I Wanna Get Witcha & Take Yo Pitcha

Some pictures and their explanations:

 I laugh at this as much as I laugh at my name actually being Gigi G.  Which is to say, me and Chin-Chin are homeslices.

 I'm trying out this new thing called closed-toed shoes.  It's weird that so far I really, really like it.  Mostly because these shoes have no sole so it seems like I have flip-flops on still.

 I get tired of packing up all my stuff just to go to the bathroom when I'm in the library studying for a few hours.  To solve this problem I left this message: "If you steal my laptop, I will haunt you til the day this laptop dies.  Furthermore, this laptop is two years old, and there are much nicer laptops in this library. (although you shouldn't be stealing things in the first place."  So far, it works!

 The effects of 2.5 years of methamphetamine use.  No matter how many times I see this picture, I still think it's hilarious.  Is that terrible?

 I had to tear at the fabric of our nation at work the other day.  And by the fabric of our nation, I mean the butcher paper that this map was made of.

I love my school.  

 This from from back when I was at home.  A snail made of green beans.  I felt kind of weird eating it.

And the housewarming present that my sister got me.  It's a small baking pan in the shape of an elephant.  Yet to be used, but VERY cool.  

That's about it.  I realize this is sort of a cop out of a post, but these pictures have been sitting in my phone waiting to be enjoyed by the outside world.  And I needed to make my last post not the first thing that you see on my blog.  In retrospect, it's a little embarrassing, but I'm not really one to be embarrassed.  Oh, and the song?  Missy Elliott's, "Work It"  Because I think at least two people were genuinely curious.  

Fin.  

Fool Friday: Library Dance Party Edition

I do love me the one-girl dance parties:

And this one REALLY lives up to the FOOL part of the title.

Yes, this is me..... in the library .... after midnight.... today..... after figuring our a really hard part of an econ problem (why is calculus that I learned in high school sooooo hard to remember??!!??) ... and then celebrating when I realized the rest of the assignment was going to be peanuts.  or cake.  which ever analogy works better, because obviously I'm not at full mental capacity at the moment.

The florescent lighting of this cubicle is really doing wonders for my complexion, no?  And a million dollars to whoever can guess what song I'm listening to.  OK, that was a joke, I don't have a million dollars.  But I will write you a haiku and post it here.  And unlike the last three haiku's I've written, the last line will not be "Refrigerator."

Have a great weekend everyone!

The Artichoke Cabana

Okay, so I am so totally in love with a lot of things about my new apartment/duplex/well-actually-it's-a-triplex.  

The things I am not so excited about are the fact that it is only about 400 square feet and also that we don't have a real oven.  Microwave ovens and toaster ovens for us!  Oh and also, we just got our own kitchen sink this last Monday.  As in after we had already lived there for 5 whole weeks!

But the things I like, Oh!  The things I like!  They are many.  Well, this house has a very old people vibe.  Just in some of the details it is old.  In fact, it smells a little bit like old people in our place, and we are doing our best to eradicate that smell in favor of a more youthful aroma.  

But it has hardwood floors and we are keeping them clean and free of schtuffs and you know how empty, clean floor space just does magic to my creativity, brain cleanliness, and everything else.  

Anyways, in no particular order, the schtuffs I love about my new place.  

There is this dandy little lightbulb in one of the closets.  The kind where you pull a little string and a naked lightbulb just illuminates all your clothes and shoes and things you have otherwise, uh... stored in your closet (Because you obviously didn't just shove a whole bunch of boxes of crap in there).  I could only take a very terrible picture of it, but there it is.

And then the bathroom.  The bathroom is this wonderful little thing full of way too many patterns and also, it is very feminine and cheery.  I quite like our bathroom.  It makes me want to take bubble baths and light candles and be pampered a little bit.  Or at least take a nice hot shower.  The shower head is so tall!

These little guys are on all the knobs in the bathroom.  They are so old people and so cute!  They are really old though, and fading, and one of them has been broken and super-glued back together (I think).

Oh and most awesomely, the natural lighting.  I love windows, and I love sunshine.  Yep, I am a SoCal girl (with SAD and everything) and I basically need lots of light and warmth to be happy.

So I pretty much love the fact that most of out light comes from the actual sun.  This picture was actually taken on the day I moved in, and all of my clothes are on the couch in clear trash bags.  So very, very classy, I am.

