moni will be thrilled
attention all motorists in ocean beach: due to the high crashability nature of my car, i humbly beg you all to please resist what seems to be an overwhelming magnetic attraction to my car seeing as i will now be a resident of your 'hood.

that's right, i'm (unofficially) not homeless. ((insert crowd going wild here))

in the 11th hour of my search (i put over 450 miles on my car JUST house hunting in the last month), it came down to 2 options, and believe me, it wasn't an easy decision. for every positive on one place, there was a negative on the other, and vice versa. just when i had convinced myself that i was going for one, someone said something that made me swing the other way. so i finally put 'em down to one last test:
do i see myself living here? check.
do i feel comfortable, and safe in the area? check.
will i be happy? ahh. well, with my nomadic tendencies, will i really be happy anywhere? that's a scary thing to consider.
in the end, though, i realized it doesn't really matter how big the place is, or how quiet, or whether or not i share walls and with whom. what matters is i took the place with the month-to-month lease, and am letting the rest of the universe unfold as it should.
current mood: everything's going to be alright

refrain from impetuous conduct
i'm not sure why i'm the only female i know that is often in the kind of creepy guy situations i seem to find myself in a lot, but i actually 'pulled-rank' tonight and uttered the phrase "i have a black belt in karate, and while we train to walk away from asses like you, i swear that i will not hesitate to destroy you if i have to."

man, i'm getting good at threatening people. i don't know if i want to be proud of that.
current mood: watch it, sucka

sh-sh-shaaaaaa-dy!
i really should start chronicling the adventures i am getting myself into on this whole home-hunt. of the places i have actually gone to see (i've done many a drive by to knock places out of contention), there have been some, ehem, 'interesting' ideas of what constitutes decent living conditions. there was the dungeon-esque chained up place in mission hills, where i was looking around for the sentinel on the wall... there was the studio down town that was covered in fine dust, where the lady was like "oh, that's only fiberglass, no biggie". and then there was the place today where the guy asked me a billion and 3 questions just to get the address (do i sue people on a regular basis? uhh, no), and when i got there, i thought i was on some sort of hidden camera show. i had to ask the guy if he was kidding me: the drywall was straight up MISSING from most of the north wall, there was a hole in the wooden floor, there was a whole in the ceiling, and the appliances looked like they were purchased second-hand back in 1952. the guy wasn't so homey either... he was trying to smoke a toothpick, had this crazy gray hair coming out of every piece of skin i could see, and was wearing mirrored sunglasses... inside. he had an old dresser he tried to sell me too, thought it was "my style". i pretended to take a picture of it with my camera phone, telling him that while i was trying to pare down my furniture collection, perhaps my mom would like it, b/c, y'know, i'm clever in getting out of awkward situations like that.

by the way, for those of you looking to invest, this jewel of real estate is for sale. when asked why he was selling it, (shift shift) err, it's time for him to, uhhh, move on.

yeah, me too.
current mood: shudder shudder shudder

file 'em under...
... things i find funny that no one else would
* when musing that i look a bit the clown today, i was promptly corrected, "not so much a clown as i was thinking a care bear"... must be all the pastels, hearts, and, of course, the fuzzy tummy.
* since the muffin man has been (officially?) retired from my roster, looks like the title has been picked up, running, by another. looking forward to the just desserts.
* i was thinking my next t-shirt design would incorporate the phrase "i put the HO in homeless"... but i figured the number of people who WOULDN'T appreciate the cheekiness of it would greatly outnumber those who would.
current mood: it's a tuesday

the universe provides
the generosity of life has once again blessed me when i seem to really need it. if you remember my rather rough start to the parking situation downtown, i finally got some resolution in the form of a check sent to me to repair the scrape damages across the top of my car. i was just hoping they'd buy me a $12 bottle of paint for some touch-ups. as it turns out, they're buying me 45 bottles...wow.
hopefully continuing on this generous streak, i talked to a lady today about renting her guest house in OB, and i have a good feeling about this one. keep your fingers crossed... i am hoping to have the inside connection since she's japanese, a bonus for me that was made obvious when she listed the street name as "colonado".
current mood: hopin' hopin' hopin'

i'm starting to get worried
t-minus 11 days till i'm homeless! eek!
ps - anyone have any moving boxes handy?
current mood: tick tock tick tock

aaaaand action!
take 2, let's try this again.
current mood: reset, it's a new day

yarr yarr yarr
you would think a company that provides managed web services would declare the industry-equivalent of snow day if all wire communication mysteriously went down and the entire staff is without email, internet, or phones.

you would think... or rather, you would wish. or rather, i would wish.

our lack of e-outlets also set off our system monitoring system, sending just over 45 alerts to my cell phone in a matter of 10 minutes or so. everytime i erased one, 2 more would pop up. by about round 23, i was ready to chuck my phone off the 9th floor. throw in the frustration of having someone check a document, then come back to me with all the corrections that need to be made to it AFTER i've sent it out... well, all i have to say is "yarrrrrrrr".
current mood: mood surely to improve once free from this mess

i'm blushing, really
i totally have some beautiful flowers on my desk, causing some wicked jealousy among the girls at work... i just may get jumped in the parking lot.
current mood: happy heart day

d-d-d-distracted
with each passing day inching closer to the end of the month, it's getting increasingly difficult to concentrate on any activity other than looking for a place to live. it's like i've got these house-hunting goggles locked and loaded, and there is little that is breaking up the view. which kinda sucks for other aspects of my life that may be getting ignored. i've become pretty eagle-eyed when driving about town, looking for that elusive "for rent" sign, and hoping it fits my stringent criteria (how many times have you assured me, world, that being picky, as i totally am, isn't a bad thing?). i guess my other senses have been heightened too, as i am currently being distracted by the scent of mexican food wafting from my clothes (lunch was good).
someone slap me, i'm all over the place. c'mon britto, get it together.
current mood: unfocused, and a little stinky

kick start the ol' noggin
for the first time since starting, i actually felt productive at work this week. good thing, too, since friday marked my one-month anniversary of being there, and i felt guilty that even i couldn't justify my paycheck. one-month also means that january's come and gone. hope you enjoyed it.
current mood: just warmin' up

Excuse me, Powers that Be, i have a request...
in looking for my new place to live, i've come to realize how reliant i am on internet search functions. whatever happened to the ol' heel-toe-express? beatin' the sidewalks? the thrill of the hunt? not that i'm complaining per se; anyone who knows me knows that research isn't exactly my cup o' tea. i'd rather someone just tell me where to go and what to do on things like these. don't get me wrong, there are definitely areas in my life where i am completely invested start-to-finish. however, this is not one of them, so the easier it is, the better. i have better things to do, like improving my mini-golf game.
current mood: research, research!