He's From Oklahoma

Today Kendra and I are flying out of Oakland to go back up north. Her big sister is getting married. I’m really excited to see the family but it’s going to be weird going from the climate here to back to the frigid temperatures of my northern homeland.

For the past 3 days it’s been in the mid 70’s. I’m not one to really complain about fantastic weather but it’s a little strange to think this is only January. Some of the random people I’ve talked to say that they are afraid of the summer and what it might bring as far as having to "use water rations again". They say that California is still in a drought but I’m not seeing any signs of that. Then again, I wasn’t here during the summer for the last few years.

Just to the east of our apartment is Grizzly Peak Boulevard which is up on a huge hill.... well, huge for around here. I drove up there by myself to kill some time and couldn't believe the view. (above picture. Left: Thug Passion, Right: Jesse Tobler) I would have posted a pic but it was too late in the day and my sweet iPhone camera, or any camera for that matter, was unabl to take a pic with how bright the sun was.

This is were I introduce the second installment of what I like to call, Logically Sound. Now I’m not going to promise you that this will be coming out with every blog. Although, with the amount of people that California has crammed into such a small place, such as San Francisco, there really shouldn’t be a shortage of top notch citizens for me to capture for your viewing pleasure.

I had a particularly hard time deciphering and translating what this gentleman was trying to say. Especially right around the 1:22 mark of the video. He mentioned something about a “peh-die-nikul” and both, Google and Wikipedia were unable to give me a definition.

Enjoy.

Butter On Toast

I want to start off and say that I had an amazing weekend. The weather had been outstanding so we made plans to go into the city on Saturday to the Haight Ashbury district. Haight Ashbury is basically a street, close to the Golden Gate Park, that’s full of trendy little hipster stores, tattoo and piercing shops, countless amounts of amazing cafes, restaurants, bars, and on just about every block are “medicinal marijuana” shops. It’s basically like 23rd Street or Hawthorne up in Portland, but bigger, with cooler shops, pseudo legalized weed, and more black people. 

However, we had a few unexpected detours. While down on Market Street, we decided to stop at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to scoop up a couple of our favorite beverages. On our walk there, we noticed helicopters in the air and motorcycle cops everywhere blocking traffic. After grabbing our beverages we walked down to see what all the hubbub was about and found out that it was a protest march for “Free Palestine”. Not a very happy group of people... and by group, I mean about 5,000 strong, holding banners and picket signs. Pretty crazy actually.

After waiting for this business to pass we jumped across the street and hung out at the Muni station. After waiting for our bus for almost 30 minutes, we decided to call the number that was posted at the stop to find out what was up with the delay. Turns out that all of the bus routes that were in the path of the “Free Palestine” protest march were shut down. So, we began our walk to a station that was still up and running. After a while I turned on the Flip Cam and blamed Kendra for everything. Then we decided to walk all the way to the Haight Ashbury. Which really isn’t all that bad except that it’s uphill... and it was hot.

We had so much fun down there and can’t wait to go back when we have more time. On the way out, I couldn’t resist and had to let my “inner thug” out. There were way too many amazing stoops calling my name to have a quick sit down and enjoy an alcoholic beverage in a paper bag. “When in rome” right?

After that was all over we figured that we should make use of the Muni station across the street. After waiting for 4 full busses to pass we got on and so did this interesting fellow in the video below. I can’t tell you how entertaining this man was. I actually have close to 15 minutes of footage and think I am going to make this a recurring segment on the blog. He had so many amazingly profound things to say that I truly was tearing up with laughter. I kinda felt bad for the young guy and girl that he was talking to but they handled him very well.

Enjoy, and remember, he likes butter on his toast.

Pimp Slaps and Pills

Oh my goodness. If you have ever had a problem getting enough sleep or keep waking up in the middle of the night, I highly recommend Tylenol PM. I slept for 11 hours straight and didn’t wake up once. I had the coolest and most in depth dreams I have had in years which makes me wonder what’s really in those glorious blue and white pills.

