Say what you will...

...but I am a Green Day fan. Have been for years now.

And the end of my summer concert series came about tonight when my mom and I headed down to SDSU to see Green Day at what used to be the Cox Arena.

You can make all the jokes you want at my expense, but I had a FANTASTIC time. Just as I did the last time I went to see them (which, coincidentally, was at the same venue), for the second run of their American Idiot tour.

Billie Joe Armstrong makes me want to break all my short man rules.

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it many more times again, but I am a complete sucker for musicians. Especially when they have more stage presence that should be legal. Other performers that have completely won me over after seeing them perform live: Steven Tyler, Steve Miller, Justin Timberlake, Roger Daltrey, Donnie Wahlberg, and Huey Lewis. Thankfully I have enough common sense to avoid dating musicians as they are a peculiar breed, especially lead singers.

Anyway. The concert tonight. Franz Ferdinand opened, but Ma and I somehow managed to miss their set due to traffic, waiting to buy t-shirts, and necessary beer purchasing. I'm a little sad about that.

Our seats were amazing, despite not being down on the floor level. Had they opened up the floor level like they did the last time I saw them, I would've probably stayed put, our seats were that good.

Billie Joe played the harmonica.

He also brought lots of folks up onstage (including this adorable five-year-old scene-stealing boy named Thomas) to help sing along or get the crowd going.

Again. Would break all of my short man rules for Billie Joe, were he not married.

I couldn't tell you the set list, and I'm not familiar at all with their new CD, but the old hits they played made me smile and hop around, and I was sweaty and hoarse and exhausted by the end of their two-hour set.

Good times.

I'm sure there's more I want to write, but I am so completely tired right now I can't pull it all together.

After the concert Mom and I headed to the Gaslamp Quarter since she'd never been there, and we had a couple of pints at the Shout piano bar. I got called out by one of the piano players for not standing with everyone else during their rendition of "Kung Fu Fighting".

Stupid me forgot to use the facilities before we left, which resulted in a madcap tour of La Jolla trying to find public bathrooms and/or food. We wound up at a Denny's in Miramar where I proceeded to ecstatically cheat on my diet by demolishing a lumberjack slam. There will be pictures as soon as we get them developed.

The drive home was uneventful and boring, and now I am more than ready to completely pass out and sleep until tomorrow afternoon, at which time I will consider typing more.

Ssssssshhhhhh......time for sleep..........

I've got a new great idea...

I'm going to give it all up and become a plumber. Vivian is going to be my assistant. Mainly she's going to plonk down close to whatever I'm working on and try to steal drill bits and screws and other metal objects from me while I'm not looking, then give me innocent eyes when I call her on it.

I'll have to get her a tool belt.

Spent a good deal of time today attempting to replace the toilet in the master bathroom so my dad doesn't have to do it when he gets back from Kansas. And as horrific as I thought the task was going to be....turned out most of those fears were unfounded. Although the wax seal stuff is just strange.

During the process of removing the old toilet, it became pretty clear to Shibbs and I just how cheaply our house was built. Needless to say, we hit a couple of snags, which is why we're only halfway through the job.

First off: the metal flange the toilet bolts onto is completely corroded and useless. Apparently this had caused enough of a problem for someone (presumably Dad) to go in and rig a quick cheap fix. So Shibbs and I traipse off to the Home Depot (again) to see if we can get another one.

Ahhhhhhhh. Home Depot. I want to work there. I want to be knowledgeable about plumbing or lumber or gardening enough that I can help lost-looking customers and swap job site horror stories with construction workers dropping in to pick up a part. I could wander the aisles in there for hours, and I have no idea why since I have no sort of DIY knowledge to speak of and very rarely manage to call things by their proper names. Case in point: Shibbs and I today on our search for the flange. Didn't know that was the name until I repeated "You know, the metal circle thingie that the toilet bolts onto around the drainage pipe whatsit on the floor," enough times for the guy to know what I was talking about. There were also lots of descriptive hand gestures on my part. I think the picture of it that we brought with us helped.

I had been hoping that the fella who Mom and I struck up a rapport with when we were buying the toilet (and then helped me and Shibbs get the right part for the bathtub) would be working since he's super-friendly and helpful without making me feel like he's dumbing it down for a silly girl who doesn't know her way around a tool box. Couldn't find him in the plumbing section, and the old guy who deciphered "thingie" and "whatsit" and hand gestures (with a help from a picture on digital camera) quickly foisted us off on this other guy who had somehow gotten involved with our toilet-buying escapades the previous week.

I was not happy with this foisting off because this guy is the other (and more common) type of male Home Depot employee. The one that assumes I don't know anything about anything. And while I freely admit that I don't know what I'm doing to the point of having to either follow printed instructions or just sort of figure it out when it comes to home repair, that does not mean I won't get pissy if you are real quick to assume that's the case. Especially since you're working in customer service. AND THEN, just to make things worse, oh pretty please insinuate that I'm not strong enough to lift something and that somebody will take it to my car.

