Trains to Brazil

For those of you that really think a "job with travel" sounds sexy, I present

48 hours in Denver

8:30 a.m. Leave my house in HB
9:25 a.m. Finally find a parking space at John Wayne Airport
10:00 a.m. Give up on quest to find something healthy for breakfast and buy almonds/trail mix/water and a trashy celebrity gossip rag at the airport gift shop
10:25 a.m. Buckle my seat belt on the airplane. Check my emails, message from my boss saying he doesn't like new ad campaign execution. Will have to wait until I get to my hotel.
1:30 p.m. Mountain Standard Time Arrive in Denver, I have lost an hour but still think I can make a 4:00 p.m. meeting in downtown Denver.
2:00 p.m. Electrical issue with gate delays deboarding of plane
2:30 p.m. Still waiting for my bag. Who checks a bag for a two day trip you ask? Someone who couldn't get her slightly oversized overnight bag past the eagle-eye at the gate in Orange County.
2:45 p.m. Yup. Still waiting. Conveyor belt jam. Try to get some work done on my Blackberry. Feel like a huge tool because I am working on my Blackberry.
3:00 p.m. On the shuttle to the rental car counter. Fortunately my sister has a funny story about a dumb boy so I am laughing at her instead of stressing about the fact that there is no way in hell I am going to make my 4:00 meeting. Also, still have not been able to look at ad execution.
3:15 p.m. Rental car fiasco. I get assigned a car that doesn't exist. Dollar Rental Car woman is really annoyed that she has to fix my problem.
3:30 p.m. Call to reschedule meeting for next day thereby negating my need to be here today. Awesome.
4:15 p.m. Arrive at hotel. Annoyance at three hour lag time from landing to hotel arrival eased by those delicious cookies you get upon check-in at Doubletree Hotels.
4:30 p.m. Finally looking at ad execution. Long conversation with my boss about changes. Long argument with agency about changes.
6:00 p.m. I forgot to eat and have only had eight ounces of water today. Could be the reason my head feels like it's about to explode.
6:30 p.m. Realize I am in staying in suburban strip mall wasteland. Eat a burrito at Chipotle. It's actually really good.
7:15 p.m. Start on work that didn't get done while I was doing nothing at the Denver International Aiport. Decide to get over the fear of looking like a tool with a Blackberry. There is a reason I have one.
8:30 p.m. Feeling like a disgusting blob so change into workout clothes and head to local rec center. Run on treadmill for 45 minutes.
9:30 p.m. Take advantage of hotel hot water and take looooong shower.
10:30 p.m. Finish up with work emails. Play on internet for awhile.
11:30 p.m. Get into bed
Midnight Finally turn off television.
1:00 a.m. Still staring at ceiling.
3:15 a.m. Wake up for a drink of water
6:00 a.m. Wake up for another drink
8:00 a.m. Wake up because boss is calling
8:15 a.m. Look at ad campaign AGAIN!
10:30 a.m. Take a break from emails to take a shower
11:30 a.m. Leave hotel to get ready for Lady Foot Locker presentation
12:30 p.m. Run to Best Buy for prizes for LFL managers. Get a message from boss that CEO hates ad campaign. The whole thing. We are scrapping all work to this point. Panic.
12:50 p.m. Make copies at Kinko's
1:30 p.m. Arrive at Westminster Mall for presentation
2:00 p.m. Finish presentation
3:00 p.m. Back at hotel, talk to boss about ad campaign. Freak out a little. Finally calm down and get back to emails.
4:30 p.m. Head to meeting in downtown Denver, call coworker to discuss ad campaign. Cry just a little bit.
6:00 p.m. Finish meeting.
6:30 p.m. Find sushi restaurant, sit at sushi bar, order too much and feel sheepish when i only eat half.
8:00 p.m. Get back to hotel. Write email to old boss asking for advice on ad campaign situation. Talk to little brother on the telephone
9:30 p.m. realize my flight is really early and should probably stop playing on the computer and go to bed.

Hey! Ho!

My friends Jared builds custom furniture up in San Francisco. This weekend he had a design show in LA so his wife Karen and our mutual friend Wayne decided to come down too and have an adventure weekend.

