Aah, social networking…every site these days wants to jump on the media bandwagon, and just maintaining/updating/managing my "social" life is really taxing my social life. You know, the real one without quotes. As such, unlike many of you, I don’t change my profile picture on a daily basis because really, hi, this is still me and I don’t think you can tell that my hair has grown 1/4" in the last month in my most recent photo and I seriously doubt you want to see that I’m in desperate need of a highlighting appointment. You’ll just have to take my word for it that I’ve got some dark-root action going on. Thanks for understanding.

My confusion, however, doesn’t necessarily lie with those of you who are far more eager to update your profile picture than I; it lies with those of you who feel it necessary to have your significant other in your profile picture. Because really, what that says to me is that you’re not really you without them. Nice sentiment and all, but kind of conveys that overly-clingy/needy thing that, forgive me if I’m wrong, is sort of ridiculously unattractive. Just sayin’…

My opinion may be quite unpopular here – yes, it’s nice that I can see what your man o’ the moment looks like,  but is it really necessary? – but I’m ok with that. You can get all hatin’ on me ’cause I’m all hatin’ on you and the half of a face that I get to see in your Facebook profile or IM avatar, but at least while you’re mentally calling me a single, jealous bitch of your half-photo (or throwing a sheep at me on Facebook, something I wasn’t aware you could do nor realized I was missing out on until just now) at least know that you’re throwing it at me and me alone. Because, really, I just don’t think it’s fair in this day and age to throw an imaginary cartoon sheep at someone you don’t know just because they happen to appear in your friend’s profile photo. After all, I was raised in Ohio, and while we may not know everything, we DO know proper sheep-throwing protocol.

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Wine tasting with a view, originally uploaded by Aubs.

’tis late.

Ok. it’s NOT that late. but alas, I was up and on the road by 7am with a sick lil’ puppy in tow. (Note that her illness was just suspected at that point, but has been confirmed now. POOR LILA!) Anyway, much more to tell about a fabulous weekend, but this was the view as Kim and I enjoyed some wine and realized in retrospect that we should have also enjoyed some sunscreen.

All in all, fabulous weekend. More to come…

Greetings from sunny Santa Barbara! In case you were following, Miss Lila Belle and I packed up the car – replete with her puppy bed and new bones and new water bowls – and trekked down to SoCal to hang with my friend Kim. Now awake and active FAR too early on a Saturday morning, Lila is stretching out on the floor, I’m reading my Blogliness and Kim, too, is on the computer having fun on the Internets.

Yes. It’s 8:07am and we clearly are geeks.

But it’s September 1st, everyone, and I’m trying to post every day! Ali is doing this as well, I see, so it’s good to have a partner in crime in my lil’ goal here.

So, Hello World. The weekend’s upon us and I may as well use this time to do something productive. Like, you know, shower. And brunch. And all the fun things one can do in a new city where the sun is out and the concept of fog is just that – a concept – instead of the summer reality that it is in San Francisco. And yes, let it be known that I DO drive with my seat heaters on. In August. In California.

SoCal – just 338 miles door-to-door from my happy abode to Kim’s cozy apartment – really is a world away. I didn’t use my seat heaters ONCE.

   

       

   
            

       
               
       
            

            

               

Santa Barbara Riviera

            

   
       

   

With the holiday approaching, I found that I hadn’t made any plans. Like, NONE. ZIP. ZILCH. My weekend was looming ahead and proved to be about as exciting as your great-aunt once removed’s funeral. I’ve already finished fixing up my house (save for the installation of two ceiling fans) and with the exception of Jordan’s BBQ, I had nothing to look forward to. Even my LAUNDRY was done. See? BO-RING.

Yet after the past few weeks, I’ve found myself greatly needing some R&R and while Casa de Sabala avec une menagerie is seriously a happenin’ place, I wanted more. And then it occurred to me: my friend – and college roommate – Kim lives in Santa Barbara, a mere hop, skip and jump from our lil’ City by the Bay. Perhaps SHE would want a visitor.

And you know what? She did!

Turns out I had already requested tomorrow off (um, who knew!?) so alas, I’m scooping up Miss Lila Belle and she and I are road trippin’ down south. I’ve never been to Santa Barbara and while the weather here is FINALLY nice (only took 8 months) I look forward to a lazy weekend with beach trips and lots of walking and lots of doing NOTHING. For some reason, I haven’t done any road trips since I’ve been here (save for camping the other weekend) which is strange since that’s how you existed in the south…heading east east east until you hit the ocean. It was a way of life, and I’m not sure if it’s because I get to see the Bay/Ocean daily or if it’s just contentedness, but I’ve not explored this country state of California in a way I should.

T-24 ’til I blow this popcorn stand known as SF and head for sunnier, southerner, California. ‘Bout time.

