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camilles is: in love an artist a friend a sister a daughter a daughter-in-law shy an introvert dorky silly cool i took a break in november 05 nothing in june 06 too busy in september 06 december was busy, too february? forget about it got lazy in may |
 h a p p y l e a p d a y ! for some reason, it seems like people in the media have been discussing that today is leap day quite a bit. i mean, is it really all that exciting? the only people that really have a reason to be excited about it are people who have birthdays today. so to them, happy birthday. and in other random thoughts... everyone should be so lucky to be told that they are beautiful every day, and know that the person who is saying it really, truly means it. that makes me lucky. camilles (10:02pm, 2.29.08)
 c r a z y c a t i don't often mention my parents crazy cat, but let me give you an introduction to lola. she's about 6. very cute. but is also the craziest cat i have ever had a chance to know. i don't really know what her deal is, but she would rather bite and scratch you than let you pet her. both of my parents seem to like her plenty well. and she likes them back. but she'll still bite and scratch them if she gets the opportunity. her favorite toy? the little curly thing that you pull off a jug of milk in order to get the top off. hands down, her favorite. i don't exactly know how it is that she figured out that she liked them so much, but she's pretty much addicted.
 click the picture to get a bigger action shot she has a basket full of them hanging from the water faucet of my parents' wet bar. (i don't think it has ever really been used as a bar the entire time we've lived there. the cupboards underneath always had art supplies in them, i think.) anytime she feels like playing, she'll jump up on the bar, pick one out, and carry it to a better place to bat it around.
 when she feels like enough is enough, she ALWAYS makes it over the fridge in the kitchen. she'll bat it around for a little while, and eventually position it so that it's JUST peeking out from underneath the grate. she'll sit there, staring at it, staring at it, staring at it (i took a video, and it lasts well over a minute of her just sitting there looking at it)... before she finally pounces on it and shoves it all the way under the fridge. strange cat, right?
 since i am too afraid to pet her, the one way i show her love is by retrieving her milk curls from out under the fridge with the aid of a yard stick. you can see, she has been very busy. funny cat. camilles (7:22pm, 2.27.08)
 b l a h d a y i'm just having a blah kind of day. there was plenty at work to keep me busy, and while i was able to keep my focus most of the time, the overall mood in the office was kind of blah. not much excitement. one of my office friends invited me to sushi for lunch today, and it was really tasty, but when i got back to work, i was still feeling kind of blah. maybe it's the weather. it's supposed to rain again tomorrow. maybe it's my hair, which i'm supposed to get cut and colored next week. maybe it's because my boss is gone. probably because i miss jeff. i have no control over the timing of any of those things, so maybe after i get dinner with eric tonight (which won't be blah, i'm sure), i'll come home and eat mochi and find something sassy to wear to work tomorrow. blah. camilles (5:24pm, 2.21.08)
 h a v e i m e n t i o n e d ? have i mentioned how much i love living in san diego? people probably think of it as a big city, and it is, but the thing i love is how small town it is. so small town, that you never know who you'll run into when you make a random change in plans and end up in a bar you've never been to before. years ago...and i'm talking YEARS...when len and i were still working together at the doomed print shop, he used to come in and tell me about this guy that he had met at a party and started seeing on local tv all the time, because dude looked like bono. so eventually i met the dude, who's name is pavel, partied at his house and we would run into each other around town or whatever. and then the print shop went under, and i started working at the real estate company. where one day, one of the gals i worked with came in talking about how she'd just been at one of the branch offices, and had run into a dude who looked like bono. what do you know? it was pavel. so i found his email address, and would send "how ya doin'?" emails every once in a while. eventually he moved on and i moved on. but we'd still see him around town, or hear about him. i heard that he'd decided to try to the bono thing for real, and he moved out of san diego. although i did find his U2 tribute band, and we all went and saw him perform one night. and then he went on "The Next Best Thing" that celebrity impersonator show. and then he started showing up in magazines. and all over the internet.