Friday night Karen and Wayne braved the 405 and showed up at my house around 9.


Later that night, Tai arrived from Salt Lake. His wife had to work all weekend so he decided to come check out the show too.


Our friend Greg came up from Vista to eat breakfast with us the next day. If you ever come to visit me, make me take you for macademia nut pancakes. Really.


Wayne doesn't really like having his picture taken so I took it upon myself to try to get him used to it.


Then we headed up to LA to pick up my other friend Greg and go to the show


He was happy to see us. Well, Karen at least.


There are so many reasons to like Greg, but one of them is that this is hanging in his bathroom


The other reason is that you can see two of yourself at once in his bathroom mirrors.


When we arrived at the show, Jared was very busy impressing important looking design people.


We took full advantage of the seating in Jared's booth. Seating designed by Jared of course.


Our friend Keith popped by before ditching us to play tennis. (with a girl maybe? hmmmm)


Rebecca and Betsy arrived all the way from San Francisco! (well, all the way from shopping at the Promenade. But they do live in San Fran)


Rebecca made a fun new friend. He gave her some manicuring tips.


We left Jared to his duties and headed up to visit the Getty Museum. Despite Karen's best effort to get our lazy group to walk up from the parking garage, we opted for the Monorail-esque tram ride. Disneyland for adults.


This is what happens when you go to a museum with all your artsy friends.


Appropriately, we went to a photography exibit at the Getty


Wayne got more comfortable with the camera. and with besty.


Afterwards we headed back to Greg's house in Culver City.
There was pool.


some ping pong


There was a quick run to get some eats.


There was ice cream.


There were sexy men


and maybe just a little bit of tom-foolery

It was a lovely weekend. And of course now I am posting about it here instead of packing for a work trip to Denver tomorrow morning....

Shelter From the Storm

Two of my favorite people on earth are getting married on Saturday.

Andy Kane


and Emily Berg

They are getting married in Boston and unfortunately I won't be there, but I wanted to send them a little blog love anyway and post a few of my favorite photos of the happy couple.


Andy totally scored.


Yup, he's calling her. Awwwwww.


Heh heh heh.


And just so we're clear on what kind of a boy andy is-here is a picture he took of emily and me with the instruction to "push our chests out". Safe to say the honeymoon seems like a guaranteed good time.


I love you two and wish you all the joy and happiness possible this weekend. Even though I won't be there, I'll be wearing my Coke t-shirt and missing you bad....can't WAIT until you get to San Francisco!!!!

xoxo,
kc

Long Time Gone

So being halfway across the world apparently didn't stop my little brother Logan from attending a wedding at home in Utah this weekend.


Toasting Alma and Julia

Hanging out with my dad

making mom, tasha, emily and christopher cry

I have the best family.

One is silver

It's been "random encounters with college friends" week for me.



First was Jed and his roommate Derek, who happened to be in New York City the same night I was there for work. My event got over late and my flight home was at 6 in the morning so I called Jed to tell him it probably wasn't going to work to see him. But he wasn't having it and at 11:45 these two delightful creatures knocked on my door and we kept each other up waaaay too late. Jed is moving to New York in May which can only mean more late night hotel encounters when I'm there for meetings. Lucky lucky me.


Then Jennie and Margie and I spent an evening eating yummy Mexican food and introducing our little Utah Jennie to the delights of IKEA. Margie was literally the first friend I made in college. It was day one in Cedar City and I still remember her opening her dorm room door wearing a robe that became very familiar when I lived with her two years later. The three of us ended up in a sorority together and although I have mixed feelings about the Greek system now, I am so glad it brought me into this group of women. We are all turning 30 this year and of the other Alpha Phi's that age, I think about 98% of us graduated from college, most of them have Master's degrees (lazy me!), a bunch of us went on missions, the married ones brought awesome boys into our friend circle...it's just a really quality group of women that continue to impress and inspire me. And when I get a chance to see one or two of them, it makes me miss all of them.

Doesn't it seem reasonable that all the people I love should just move to California?

Bailamos

So Puerto Rico was really, really fun. I went with a few of my friends from Boston and we had a great time.


We did a little sightseeing.


A little shopping.


We saw pretty things.