Buddy. The toilet only weighs 100 pounds. There were two of us, and me and Mom have both done our fair share of baggage-slinging at the airport. Oh, and we're taking the initiative to replace a toilet all by our weak, wilting, helpless selves.

Obviously this guy hit a nerve when he interfered on toilet-buying day, so the prospect of relying on this guy to help us in our flange foray had me a little concerned...

Sure enough. He came down from on almighty plumbing high to help us poor, helpless, silly, clueless females who were obviously messing around with man's work. Once on the proper aisle, my eyes quickly caught on the part we needed, only to be told that replacing the flange is a really tough job and you have to be very very very careful you don't damage the main pipe because then you have to take out the floor and re-do everything. You see...the flange thingie is attached to a bit of PVC that you then cement into the drainage pipe. To replace that involves lots of careful banging and hacksawing.

So he presented the quick and easy fix, which more or less amounts to the metal ring part of the flange that you then screw down over the top of the existing flange. But when I say the existing flange is corroded.... I feel like "corroded" doesn't properly convey the mess of rusted out metal mixed with wax sealant that appeared once we took the old toilet out. So I was a bit nervous that, like the quick fix my dad tried, this quick fix would fail and I'd have to take the toilet out again and go back and replace the flange after all.

Thankfully Shelby was with me, otherwise I would've tried to replace the flange and probably ruined everything, all because of my prickly sense of capability. After a couple of weighty exchanges of eye contact, we both agreed to forgo the risk of completely screwing everything up and thus incurring the mighty wrath of Billiam so close to the ends of our respective summers. Got the fake flange, got some caulk, traipsed home.

Vivian, for some reason, likes to sit and watch me fix plumbing problems. She kept me company on Friday when I fixed the bathtub, and she sat with us today while we futzed about with the toilet. It would be cuter if I didn't have to keep an eye out for her stealing drill bits or any other spare metal or really anything available to chew on.

Anyway, fake flange in hand, Shibbs and I finish scraping off all the old wax in order to install the fix. Except (hooray for cheap construction) we can't get the fake flange to fit over the real flange because the lazy jackasses who laid the tile in that bathroom did a really imprecise job of cutting the tiles to fit around the drain pipe and flange. So I got to attempt to chip off the overhange with a scraper and a hammer. You've got to be kidding me.

Finally manage to get the tile trimmed and the fake flange on top. Now to anchor the thing into the subfloor...

Except, of course, I only have two screws and one of them, for some god-unknown reason, isn't catching the threads and frickin' screwing down into the subfloor.

WHY ME?!

This means another trip to Home Depot, and at this point Shelby and I opt to put the project on hold until tomorrow as we're meant to go to Grandma's house for dinner and it's already 3:30.

So it's on hold. Stopped by the Home Depot by Grandma's house this time because I feel like I've been seen in mine too often this past week, and mostly in my hippie dress (I swear I haven't worn anything besides that dress out in public since I bought it. It is that comfortable). But the hippie dress is golden at Home Depot. I get help from nice people, not assholes. The guy at Grandma's Home Depot did all the work and found me replacement screws, saving me time spent pawing through the thousands of different types of screws they sell.

So as soon as I wake up...going to finish the job. I hope. And, as a bonus nice thing for Dad, I'm going to fix the shower too, since I am now familiar with the pressure arm hoozits on bathtub faucets. He's using a wrench to work the thing right now. Classy.

Plus I have to finish fine-tuning the replacement pressure thingie in my bathroom. And clean the house. I should probably go to bed.

Diet is still going strong. Despite MASSIVE TEMPTATION in the form of baked goods tonight at Grandma's house. Only a week left, then I get to eat fruit again!

First week: DONE

Despite cravings for sandwiches and chocolate, I have made it through the first week of this infernal diet. My outlook for the second week is good because I went to the grocery store today and bought some damn fine hummus.

It's the little things really.

I've also decided I'm going to start eating the dinner meal for lunch and vice versa because I find myself not all that hungry at night, plus...I don't eat dinner until late, and I feel bad eating a big meal at 9 o'clock at night. Today was the trial run of this and I feel like I've made the right choice. A bigger lunch makes me less snack-y right before bed. Not sure how that works.

Today I got into a fight with the faucet on my bathtub. I won. The cheap fixture that probably hasn't been replaced since my parents bought the house crapped out and I replaced it. WD-40 is my new best friend, because there's no way in hell I would've been able to take out the old part without it. Tomorrow Shelby and I are going to replace a toilet. As unhappy as I may be with the prospect of how foul this job could turn out to be, I'm excited to get to work with hands and do some home maintenance. I'm tempted to buy a tool belt (that I'd never use).

