My Feet Hurt

Like real bad. And I have no idea why. It's not like I've spent a crazy amount of time on my feet. Just the usual. But whatevs. They hurt, and it's no fun. In other news, this is a weekend update post...that takes place from Wednesday-Sunday. Because a weekend post is better than nothing. You're welcome.

Wednesday: Left work at 5:30, cruised to OC with Sara, ate lots of sunflower seeds, slept. No pictures. Sorry.

Thursday: CATALINA! Rode some beach cruisers all day. Hung out on some rocks because the beach has no shore. Ate a bomb.com burger and had some cool looking sangria that wasn't as good as the one at Barleymash. Played mini-golf. Sara won. Drank some buffalo milk. But not REAL buffalo milk, it was just a blended boozy drink called buffalo milk.

BUFFALO MILKKKKK!

Friday: Worked til 5:30. Then I went to Keri's softball game with Lime and played Veronica's kids while we were there. Then we went to a 10:30 pm showing of 22 Jump Street. I remembered of the times I had to be home from the movies by 10:00 pm. Yay for adulthood. The movie was hilarious. I loved it. I'm looking forward to 30 Jump Street: Flight Academy.       

Saturday: Worked at the Safari Park. Got kept late at work. But not as late as I thought they'd keep me. I was notified that Veronica's kids slept in til like 10:00 am. Which means Caroline and I rock at babysitting. Went to the Padres game after work. I sympathized with the dude who was at a ball game and got caught sleeping. I wanted to sleep before the game even started. I was so exhausted after a long day of work plus driving home late from Catalina Thursday plus being out late at the movies Friday night. But then I had a sangria and a bratwurst at the game and all was better. Sort of. Then the Padres won! Then we went out dancing at Moonshine. Then running around town to get spare keys for me car because I left mine in a different car. And then finally...sleep. For 4 hours.

Sunday: Work. Checked out a new job for my mom with my mom and grandma. Ate Mexican food. And Froyo. Then blogged. Then bought my Dierks Bentley ticket. Then fell asleep. 

This post was pretty much just writing stuff so I could share Catalina pictures. Happy Monday kidlets.

29 Things I'm Thinking Right Now

i'm alive. and this is a real blog post. not a mirage. i know you haven't seen one of these from me in a while, so i understand the confusion. you get 29 thoughts that have crossed my mind recently in honor of the 29 days i didn't post this month...you're welcome.

-one of my favorite friends, keri, got married over the weekend. it was an incredible wedding.

-getting pampered at a salon as part of a bridal party rocks. free champagne. and you hear things like how your eyelids are perfect pallets for makeup. and how beautiful your hair is. and that your eyebrows are shaped perfectly.

-bachelorette party was in vegas. it was my first time there to really party since i've turned 21. it was a lot of fun. and it was not a lot of fun. both. at the same time.

-vegas recap: long drive. edc weekend. don't like techno music. coyote ugly. big ass pizza. sleep. pool party. lots of booze. lost sunglasses. thunder from down under. lax @ the luxor. tired feet. hotel pizza. coyote ugly. sleep. sunglass shopping. win big money. pool party. expensive dinner at hakkasan. long ass line for afrojack at hakkasan. long ass walk to hyde at the bellagio. long as wait at the bellagio. sleep. pack. drive home. sleep.     

-you're not supposed to fall in love with a stripper. but i did. one that's in thunder from down under <3

-69. the amount of times we heard "that's a big ass pizza" while carrying a pizza down the vegas strip.

-your phone screen can still shatter while being totally enclosed in a lifeproof case.

-blood orange vodka rocks.

-ninja mimosas rock. thanks juliette :]

-my job at the safari park still rocks.

-baby cheetahs are the cutest. we have one at work right now.

via

-i'm still overwhelmed at my office job. a month and a half left and i'm done.

-anyone else think that ice challenge is stupid?

-i need to pick up on this fitness and healthy eating thing again. it's totally been abandoned this month.

-i need to actually WEAR my fitbit. it sits in my purse and only counts those steps.

-i like soccer. i like team usa. i like competitions that take place on a worldwide stage. i can't get into the world cup this year. not sure why.

