a long overdue update

from the time i started this blog, i've noticed a recurring trend. i write a nice long post for everyone to enjoy and then it takes me at least a month before i post something else. i think it's because when i write, i usually write a lot so when i sit down to post something new it's always a bit time consuming.

i really have to get out of that habit.

anyway here are some things that have happened in the past month or so starting with my birthday.

kirstin's 24th birthday

as you all saw, i got my beautiful new camera from mike and have been trying to use it as much as i can. i still have plans to take a class to learn more of the features and hopefully get my hands on a student-priced version of adobe photoshop to learn how to use that too. my photography talent is still a work in progress.

anyway...for my actual birthday, i worked during the day and all my coworkers signed a nice card for me. when i got home from work, mike and i went to my favorite restaurant. if you know me well enough, you'll know that restaurant is p.f.changs. we had such a nice dinner and the food was amazing. then my birthday continued into the weekend when my parents came up to san clemente and we went out to dinner at salt creek grille. to further extend my birthday celebrations, i had a coffee date with aimee, brunch with julie, and dinner with sabrina in the weeks following my actual birthday.

it's going to be a good year!

grandpa norm. 1924 - 2009. r.i.p.

my grandpa norm, my dad's dad, passed away back at the beginning of september. as part of his last wishes, he didn't want us to have any sort of service for him so we had a family gathering to remember him instead.

his passing came so quickly and started with a fall down the steps in their backyard. as a result of the fall, he ran into some other complications while in the hospital--he had a heart attack which caused his heart to race and he wasn't eating too much. after a certain point, we knew there would be no recovery so the doctors had him on some medication to keep him comfortable and he died in the evening. i'm glad to know that he is no longer suffering or in pain, but it's a weird feeling to know that had he not fallen, he'd probably still be here with us.

we got the family together on the morning of october 9th and drove out to gorman (off the grapevine on i-5) which is one of the places he used to ride his motorcycle--his favorite pastime. we had some remembrances from his life and set off some balloons with messages we had all written. i've included some pictures of the day below.

i'll miss you grandpa!

surfrider foundation's 25th anniversary gala

since 1984, surfrider foundation has been working to protect the world's oceans, waves, and beaches. on october 9th, we celebrated our achievements in los angeles with a great party.

mike was able to join me which was fun bonus. due to some budget cuts, the officers are encourage to take more furlough days off. so after my grandpa's family gathering, mike and i headed to los angeles for the big event. we were staying at the omni hotel, so mike hung out at the hotel for a bit while i went to the event early to work my post. i worked the registration table selling tickets at the door and was still working by the time mike showed up. he went inside to join the party while i finished my duties.

finally around 9pm, i was ready to have some fun about the time the program for the event started. mark hoppus of blink 182 was the host and surfrider gave away the keepers of the coast award (an award given to celebrities who have helped us further our mission--this award is only given away every five years). the awards went to pearl jam, incubus, and david chokachi. i actually got to hand an award to david chokachi and brandon boyd of incubus!! then, mike and i got to enjoy the musical performance together. a group called camp freddy played which is a "super group" of sorts consisting of various people from other well-known rock bands (billy morrison, dave navarro, matt sorem, scott weiland, donovan leitch, and chris chaney). their performance was awesome and they brought up several guest performers including mark mcgrath, deryck whibley, and perry farrell! so fun.

by the time everyone was leaving the event, mike and i headed over the after party which took place at a place called the independent. it looked like an independent movie theater by day that they convert into a venue at night. we hung out for another hour or so there and after a very long day, we finally took a cab to the hotel and went to sleep.

congrats to surfrider!