I’ve been working weird hours lately and which really isn't a problem seeing as how it’s really my only gig for now. On that note, there really hasn’t been anything terribly amazing happening other than we got our first piece of mail at the new place and I got my first Californian paycheck. Small as the check was and the single piece of mail was addressed to the anonymous tenants at our address, it kinda really solidified the fact that I actually live in California.

Dear God. How could I forget. Yesterday, I was just perusing the internets, when I couldn’t help but notice the sound of a lap dog being raped by an elephant outside my window. I looked down at the street and saw a large black woman producing the ungodly resonance. I realized that this would be a perfect moment to whip out my Flip Cam and take a few minutes of surveillance to share with you guys the amazingly entertaining displays of dysfunction that we witness out our very own windows.

It seemed to my eyes, that the gentleman on the right, (aka: dirty old bum) was harassing the large black woman, (aka: dirty fat bum). Then walks up this middle aged black man who wasn’t so dirty, (aka: possible pimp of the large black woman and assailant), this is where I started filming and well, the rest is in the video. Not very good quality cause it was shot at a distance with the zoom all the way up. My apologies for that, but I’m sure that you get the idea of the awesomeness that we are blessed with on a day to day basis here in the Bay Area.

The Most Stressful 20 Minutes Of My Life

Let me start this story off with how NOT amazing my night of sleep was. Yesterday, I didn’t really have more than half a cup of coffee. No RedBull (I know, I know, crazy, right?) I had a great breakfast and ate a pretty decent dinner. For some ungodly reason, I didn’t get one wink of sleep last night. I actually couldn’t keep my eyes closed hardly at all. I tossed and turned for hours and eventually got up and checked the MySpace and FaceBook world, played some video games, and eventually went back to bed.

I ended up tossing and turning for another hour or so and moved to the floor. Not sure why I migrated down there. I mean, it’s a wood floor... how comfortable can a wood floor be? Turns out, that the wood floor is actually more uncomfortable than the bed. Regardless, I ended up spending the rest of the night down there watching the clock move closer and closer to 5:30am when my alarm would normally have woken me up for work. I couldn’t bare to hear the awful sound it creates, so I turned it off a minute before and just got up.

Work actually went pretty well. It was busy, I learned a few new things, and it was all around pretty productive. Coming to the end of the shift, I was seriously starting to feel the effects of no sleep for more than 24 hours. But when my shift was over, I was assigned to attend a special training class with a few of my co-workers. Not a huge deal. In fact, I was pretty excited to get some serious training so that I can at least fake my way through a conversation with a snooty specialty coffee drinking customer. The plan was for me to meet the other two co-workers back at work and we would carpool to the class which was located at the Vine Street store in Berkeley.

I left my apartment with tons of time to spare, but everything was working against me. I was lucky enough to hit every single red light on the way back to work and still make it there with some time to spare. “Oh, good”, a parking spot that isn’t just barely big enough to fit a Smart Car. I park, grab my bag and race in the store to meet my co-workers.

Wait, they’re no where to be found. I run to the back to ask my manager if they left with out me and of course they did. Apparently they won’t let you into these training classes, not even a second late. Which I’m okay with, cause that always annoyed me back when I attended school, to have the lazy ass kids come in late and disrupt my learning.

I roughly knew where this Vine Street store was so I raced back to my car to find out that some giant bucket of Summer’s Eve decided to park his Prius six God damned inches away from Thug Passion. If you know anything about Thug Passion, you’d know that her drivers’ side door lock is broken and can only be unlocked from the inside. Unfortunately, Captain Massengill was parked so close to me that I had to unlock the passenger side door, reach in and unlock the back door, open it up and try and crawl in. Here comes the best part of the story, right here. This Prius driving tampon had boxed my car in so tightly that not even my skinny ass could fit in the back door that I just tried to open. I had to unroll the back window, crawl in, and weasel my way to the driver’s seat.