-i miss playing soccer.

-i've committed to using a lilly pulitzer jumbo agenda for the rest of my life. i'm obsessed. with lilly. and with consistency. *i've used the small for 2 years and loved it. just needed to go up in size. and this is totally not an ad.

-i'm really good at holding grudges. that's not nice of me.

-television: so over pretty little liars. super behind on sytycd. wish cara maria didn't get ko-ed from the challenge. picked up on mad men. ellen still has reruns on. i might re-watch the hills.

-my next teacher test is in 2 weeks, and i haven't studied. i start today. my notes will be titled "pink lemonade" because i'm using a yellow legal pad and a pink highlighter. 

-i complained about that whole angels stadium thing to management. they apologized. and someone offered me free tickets. i didn't take them up on it. i'll elaborate more on this soon.

-3 weeks ago i did a wine and paint thing for another friends bachelorette party. i've always wanted to do something like that. and i loved everything about it other than the part where i suck at painting. 

-i'm getting california fever. i want out. never thought i'd ever say that...but i feel like i need a big change in my life after i finish my credential program. looking at dallas and nashville right now. this might just be a phase.

-i need to read mocking jay. 1st part comes out in a few months and i still haven't cracked open the book!

-i need to stop spending money! but a savings account totally burns a hole in my pocket!

-my biggest struggle right now is deciding between carrying a cross body messenger bag for school and a purse with handles for personal crap OR a cross body purse for personal crap and a shoulder tote for school.

-tony gwynn is gone. i'm sad, but not distraught like i feel i should be.

-tony gwynn memorial was the coolest/weirdest thing to attend.

4 Obvious Reminders For MLB Opening Day

MLB Opening Day. My favorite day of the year <3

There’s a few different “Opening Day” celebrations happening this year. The first is the officially official Opening Day of 2014 which actually happened a week ago when the DBacks played against the Dodgers in Australia. The second is Opening Night which is this Sunday, March 30th, Padres v. Dodgers at Petco Park…the game I’ll be attending :] The third is Opening Day which is Monday, March 31st. The last "Opening Day" is your respective team’s Home Opener which might happen Opening Night/Day orrrr you might have to wait at least 3 games for their away series to finish up before they head home and have their Home Opener. Regardless of what Opening Day you’ll be attending, baseball season is starting and that’s a wonderful thing. So there’s some things you should know for that first home game of the year…

BUT FIRST! Let’s start with a small font disclaimer. I might not be totally qualified on advising of things to know for Opening Day. Even though my friends and I have been to first home game of the season at Petco Park for the last (at least) 4 years…I wasn’t totally “there” ifyouknowwhatimean. #toodrunktofunction. Also...these suggestions are based on opening day and busy games at Petco Park. Some suggestions might totally apply to your local stadium, others won’t. Sorry ‘bout it.

Tickets. 
Do you have any? If you’re planning on going to the game, I’d suggest getting some. At this point, it might be a little too late for some of you because Opening Day might be sold out. That’s the case with the Padres…Opening Night sold out about a month ago, so anyone looking for face value tickets is kind of SOL. The remaining options are overpriced Stubhub, unknown third party ticket sites, sketchy Craigslist, or scalpers. If you find a sweet deal, awesome! You can totally keep reading. If not, and you don’t have tickets, bookmark this for next year when you plan ahead! If you don't have tickets but still want in on the action, head to a bar near the stadium and watch it on tv! You'll most likely be among others who failed in getting a ticket having just as much fun! 

Parking. 
I haven’t had much trouble with this, but I know how much of a pain in the ass it can be. For starters, consider traffic. Leave with enough time to either totally avoid traffic altogether, or budget enough time to be okay with be moving at a crawl…or slower and maybe miss some of the game. Everyone and their mom goes to Opening Day, and since everyone is headed to the same area, the roads are gonna get backed up. Also, because everyone is going to the same area, everyone is probably going to be parking in the same area too. Don't get stuck without a parking spot! If you can, buy parking passes in advance. That way you know you've got a guaranteed spot no matter how late you leave and how much traffic you sit in. You don't want to spend 40 minutes looking for parking half a mile away and pay $40.  