Seems like it's been a few days of needing physical strength. Changed the oil on my car the day before yesterday and since that hasn't been done in a year or more due to my car not being on the running side of things, it was particularly difficult to remove the plug on the oil pan, and the filter was so glued on I had to break out an awl and drive it into the filter so I could use it to wrench the silly thing off. Felt good getting my hands dirty, even if I did do the whole thing wearing my new hippie dress. And without chipping my newly-manicured nails.

I got the first book for my dissertation research today too. Exciting stuff. It's massive and reminiscent of a textbook, but seeing as how it's probably going to be the backbone of my research, I am geekily thrilled to dive into it. Unfortunately, before I can do that I have to write the two portfolios that I have to hand in at the end of the month.

I'm going to a Green Day concert this week. I think. With my mom. Cracks me up though... wanted nothing more than to go to one of their shows when I was a teenager and really into pop punk, and now I listen to my old pop punk stuff for a bit of nostalgia and I'm going to a Green Day concert with my mom (who claims to have always been a fan.... though to be fair she's the one that bought Dookie for me, completely unasked, when I was still really into grunge). I've seen them once before, on the second round of their American Idiot tour, and I remember being annoyed at how young the audience was, since it appeared that most of them had been in kindergarten when Dookie was released.

Anyway. I'm excited to go to what will be the last event of what has turned out to be a concert summer. I've seen more this year than any year previous, and they've all been in the course of less than two months. Wacky. And none of the three are new acts. New Kids and Huey Lewis were from my childhood, and Green Day is from my adolescence. Bit of a trip, really.

I couldn't sleep last night so I watched movies. Starting with 17 Again. And lord help me, but Zac Efron is all kinds of crazy hot. Man. I hope he never does anything besides cheesy stuff meant to pack girls into theaters, because if it turns out he can actually act as well. Lordy. Don't know if I could handle having an acting crush on somebody who is also that blisteringly good-looking. Even if he does have narrow shoulders.

But I did enjoy 17 Again. Mainly because Lt. Dangle plays a rich nerd who has a speeder bed and several toy lightsabers. God knows I'm a sucker for Star Wars nerd jokes. And there were Lord of the Rings jokes too. Magnificent.

Then I had to watch Hairspray. Yes. There was a theme developing with my movie choices. For the most part, I did not like Hairspray. The original was okay, but turning it into a musical completely killed it for me. And what the hell? Who decided to turn a John Waters movie into a musical? Although, should they ever decide to do the same for Pecker, I'm there.

But I will say I fell a little in love with James Marsden as Corny Collins. He nailed that role with that fantastic smarmy grin of his. Heart.

Finally, I watched Junebug, which has been sitting on my computer for a while, just hadn't gotten around to watching it. Downloaded it because Amy Adams is in it, and as much as I want to her play something besides a wide-eyed innocent, I can't help but admit she's real damn good at it. And a southern accent suits her just fine. Didn't really like it though due to a weird sex scene, an even weirder masturbation scene, a racist artist who liked painting comical penises on the men in his artwork, and the fact that Natasha from Bridget Jones was the main character. Blech.

Ho-hum. Peanut attacked and killed my fan, so it's hot in my room right now. I can't decide whether to start my R-Patts mini-filmfest or play Total War. Probably R-Patts. Need to see whether or not he can actually act. And I want to see what all the fuss was about with him in that Dali movie.

Too broke for a haircut leads to silliness...

Right now, I have (I think) 13 bright pink sponge curlers doing a reasonably good job of putting my hair in a choke hold. I cannot afford a haircut right now, so I'm looking elsewhere for ideas on how to make my hair look presentable.

I have not had a haircut since December. And while you may think this is no big deal, I feel the need to remind everyone how short my hair SHOULD be:

...Except I can't find a picture from right after my last haircut. I suppose this is what happens when you're the crazy, over-zealous photo-taker of the group.

Anyway. My hair is now long enough to put back into a ponytail, albeit a very short one. I can no longer use a straightener to make it look fabulous (or at least, it's beyond my meager hair-taming capabilities). Now, I am still tempted to dye it purple, but that won't solve my unmanageability issues (and would probably make them worse).

Yesterday I considered lightly curling all of my hair with a small curling iron. Last night I told my mother I want to grow my hair out and get a body wave perm. Then, whilst wandering Wal-Mart this evening, I had a revelation: sponge curlers. Hence the 13 or so that are clustered on my head right now. I hope my hair is long enough to keep them all in.

The goal? Wavy tousled locks. Or something. We'll see how this all turns out tomorrow. And since I actually have to leave the house tomorrow (2 separate trips to the airport, first dropping off Ma, then picking up Shibbs), I'm that much more motivated to do a good job. Plus, Shelby's initial reaction should give me a pretty good idea whether or not I look like a total fool.

