nobody likes you when you're 23

That's right. That's Travis Barker, the drummer of Blink 182. And even though it goes against the lyrics of one of his better known songs (I'm 23), he totally liked me. I even got to put my head on his shoulder! Swoon.

I spent the weekend with Rod, relaxing for a few days at his home in the Los Angeles area. Even though it was about 15 degrees hotter than it is here in Irvine, it was great to get off campus, out of my dorm room (yes, I am sharing a room with someone else and sleeping on a twin bed), and ignore my graduate studies for a couple of days. Oh, and meet up with some celebs.

As a way of avoiding overheating in the 109 degree weather, Rod and I spent the day shopping and sightseeing around town. I love Target so when I saw the big red bullseye we decided to go in and hang out for a bit. After trying on a bunch of clothes I didn't really want or need, Rod wanted to make his way over to the car accessory area to check out a bunch of stuff he didn't really want or need. On the way down the aisles I spotted a super sweet Hello Kitty lunch pail that I had to talk myself out of immediately grabbing from the shelf. While looking at it, though, I heard a guy talking to his son about a Pirates of the Caribbean lunch pail, telling the little boy it would be better to wait until school started to get an even better one.

I can't ever eavesdrop on a conversation without looking at the people talking, so I casually turned my head over my shoulder and saw a very tattooed man with two adorable kids. This guy looks familiar, I thought. Right away in my head I was screaming "TRAVIS BARKER! TRAVIS BARKER!" but Rod had also seen the man and didn't seem phased at all, so I figured it was probably just a case of mistaken identity. After all, he was wearing a hat, and plenty of people in LA are covered in tattoos. But still, I turned to Rod and whispered, "OMG, I think that's the drummer from Blink 182." Rod was just as skeptical as me, but urged me to get a closer look at the man to verify if it was Travis or not. And so my not-so-inconspicuous trailing of Travis Barker through Target began. I pretended to not be following him, but it was pretty obvious that I was navigating through the aisles a few steps behind him, quickly looking away if he ever turned in my direction.

A few times he caught me staring at his tattoos, so I decided to take a moment, grab my Treo, and try to find some recent pictures of the drummer on the internet. Well, my phone was going incredibly slow and was of absolutely no help, but I persisted. Rod kept pushing me to go ask him if he was, indeed, who I thought he was, but I was so embarrassed and worried that it really might NOT be him, and how weird would I sound? Oh, um, excuse me, your tattoos look like the tattoos of this band member guy, are you him?

After finally giving up on my Treo plan, I looked around for the man and couldn't find him, and had almost resigned myself to the thought that I had missed a golden celeb sighting opportunity when I noticed a girl around my age taking a picture with someone who was standing in line to pay, and my suspicions were finally confirmed!

Did I run up to him, embrace him tightly, and pledge my ever dying love for him? I wish. I didn't even want to go up to him, I was so nervous. I insisted to Rod that I didn't want to bug the drummer since he was clearly there trying to be low key and buy toys for his kids, but in truth I was too scarred to talk to the guy. Rod wouldn't take no for an answer (thank goodness!) and made me ask for a picture. Travis was so incredibly nice to me. I admitted to him that I had thought he was from Blink 182 but wasn't really sure, and that I had been following him around the store for a while (he laughed at that). I also got to tell him what a huge Blink 182 fan I was which he told me was "awesome", and he assured me it was "no problem at all!" to ask for a photo even though he was there with his family. After I bought a tank top and a pair of shoes, I passed by Travis one more time as he was packing up two carts full of things for his children and I told him thank you again for taking a picture with me, he told me "Oh no! It's totally cool. Have a great weekend!" And I totally did.