Dudes!  I love this little place.  My biggest complaint was the fact that we went 5 ENTIRE WEEKS WITHOUT A KITCHEN SINK (don't get me started on my feelings about my property manager at this point), but now that we have one, I feel so good about our tiny whole in the wall.


Oh, and if you're wondering about the title of the post, it's because the name our place shall by known by, from here until forever, is henceforth

The Artichoke Cabana

Which absolutely does not make any sense, but you do whatcha gotta ... or something.  

A 55th College Reunion

If anything in my life has been interesting in the last month, it has been working at the 55th Reunion Party during homecoming weekend at Stanford this last weekend.

I wish I had snuck a few photos, but it didn't occur to me at the time.  I was busy being the picture of professionalism and grace (yeah, right).
But first off, this reunion was at the Sharon Heights Country Club which is a ridiculously nice place about a mile from campus.  But probably technically across the street from campus at the same time. (Stanford owns about a billion land around the actual campus, so I'm never really sure where it ends).  And let me tell you, my new criteria for judging how nice a place is is by seeing how nice their bathrooms are.  And napkin-towels with the emblem of the country club on them pretty much mean that this place got a billion fancy points.  And by  billion, I mean approximately 25.4 points. 

Via - This is a popular alumni event where dinner is served on our main quad during homecoming weekend. 

Then, to top it off, it is a reunion party.  Meaning, these old people were very eager to act like they were 22 again.  I saw a lot of old people cursing, making weird ahhh! noises, flirting (involving the people who were "no longer with their first wives" or that sort of thing), and was flirted at by a lot of old men (flirted at?  does that make any sense?).  This one guy had had a couple of drinks and was leaning in all too close to tell me that I was young, and I had my whole life in front of me that I could do anything with, and that the girls at Stanford had gotten a lot cuter than they were in his days.  To which I responded that he was right that I was veeery young and then I smiled and pretended like someone was calling my name. (Aside - I don't much get flirted at (I'm embracing it now) by men my own age, however, at airports I am like kryptonite to men in their late 50s, which is actually a little bit frightening, because when someone offers to pay for your food in an airport, you become aware of all the sort of obligations that could come with this free, yet overpriced meal of a scone and a yogurt parfait.)

Oh and also, at the end of the party, we had the awesome duty of making sure everyone was good to drive (there was, after all, an open bar at this very nice venue).  Consider this for a moment.  Checking the sobriety of people who are around 77 years of age is actually quite difficult.  A lot of times when people have been drinking quite a bit, they are very social.  They stop and talk to you for longer than they normally would, and are very social.  But wait a minute, doesn't every conversation with an old person usually involve them talking for longer than you have interest to talk to them for, and them being very friendly or sometimes very blatant about the things around them?  Hmm, so then you try to judge by the way that they are walking.  Because people who are drunk usually stumble around a bit, can't walk quite in a straight line, and aren't very sure of their footing.  They sometimes need other people to help them stabilize themselves.  Oh but wait, all of the old people were stumbling as they were walking into the party (well, a lot of them were).  In conclusion, I never want to get old.

Ooh, I should get bonus points for mentioning that one man lost control of his bowels at one point in the evening.
Which reiterates my point about never wanting to get old.  Oh and also, what a horrible thing to happen at a reunion party.  That is not how anyone wants any of their peers to remember them.

A very weird night.  A very weird night indeed.  BUT (if you buy five completos...) I did get paid for it AND I got a free meal of really expensive, really tasty country club food.

So a good night.  For sursies.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

P.S.  DId you see me on TV last night?  To be honest, no one did. However, I think I probably made an impression on the minds of talent finders across the world.

That shadow is totally me!  Party!!

Add it to YOUR To-Do List!

Monday night.  8 o'clock.  What are you doing?  The question of all questions, my friends.

Here's what you should be doing: WATCHING MY TELEVISION DEBUT!

And by watching my television debut, I mean that you should be watching the Sing Off on NBC and scouring the shots of the audience for some sign of me.  Hey, everyone's gotta start somewhere, right?  Look for me in a blue top with pinkish flowers.  I'm probably holding a sign that says, "Everyone Loves Avi!" or something.  Probably looking like a crazed fan.  

