Dress #29

On Saturday (8/16), I went to the Santa Monica Pier beach with my friends.  I've only been to the Santa Monica Pier twice before.  The first time I had friends visiting for the weekend from out of town.  I wanted to show them the touristy things in LA so we went to Disneyland the first day and Hollywood Blvd, Universal City and the Santa Monica Pier the second day.  I always felt the Santa Monica Pier was overrated.  The boardwalk has a small roller coaster, ferris wheel, arcade, carousel and carnival games.  The beach isn't bad but it's always super crowded.  The first time I made the mistake of parking in the lot by the pier.  My friends and I put our feet in the water, explored the pier and rode the ferris wheel at sunset.  It was kind of a depressing time in my life and I remember seeing the sunset from the ferris wheel and being sad about the day ending but relieved that it was over.  It kind of sunk in for me the ending of a time period of my life.  The type of people who hang around the pier tend to be aggressive angry people.  I had trouble trying to leave.  I was head in parked and no one would let me back out.  Not a single person.  One of my friends had to get out of the car and hold traffic so I could back out.  Never again will I park there.  The second time I had parked in a huge lot up the street and walked down.  It was a way better experience.

The second time I just went with one of my friends.  We had bought Living Social deals for Color Me Mine.  It's a pottery painting store, so you select your ceramics and paint them.  The store will send them out to be fired and you pick them up later.  I made a fruit bowl.  My friend painted a vase.  We were there with two other girls but they had things to do and couldn't hang out afterward.  So my one friend and I walked down to the beach and had a picnic lunch on the sand.  That's basically the extent of me visiting the pier besides the one time I went parasailing and we sailed up the coast past it.

This time I went with two other friends I hadn't gone with before.  We had bottomless mimosa and appetizer brunch at Zengo.  Our waiter was diligent about never letting us reach the bottoms of our mimosas.  We walked over and laid on the beach.  We went swimming but the waves were super rough.  They literally knocked me over a bunch of times and I was afraid I'd lose my bikini bottoms.  Afterward, we got ice cream nearby and then went to the arcade to play a quick game of House of the Dead.  HOTD is my favorite arcade game and I play it every time I'm in an arcade.  It's funny because my friend loves it too.  When she found out I like it we decided we had to play a game before leaving the pier.  They only had part 1 and part 2 in the arcade.  My favorite is the one with the uzi which I think is part 5 but they didn't have it.

I wore my button down sun dress.  Back in 1999 I got three short summer sun dresses at a store called Fashion Bug in a nearby shopping center to my parent's house.  I wore them all the time back then to school and out to the beach.  This one was perfect for the beach because it buttons down the front for easy wear over a bathing suit.  When I was fifteen I went to Orlando Florida with a friend's family and I wore all three of my sun dresses there.  We were there for a week and the family had rented a house to stay in.  Every day we went to a park, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, MGM Studios (now Hollywood Studios), Typhoon Lagoon, Universal Studios, Downtown Disney.  I wore this dress to the water park Typhoon Lagoon.  I liked the weather in Florida, it was warm and tropical.  It often sprinkled warm rain.  Every night we went swimming in the pool at the rental house.  It was kind of the first family trip I ever took.  My parents never went anywhere so I never really had a family vacation before that.  I haven't been to Florida since but I hope that someday when I have children I'll take them on a family vacation to Disney World.

The Fashion Bug I got this dress at had gone out of business during my high school years but I guess it's a chain that's still around.  The dress has a print design that's black with green leaves and green, purple and blue flowers all over it.  It's a v-neck with a button down front and criss cross x's in the back.  It's made by Fashion Bug.  100% Rayon.  100% Viscosa.  Size S.  Made in Sultanate Of Oman.  I don't honestly remember the last time I wore it.  It may very well have been when I was in high school.  It's still a really cute dress and I do like it but I'm definitely going to donate it because I never wear it.  It is a bit junior but that's reflective of when I bought it.  I'm honestly not sure why I've held onto it all these years either.