having to uproot my entire life and house and move to a town where i would know NO ONE.  Somehow companies think, "Oh, moving must be so easy for you. You're young and single. You don't have a family to move." Sure yeah, maybe physically moving a single individual is easier because all of my possessions will fit into one medium sized U haul with half of that space being taken up by my shoe collection and i don't have a playpen of toys that have to come with me containing 12 different Elmo dolls and an ENTIRE princess castle complete with moat but i think what people fail to realize is when a single person moves it is ONLY they that moves. It's not a small family community that moves together to restart their lives in a new home with each other to lean on through the hard times. It is only ONE (The loneliest number) that moves with me and finding shoulders to lean on is about as hard as finding jewelry along the CA coast line, it takes long hours spent alone swinging a big piece of equipment looking ridiculous to everyone else on the beach until that other freak with the metal detector comes along and knows exactly why you're out there searching for loose change. And after 3 yrs on my ghetto neighborhood street I've finally found a group of beach combers that find the same ridiculous joy i do in scouring life for buried treasure. And i just couldn't bare to leave my band of pirates and swashbucklers, after all we pirates must stick together.

So that was it, i said NO Thanks to offer of relocation and decided to see what the big wide sea of employment had to offer in deeper waters. And what have i found so far? Well absolutely nothing because instead of manning my ship and sailing out to destiny, i decided to walk the plank and take a bit of a swim around my little ocean island. A week and 2 days after i was handed my last two pay checks i boarded a plane for the land of leprechauns and rainbows for 9 days. And although i never did find a small red bearded man i did find a 4 leaf clover and found out that i indeed have mad skills in driving on the wrong side of the road (even you couldn't shake my skill CLIFDEN CASTLE, in your face) After my return to browner pastures i packed another bag and flew up to the land of green in Oregon. I had decided i should spend some time in the homeland of hippies and recycling. But i did learn that giving myself less than 24 hours to recover from a 12 hr plane ride the day before was probably not the best idea. I had to spend most of time laid up on my couch trying to rid my body of the enormous cankles that had formed from sitting for hours on end in a seat that is way too uncomfortable. Strangely enough my feet did not swell which is good because i was able to go to DSW with my $10 off coupon and purchase a new pair of incredibly cute pumps I'll probably wear once this year (I wasn't exaggerating about the shoe collection) and i did one load of laundry. But that second journey on the plane was incredibly difficult to manage. I felt like a caged animal ready to spring forth and rip the seats to shreds with my finger nails and run up and down the isles screaming for the lack of space i had in front of me. I had enough of sitting time to last me a good month. The anticipation of being on the ground and not cooped in a metal tin box with recirculated air was straining my last nerve of patience.

But Oregon was the out in its best form. Beautiful weather, green fields, trees and flowers all in bloom. Yes, i know it seems like i am describing a Disney movie but seriously it felt like i was walking through a landscape painting for 2 weeks. Oregon new it's friend had returned and wanted to greet her with the best spread it could offer. And after my stint back home i realized a few things: Ireland is hard pressed to be in competition with the green fields in Oregon, i love long motorcycle rides as much as i did when i was 5, i have the cutest niece and nephew EVER and there are plenty of reasons i no longer live at home.

And then back to the brown cloud of So Cal i went. Once again in town less than 24 hrs before i took off to AZ. My sister was graduating college and being a good older sister i decided to see her cross the stage and receive that diploma she had worked 11 hard years to get.

And here i sit in my friend's house composing this ever intriguing blog entry reminiscing about the 9 yrs i spent in this desert landscape and thinking, Yes this place is still TOO hot. But good friends will always be good friends, the movie theater will always be the easiest escape from the unbearable heat, baseball games are always better in person, the freeways here cannot be beat and i will always be involved in the lives of those that live here to matter how small and when God blesses you to see the most amazing shooting star you better make a wish that your life will always be wonderful and that being temporarily retired is AWESOME! (Now to find a way to become independently wealthy so i can remain retired)


Here is a picture of the CURSED Clifden Castle, that story to come later.

