What a week! Never, ever in my life have I felt like I deserved a weekend as much as I do now!

How are you guys? Tell me something good.

I'm still here, and I gotta say that life is good. I somehow managed to trick a fantastic agency into hiring me (SUCKAHS!!!) so I'm working a lot at a job that I'm absolutely loving! Unfortunately, the job also involves a commute, which I have a love/hate relationship with, depending mostly on whether or not I drag my ass out of bed in time to have a proper amount of coffee before I need to head out the door.

Otherwise, not much going on. Trying to make up for all the cash I spent while I wasn't employed (or was employed but not getting paid) doesn't leave room for much of a social life, but that's cool cause I've been feeling a bit like a homebody lately, anyway.

Been running, rowing, climbing, and surfing pretty sporadically - part laziness, part figuring out a new job/schedule, and part waves not cooperating. But, I have been making it to Bikram class on a pretty regular basis. I'm feeling pretty good. And, if I do say so myself, I'm looking pretty good, too, since I finally got around to changing my hair color yesterday. Trust me, it had been waaaaaay too long.

Have a few super cool things coming up, including a few longer trail races. This will be the first time I've done any competitive racing in years, so I'm really looking forward to it.

That's all for now, but I'll be back soon with some proper updates. :-)

Added 11 miles to my weekly mileage today, making my grand total for this week...11 miles. Hey, it's only Tuesday, gimme a break.

I ran almost to Sausalito and back, and then looped around the roads here for a few more miles. Started off rough - lots of small aches and pains - ankles, knees, shins, right hip and left shoulder were all bitching at once - that gradually went away when they realized I was only going to ignore them. I also walked for about 45 seconds somewhere near the 8 mile mark, so I suck for that but whatever.

That's it. That's my life.

I gotta find a job and some friends before I die of boredom.

Check out my sweet new tattoos! Only 17 hours in the chair! Hardly any bleeding! Alright, alright...before my mom and dad have about 6 strokes apiece...they're only tights. I wore them to the Black Rock Arts Festival on Friday night. I also wore these super awesome gloves that made everything I touched feel satiny. They also looked great with vodka (trust me, fashionistas, you don't want your drink to clash with your gloves). See?

They also, apparently, made my hands look about 6 times the size of my face.

It was a pretty cool fundraising event, and we were very exuberantly informed at the end of the night that it made a "shit ton" of cash, so I guess that's cool. The money goes towards something or other having to do with Burning Man, which I'm not really into for various reasons, but Ant's into it, and I'm into him, so off I went. There were dancers and contortionists and DJ's and lots of bare skin, which is always a good combination in my book, and overall I'd say the evening was much, much cooler than I had anticipated and I MIGHT (I said MIGHT) even be changing my totally biased opinion about paying a small fortune to sit in the desert for a week, dressing funny and staring at a bunch of fire and lights. Here's a few more pics - sorry about the craptacular photography skills.

Cool, right? And here's me after getting cold and stealing the jacket to Ant's costume, then Ant and his friend Gail, then some weirdo, and then a dude playing the xylophone. What's not to love?

Hung out with my friend Pabst B. Ribbon the other day. We had a good time.

I slept in today...until 4:30. Without anything to do during the days, I'm definitely babystepping my way out of this jet lag!

In other news - did you guys watch House last night? Hugh Laurie, if you're reading this, I would totally make out with you.

I don't know about the conditions where you guys live, but over here in my little corner of the world Mother Nature has some seriously bad PMS. Foggy, raining, and I've never seen the ocean so angry before! Yesterday, Ant and I strolled to our favorite spot on the cliffs at Fort Cronkhite to watch the waves pounding the shore, and it was an awesome display! We were at least 150 feet up, and we were getting sprayed by waves on a regular basis. Check out the video:



Pretty cool, right? And here's a few more pictures.

If you could marry an inanimate object, I would totally run off and elope with breakfast.

Ant, Taylor, Todd, and I recovered from last night's festivities with some coffee and eggs benedict at the Americana Cafe, which, despite its name is actually a Vietnamese restaurant.

It was a good way to fuel up before our brief but awesome hike at Fort Cronkhite. Pics later...I'm late for naptime!

Note to self: Nights are for beer and sleeping. Days are for beer and playing and staying awake.

Man, this jet lag sucks! I'm up somewhere between 1:30 - 3 every morning. Then, of course, I'm too exhausted to really enjoy my afternoons, and I end up falling asleep super early.

In terms of being American again, I've done nothing besides a few trail runs through Muir woods and the Dipsea trail, fall off the routes at the climbing gym, drink PBR, and buy some super sweet black heels for a wedding we have to go to tonight. And I've also managed to eat my own weight in bacon.

It's not a bad life.

How are you guys?

Yesterday I left the house we're moving out of and ran to the house we're moving into!! Through Crissy Field to the Golden Gate Bridge, up the steps to Battery East, through the Presidio, through Sea Cliff Heights, through Lands End, Baker Beach, Sutro Baths, and finally I made it to the house! Man! I was beat and super happy! That's the farthest I've run in a loooong time! The boys were just unloading their surfboards when I arrived, so I sat in the sun, drank a beer, and listened to them review their session. It went a lot like this:

Ant: Dude.
Matt: Duuude. Seriously.
Garren: Duude. Awesome.
Me: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT?!?
Matt: Ant caught a wave as high as his head!
Me: REALLY?!?
Ant: Dude.
Me: Whatever. I want a cheeseburger! With bacon and no vegetables!

So Ant and I took off and went to Bill's for a burger and some fries, and I threw in a milkshake just in case there were any benefits from my run I hadn't completely erased yet. Then we went back to the old place, and he tried to convince me that he hadn't really forgotten about our scheduled date night and that rolling his eyes while saying, "Fiiiine...if you really wanna go out then I guess we can go somewhere. *Siiiiigggghhhh*" totally counts as him making a plan.

Men. GRRRR!!!!!

We ended up going for a lovely walk and then lounging around playing cards until we fell asleep. Turns out it wasn't a bad night at all, even if there was no "real" date involved.

On another note, 32 readers of this here bloggy blog sent me their address, and all 32 of you will get at least one postcard! If you wanna add your name to the list, email me your address (dont.call.me.jessi at gmaildotcom) or leave it in the comments.

I gotta admit, zoos make me a little frisky, too. :-)

I love zoos, even though I know it's not PC to love zoos anymore because we're supposed to want all the animals to be free and roaming around in the wild. Whatever. On my list of "PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME ROLL MY EYES," those who boycott zoos on the grounds that they aren't fair to the animals are right up there with vegetarians who wear leather.

Anyway, my awesome boyfriend who says he has a job but never seems to work went into the office 2 hours late on Friday and then sent me a text 40 minutes later saying, "WANNA GO TO THE ZOO?" Fuck yeah I wanna go to the zoo!!! So, off we went.

The SF Zoo is a bit small, and reminded me a lot of the Singapore Zoo because they use so many natural barriers and they have a pretty large aviary. Gotta say, I've been to zoos all over the world and I haven't found one yet that beats the Philadelphia Zoo.

We named this guy Tina Turner.

I seriously hate monkeys.

But (!!!!!) unlike most zoos, this one has a carousel! And since it was a bit rainy and not crowded at all we got to ride it all by ourselves!! When does that ever happen?!?



On our way out we stopped at the children's zoo, and all hell broke loose when a fight broke out!

The apes were nowhere to be found, but we had a blast making up captions for this picture. Seriously, the possibilities for amusement from this pic are endless. Whatcha got?

I forget what kind of bird this is, but he had a ton of attitude and I thought he was so cool.