Hi Face of the Earth… let me reintroduce you to Michie. Michie…. welcome back to the face of the earth.

And I don’t even have a good excuse. I am not working full-time anywhere. I am not hanging out with friends. I am not even changing out of my pj’s every day.

Should I be admitting that… hmmm… well there it is.

But what brought me to my sad, dejected, little space of a blog today was to tell you about the Gilroy Garlic Festival. I am sure that all of you garlic-lovers are scooting to the edge of your seat. I mean, you might have heard tale that this extravaganza includes garlic treats from garlic french fries and garlic popcorn to garlic ice cream. You might be persuaded to go just for garlic bread and garlic sausages. And with all of that tempting, you might think there is even more unexpected garlic goodness that they couldn’t fit into their ad campaign. But alas, you would be the sucker. Because that is all the garlic items they had.

We spent two and a half hours driving to this festival that cost $12 to get into. We walked through dirt parking lots (yes, that is plural) getting smothered in dirt plumes to get to the entrance. We spent exactly ONE HOUR walking around in the most uncomfortable heat ever. In that hour we ate a garlic sausage and an order of garlic fries. We consumed one GIANT Pepsi and one small frozen lemonade. We walked around the entire festival. We spend 15 minutes waiting for a shuttle to take us back to the car and we headed west for the beach.

The festival of mine and Winemonkey’s dreams. Something we had been dreaming about since we had known about it. And we spent an hour there. But I guess it did give us one whole night of indigestion… wow wee…

But Gilroy is close to where I was first introduced to California back in 1996. And I somehow managed to find the beach that my friend and I went to almost every day. Winemonkey and I spent several hours there… Good old Sunset Beach. I have rode home with my pants hanging out the window many times that summer. But not this time. I let Winemonkey wade knee deep into the water.

Sandy feet…. nature’s pedicure!

Well this has been a WHAM! BAM! Vacation summer. We are packing our bags for our Seattle trip. And today my sister asked me what we were going to do in Seattle for 5 days.

Turns out, with the exception of dinner every night and one wedding, we hadn’t planned ANYTHING. So we are frantically searching the internet to find out what exactly there is to do in Seattle. Any last minute suggestions would be greatly appreciated. It appears we have ~3 days where we have to be somewhere for dinner and that is our only plan.

Also - apparently I applied sunscreen to my entire face… except for my upper lip, which is on scorching FIRE.

And I have watched land slides, 50 mph winds, flooding, and… this is the icing on the cake… the power going out at 12:05 last night. And you know what? It was an awesome weekend. For as crazy as the weather was, it was beautiful. Every night we were lulled to sleep by the pounding rain. We were concerned that we were going to be stuck there, but fortunately there was one route open (out of at least 10…. we passed quite a few closed roads). We would have liked to stay but we were a little worried that we wouldn’t make it home tomorrow if the weather kept getting worse.

The cabin is one of those places that you hate to leave. But you know you can’t stay there forever. Plus they have no internet connection and you would miss me. =)

Tell more about all of the good food and silliness later this week. Hope you all brought in the New Year the way you wanted to.

Well folks, this new years eve I will be heading to the cabin with the B929, Porter and my winemonkey. We might be accompanied by one other couple, but the odds aren’t likely. I think we are all secretly hoping for it to only be the four of us. Not because we don’t like the third couple, because hell - they are a lot of fun, but because it would mean more food (read: crab cakes ala Winemonkey, cioppino, raw oysters, and homemade cookies) and more room. Our plan, of course, hinges on whether the freeway is flooded apparently.

I usually take time at the beginning of the year to assess what has happened in the last year or three.

I think that I have made it through scandals of lies, losing one of the two friends. I think about how much I miss the Big A and that I want to call him everyday. I wake up and think “is today the day I break down and do it?” I know that I would be setting myself up to get hurt all over again, but I miss him something fierce. Something more than I can explain to you or even myself.

I moved again this past year. This was the move where I misplaced a bunch of my things. I went from living in a dorm room in 2000 to having an entire apartment filled with my stuff in 2004 to living in two people’s houses, one storage unit and a patridge in a pear tree. But really. Moving sucks. Don’t do it.

I saw my parents three times this past year. One more time than was expected. And with every visit, there was that bittersweet goodbye. I love my parents, but one of the two is high maintance and I have spent my whole life trying to please that person. And every time I see him it just gets harder and harder. And he gets himself into a position where apologies really should be given but he can’t suck it up and do it.

I wrote 1.5 chapters of my thesis. In all reality, I should be halfway finished. I hope that I can get myself overly motivated for the beginning of January. I really want to get out of here so that people can stop asking me when I am finished.

And finally, in the health department, I have one malfunctioning thyroid and one lumpy boob. The thyroid has been medicated for about six months now and I can totally feel a difference in how my body functions. No more sleeping for 9-10 hours and still feeling tired. No more clumps of hair clogging up the drain. It has been a good change. The boob is another story. I haven’t written about it, mostly because I haven’t had the appointment yet, but the lumps are still there and so I have to make the appointment with the boobologist. They will do their needle thing and make sure that everything is as alright as a lump can be.

For my resolutions? My running joke is that I was going to stop procrastinating, but I got 364 more days to go, so why start now?

But honestly, that should be my goal. So maybe it will all work out. I don’t know.

Anyone else have a resolution?

I would love to hear it.