“I’m in!” I thought to myself and started up the car, backed out, and started my breakneck journey to my class. Even then, there was a small inkling of hope that I might make it on time. As I was leaving the parking lot, I looked in my rear view mirror to discover that my bag had been left on my trunk and fell off when I accelerated. Luckily no one ran it over, so I backed up and retrieved the fallen soldier. I raced down the street named Shellmound to hopefully turn right up 65th when there was an Amtrak the length of the whole state of California crossing the street where I needed to cross.

I finally gave up and called my boss back and told her that it just wasn’t possible for me to make it in time. Thus concluding the most stressful 20 minutes of my life.

When I got back home I sat down and decided to take this picture. I haven’t felt this crappy in a long time. I’m not sick but I sure am on my way if I keep up this pseudo-insomnia. I think tonight I am going to have to resort to some sort of sleep aid, such as Tylenol PM... or Chloroform.

So... I made a list.

Things To Do On My Days Off (that don’t cost money):

• - Go on a bike ride on the many bike trails around Berkeley
  
• - Write another blog
  
• - Explore the surrounding neighborhoods
  
• - Clean the apartment
  
• - Go harass the two strung out bums that seem to think that they need to sing and yell at the top of their crusty old lungs (possible videos to come)
  
• - Give Thug Passion a bath
  
• - Kendra says volunteer (fuck that)
  
• - Play through the Halo Trilogy on my X-Box (laaaaaaaaaame)
  
• - Drive to the ONLY Gold’s Gym in the East Bay to work out
  
• - Try Yoga at the yoga shop up the road on Tuesdays (did my wiener just fall off)
  
• - Walk up to the Berkeley campus, which is completely up hill and ride the longboard all the way back home and pray to God that - I hit all the green lights all the way down College Avenue
  

I can't express how happy I am (in words) that I have a job now. Perhaps, I've had a lapse in creativity, but I've resorted to having to make a list for my days off so I don't just sit around on my ass.

Been very busy with work lately, seems that I'm sort of the new guinea pig, for the way that they are training people now. Problem is, that it gets so damn busy there that when we start to do a little "peer training" session, we have to pause and take care of the customers. More often than not, we never actually get to do the training so I've kind of gotten to do a little here and there but basically just skip the actual training and I get a super summarized version of the training. Oh well... I guess. 

I wanted to apologize to each and everyone of you because I totally forgot to include a picture of our tiny tiny tiny bathroom in the post with all the pics of our new place. Deep down in my heart, I know how each and everyone of you were wondering what it looked like. So here it is.

I would have included the shower and the toilet in the picture but I was standing on top of them to take the photo. So just take that into account if you come to visit us and have to clean up or throw down the number two.

Don't Be A Scum Bag, It'll Make Me Not Like You

We finally are unpacked.... mostly. Still have a few boxes of random crap that we need to sort through but I had a chance to do a little decorating in the bedroom. The tree thing above the bed is actually a set of wall stickers from IKEA. They show it as kind or a sprawling design but I felt like posting them up in the design of a tree. More pictures will be up as soon as we find something to sit on. As of this very moment I am sitting on a Sterilite 3 drawer unit and Kendra is playing Tetris on her lovely iPhone sitting in a folding camping chair.

Some of you might recall that in the recent past, Kendra and I had been denied to live in a couple of different apartments for various reasons. Nothing bad, but denied none the less. Well the last of them was by a guy named Jon Favors. He is the owner of a musty, useless, probably a cover up to a weird underground child pornography ring, shop named, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. In fact, it’s located on the very street that we live on about 7 or 8 blocks south of us. This guy is a cheap, dirty, trashy, good for nothing asshole.

You might ask yourself, “Whoa Jesse, what’s with the harsh and slanderous names you’re calling this man?”

Well reader, first of all, thanks for asking. Secondly, this man Jon Favors denied us a chance to live in his little over priced crack in the wall studio because he didn’t feel comfortable letting a “couple” live there. Reason being, he only wanted to have a single person live there. Which is weird considering that he was going on and on about how the previous COUPLE lived there for a number of years. Here’s the kicker. When Kendra and I decided that his reason was kind of lame and I had a few questions for him about it, I thought I should call him and ask him if I could have a refund on our $40.00 check that we wrote him for a processing fee for our application. He told me that he actually had never cashed it and said that “Ya know what, I’ll just rip it up for you.”