 anyway, helen came to town, and we had originally planned on going beer golfing. but it wasn't quite the same without ben and my husband with us to join in the fun. i had heard that a bunch of friends were headed down to south park to check out some bar that has an impressive beer selection, so we picked up len and headed over. we had just parked and started to walk across to the bar, when len sort of did a double take, and said "oh, i thought that guy back there might have been pavel, but he doesn't live here anymore." and started talking about how he keeps seeing him pop up on random people's myspace pages...when all of a sudden he just stopped dead in his tracks and looks at the guy coming up behind us. "len?" "pavel?" and it WAS him. he grabbed me and gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked "do you remember me? i was just thinking about you, cami...you are on my website!" like i could forget the only guy i know that looks like bono?! turns out he was on his way to the same random bar as we were, for a party that was actually happening a week later, but he had decided what the heck...why not stick around and enjoy the crowd? anyway, we took pictures and chatted and just generally enjoyed seeing him. he's a totally nice guy, and it seems like the bono thing is really working out well for him. he's got a cool website called www.bonolookalike.com (look for me in his "photos" section. i'm wearing an orange shirt!), and is appearing all this week on Family Feud of all things. how funny is that? all that bono stuff aside, the highlight of the weekend was obviously helen's visit. i have to say, in that picture of her up there with abbey and our faux bono, you can tell that she is looking more beautiful these days than ever. it was great getting to hang out and have the chance to talk about life and what it is and how it has surprised us and turned out how we expected and how we haven't expected. i was just sorry to see her go again. she is one of my very best friends, and all the time in the world isn't enough. we spent most of our weekend eating at some yummy restaurants and talking and walking around various places. and the weather was pretty nice, so how couldn't all those things equal a fun weekend? but it's back to the grind. tonight, i'm drinking some cream sherry, trying to catch a teeny buzz, so that cleaning my bedroom won't seem like such a horrific task. :) camilles (8:12pm, 2.19.08)
 e m p t y that's the best way to describe my current state of being. camilles (8:56pm, 2.15.08)
 h a p p y v a l e n t i n e's d a y ! no reason for the funny face, other than that sometimes i just try to see what random expressions i can catch when i decide to put up a picture of how i look at the moment. jeff told me that my hair was particularly crazy today...but i didn't really notice. we celebrated tonight by first picking up a slingbox at best buy (christmas gift card monies), and then dinner at buga (sorry, no link) for korean bbq. so right now i'm sitting in a meat coma, smelling of bbq, but it's ok, because it was delicious. the only thing i'm kind of wondering is if i'm going to have to wash my hair in the morning to get the smell out. i try to only wash my hair every other day. we didn't do traditional presents this year, and instead decided to buy ourselves a new bed (mattress and box spring). our old bed was one that jeff had bought before we even started dating, and every night i felt like he was rolling down a hill onto me. i like to sleep at the very edge of the bed, and i don't really move around all that much, but jeff not only likes to sleep pressed right up against me, he flops back and forth like a fish all night. since there was a little hill in the middle of the bed from before he liked to sleep right next to me, he was always being forced by gravity into my little dent, which forced me to start to fall half out of the bed. so the nice new bed is much fancier and is still flat, and i've had a really good night's sleep the last few nights. helen is coming to visit this long weekend, and i'm super excited. she and i haven't had alone hanging out time in ages, so we've got lots of catching up to do. so much to talk about. well, i'm totally exhausted, and ready to sit my rear on the couch and watch some tv wearing some comfy clothes. hope you enjoyed a nice valentine's day with your sweetie! camilles (9:08pm, 2.14.08)
 a n d i'm b a c k ! i'm back from my trip to baja mexico, and to say it was probably the most fun thing i have ever done in my entire life wouldn't be an exaggeration. it was fun, challenging, exciting, breathtaking, hilarious, and crazy, all at once. and now that i have done it once, all i can think about is what would the chances be for me to try to do it again. i met up with my coworkers at the airport on sunday morning. it was raining and cold, but we had decided to wear flipflops and shorts to commemorate where it was that we were headed off to. a short, 2-hour plane ride (and a variety of card games) later, and we had landed in the san jose del cabo airport. we navigated through customs and immigration, avoided being sidetracked by the sharks trying to sell you timeshares, and got outside to where our transportation was waiting to take us away. once we got to the hotel and the rooms/roommates had been straightened out at the front desk (i was set up to share a room with some man i had never met before!), we headed out to the pool to enjoy some sun and beers and really crummy mexican food before the superbowl started. we had a few hours to kill before our scheduled introduction meeting in the basement of the hotel, which went fine, and was followed up by a dinner right on the marina with all 20 attendees and our 2 guides. let me just pause here to say, i am absolutely shocked that all 20 people from around the country, Mexico, and Ecuador all made it on time. with no mishaps. after dinner, a few of us broke off to go check out the famed cabo nightlife. which wasn't all that happening at 10pm on a sunday night, although i did get to drink a beer at squid roe and get just an inkling of a nostalgic feeling for the old tj days. we headed back to the hotel for a few drinks in the hotel bar, and called it a night. meeting time on monday morning was 6am, and again, i was shocked to see everyone was there with all of their stuff, on time. we took about a 45 minute van ride to the wide open baja test track, where we had breakfast and orientation. this is where we had to resign all the paperwork we had signed before, basically saying that we'd owe lots of money if we crashed our cars, and would be responsible for our own lives and limbs if we got into any terrible accidents. and then we were off.
 for the next 3 days, we drove about 500 miles across and up the baja peninsula. 170 miles to la paz on monday. 250 to san carlos on tuesday. the remainder to loreto on wednesday. we were split off into 2 groups of 5 cars, each led by a guide (we got an off-road racer, the other group had an ex-formula 1 and indy car racer) and chased by a team of amazing crew guys. all along the way people were either meeting up with us at random places on the sides of dirt roads or highways to fill us up with gas, make repairs, and feed us.