A friend of mine is on the show in a group called Pentatonix, and they are completely awesome.  Like you wouldn't even believe.  I went to the taping of the show in August and since then I have been bursting at the seams waiting to see this episode.  I would tell you the name of the song they sing, but I think I signed a paper that says NBC will own a little piece of my soul if I let even the teensiest thing slip.  But, it has already been announced that it will be hip-hop night on the show on Monday.  

Seriously though, when I saw it live, I promise you I have never been more excited to hear anyone perform live.  It was amazing.  

You should really watch them sing "Video Killed the Radio Star."  In fact I think that so much that I'm going to post it.  

The bass in the group is a friend of mine and he and the percussionist seriously take the group to a whole other level.  A level that only exists in outer space.  Yeah, the dance moves are a little dorky for me in this video, but just listen to them.

And seriously, Monday night they are going to killlllllll!  Just trust me.  

A Gamboa Classic

Have you ever heard of giving someone the BOD?  Generally, it means to give someone the Benefit Of the Doubt.

An Evil Genius!!

Okay, okay, I'll explain!  In my family, we have a couple classic stories from the childhood of some of our siblings.  There's the brown sugar story, which has to be told by Camille (I wouldn't even try to explain this one - it has to be experienced), the fudge story, and there's the BOD story.  (There's probably a few others that I'm forgetting too.  They probably involve scars and getting lost as a child.)

This story is probably only funny if you know my little brother Lucas, but I tell it all the time and people find it funny sometimes, so here we go.  

Gamboa family tradition: When you turn 7, you've somehow earned the right to a trip to Disneyland with Grandma.  No one knows why, other than my Grandma has done this with all of her grandchildren, and simply because Disneyland is awesome.  Anyways, by the time my youngest brother was 7, my Grandma was having a little bit of trouble getting around (not to mention going on rides), so she just gave my sister Camille the money to take Luc to D-land.  (Which is actually totally not fair because Camille got to go to Disneyland.  Boo).  

Anyways, as such folk lore goes, I've lost a little bit of the details of the story, bit the gist is still there.  Which is that in some line, Camille and Luc were stuck by some kid who was being really annoying.  As little kids tend to do after a days worth of walking around an amusement park.  Anyways, my sister turns to Luc, and in an inspired teaching moment that she had as a 17 year-old big sister, she tells him to give the kid the BOD (obviously meaning the Benefit of the Doubt).  

Luc, being at the ripe maturity of a seven-year-old, didn't get what that meant.  So when Camille asked Luc if he knew what that meant, he thought for a second, then turned and said, "Beating Of Death?"  in a moment of pure Disney magic.  

So now, whenever my family deems that someone deserves the BOD, there's always that sort of question in the back of our heads about which one we'll give.  

Dear Everyone,

I'm counting "everyone" to be everyone who reads this blog.  It has recently come to my attention that I have surpassed 5,000 views of this blog.  This is both lame because this whole blog thing has been going on for about a year now, and a bit amazing seeing as I only really have about 15 people who actually consistently read this thing (and maybe I am related to 6 of them).

This is exciting.  Here is a facial expression to match that emotion:

Adorably, I might add.  

What is even more exciting than this?  A giveaway.  I will be giving away something.  I'm not going to tell you what that thing is just yet.  Because - This giveaway will not be occurring until I have surpassed 10,000 pageviews.  

So the way I see it, you have two options:

1)  Check my blog obsessively several times a day so that the total number of pageviews that I have goes up.  5,000 more pageviews divided by 15 people is about 333.3 pageviews per loyal reader.  Are you willing to wait until each of my readers has done this to find out what it is?  I promise, it will be something absolutely awesome that you will wish you had had in your life way earlier than this.  It will be something of actual value.  

2)  Tell someone else about my blog.  That's right folks, I'm going public.  As in, I am going slightly more public than I am currently.  In that I am trying to reach a wider audience.  If you think your friend will need a little convincing, tell them about the time I wrote a letter to a television.  Or the time I made a stupid comic out of my family.  Or maybe about the time I saved my family from a raging fire.  And the infamous one-girl-dance-parties, are a must-read, if I do say so myself (conceit is  fact of life here, people).  Or on the more serious side (as if I have one of those), you could suggest about my thoughts on children, or on how everyday life can be awesome.

To keep morale up, (as I suspect even with this big (awesome) promotional event, it will still take close to a billion years for us to make it to 10,000 views), I will be giving away a hint about what the awesome giveaway will be every time that another thousand milestone is passed. (If you're interested, you can see the number of pageviews by scrolling all the way to the bottom of my blog).  