Me, looking for any kind of cooperation from this burnt out old hippie, was surprised that he was willing to do that and actually even suggested it. So I took the bait and ran with it. I told Kendra the good news and we thought we had this wrinkly old ball sack out of our lives for good.

Fast forward to Friday, January 2nd, 2009. Kendra text messaged me after consulting her online banking, and told me that our good buddy Jon Favors decided to go ahead and cash our $40.00 check. We both understand that we willingly gave him a check for the said amount but last I heard, if you tell someone that you are going to do something (ie: rip up our check) and then you A) don’t do it and B) still go ahead and cash it anyway... that there is something shady about you.

So now that we are pretty much settled in our new place and loving it I am going to make my way down to the local underground child pornography ring (aka: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly) and talk to Jonny Boy. Wish me luck.

Oh, and P.S. :

Feel free to comment here on the blog. You don't have to have an account or anything. Just click the word comment below this sentence.

10:29 pm.... Happy New Year?

Have you ever been so busy with everyday life and felt so exhausted that you could barely stand on your own two feet by 6pm? Have you been so overwhelmed with this said feeling but been completely okay with it because you are having so much fun and things are finally going your way. Ya well, that’s kind of what it’s been like for me for the past two nights. As I have previously mentioned, I actually started work and even though it’s only a minimum wage job for now, I feel way better about life. On top of that Kendra and I spent our whole New Years Eve moving. [above photo: yes. yes that is my furniture strapped to the top of Thug Passion]

From Bay Street (our old place) to College Ave (our new place) is really only 3.8 miles according to Google Maps but we made that trip 5 times.... round trip. Yeah, even then, 38 miles doesn’t sound like that much but when you are moving stuff from up a couple flights of stairs to Thug Passion, down the ghetto streets between the two nicer neighborhoods filled with crack heads, reeeeeeeeally fat people slowly rolling through the cross walks, and cops accompanied by C.S.I. units you really try and take your time to soak it all in.


You have to keep in mind that I absolutely loathe having to move. Which is really strange considering the fact that I really don’t like staying in one spot for a long time. All things considered, this was actually a very good move. Not only is it our own place but it’s the first time that I have moved into a house with the hopes of it being a clean and nice place to come home to from work and I won’t have those hopes and dreams shattered by all my bachelor house mates (no offense, you know I love each and every one of you boys).

On top of it being a good move, we also recorded just about every minute of the 38 mile trek. Sooner than later I’m going to try and piece together something for your viewing pleasure. I’m not going to promise any real entertainment value but you will kind of get a glimpse into our lives and how we interact with each other. Basically, Kendra tells me stories and I sit there and crack really bad jokes about them or swear at asshole drivers and/or pedestrians.

On another note December 31st, around 11:57pm, I’m sure about 98% of the partially, if not, then fully inebriated world was warming up their vocal cords to slur through their version of Auld Lang Syne, Kendra and I were fast asleep. That’s right, we passed out right around 10:30. The whole waking up at 6am, moving all day, not eating any food until 7pm and washing it down with a few vodka crans to celebrate the new place, really makes for a sleepy couple of lame asses right around that time. Honestly, I think we both had enough fun for a greater part of the continental U.S. last New Years Eve. If you don’t believe me, check the MySpace or Facebook and look at the Polaroid Picture party for N.Y.E. ‘07-’08. (p.s. thank you once again to all of those who attended and tolerated)

Not much else to report that’s really worth typing up. So I leave you all with photos of the new place. Not really top notch but we really like it and are very excited to be here and even more excited for our friends and family to come here and stay with us. Just call us and we’ll figure something out.

[ Our bedroom ]

[ Looking from our bedroom into our living room ]

[ In the living room, that's the bedroom on the left ]

[ The tiny kitchen, with tiny counter, tiny shelves and tiny stove ]