Attractive for a hour

I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve as a holiday. Haven't been for years, there are probably only a handful of New Year's Eve that i can remember as being a good time. I feel like there is always a lot of hype and not enough delivery. i suppose you can pose the arguement that the fun is what you make it, which i would agree to an extent but more often than not it seems some unexpected terrible thing happens that ruins the event for me anyway. So this year i decided to spend New Year's Eve with just one friend on a yacht in San Diego. My typical MO would have been to go to some lame church dance where everyone akwardly stands around when the clock strikes midnight wondering if they should attempt to kiss someone or just ignore the fact that is a common tradition for the holiday. In order to avoid the lameness of this cultural event i decided to search in the area and find something much cooler and when i saw i had the opportunity to fulfill my goal to ride on a yacht i thought there was no better way to do it than over New Year's Eve. My friend and i arrived a little early to make sure we made the check in time but didn't realize that actually meant an hour later than the ticket stated so we hung around the little cafe they had waiting to board the ship. Once they finally started boarding the passengers they turned us away at the door saying we had to trade our paper tickets in for real tickets and it was only when we went outside that we noticed the long line of passengers waiting to get on board. Annoyed that no one had told us in the last hour that we were supposed to check in for the night we quickly went through the ticket line and then snuck back into the cafe and filtered ourselves in with the mass of people to avoid waiting even longer to get on the boat. By then we were starving and anxious to get the appetizers that awaited us.

The boat was BIG, it was 3 decks, with 2 interior levels and the upper top level. There was music blasting and crowds of people making their way to the bars to get their first drinks. We stayed on the lower deck for a little while snagging every chance we could to grab food from the servers as they brought it up from the kitchen. Pot stickers, sliders, spanakopita, and chicken tender skewers, later i found out what i thought at first was a shrimp cocktail turned out to be a little round of grilled cheese with a shot of tomato soup. We made our way up to the top deck where we grabbed some New Year's Eve head bands, a lei and a noise maker. My friend went to the bar to grab a soda and as i waiting i noticed that the one bar tender handing out beers and champagne wasn't the girl i thought she was, it was actually a guy sporting eye liner and polished nails.

We spread our night out going up and down the levels, grabbing food as it went by and dancing when a good song came on. About an hour before midnight we went to the upper deck and found one of the tables only occupied by 2 guys and asked if we could sit down and join them. They assured us they weren't going to bite and introduced themselves as Izzy and Johnny, they had known each other since they were 13 and were best friends. I had originally thought they were a gay couple enjoying the night together but their mannerisms suggested otherwise. We chatted with them, danced with them and then rang in the New Year with them and to their credit they did give us each a piece of gum probably intending to receive a kiss but were probably sorely disappointed when their efforts were for not. We posed for a picture with them and they invited us to a comedy night where Izzy was performing and then Johnny stated, "Yeah, i just turned 21." "What? You just turned 21?" Little did i realize we had been partying with guys who were a decade younger than we were. He was born in Sept of '91 which put him still in elementary school while i was graduating high school. Inevitably the question of our age came up and when i said 32 there was a look of disbelief. But when my licensed confirmed my age, it wasn't long after that all of a sudden they both had to use the bathroom and somehow didn't make it back up to the deck. I realize it's common for women to lie about their age but i didn't think i was at that point in life yet. Guess i better stick to 25. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. The boat docked we went back to the hotel and slept in till 9:30am and went down to get our free breakfast but found out the kitchen wasn't open on New Years and that they were supposed to comp us dinner on the 31st but forgot to tell us so instead we went down the street and grabbed a $4 breakfast special and convinced the front desk to comp us dinner on the 2nd, which incidentally ended up being (so far) the best meal of the New Year.

When we went back to the hotel we had to do some explaining to the front desk staff of what had happened and then when we went and sat down to eat the server had to consult with the front desk and while our wait staff was away the chef came out and started chatting with us and i asked him what was good and of course he said everything. He assured us that everything was made with fresh ingredients but he did tell us that they didn't have the New York steak and that instead he was given filet mignon by his butcher. So when the server came back and told us we could have anything on the menu it wasn't really a question of whether or not we ordered the filet but how we wanted it cooked.

Overall i'd give it and 8 out of 10 on the fun scale because although we scared off some boys we both ended up with a big hunk of meat in the end. Happy New Year everyone!