I know I’ve been stressed as of late – shocking, I know! – but I didn’t realize the extent of it until this evening. I headed out to a new bar that has a Skee-ball machine (I. LOVE. SKEE-BALL! Sadly, ’twas broken.) and met up with some friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Anyway, one of these friends – who are actually acquaintances that I really like or rather friends of friends thus friends by proxy – is known for his compliments. He is always really kind and ends up complimenting you on something that a guy normally doesn’t. Like, "That dress really brings out the blue in your eyes" or "Wow, you look like you’ve lost weight." So this evening, when he told me that I look "thin" (in response to me saying I’ve been under quite a bit of stress lately) I replied, "Thanks, I wish…I don’t feel thin at all, but that’s nice!" His response? "No, not thin like that, like thin. Weary. Worn thin. Yeah, gaunt and tired and worn thin."

Oh.

I know he meant the best and by no means did I take offense to it; in fact, it’s just the justification of what I already knew: I’m looking haggard as of late. Is *THIS* what they say about people aging due to stress? If so, it’s time to get off this stresstrain. Conductor, where’s the next stop?

I’ve long struggled with calling my website(s) a blog, since I started writing online before the term was universally coined and Six Apart and Pyra came on the scene and made this whole phenomenon a phenomenon. My website, you see, was started as a craft when I had downtime at a former job, and using my mad Dreamweaver skillzzz (that no longer exist), I painfully hand-coded the first iteration of aubreysabala.com, my eponymously (and uncreatively) named site that’s been around for – OMG can you believe it – OVER SEVEN YEARS. I’ve also had various taglines – "Thoughts and whatnot", "becoming less jaded every day", "looking for love in all the wrong places", and "a work in progress", to name a few (all true) subtitles – and despite the design atrocities, I must say that I’m actually pretty proud of my older posts and often lament the disintegration of my brain throughout the last few years, blaming it solely on aspertame or jackass guys sucking the life out of me. Often both.

Anyway.

I used to read a lot of blogs religiously – Dooce, HelenJane, and QueSeraSera, of course – and now and again I’d throw in a few others for good nature. These awesome ladies started writing around the same time that I did (actually, a bit earlier) but they were my inspiration to have a site at all, my muses in this whole newfangled weblog land o’ the Internets. Years later, both HelenJane and Sarah Brown (of QueSeraSera fame) are dear friends whose opinions I not only trust, but rely upon, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I still have a teensie-eensie gal crush on Heather Armstrong who I’ve met casually a few times and did my best not to make too big of an ass of myself in front of the Queen of Blogs herself. Aaah, the Internets, making pseudo-celebs out of the best of us. Yet over the past few years, either despite of or because of the insanity of work, my blog reading was more of a commuting activity, catching up on the Goog shuttle or (these days) while inwardly cursing all of the crazies on MUNI while trolling my Blackberry-now-iPhone. As such, I found myself having a hard time keeping up with my reading and once behind, it fell out of my daily must-do list.

And then I found NetNewsWire and now, the new Bloglines Beta, and oh glories of glory, I feel like I just arrived late at an awesomeness convention bearing some lukewarm baked beans, crying out to the popular kids that "I’m here! And I come bearing gifts!" Or something like that. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve returned to the land of the must-do’s, the must-reads, and along the way I found awesome new inspiring lady-blogger-friends like Ariel! and LeahPeah! and JenB! and Lisa from AGirlandaBoy! and OMG, I can’t wait to have this uber-rad real-life sleepover where we can french braid each other’s hair and burn pillsbury cookies only to eat the cookie dough instead and re-enact our extremely talented "Cold Hearted Snake" dance that began in a sleeping bag because of THE IMAGERY, you know, OF THE SNAKE? The COLD HEARTED ONE? So creative, we were.

So these gals, who I often refer to as "The League of Awesomeness", inspire me to post more frequently and I’m trying to do so. I think I’ve been averse to it because I want never wanted to be that person who was all "I ate a turkey sandwich for lunch today and they forgot the avocado and now I am doing my TPS reports and I’m going to bed at 10pm tonight" even if yep, that’s all I had to say. I think I equated bloggers with train-of-thought, mundane daily activity-listers and I honestly think it’s semantics at this point since, yes, there are many a blogger who finds their pocket fuzz completely compelling but the good ones, the ones in The League of Awesomeness, even if they DID post about their pocket fuzz, I SOOO would favorite it and Twitter and Pownce it out because these gals, they can make their pocket fuzz the most interesting, hilarious, compelling stuff ever. Yep. Really.

Of course, they’re not my only inspiration…my friend Daisy – who I always refer to as "a real writer" since she’s WRITTEN A BOOK – has her blog that puts mine to shame, and from her I just discovered her friends’ Hannah and Mamie’s new blog and I’ll tell ya, I had some self-deprecating moments yesterday as I compared my chickenscratch posts to their eloquence and hilarity. (Sure, there’s TWO of them and only one lil’ ol’ me, but still. Those gals can WRITE). And of course this got me thinking that perhaps I should go to graduate school too (they all met at the Creative Writing Master’s program at UNC-W) and then I instantly negated that thought since really, I’d be 34 when I was finished and you know what they call a 34-year-old single lady in North Carolina? Good as dead. (I wish I was kidding).