...

i'll finish up these updates in another post with the following topics so stay tuned:

1. 2 year anniversary

2. scott bradley turns 50

3. family dog megin

4. halloween

busy bodies

i was taking a look around at matt and whitney's blog today and noticed that i am down at the bottom of her blog reel widget (basically meaning i've been totally slacking in making updates to my own blog). i realized that i haven't posted anything new in over six weeks. i know how much i like to read blog updates--and even though i've said this before--i'll do my best to make updates more often for your enjoyment.

anyway, summer is in full swing and life has certainly gotten busy, at least for me. mike's been busier at work since the oc fair opened in costa mesa. he's mentioned to me that the fair has certainly brought out some interesting people to his neck of the woods.

as for me, summer and fall have easily proven to be the busiest months at surfrider. this makes perfect sense since we are heavily involved in the surf industry, and the busiest months for surfing are the warmer months. imagine that!

here's a list of some of the things we've been up to since our last post:

• my sister turned 20 on june 11th which means my parents no longer have any teenagers around. we're both so grown up now :) but i can't wait for her 21st. there are plans to do a mother daughter trip in honor of this milestone.
• father's day came and went so quickly. mike had to work, but my family came up to san clemente for a little breakfast to celebrate.
• i participated in international sufring day (an annual holiday created by surfing magazine and surfrider foundation five years ago) by going to moonlight beach in san diego and participating in a beach cleanup.
• i devoted one of my weekends to "wining and dining" surfrider's board members while they were in town for our june meeting.
• i attended my friend vickie's 80s prom themed 25th bday celebration. i honestly don't know how blue eyeshadow went out of style. it's so attractive and complements everyone's complexion! (please note the sarcasm in the past two statements)
• my sister moved back up to san francisco. she finally found an apartment to live in next year with two of her friends.
• surfrider took half a day off work for some staff bonding and competition fun for "hump day fun day." we had a surf contest, some volleyball fun, and a cornhole tournament. good times with my coworkers.
• i've been surfing a little more.
• fourth of july came and went with no significant festivities. mike had to work the next day so he went to bed early, and i decided i didn't want to fight traffic in downtown san clemente to see the fireworks off the pier, so i joined him.
• our friends scott and meghan came up to spend an afternoon in san clemente and enjoyed some dinner with us.
• i hosted one of this summer's sanO nights by creating some delicious booher burgers (burgers with delicious goodies inside). lessons from making these the first time--do not overstuff the burgers, make sure you pinch the sides really well, and make sure they are as flat as possible before putting them on the grill. i will know better for next time.
• my mom and dad came up to sc for my dad's birthday and we enjoyed some pizza and beer at pizza port, one of my favorite places.
• i attended the grand opening of my cousin's vintage shop in laguna beach. if you are ever in the area make sure to stop by macalistaire at 1850 for some great vintage finds.
• julie, one of my best friends, came to san clemente for the day to spend some time at the beach. we ended up walking around the pier for the annual ocean festival.
• and our friends scott and julie came to visit us yesterday. we went to the beach and had some dinner. it's always good seeing them and i wish we lived closer.

that's about it. here's a few pictures from some of the fun...

the view above moonlight beach on international surfing day.

hump day fun day: everyone hanging out with the cornhole tournament going on in the background.

hump day fun day: more people hanging out.

hump day fun day: ed getting ready for the boys' surf competition wearing the beaver wetsuit. note: the flap in the back actually snaps to the front of the suit. too funny!

booher burgers are made. vickie and i posing with the finished product.

cousin rachiel's vintage shop storefront.

here's a shot of the inside of rachiel's new vintage shop.

julie and i in san clemente.

take a look how crowded the beach was during the ocean festival.

there were a bunch of old woodies parked on the pier. i want one.

there were all sorts of water competitions going on throughout ocean festival. this was a dory race. two-man paddle boats making three laps. it was really exciting to watch, especially when one guy had to finish the race by himself because his partner's oar lock broke off the boat.

until next time my friends...

halloween

well.  halloween was fairly uneventful for these harveys.  there was debate about what we wanted to do to celebrate the festivities.  but truth be told, halloween is not as fun if you don't plan WAY in advance.  i think this is because i try to cut costs and make the costume myself because the prepackaged outfits are at least forty buck a pop!!  AND most of the ones for the girls are the "sexy" versions and i don't like to show off my legs that much.  so i end up with very little time to put together my outfit.

anyway, i ended up running around the few days before halloween to try to figure out what i was going to wear.  i had had this idea a couple years ago for mike and i to be 'thing 1 and thing 2' from the cat in the hat--super easy to make and kind of a his and hers ensemble.  the only problem is that mike wasn't sure that he wanted to be the other half of my outfit.  so i went ahead and made my own 'thing 1' costume and sewed the felt onto my red shirt.  mike tried looking for something else to be, but most of the halloween places around here were low on inventory.  he ended up with a grumpy old man mask and i ended up as 'thing 1 minus thing 2.'  

