Ketchup in Santa Cruz

I now find myself in a great little pool house near the beach in Santa Cruz. I love this little place. It’s cozy and I feel pretty good here. I’m staying two nights here in Santa Cruz to see the area before heading down to San Luis Obispo. My official host is Joy, who is a hair stylist here in Santa Cruz and I’ve been talking with her online for quite sometime, so we figured we night meet up while I’m out this way. So she put me up in the pool house in her complex, which I get all to myself! It’s a great chance to catch up on a lot of writing and relax. In fact tomorrow I’m not even going to set my alarm, which is the first time in weeks. So it’s time for a little ketchup and mustard.

I’m in a pretty amazing stretch of the trip here. I’ve made it to the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco. From here I’ll be in the Los Angeles area, fly to NYC for a few days, fly to Hawaii for more than a few days, check out Las Vegas, then move on towards Phoenix. Wow! How’s that for a month? Not bad.

There’s a lot to manage and balance on this trip. I partially joked that I have to spend a lot of time managing my parents alone! In good ways of course! I have to keep them informed, they’re always passing information my way, logistical stuff to take care, bills and paperwork back home, and trying to mail stuff back and forth. Talking to my parents weekly is always one of the best parts of the week, brining me back home. And I live for the e-mails and messages from everyone. This is quite the experience, managing time, planning hosts to stay with, finding donations, approaching press, responding to e-mails, tracking dozens of people down and phone numbers during business hours when I’m in and out of cell phone service here and there, trying to find internet access, and all sorts of other stuff. And this doesn’t even include editing hundreds of photos a week, writing down as many thoughts as possible, remembering to do a weekly newsletter, and everything else on the website end of things. Among other things that is all the stuff I have to squeeze into little time gaps throughout the day when I have a few minutes here or there between site seeing, meeting new people, trying new foods, talking to classes, seeing how people work, and seeing how they live.

Haha, yikes. I’m scaring myself with all that stuff, it reminds me how much stuff I’m backlogged with. I’m adjusting really well to this fast pace life, I enjoy it. I’m living day in and day out experiencing new things every single day. No day is like the previous. I am loving this! This is just going to have to be a trial run and practice for everything else to come. All the fears and nightmares I had in college about my future are gone, absolutely vanished. I’m quite happy with everything I’ve done to get this off the ground and to live it out! Life is goooood!

p.s. I also get to ketchup with the news! Anyone hear about the UM vs. OSU final score and the same number for the Ohio Lottery? Well speaking of that, when I typed that exclamation point after goooood the time was 11:20pm, which happens to be the date. Spooky! Ok, it’s not that spooky, tiny coincidences happen all the time. However, it is pretty hard to keep up to date with news around the country and world.