Newport Beach at Night

Newport Beach has held a special place in my little heart since my lovely Aunt Paula and my Gram took me there after 9th Grade Promotion. I have been back many times and love it more each visit. The Crab Cooker. Beach Cruising. Sharkeez. Ice Cream. Toddland. Balboa Bars. Yacht Shopping. Ruby's on the Pier. What's not to love right!?

Until tonight I had never been there at nighttime. Who knew that there was an entirely different feeling to it all? Just more to love.

Went on a little date tonight. We ate at Shabu-Shabu in Costa Mesa. This place was amazing. You actually cook your own food. Kind of the Asian version of Fondue. Then we headed out to Balboa Island to meet up with some friends that live there in their Grandparent's extra apartment. (Lucky little suckers.) I held an Emmy Award. His Grandpa has two hanging out on the shelf. Kinda cool. The four of us beach cruised the streets, boardwalk, harbor, and pier in search of some dessert. It was too late, so no such luck. It was so cold by that time that I could not feel my fingers, so naturally we got some blankets and headed out to the even colder beach. Said farewell to the friends. Found a cell phone in the sand. Answered a call from its owner. Saved the day. Laid out one blanket. Cuddled (more like huddled) under another and added to my "California Firsts" list with a little kissing on the beach.

In summation... I love Newport Beach. :)

Ready, or not, here I come!

Dear Universe,

I am ready to get married.
Let's make this happen.

Yours Truly,
Jessica


The end.

Mr. Music

This is my friend Cory. He comes over on Sundays after church, walks directly to my couch, gets out the guitar, and sings me songs for hours on end. I sit on the couch opposite and let it all wash over me.

In exchange for dinner, I get the ultimate pleasure of experiencing incredible renditions of The Beatles, Ben Harper, John Mayer, Ernie Halter, Dave Barnes, Incubus, Jimi Hendrix, and numerous others.

There's just something about a boy that can play the guitar...

Super Marathon Saturday Parts 1 & 2

The past two Saturdays have been non-stop, action packed, no time for myself Saturdays. This is not a complaint, but it is hard work to be having this much fun. :)

Part One

Last Saturday Randall was here and we "recreated" (as in recreation) the snot out of the day. Started the morning off with tennis, then played some one-on-one basketball, made some delish breakfast burritos, headed to the beach, played some frisbee, learned how to skimboard, then passed out on our towels. While napping on the beach I was told by my date for the evening that our reservation was at 7:00 up in Costa Mesa (an hours drive away), so the hustling started up again. Stopped at Beach City to grab a quick smoothie, got ready in record time, and left Randall (my current date) at my house to go meet up with Jared (my date for the evening).

[Yeah the dates ran into each other! Hahaha! Next week I shall fill you in on the chaos that is my dating life.]

I met up with Jared in Mission Viejo and we went to Mastro's for dinner. No big deal. His buddy from high school was our waiter and is the restaurant's Sommelier. As such, he knew that Jared is Mormon, so he rummaged through the gazillion bottles of wine they have in the restaurant (please check out the picture gallery for their Costa Mesa location) and produced the one and only bottle of Martinelli's in the place. When the bottle was presented to us, with that information, our neighbors to the right offered to pay double what we were for the bottle. It was funny. They then asked us what we were celebrating... My response? "He just made his first million." That shut them up. Then I said, "Actually we are celebrating our two week anniversary. We met two weeks ago today." Pretty sure they thought we were crazy, but we weren't the ones that started yelling at each other during dinner. Moving on. Our waiter took it to the next level and after our incredible meal brought us out the most magnificent cake I have ever eaten and had the kitchen write "Happy Anniversary" around it. Outstanding.

After dinner we drove down to The Ritz Carlton in Laguna, nearly crashed an Asian wedding (decided against it due to the fact that we would stick out like a sore thumb), then snuck into the paradisaical pool and hot tub. Still having an hour-long drive ahead of me we ended the night fairly early.

When I got home I had a little package waiting for me, which was MarioKart for my Super Nintendo that I bought on ebay, so naturally I had to make sure the it worked and may have stayed up until 2 am playing it all by myself. All of this, plus the previous two days of working 6 hours in direct sunshine, resulted in my sleeping in until 2 pm the next day. A feat that is unheard of for moi, someone who is tickled with a 9:30 am sleep in.

