put your sunglasses on....

i've just spent the day looking at the brighter side. okay, a little cheesy, but it's a good thing, right? i won't spend time elaborating on this though, because i want to get to the fun stuff.
(this is a pic of our fireplace we lit up the other night, fyi :)
maybe you guys have detected a pattern with me, but when i need a day to collect myself, i usually end up in manhattan beach. today was no different :)
it almost started out really bad though. when i got out here, i was going to go to lunch, but then when i went into my wallet, my credit card was gone (don't worry, i know exactly where it is... at home, next to my laptop because of an itunes purchase last night). so i didn't have any money on me, and i was hungry! so i walked down to the pier and read my book for a little bit (getting through it, slowly but surely) and decided to go to my grampas and see if he wanted to go to lunch. wasn't home, so i went to the mall. i found a coupon to coffee bean in my car (because they messed up my order one time) so i got a drink to hold me off for a while (funny thing is, they gave me a totally different drink than i ordered, but i didn't say anything because the same thing happened to the lady right before me, and i didn't want to make a big deal of it).
i went to william sanoma in the mall and sampled some free chocolate (which was delicious) and found that i was doing well with finding ways to get food in my belly :)
a lot of people were complimenting my home-made christmas necklace (it's a christmas light) so that made me smile :)
anyway, i went back to the beach, and this time i brought my camera along. i put my ipod on and walked down to the water with my camera to have fun taking some pictures. after, i went up and walked around downtown MB to take some other pics.
this seagull was hanging out for bit on this pile of sand... i sat there, he sat there... you could almost say we sat together. my friend, the seagull :)

i saw this kind of thing when i went running two weeks ago, and was bummed i didn't have my camera... i made up for it ... doesn't it look cool how the water creates that pattern?

i went under the pier for the first time... i spend so much time on top of it, i figured i should check it out down below :)

seagulls are always on top of the volley ball posts... doesn't seem like much fun to me.

one of the best thing about december in manhattan beach: FREE PARKING!

some people have issues with accepting "charity" though and just HAVE to pay for their parking.

i don't know if yall saw it on the news, but there was a big fire in MB last weekend, and it burned down 5 stores... one of them an art gallery that i go in all the time... all the stores were privately owned, and the locals have been really affected by it.

i just wanted to show you guys the parking spot that i had a hard time parallel parking in... you know where i got applauded after i finally got in... the spot happened to be open, so i took a quick pic... i almost tried parking there again to redeem myself, but decided against it.

i went back to my grampa's and he was home. they had brought a BUNCH of grapefruits from their tree in the desert, and look at what i helped myself to :) it was the best!

you'll have to click for this one... but this is a squirrel in a tree. it was sitting on the fence, and my grampa made a squirrel noise at it, and the thing jumped up into the tree and started making loud squirrel noises like it was yelling at my grampa. it carried on, yelling at my grampa for like 15 minutes without stopping. it just sat in the tree, going on and on and on, upset that my grampa scared it (the fact that it kept going on and on was my grampas basis for it being a female... i said that it's pride was hurt for being scared of my grampa, therefore it was proving itself to be macho to make up for it's embarassing moment--hence it is a male) it's still barking now!

hope you enjoyed the pics!