Tim and I just had a fantastic weekend in Santa Barbara and Ventura. I didn't actually take any pictures, I am not sure why. I guess I just didn't want to lug the camera around this weekend. Please enjoy this image of the Mission Santa Barbara I found on the internet.

If you ever need or want to visit Southern California my advice to you is to stay in Ventura (the actual name being San Buenaventura [classy]) and drive to Saint B (45 minutes or so northwise) and Los Angeles (1 hour in no traffic, 2 hours in normal traffic, 3 hours in holiday weekend traffic southwise) instead of staying in Los Angeles itself. Maybe it's just because I live and work here, but LA is not usually a very relaxing place to be.

Santa Barbara is absolutely right out of a movie. Everything is perfect and done in mission style. Ventura is similar, but more of a surfer beach town and less of a wealthier Northampton of Southern California, like SB.

We went to a great museum; the Karpeles Manuscript Museum. (Be careful, the site plays cheezy music). It had a little bit of everything! Letters from Elizabeth I to Francis Drake re defeating the Spanish Armada, handwritten drafts of Ian Fleming Bond stories, sheet music written by Mozart, Bach and Tchaikovsky, Gutenberg Bible pages, a map used by Christopher Columbus on his voyage, lots of Egyptian stuff, Russian space station computers, an ancient Torah, letters from Arthur Conan Doyle written to dead people, the world's first folding pocket knife, memos written by Admiral Nelson shortly before his death aboard the HMS Victory during the Battle of Trafalgar. IT WAS NUTS! They have more in New York (Newburgh and Buffalo) and in Charleston, SC, Tacoma, WA, Jacksonville, FL Fort Wayne, IN, Shreveport, LA and Duluth MN. Maybe more, too. I don't remember. If you are ever in any of these towns, GO! It is also free. The guy, Mr. Karpeles, MUST BE LOADED because he just buys these things and puts it all into a museum. It's awesome. Apparently they have the Proclamation of the Holy Crusades which, obviously, I really want to see.

Queen Elizabeth and Arthur Conan Doyle had interesting, neat handwriting. The composers had CRAZY handwriting.

I had a great vacation.

Did I ever blog about my most inappropriate comment ever?

Darnell, the client from the reindeer post, flirts with me constantly. Well, he used to. I think I got the point across and now he just talks about how he's going to bake me my wedding cake (I helped him enroll in culinary school) or "at least one of my wedding cakes." Back in the day, when he was inappropriate all the time, I really put my foot in my mouth.

Darnell was in my cubicle talking about how pretty I am and what "nice blonde goldilocks hair" I have and how I'm so nice and I'm not going to be a bad wife but a good wife and blah blah blah. Amid his comments and my constant verbal reminders of what is appropriate and what is not I was somehow able to discern that he wanted me to print out some of his resumes and make copies of his California Guard Card (which, by the way, allows him to carry a gun!).

I got up and went to the break room, which also houses THE BIZHUB 2000 (which cost like $20,000 or something nuts) (sorry for all the parentheses). I poured myself some coffee while waiting THE BIZHUB 2000 to do its thing.

When I came back into my cubicle I put the coffee mug down on my desk and handed Darnell the papers. He took his stuff and looked at my coffee mug.

"Don't take no sugar?"

"No."

"No cream at all?"

"Nope, nothing Darnell."

"That's weird. Most ladies like it a little lighter."

"Not me. I like mine strong and black."

Italicized for emphasis, I hope you can tell how much I wished I could shove those words back in as they were spilling out. I immediately started talking about the Lakers (if you ever say something awkward in Los Angeles, this is a good tactic to divert the conversation) and, thankfully, Darnell didn't say a word.

Pardon The Lack of Blogging or Lil' Jon is the Antichrist

I've been applying to jobs and I have no time to blog. But I applied to 2 jobs today at work, so I feel like it's ok for me to take a little break. Today, I'm going to tell you about either Dean or Demonde.

I guess I'll start with Demonde, because Dean is a regular client and I know he'll keep coming in. Demonde is very unstable and could disappear at any moment.

Demonde wears a dirty white bathrobe every day, all day. He has this look in his eyes that suggest he is constantly staring at the mesmerizing pendulum of a grandfather clock located a few inches above eye level. It's disconcerting at first, but when you hear that he speaks only in rhyme it kind of makes sense.

"Today I would like to get a job/but it's not that I need one/ it's for the future I sob/ at the coming of Lil' Jon"

Lil Jon is a big deal with Demonde. I'll get to that in a minute.

When I met him, he told me he was Jesus. Keep in mind, he told me this after he mentioned he "didn't need to take his meds anymore". So he tells me he is Jesus (using slant rhyme liberally I might add because Jesus is a pretty tough rhyme) and he goes on and on about being the messiah for like, 25 minutes. Then he asks me if I believe. I say, "do you mean, do I believe in God?" He said "Yes, God. From which we are all shod!*" and I said "yes I believe in God."

"Well then, you are a believer. You may read the white book, don't let the black one be a deceiver."

I had already seen these books. He brought them in for my co-worker two weeks earlier. (Demonde is not my client, he's just a favorite of mine.) When he brought in these books, he told my co-worker that she could not read the black book, only the white book. The white book is a white binder filled with loose leaf notebook paper. The pages contain scribblings about Jesus and lots of magazine cut-out pictures of Lil Jon. We all wondered a lot about this Lil Jon thing. I got my answer last week.

Demonde was speaking to my co-worker, his case manager, at the time. Thankfully the cubicle walls are thin so I was able to hear pretty much everything. Let me break it down for you.

There are three Machiavellis. The first Machiavelli was not, as you might think, Machiavelli. No, the first Machiavelli was Tupac**. The next Machiavelli was R. Kelly. The third, and final, Machiavelli is Lil Jon. Lil Jon is the anti-christ and on [last Tuesday] Demonde is going to fight him at Venice Beach to bring on the apocalypse. He's going to defeat Lil Jon and walk on top of the Pacific Ocean and when he walks on water the end will come. We're all going to be ok though, because we've read the white book. Please keep in mind that this was all in some semblance of rhyme so it's even crazier than it sounds here because he really had to stretch sometimes. (For example, making "Jon" rhyme with "won".)

I'm going to include a Lil' Jon video so my parents know who he is. I was going to try to find the clean version of this song, but I think it's more effective if I just leave it dirty. Don't freak out. Lil Jon is the gentleman with the dreds, glasses, grill and pimp cup.

* Shod means "furnished or equipped with a shoe" just as an FYI.

** According to Wikipedia, 2pac actually went by "Makaveli" sometimes so that makes this all a little bit less mysterious, but no less crazy.

Dean is another story. Actually, Dean is a series of stories.