mike's on a new schedule for work that keeps him awake until the wee hours of the morning so he was pretty wiped out and didn't want to spend the energy going to a party.  so we chose the mellower version of halloween and ended up just going to my parents house to hand out candy, while mike had fun trying to scare the kids by jumping out from behind the door with his mask on.  

i guess we better start planning now for halloween 2009...

halloween at work.  it was one of those things that because i'm new there was going to be some sort of joke on the new girl where they convince her that everyone is going to dress up, but no one actually does.  luckily there were a few other that got dressed up.  this is our marketing manager laura (lead singer of weezer), our marketing director matt (scary clown), and me (thing 1).  

san clemente life

so much has been happening over the past few months that i don't even know where to begin...

we've been living together in temecula for a little over a year.  i was working in wine country (but hated my job) and mike was doing great things with his probation work.  then, mike kind of hit a ceiling in the probation department.  he wasn't really being challenged at his job everyday and it became kind of routine.  he decided that it was time for a change and wanted to become a police officer.  after a long, grueling application and interview process (they even came to the house to talk to me and they made mike take a lie detector test...scary!), mike was hired on by costa mesa police department in orange county.  they are one the best departments in california for two reasons (1) they pay isn't half bad, and (2) they provide some of the best training from the orange county sheriff's academy.  from february to august, mike was back in school again, but not like any other school we've been to.  he spent long days getting yelled at by the tactical staff, sitting in lectures, running, and just trying to survive.   but he made it out of the academy alive (with honors in communications skills and firearms proficiency i might add)!

so here we were living in temecula, with mike working in costa mesa.  (side note:  the drive from temecula to costa mesa without traffic is about an hour and fifteen minutes...don't even talk to me about the wasting gas and money there)  we decided that it was time for a move out to orange county to be closer to his new job and then i could spend some time looking for a job i actually liked.  so, i quit my job at the winery and spent my days searching as many corners of the internet as i could for appealing jobs.  but job hunting is time consuming and ultimately frustrating.  i didn't have any particular industry in mind even though i studied hospitality management.  but hospitality requires a lot of hours for not very much pay...one of those work your way up the food chain type industries.  i was spending a lot of time on malakye.com (a job posting site for the action sports industries--surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, motocross, etc.)  i even found a few job posting there that sounded interesting with companies like billabong and rip curl.  the only problem is that the companies are so big, that if you don't meet their specific criteria, you'll never get a call back.  i tried with some follow up calls, but to no avail.  

then, out of the sky, i decided to take another look at the surfrider foundation.  i had looked on their site before, but there were no job openings except for internships.  but i loved the organization anyway and we even made a donation to them instead of having favors at our wedding.  by some miracle, there happened to be a job posting for an office administrator position.  right up my alley!  you have to be friendly (check), personable (check), organized (check), reliable (check), computer saavy (check...mostly).   i quickly put together my cover letter and sent off my resume.  i didn't hear anything right away, and checked the website again and the job posting was gone.  i thought that they must have hired someone already.  i called the surfrider foundation and left a message.  wouldn't you know, i got a call back asking if i wanted to come in for an interview.  hell yeah i want to come in for an interveiw!  i did my research and nailed the uber casual interview.  a couple days later, i was hired!  yeah to me!

now, we're both in temecula with jobs out in orange county and still no place to live further west.  we ended up finding a great place in san clemente (well, rancho san clemente...east of the i-5 and up the hill a couple miles)!  we are about 10 mins. from the beach now!  i am loving every minute of our life out here in our extremely cozy apartment.  mike misses our house in temecula, but it is hard moving from a house to a one-bedroom apartment.  

it's time to find some renters...dun dun dun.  with the economy and the housing market as it is, we aren't willing to sell our house in temecula.  we are going to hang onto it for a while and try to rent it out.  this is a whole new process for us, so we'll see how it goes...any and all suggestions are appreciated.  

anyway, i better be getting back to the dog and cat to make sure they get dinner.  thanks for reading the latest update and i'll post some pictures of our new place soon!