Transportation. 
How are you getting to the game? And home from the game? Alive? I hope so! The most important point with this is to make sure you've got a sober driver. To and from the game. If everyone wants to party, look into public transportation or hiring a driver! 3 years ago my friends and I took the train and trolley to Opening Day. From what I can remember, it was kind of a blast. We were able to bring booze on the train, party on the way down, and had reliable transportation! If you gave your limo driver the night off, download an app (Uber/Lyft...whatever) and have someone pick you up! Or book a night at a hotel in the area and walk/cab it. The other thing to keep in mind with transportation is to make sure you think about traffic. If you're anything like me, you'd rather be an hour early than 5 minutes late! You don't want to leave home/work too late, get stuck in backed up rush hour and game day traffic, and miss the first pitch!

Pregame. 
Load up a truck with some tailgate necessities: booze, food, bbq, tables, corn hole, etc. Head to the stadium early and party before game time. Why? A) Getting to the area early enough to tailgate means you've most likely avoided backed up traffic and have a better chance at being on time to the game! B) If you're there early, that means parking lots aren't crowded yet and you've got a better shot at getting a spot! C) $15 bottle of Fireball for everyoneeee beats 2 $8 shots of Fireball at the stadium/bars. D) PARTY! Just make sure to drink responsibly. And if you don't, hopefully someone is keeping an eye out for you making sure you're safe! Thanks friends for helping me with that last year!)

Our Plan.
Season Ticket Crew+1 are headed to Opening Night. The game is at 5:00-ish, but we're headed down at 10:00 for some brunch. Followed by some bar hopping for sangria!. Followed by some tailgating. Followed by the game. Followed by...work Monday morning. Hopefully we make it out alive!

Is anyone going to Opening Night/Day or your Home Opener? What are your plans for the day? Let me know!

Also, can I just mention how excited I am to be co-hosting Fan Friday this week? Other than my love for baseball,  I'm kind of obsessed with Sarah over at Venus Trapped In Mars. I kind of love sports a lot. So when I started blogging, and reading blogs, my main search was for other bloggers like me who love sports too...with no luck. Until my friend Kayyyyyy did a guest post for Sarah and the rest is history! Because of her Fan Friday link up, I've been able to find so many other sports loving bloggers like myself! And I love it! 

TL;DR: I love sports. I'm obsessed with Sarah, her blog, and Fan Friday. Thanks for letting me co-host!

If you're sharing anything baseball related today, make sure you link-up!

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<a href="http://martywiththeparty.blogspot.com/" title="Marty With The Party"><img src="http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae274/venustrappedinmars/baseball_linkupcopy.png" alt="Marty With The Party" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Class Of 2013!

Let’s talk about my first day of college ever. I went to the local community college, Palomar College (UCP!) The year was 2006 on a nice summer/fall Monday morning of September…or was it August? Anyways, my first class was softball practice at 10:00 am. I probably left at 8:45, thinking 1 hour and 15 minutes should plenty time to drive the 25 mile distance, and it was. I remember arriving with 30 minutes to spare but ran into trouble when I pulled into the parking lot…and couldn't find an open spot to save my life. After spending an hour going through all of the lots, I finally found an open space! But now I was at least 30 minutes late to class. I struggled to decide if I should go to class or not and after crying to 2 of my best friends over the phone and talking to my dad, I decided not to go. Yep, I did not go to my first class of my college career. Instead I went to the retired softball coach’s office to talk to him about missing class since I knew him personally and was the reason I had decided to go to Palomar and play ball. He told me the new coach was chill and to just talk to her about what happened and she’ll understand. At that very moment, the new coach had stepped into retired coaches office to talk about her first day and there I was, the chick that didn't go to practice. I had to explain myself and she understood…but I had to pay for it and run sprints the following day.

Fast forward 7 years, I graduated from California State University, San Marcos with a Bachelors of Arts in Liberal Studies with a depth of study in Arts & Education on May 18,2013! 

Check out the grad pics:

Jumbo-tron action!