Part Two

Yesterday started early with a trip to Costco to pick up a birthday cake on my way to work. It was Avery's 1st birthday, so they had me working to help out with her party. (That is the birthday girl to the left. I thought this moment was priceless.) I made about 40 PB&Js all cut out with cookie cutters for a cute shape (note to self... simple triangles will suffice in my future. no need to over complicate life and be wasteful with flower shapes.) I played with the kids in the huge "jumpy" for like three hours and looked like hell (explaining the absence of any further pictures) when I finally left.

No time to go home and make myself decent so I just cruised down to San Diego to go to a Padres game with a bunch of people. The highlights... I parked right by the world's largest homeless shelter/population, I gave my number to two guys, I somehow ended up in a suite behind home plate eating the most phenomenal chicken fingers of my life, my buddy that is 6'8" 300lbs walked to me my car in order to prevent me from being whisked away in a homeless man's shopping kart, met up with Stefan in the Old Town for drinks and dessert, the flan was like heaven, and I hit it off with his friend that is a girl in talking about her wedding. Pretty sure that the boys were completely ignored for about 45 minutes. It was hilarious and my desire to pursue wedding anything as a career was rekindled.

Just typing about my last two Saturdays has exhausted me. Alas, no Sunday nap for me. I'm off to the next social event...

Gidget

I have officially arrived.

You can henceforth refer to me as "Gidget".

I, Jessica Johnson, had my first surfing lesson yesterday.

My marvelous friend Ryan and I made a deal; he would teach me to surf and I would pay him with food. So I made up some Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, headed north on the 1 - sunroof open, windows down, sunglasses on - and met up with him at his house in Huntington
Beach.



Wetsuit and long board in tow, we walked down to the ocean and took the plunge. We only had about an hour because I had to be back down to work in the afternoon, but that was more than enough time to completely exhaust my out-of-shape self.

I never actually stood up on the board. I did, however, get to my knees, which I considered a great success!(and was then told I failed because your knees are never supposed to touch the board; just straight up to your feet, blah blah blah), but I caught every wave that I tried for, and I can hardly move this morning due to sore muscles, so I must have done something right.

Lesson Two shall commence in one week.

In the mean time... please enjoy this quote from the movie Gidget.

"Surfing is out of this world. You can't imagine the thrill of the shooting the curl. It positively surpasses every living emotion I've ever had.
Honest to goodness it's the absolute ultimate! "

COUPONS!!!

This week I did something that I have NEVER done in my entire life. I looked through the junk mail and cut out coupons. COUPONS! Yes, I am that poor by choice down here and LOVING IT!! I was amazed at how much fun it was, and it was oh so interesting to see the different prices that different stores had on the same items.

Now it is not that I am in any way above using coupons, I had just never really thought to do so. I started planning my assault on the different stores in order to get the biggest bang for my buck... then life happened and I just ended up at the closest store, without any coupons, and paid whatever price "convenience" was going to cost me. Worth it? The jury is still out, but I am for sure going to try the coupon thing again... maybe next week?

New Kids on the block

While I spend quite a bit of time "watching" the house that I am sitting, I have had to find a way to pay the bills (e.g. sunscreen purchases and other such frivolous things) while I am down here. Now we all know that the real estate market is crap, so I went through the same website that I found my Germans and came upon a lovely little family that suits me just fine. They are the exact opposite of what I had before. In Germany it was two girls and a baby boy; here it is two boys and a baby girl. Fun.

Donovan, 4

Jaxon, 2 1/2

Avery, 1

Getting my hands dirty

Starting week three of Carlsbad life I decided to take some inventory (to date) this morning.

House guests: 5
New friends: 11
(Number of those new friends that are boys: 9)
Hours spent on the beach: 32
Movies watched alone: 2
Days that tennis has been played: 6
Fish tacos eaten: 8
Hours worked: 52.5
7.2 magnitude earthquakes survived: 1
Nights kept awake by party-animal neighbors: 3
Super Nintendo games purchased: 1
Times I've gone out dancing: 4
Number of meals that someone else has paid for: 14
Tanks of petrol purchased: 5 (at 360 mp tank)
Hot tubbing at The Ritz Carlton: 1
Visits to Crate&Barrel and H&M: 3
Pizookies eaten: 5
Granules of sand that have found a new home in my car: 1 billion (approx.)

All in all, I would say that I hit the ground running.

Hotel California

The Hotel California is open for business.

Thus far my roster of guests has been top-shelf.

Ms. Whitney Haydock

Messieurs Adam Dietlein & Joshua Olofson


Ms. Kathleen Price


Mr. Randall Lloyd

"Welcome to the Hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
They livin' it up at the Hotel California
What a nice surprise
Bring your alibis"