Okay so Go! Go! GO! Grab your gopeds, gokarts, and gondolas and vote for Gigi Gamboa for Valencia Secretary*.  I mean, go do whatever you want.  

*May or may not have been the last line of my sixth grade speech to be the secretary of my elementary school's student council.  Which I won be tee dubs.  

Your adorkable bloggy friend, 

G


P.S.  I've gone back and forth about a billion times on whether or not I want to do this, so be kind.  Give me the Benefit of the Doubt.

Lately

SO over the weekend I chopped off a bunch of my hair and added red peak-a-boo highlights to it.  The chop was supposed to be shorter and more chic, but I've come to the decision that I have too much hair for it to look the way I want it to most of the time, which is fine because it does okay on its own.  And also I sort of chickened out on how short I would let the lady cut my hair to be.

The end result is that I have sort of a Mom haircut with random red highlights.  Both of which you can barely see here:

Please ignore the face that my facial expression makes me look, well, rather stupid.  But you can kind of see a highlight there.  They are very subtle, unless I wear my hair partially up, and then they are on the top level of visible hair and even then they kind of blend in with the rest of my dark hair to be ... less subtle.

I have this talent for rambling on about things that have very little meaning.  Have you noticed?

Anyways, there is more to this post than just announcing to the world that I cut my hair over the weekend (although that's definitely what prompted me to start writing this post, if we're being honest).

The rest of the post is about the fact that lately I just feel so inspired.  Like half of the things I walk by or or half the conversations I have make me want to go out and do something.  I took a few pictures.

Stanford at twilight:

My new favorite library:

It has super high ceilings and hardly ever has people in it because it is the Education library and it is not even its own building.


The Stanford RedZone:

Do you know what it's like to go to a football school?  I do.  (I like to brag about our football team - a lot.)


Guys, get excited! I am.

This Isn't Weird, Right?

Unabashed list coming through:

• Sometimes I look in the mirror and think, "I look so horrible right now, that I think I crossed back into cute somewhere."
• I've been in a poking war on fb with my two little brothers and my best friend for several months
• I got so upset over the ending to the last hunger games book, that I spent a week trying to imagine an ending where all of the issues get resolved in a way that I find suitable.  It's sort of detailed.  
• A very large portion of my alone time is filled with singing and dancing. 
• Because my best thoughts sometimes come to me right before I go to sleep, sometimes I go through my night time routine just to get to the good ideas.
• I only own high-heeled shoes (emphasis on the high) and flip-flops.  Plus one pair of converse and one pair of exercise shoes.  
• Sometimes I wish I could just smell lightly of cinnamon for the rest of my life.  It would be an awesome perfume.  
• Lately, I've been craving Christmas music.  I keep humming "Winter Wonderland" as a quick fix. Because December is the best month that there is.  And nothing could ever convince me otherwise.  
• More and more, I appreciate the value of a good-old-fashioned gentleman.  
• I want to live in the Incredible's house.  No, really.  It's spawning an interest in home decor.  
• My family has this weird obsession with chocolate milk that I just realized when my mom came to visit and bought a tube of Nesquik for my new place.  

I'm a believer in ever blog post having a picture to call it's own, so here you go:

The Post I Almost Did Yesterday

Remember when I said that I love my walk home?  Turns out that is true even when it's raining.  Two days in a row.

Back to the main point, I love my walk home.  Like times a thousand.  Which leads me to......

"20 Minutes in the Life of Gigi While Walking" Picture Tour!!!!!

I hope that was self-explanatory.

So get this.  You are now a twenty-year-old college coed attending one Stanford University.  You are obsessed with your football team and today you might have accidentally said that you have elephant-like skin in one of your classes for reasons that still don't make sense to you, but this is besides the point.  

After engaging in a full school-day's worth of schoolishness and good old fashioned hard work, you head home from the library.  And here's where we hit picture number one:

Really, there was a maintenance man putting in light bulbs at a different chandelier that you really wanted to take a picture of, but you decided that blatantly taking a picture of a stranger who is stuck at the top of a tall ladder might be a little less than usual.  But you take a picture of the chandeliers anyways because, really, it's the little things that remind you of Hogwarts.  