I'm hoping I don't. Because, you see, if this works, then I can achieve a body wave perm without all the chemicals which would undoubtably make me lose hair. Plus, since I've ravaged it a bit with hair dye, there's a possibility that everything could go wrong and ALL of my hair would fall out. And putting curlers in only takes about 15 minutes, so it's something I could easily do at night before bed. AND THEN, I'd have an excuse to switch back to taking a shower at night, allowing for at least 15 more minutes of sleep the following morning.

By the way, this is what happens when I spend a lot of time on my own. I have long, drawn-out arguments with myself over hare-brained hairstyling ideas, and eventually I start muttering my ideas to myself. Or to a cat.

But anyway, day four is done, and I realized this afternoon I missed jotting down a few thoughts on day three. Day three wound up being a bit of a let-down since the hummus I was excited for turned out to have no real discernable flavor. In fact, the celery had more taste than the hummus. Next time I'm making my own.

Omlets are now my new best friends. I put Hatch green chile in my western omlet this morning and promptly had my mind blown. Fan-tastic.

I have three cute new dresses, but I've only had the opportunity to wear one. The other two are waiting to be unveiled when I return to England. Though there is a possibility of a west coast debut, if the right occasion comes along. The one dress I have worn is my new best friend, although Stacy and Clinton of What Not to Wear would screech at me for wearing it. I have watched too many reruns of that show in the past week.

I should probably go to bed now. And at any rate, I forgot what else I was going to say.

Today I ate a hard-boiled egg.

Day Two: done.

Just so you know, there are going to be twelve more days of bitching and whining until Phase 1 is over and I can eat fruit and bread again.

I have decided that sharing menu planning with my mother is going to turn the next two weeks into an exercise in just shoving things into my mouth, chewing, then swallowing regardless of the taste. I don't like raw tomatoes, asparagus has to be eaten with something else, as do squash and zucchini, and the edamame we bought is atrocious. I am also leery of radishes since it's been a long time since I tried one (and didn't like it the last time around). Blue cheese reminds me of stinky feet and tastes too salty. Mom likes all of these things. On the other hand, I love onions and all colors of bell peppers (especially orange), and I prefer TONS of garlic when a recipe calls for it. Mom...not so much. We're making it work though.

The pork chops tonight turned out excellent. That's a recipe I'm going to keep. Soy sauce, garlic, paprika, black pepper, and a teensy dash of salt. So lovely. Surprisingly so.

Since Shelby and Dad are in Kansas the puppies sleep in my room on nights when Mom works the next day. They're cute once they finally bed down (they both spoon, and Vivian is an expert at it), but the amount of carnage and noise beforehand is a bit tiresome. Right now Viv is trying to figure out a way to get up on my dresser.

The puppies are also very fond of attacking me whenever one of the Wii Fit exercises require me to lay down. Today Vivian jumped on my face in an attempt to get at my hands whilst I was doing jackknifes. She managed to perfectly plant her front paws on my eyeballs. Nice.

Anyway. Tomorrow promises to be a school work marathon. Excitement abounding.

Good news though...tomorrow's afternoon snack is celery with hummus. Would be perfect if Mom hadn't insisted on red pepper hummus because she doesn't like the plain stuff. (And there was no way I was going to be able to talk her into buying the garlic lovers' variety...SAD FACE!)

Later skaters....

Because I need every bit of motivation I can get...

I've been home for 42 days. At least, I've had a profile on my mom's Wii Fit for 42 days. And in that time, I've managed to gain back ten pounds, most of which has taken up residence around my midsection. Awesome.

Rather than revert to the less-than-nutritionally-sound rice and oatmeal diet, I finally talked Mom into starting South Beach Diet again. Today was day one.

You should see the amount of vegetables crammed into our fridge. Mom and I went a little crazy at Henry's last night. It was fantastic. I got a new tote too. I am really looking forward to eating all that produce. Except for the squash.

But since a diet is essentially telling me what to do, I'm going to have issues with motivation and focus. Which is where the blog comes in. Figure if I write a little something about my progress every day, I'll be that much more likely to stick with it. Whether or not that makes sense...don't care.

Plus I'm going to keep myself busy with various things. Today was occupied by scanning and uploading the incriminating old photos I found the other day when I went for a wander through my boxes in the garage. First up are high school dance pictures. More will follow. You've been warned.

I tried to give my car a good bath yesterday since he behaved himself at the doctor and got better, but he's so dirty I think I'm going to have to pay somebody to do it. Sucks.

Thankfully the diet still allows tea. Provided it's 1% milk that's mixed in.

I'm going to play Total War now until the hunger pangs subside enough for sleep.

Yeah. Except the real story is that I'm going to play Total War so the TW withdrawals subside enough for sleep. I am such a goob.