WOOOOOO!

martywiththeparty

with the parentals <3

grandma (mom's mom) and grandpa (dad's dad)

my family.

some besties!

school loves!

life long friends...and a photo bomber

with moniqueqee!

I seriously couldn't have done this without the support of my parents, family, friends, and work. It’s been a long time coming, but I finally did it!

I've still got a few classes, tests, and credential program to get through until I’m fully legit to become a teacher so here’s to the next 3 years!   

Weekend Update: Cornstalks I Tell Ya!

Weeeeeeeeeeekend update :] It was a good one!

Let's start with Thursday. I'm in a theater for wannabe teachers this semester and we spent a majority of the time working on a play that we were supposed to perform for an elementary school. We had to write the play/scripts, master the craft of acting, develop and construct out set, and put on a show for the kiddies. Thursday was performance day. It went really well, I'm pretty sure everyone loved it! It took place at Story Farm, Farmer Jessie was the narrator, Petunia & Penelope pig were BFF's with Sally the sheep and even though Shaggy wanted to play with them super bad, he couldn't get them to notice him. Throw in some costume changes, our interpretation of 1 Dalmatian's performance at the Farmer's Choice Awards, the moral of our story which is "Be Yourself" and viola! you have the best play of our class. At least in my opinion. Keep your eyes peeled for Shaggy the Shy Wolf at a jungle gym near you!

Friday was my friend Caroline's birthday so I went over to her place and had dinner with her and her family. The plan was to go out to downtown SD for a night of dancing and drinking. Unfortunately, my back decided it'd be a fun weekend to hurt. No idea what happened but the muscles are like super tight. This kind of killed my plans to go out because of how much it hurt. I waved goodbye as I headed home and they headed to the club.

Saturday was Caroline's pool party/BBQ so I headed back to her place to hang out. It was a pretty beautiful day but the water was cold :[ butttt that didn't keep me out. Spent most of the time playing with her super adorable 3 year old nephew but I did manage to mingle with the grown-ups. We played some drinking games and corn hole and it eventually turned into a jacuzzi night with all of us haning out. I stayed until 11-ish because it was time to head home and get some sleeeeeep.

[Cool & The Gang with a few missing]

Sunday a group of us headed out to Del Mar for the Brizal Bazaar at the Fairgrounds. One of the CLAMS, Keri, is engaged, so we hit up the madness to do some scouting. Holy moly talk about craziness. There were so many people there, and so many vendors! It was more of picking up fliers and seeing cool stuff rather than actually talking to vendors about details and pricing. After a few hours of that, we all went out to La Jolla for some lunch. Good food, good drinks, and good times had by all :]

Then we all parted ways, but Caroline, Chelsea, and I stayed in the area because we scheduled massages for Lime's birthday at Spa Gregories in Del Mar. Thanks for the hook up Groupon! Oh, btw...my masseusse's name was DRAGON. That was pretty awesome. Hahaha. The massage definitely relieved a majority of the tension that was in my back that carried over from the other day! They've gained a customer in me!

Back to reality. Whomp. 

How was your weekend?  

Weekend Update: Spring Break

Whoooo hooo, weekend update :] This is gonna be a long post so hopefully you have some time on your hands!

I go to two different schools right now, the local 4 year univ. [where I will graduate from in May!!] and the community college where I take 2 classes that fit into my schedule since the ones available at the 4 yr. don’t. As much as it’s a pain in the ass to go to both schools, I gotta get it done to finish! One of the sucky things about this situation is the spring breaks don’t match up. My break for the community college is this week, and the 4 yr. break is next week. That kind of puts a damper on any kind of celebrating because I still have crap to do. Hahaha.

Instead of a tropical drunken vacation to Cancun or Cabo San Lucas, I did a weekend getaway to my friend Holley’s place in Irvine, CA which is about an hour North of me.

I was planning on taking the train up, bought my ticket and everything, but I took the back way of connecting to the 76 to the 5 but didn't realize that connection was past the train station! Not even kidding, the next exit for me to turn around and go back to the train station was like 20 miles down the road in San Onofre/San Clemente! By that time I’d already be halfway to Irvine! Hahaha. I made the executive decision to just continue driving all the way up instead of turning around and catching the train. Big Ol' Fail. Hahaha.

