Anyway, we arrived at the ranch late Saturday afternoon and Talbot, Paul's pledge bro, wasted no time in taking us on a tour of the ranch. Which was huge, like seriously, huge. Being the gracious host that he is, Talbot started off the tour with some cold beers and a peak at all the different existing houses on the property.

Then came The Jeep Ride. Oh how I wish I had a picture of The Jeep. The Jeep was a pale yellow, dusty, doorless, seatbeltless two-seater that looked like it had been painted during the 1960's but was actually made during the World War II era. Because there were three of us Paul had to ride commando-style, standing up in the back, one hand holding onto his beer and the other to the bar over our heads. I would have spent the entire jeep tour preoccupied by my fear of flying out everytime we hit a bump (which was A LOT since the road wasn't paved) but since Rowdy (Talbot's dog) insisted on running just in front of the jeep for almost the entire ride, everytime we hit a bump I was instead seized by the fear that we had just run over the dog. Which happily, was never the case.

Rowdy (who is also the most in-shape dog I've ever seen in my life and made me feel extra bad about raising such an obese feline) ran in front of us all the way up to The Top of the World, which literally feels like, well the top of the world. It was the highest point on their property where some lucky person's house will eventually be built and on a clear day you can see all the way to the Channel Islands. Which is pretty damn far, for those of you who didn't know. Rowdy was exhausted by the time he made it to the top and had to spend several moments foaming at the mouth and panting heavily. Talbot drove us through a creek with a waterfall on the way down so Rowdy could lie in the water and get himself a nice cool drink. Here's a little tip to those of you who live in Montecito: the creek feeds a reservoir that serves the city of Montecito, so you may want to rethink drinking your tap water. It may come from the mountains but it also has Rowdy's hair in it. And dirty jeep tire crud.

On the way down from The Top of the World I realized that beer + tiny bladder + bumpy jeep ride = well, you know what it equals. Luckily we made it back to the house before anything embarrassing happened.

After relieving our bladders and changing into dust-free clothing we piled into Talbot's non-WWII era jeep (with five seats!) and headed to Santa Barbara for dinner at a restaurant on the pier called Brody's (I am not sure how accurate this name is as I wasn't paying very close to attention to where we were going). Dinner was delicious and included a free view of the sunset over the water. For dessert we went to an uppity restaurant in Montecito called Lucky's. I feel safe in calling it an "uppity restaurant" because I totally saw Oprah there (Oprah fans eat your hearts out!). Also, the bill for drinks + dessert was like five dollars less than the bill for drinks + dinner, but I mean we saw Oprah there so what did we expect right?

After the Oprah sighting I was pretty exhausted but Talbot wanted to show us State Street. So we tried to get into this place called Joe's but they were all, please wait in this line so we were like pfft, yeah right and we went to this english pub place instead where I, being the old lady that I am, promptly fell asleep in one of the booths and left the boys to their boy talk and Jamison's (Irish whiskey) on the rocks. Loud music and crowds apparently do not keep me from falling asleep in random spots after a certain hour of the night (11:00 p.m. to be exact).

Oh, so I forgot to mention that during cocktails and dessert at fancy Lucky's my purse fell off my chair and some items spilled out, including the mini-bottle of Bushmill's that Paul and Talbot stashed in my purse "just in case". Somehow, I managed to get my purse caught under one of my chair legs (don't ask me how this happened in the span of like 2 seconds) which meant making quite a spectacle of freeing my purse before attempting to jam the miniature bottle of alcohol back inside. The couple sitting next to us looked at the small, shameful bottle of Bushmill's and then at my cocktail and then at me like Wow, how much do you drink? I'm just glad Oprah didn't see.

All of us slept in on Sunday morning and then went out for burgers and clam strips at The Spot in Carpinteria. Which Paul and I are pretty sure was featured on $40 a Day with Rachel Ray. After that Talbot snuck us into the Santa Barbara Racquet Ball and Polo Club so we could experience (horse) polo for the first time! Dressed appropriately in our "country club clothing" (kahki's and pastel) we pretended to be young socialites as we watched 5 chuckers (there are 6 periods or "chuckers" in a game of polo, hah don't I sound knowledgeable). The best part was half-time (after the third chucker) when everyone goes onto the polo field and stomps down the divets made by the horses and they reward you for your efforts with free champagne! Gorgeous horses, stomping on grass and free champagne! What is there not to like about polo?

Because we did not feel sufficiently sunburnt by being polo spectators, we decided to go out to the sidewalk art show thing by the beach in Santa Barbara. Many cool things were seen by all, none of which I have pictures of to show you guys =( Maybe next time..

Last thing we did was have ourselves a little bbq, because dude, we were on a ranch. Talbot gave Paul a cowboy hat to wear to the Von's when we were buying meat and I must say he looked mighty good. The sunburn gave him a very realistic hot-sexy-redneck-cowboy appeal.

So here we are back from our lovely weekend in Santa Barbara and all we have to show for it are our lobster-like complexions and no pictures to speak of. Wish you were there, etc. etc. =)

Note: Upon returning from our glorious weekend with nature, we immediately sat down at our computers for a three hour session of DOTA with my friend Henry.