After leaving the library and making a bit of awkward small talk with the library man, you set off into the world, ready for the fresh air.  Only when you leave the library, you start to wonder where Christian Bale is, because, are we filming the next Batman movie?

You marvel at the fact that you have now taken two pictures without anyone noticing that you have taken them, and decide that that man is infinitely cooler for owning a motorcycle that is basically a replica of the Bat-mobile.  But all motorcycle lusting aside, you now have the urge for an insanely cool leather jacket because then if you asked that man to let you ride his bike, he would probably let you because you looked so cool.

Overcome by a sense of sadness at your lack of leather jacket, you decide life is too short to mourn what could have been, and again, you press onward.  Wandering the sidewalks, and admiring your shadow (How is she like me, except with longer legs and way skinnier?  I want to look like her.), you see something that causes you to wonder.

You come to the conclusion that a sprinkler has been broken, but still there are so many questions:  What are those little flags there for?  If they noticed a problem was there, why did they put little flags there instead of fixing the sprinkler?  Are the little flags to alert you of the tiny marshlands that are growing and slowly taking over the sidewalks?

Whatever, it must not be terribly important, because you are still walking.  But then you get to your neighborhood.  Your neighborhood!  And every time that you enter this magical little place known as College Terrace, you want to scream to the world that it is something like Narnia.  Having never seen a neighborhood so adorable and also, let's be honest, kind of cramped as this, you indulge in three photos.  Three!

After taking this photo, you realize you have captured these cyclisysts in the moment and are both concerned and overjoyed.  Concerned because, why do you have this weird urge to take photos of strangers today, and overjoyed because, how idyllic is this?   They are literally riding bikes through their neighborhood, and the son is wearing a helmet and everything.  

When you get to this house, you at first want to own it, and then realize how much of a grandma you would appear to be if you actually owned a house that was somewhere between pink and purple.  And you would have so much gardening to do!

And as you stop right before taking the pathway back to your place, you snap this shot from your front yard and think, "if I had a green house, would that automatically make me a better parent?"  because that logic is very sound.  Oh and also, even though your camera didn't catch it, you see that there are now pumpkins on the front porch of this little green house and you're so overcome with the Disney/Pixar "Up" of it all that you spend the rest of the afternoon pondering what you would do if a little Asian boy with an absentee father showed up at your doorstep.  Would you dismiss him or would you take him to Fenton's ice cream?  Which is a real place in Oakland that you now really want to visit.

And then you turn to face the 921 (soon to be named with a real good name), and you realize that only eyes can do justice to this little majesty of a triplex.

Oh, you can go back to being you now.

OCTOBA!

There was this post on the tip of my fingertips all about how much I love my walk home from school to my new place (Kristin and I are having a terrible time trying to name this thing - by which I mean, all the names we are coming up with are terrible), when October came and decided to throw me for a loop.  I got out of class today and went to the library to study for a few hours in an optimal learning environment before going back to the laugh factory (hey that's not bad) to do some chores and hopefully some homie work.  Anyhoozzle, when I got out of the library to make the walk back to home, it was RAINING!  Can you believe it?  Just four days ago I was sweating like a pig on my walk home, and by a "sweating like a pig" I mean "glistening like a lady". Where does the time go?

I was trying to take a picture of the rain, because the first rain of a school year is a little bit soul-crushing in that I am a Southern California girl who thinks, "Get me out of this gloom and doooooom!" and also a bit awesome in the, "We're not in Kansas anymore," sort of way and also, who doesn't love a little fall crisp-ness?  But why should it come with moisture?
Oh! but I realized, that when all you have is a not very high-quality phone to use as a camera, it is pretty much impossible to take a picture of the rain.  Which is when I realized......


You must need a video:

I'm rocking that wet dog look.  Oh and also, I don't think I've even made worse jokes in my entire life.  IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.  So let's just pretend that I never ever said anything about a snoring man.  EVER.

Happy October Everyone!  Fall is in the air! (Quite literally).  Enjoy the proximity to Christmas bells!  They are almost a-ringing.  No but really, Christmas (which is practically the entire month of December in my mind) is right around the corner, and is obviously the best holiday there ever, ever was.


So here's to a quick fall!


P.S.  I apologize for not posting a fool Friday!  This whole school thing is throwing me through a loop.  Oh and also in the PS category, I'm totally getting back on this blog-thing for realsies about now.  So get pumped!