Got up there Friday night, stopped by the Ralphs across the street and grabbed some movies…and wine. Props to the cashier for upselling me and convincing me to buy 2 more bottles to complete our 6 pack and save like $37.00! IDK how that works, but it did…and I’m okay with that :]

Woke up Saturday morning, had some Einstien’s bagels [best in the worldddd.] and made our way to Laguna where Holley’s grandparents live. It’s a super nice community called Emerald Bay. We hung out with her family for a little and then hit the beach…the community has their own private beach! We walked along the shore and did a little house shopping before we ventured to the rocks and checked out the sea life! 

^^ Found my dream home :] ^^

It’s crazy to see star fish and sea urchins and sea anemones for real in their natural habitat! I’ve seen them at the aquarium but hey’re in captivity, and that’s not that cool.

How freaking beautiful is this?!! 

#artsyfartsy

We then cruised over to downtown Laguna, and tried to be as tourist as we could by getting some toe rings and pooka shell bracelets! Hahaha. We went out for a late lunch/dinner but only have like an hour before we headed out to the comedy show which was our entertainment for the night. We called ahead to a place called Nick’s and were told that the wait was 5 minutes. We were about 3 minutes away but by the time we crossed the street and got to their door, the wait had increased to 40 minutes! WTF?!! Ugh. There was a BJ’s down the road but their service is always super slow so we didn’t want to risk it and went to an emptier place called C’est La Vie. The picture of a chocolatey/strawberry crepe pulled us in. We sat at the bar and has quite possibly the worst bar tender ever! Not friendly and got pissed off at the servers right in front of us!

Thankfully our food was delicious. I ordered the brie cheese platter as an appetizer and some burger sliders for my dinner. 

We weren’t allowed to photograph or record the comedy show, so there’s no pictures of that :[ but it was fun! The opening act was also the MC for the night, some dude named Nick, a chick from MadTV, and the headliner named Aires Spears from MadTV. No idea who any of them were, but all super funny! I’ve heard of people walking out of shows because they’re offended but I never thought I’d actually see it in person! Super cool people acting totally dramatic. A white dude got called out for not laughing at the black jokes. The comedian kept saying “nigga” and the guy wasn’t laughing so he got called out about it, especially since he was sitting next to a black guy! The comedian told him to lighten up and that it was cool for him to laugh. The wife of the white guy got pissed and they took off. There were some jokes that crossed the line that I wasn’t comfortable laughing at, but for the most part they were all pretty funny!

We got home and poured some wine and headed to the Jacuzzi! It felt so good on my feet after climbing rocks ALL DAY! Ouchhh.

Sunday morning, I woke up and headed to the grocery store to grab some stuff for brunch…

I made the brie grilled cheese with roasted strawberries and chocolate! SO GOOD! Washed it down with some yummy mimosas!

I'll post the recipe later this week :]

Holley lives in a super nice complex that has it's own theater! We slept through most of our reservation for it, but figured we'd go and chill out for an hour or until people kick us out. One one had it reserved at 3:00 but never showed up so we got to see 2 of our movies!

The sunset from Holley's place!

I wanted to go out for a nice dinner but felt kind of bad because Holley wasn’t feeling too well :[ She summoned all her strength to go out and it was probably totally worth it! There’s this restaurant called Seasons52 in South Coast Plaza and it’s supper cool because they change their menu with every season change, and also change their side panel of the menu once a week! Also, everything under the menu is under like 480 calories! Too cool! And I must say, when you tell cooks in OC you want something medium rare, they know what medium rare means! San Diego isn’t so good at that. We ordered their famous flat bread, some steak and dessert!

WOOP WOOP WINE! 

Dinner collage :]

I love the fact that I don't have to fly out of town to enjoy some beautiful scenery, the ocean, etc. It was such an awesome weekend, so great to get away and hang out with my friend all weekend! I owe Holley big time for for letting me come over and crash :] I had such a great time.