Where am I going with this? Again, long-winded me is trying to say that I need to write on here more often, not for any other reason than I want to and I think it will improve my writing and really, I’m probably a bit too hard on myself since that’s kind of my (unintentional) MO as of late. And while I can’t promise prose equal – or even similar – to those in The League of Awesomeness, I can certainly pledge to never, EVER post about turkey sandwiches.

Because really, I kind of hate turkey sandwiches. Pocket fuzz, on the other hand, well, you’ll just have to wait and read…

Do you own all the albums of any particular musical artist or group? Who?
Submitted by dutterman.

Ryan Adams. Everything from Whiskeytown to his latest miraculous melodious piece of awesomeness, Easy Tiger.
Also, in no particular order:
Toad the Wet Sprocket
Counting Crows
Angels and Airwaves (um, yeah. They only have one album, but whatev. I embarrassingly enough like it, even if it does remind me of all of the stress of last summer and makes me need a xanax each time I listen to it).
Sufjan Stevens
Stars

I could go on, but this was supposed to be a quick post.

Originally posted on aubs.vox.com

So after having it on my To-Do list for over a year, I FINALLY got something up that loosely resembles a Writing Portfolio Site. The problem? It’s currently NAMED “Aubrey’s Writing Portfolio”. Hi, future employers who want a creative writer, I’m sorry my creativity doesn’t scale to the name of my website. Love, Aubrey.

Seriously, though, I’m stuck. I’ve tried to think up unique names, but “Wordsmitten.com” was already taken, killing my short-lived elation for my wittiness. I love the word “Belletrist” (definition: A writer of belles-letters, works known for their eloquent style and aesthetic value) but Belletrista.com (which I own) seems like “Belle” and “Trista”. While I congratulate the former “Bachelorette” on her new baby, I don’t think I’m down with a whole site honoring how pretty she is. Call me crazy.

Of course, I suppose I could use one of my other domain names, but I just don’t think they convey exactly what I’m looking for. To note:

• DebauchAubrey: Often true, but probably not professional enough.
• Aubvious.com: AUBSOLUTELY fantastic, but doesn’t scream professionalism.
• Aubsolutely.com: AUBVIOUSLY awesome, but not professional enough. (Are you sensing a trend here?)
• Aubs.tv: Being saved for that day when I say ‘To Hell with it all!’ and become a full-time LifeBlogger

I could go on, but suffice it to say that I don’t have the right name and have been wracking my brain for weeks now, to no avail.

I reached out to my supergreat friend HelenJane who just launched her own marketing company, Maplevine.com, and asked for tips. As smart as ever, she had made a few lists of things that represented her life – growing up in Wisconsin, her work in the wine industry – and VOILA! She put them together and out came Maplevine, the rousing success-in-the-works. So I tried that…only to decide that “LilaBelleVodka.com” just wasn’t saying the right thing.

So, I figured I should turn to you, Internets. Y’all have come through for me before, and I’m counting on you again. Help me name my writing site – currently hosted at: http://www.aubreysabala.com/belletrista until I can decide upon the name and completely redesign the whole thing – and make me the happiest unemployed freelance writer around.

The End,
Love Aubrey

PS: And yes, I own that too.

Originally posted on aubs.vox.com

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The camping crew (minus Ali!), originally uploaded by Aubs.

Our trusty crew of six (Cute Ali isn’t pictured as she’s the photographer of this stellar shot) headed up to Clearlake State Park this past weekend for some much needed R&R. To recap:

1. Clearlake State Park is NOT the same as Bothe State Park, where I had thought we were going and printed out directions to. They’re not even in the same vicinity. Luckily, observant Manlio caught this early in the “4 1/2 hour-but-should-have-been-2 1/2-hour” journey so we didn’t have to detour. We DID, however, have to stop for McDonalds french fries since 330 calories doesn’t hold me over until 7:30pm. Shocking, I know.
2. We went up a mountain.
3. We went down a mountain.
4. Nobody got carsick. This was amazing, given my driving.
5. You do not need a boating license in the state of California to operate a 19′ Sea Ray. You SHOULD, however, inform people of the amount of seaweed in the lake prior to renting said watercraft.
6. Burgers – ok, ANYTHING – cooked over a fire pit taste exponentially better than things that don’t.

The rest of the weekend may be detailed by others (Daisy? Your turn…) but in the meantime, I have to admit that being disconnected to the digital world was nothing less than thrilling. I definitely need to do it more often.

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1986: Third Grade School Photo, originally uploaded by Aubs.

Clearly I’m masochistic, posting the WORST photo of me ever taken (or at least a photo of me looking at my worst, haircut-wise). I’ve written about this before in this post but I feel that I need to include the following excerpt describing the depicted atrocity as:

“…The catastrophic boy-looking feathered-on-both-sides haircut that I got (a result of my Dad taking me to the barber shop, letting me get whatever I wanted done to my hair, me saying I liked it with the sides back and them subsequently mullet-izing me, to my Mother’s extreme horror such that she called her hairdresser immediately and the only remedy was to turn me into Tiny Tim crossed with Farrah Fawcett.)”

It’s not every day that you get to evoke a Farrah Fawcett/Tiny Tim mashup.