Santa Barbara

So I'm sitting on a lounge chair on my deck in Santa Barbara and I have to say.... life is good. Incredible, really. Nick and I departed from Seattle on Monday morning, made it as far as Eureka, CA on our first day of driving. Word to the wise: don't go there. We drove through the Redwood forest which was huge and powerful and completly indescribable, which made it worth the crazy meth-heads mumbling to themselves in the shadow of my car parked in the garage. Day 2 took us down another beautiful stretch of North California Rt.101 and into San Fran, where we spent the afternoon with Nick's good friend Eddie. Finally, at 6:30pm on day 3, after braving the coastal route 1 until we were blue in the face with carsickness, we made it to Santa Barbara. Incredible.
The owner of our house is a Law & Society professor at UCSB who decided to pick up and move to LA to help her boyfriend produce a low budget film while school was out for the summer. She cleaned the house but pretty much left us everything - including a fully stocked fridge and liquor cabinet and some ambien in her bedside drawer. Nice.
The house is in a residential neighborhood just west of downtown - known to most as a Mexican area. But I like Mexicans and the place is safe and quiet, not to mention being a 10 minute walk from the heart of downtown. It is so peaceful here, and the house is sick - for lack of a better word. We could not have asked for a better place. On a similar note, we have a guest house and enough couches to sleep at least 3 more people here comfortably, not counting nick and myself.
Santa Barbara is chill as can be and yesterday I saw a real live shaman walking around the organic supermarket barefoot with his flowing white robes and waist length silver beard. I love that shit.
The beach is incredibly beautiful, palm trees line our street, birds are chirping in the trees, and I am in love. Talk about paradise.

After giving myself a day to unpack and take it all in, today I put on a tight tank top and heels and braved the streets of downtown SB in search of a bartending job. Many of the places were closed, and of those I visited it was generally hit or miss. But mostly hit - so things are looking up.

Even better - it turns out this weekend is the "Summer Solstice Festival" here, the biggest party of the year. Tonight Nick and I are headed to a park for some live bands and drinking at a beer garden. Tomorrow, starting at noon, a ridiculous "bohemian" parade marches down State St (the main drag), and all of Santa Barbara comes out to see it. All the bars have crazy parties going on all day. I am like soooooo bohemian, LOL!

So I will hold out on specifics of which bars are looking promising because a) I dont want to jinx anything, and b) you dont care, but I will be writing shortly hopefully with news of a great new job and definitely with all the pics of the Santa Barbara leg of the vision quest thus far.

Will somebody please comment or send me a freakin email so I know there is at least one person reading this damn thing?!