 i don't know what was stranger. driving racecars through major cities on regular city streets, or driving along what was considered the main highway to many of the small ranches all around the peninsula, which was made up of a 1 lane dirt trail. but whether we were on paved roads or dirt trails, the scenery all around us was amazing.
 we were pretty much treated like rockstars wherever we drove. kids would come running to get stickers. adults would take pictures of us passing through. when we made a stop at one of the historic missions along the way, one of the locals who was guiding groups of visitors on tours through the town told me i was awesome for coming in with the guys i was with.
 there wasn't much downtime while we were away. we were pretty much up at the crack of dawn, driving all day, and pulling into town right before dinner. when i wasn't in the car, i was pretty much hanging out with my coworker dan and his co-driver tino, and we kept ourselves busy and entertained with a competition to take unflattering pictures of the people in our group. dan is reviewing his work in the photo above. and as you can see, i drank lots of mexican coke while i was down there.
 as we were stopped at this mission, my boss pondered with me about how a place that was pretty much exactly the same as most of california was 300-200 years ago, all of a sudden slowed down when it came to technological progress. seeing the way that so many people lived down there made me appreciate everything that i have, but at the same time, made me wonder if my life really is that much better. it has to be a simpler way of life, when "driving into town" requires a 50 mile ride one way in a beat up old truck on a 1 lane dirt trail. and since we saw some people had satellite tv out in the sticks, maybe they like it that way.
 our entire group of 10 cars did an awesome job of surviving the trek without any major driver-caused incidents. not even one flat tire. the worst thing that happened was my boss's co-driver experiencing a minor brain blankout, and instead of being able to choose to go right or left, drove straight into a bunch of cactus. my boss said the face shield on his helmet was completely green from the cactus explosion (no windshields on our cars!), and they were both completely covered with spikes. he pulled his watch back at a stop, and showed me how his wrist looked like it was furry, when it was actually tons and tons of tiny cactus spikes. i tried pulling some of it out for him, but they were barbed and kind of just broke off at the surface. when we were back at work on friday, he said he looked like he had a rash going up and down from all the spikes he wasn't able to get out. in spite of my costochondritis and lack of much experience driving stick, i think i made it through this trip very respectably. i was wrapped up pretty tight with the ace bandage, and the 5 point harness holding me into my seat kept me from going anywhere. my co-driver was extremely patient with all of the stalling out i did in the car, but as i got the hang of it more and more, i was able to do some pretty tricky starts on hills, and even got up to about 77.8 mph on some of the straightaways. and while my only real concern about the trip was the fact that i was going to be the only girl in a group of about 28 (including guides and crew), i felt pretty safe the entire time. my coworkers and the crew were keeping an eye out for me, and other than the one night that i slept that the alcatraz hotel in san carlos with my nightstand pushed against the door, i felt pretty secure.
 we took charter planes from loreto back to cabo on thursday, which gave us about 3.5 hours to kill in town before our shuttle picked us up to take us back to the airport. we rounded up a small group of guys to go out and enjoy the sunshine, and we ended up hiking through town to a place on the main beach called billigan's island. we sat at a table in the sand, drank a few buckets of tecate-in-a-can, ate some pretty gross food, bought a few souvenirs from the vendors that came to our table, watched a silly drinking contest that somehow degenerated into some dancing bikini girls, and enjoyed the warm weather. since the rest of the guys didn't have to leave until the next day, dan and i said our goodbyes to them, caught a water taxi and headed back to the designated meeting spot for 25 minutes at the pool (just to say we did it), a quick change, and then scrambled to the lobby with all of our stuff with about 5 minutes to spare before the shuttle picked us up. and then we were home. and back at work the next day. i've got so many more stories and details of the trip that i could tell, but there is no way i could write about them all here. but i definitely made memories that will last a lifetime. i'm thankful for how well the entire trip went, how well behaved our company guests were, how smoothly the crew running the tour worked with us, how lucky i was to be able to go, and for who i was able to share the experience with. now i'm just trying to figure out how to get jeff to be able to do something like it. :) enjoy all of my pictures! camilles (7:04pm, 2.10.08)
off to mexico that is. first thing in the morning, i'll be heading down to the airport with my bags and high hopes that everyone from all around the country makes it to the hotel in cabo for our 6pm meet-and-greet. weather.com says that san diego will be cold and rainy. i plan to show up to the airport in shorts and jelly shoes, because cabo is supposed to be in the mid-70s when we land. i can't express enough how excited i am about this trip. costochondritis be damned. i am going to have a good time no matter what. camilles (10:49pm, 2.02.08)
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Jeff
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