And broken things.


We ate good food.


We went to the beach.


We relaxed.


I'm ready to go back.

I Wanna Be Your Lover

alright, i'm too lazy to download photos tonight but i am NOT too lazy to find the "Top Five Artists in My iTunes That Might Make You Judge Me But I Don't Care"

1. Whitney Houston
"It's not right, but it's OK" I can't even begin to tell you how many five milers have been salvaged by repeating this song over and over and over. "Pack your bags, up and leave, don't you dare come running back to me!!" Such power! Such anger! Look, no one has ever cheated on me, I've never confronted someone with a mysterious credit card receipt, I've never kicked a man out of the house. But there is something about this song that sorta makes me wish I had.

2. Jennifer Lopez and Ja Rule
I'm going to guess that I have some sort of unconscious association to a good time in my life and that's why I like the song "I'm Real" so much. This thing is like five years old and features two very marginally talented people but I can't stop putting it on mixes. 'Hard lovin', straight thuggin'-what is wrong with me?

3. Natasha Bedingfield
Yeah I don't care what you think. I am addicted to the song "These Words". You simply can't contain your joy if you sing along. I dare you...I love you I love you I love you I love you!!! When this comes on my iPod I always end up giggling and there's nothing I like more than when my iPod and I have a secret.

4. Tony! Toni! Tone!
Oh dear. Well we did call some brothers I know Slim Shaney and Toby! Tobi! Tobe! all summer once upon a time but that is no excuse for the fact that I actually paid money to own "It Never Rains in Southern California". I'll still try to defend myself and say that the day my company president announced that our Boston office was closing and most of us would probably have to move to Irvine, I came home, downloaded this song, and proceeded to listen to it everytime I was out in the blistering cold that is Boston in February. I didn't move for another year but it wasn't because the brothers Tony weren't singing blessed hope into my ears at every turn.

5. Mariah Carey
Oh now this is just going to ruin me. I have four-count them-FOUR, mariah carey songs in my possession. One is on my workout mix which I feel like can justify pretty much anything with a good beat or lyrics you can use as a mantra when you are ready to pass out. So that's one. But the others....well at least I'm not trying to say "hero" is a really good song. I have two songs and a remix from last summer's "The Emancipation of Mimi". My friend Corey and I have been justifying our intense love for both of these tracks by saying they are by "mimi" instead of "mariah". I will argue that "We Belong Together" is a really good R & B song and if Mary J. Blige had recorded it instead of Mariah, you might take it more seriously. It's moody and sad and there is genuine emotion in her vocals. I feel like I owe a certain amount of respect to an artist who has managed to stay relevant in a genre dominated by teenagers and flavors of the week.

Mas Que Nada

I just got home from Puerto Rico. Lengthy post to follow. For now, I have to run approximately 1000 miles to work off all the coke/fried food/ice cream/grease blessed grease I've been putting in my mouth for the last week.

In High Tide or in Low Tide

home sweet huntington beach. i missed you.

Miss Sunflower

So I might have a mild obsession with Ryan Adams. A few years ago, my friend Alicia had tried to get me to like his "New York, New York" song and it didn't really take. But I was in a Hear Music store in the Stanford Mall in Palo Alto one summer and happened upon a track off "Gold" that actually made me cry (confession-it was the original version of "when the stars go blue", which at the time had been covered by The Corrs and special guest Bono. I loved that version, saw that this guy wrote it and decided to give it a try. I'll spare you the messy details of who I had dinner with the night before and why exactly I was probably ripe for an emotional reaction)I sort of have a rule that if you are physically affected by music, you should buy it. So I did and I liked that album just fine. Then my sister sent me "Pneumonia" by Adams' old band Whiskeytown and told me it was an album best enjoyed in it's entirety. That became the anthem of my fall and by the time another friend put "Dear Chicago" and "A Long and A Sad Goodbye" on a mix CD a few months later, it was over for me. And now I'm that fan with eight versions of "Answering Bell". Yep, it's good to have passions.

I've only seen him live twice. The first time I was in New York for work and completely blew off a meeting to go see him with a friend who happened to be in the city that night as well. It was one of those killer fall New York nights where it was still warm enough to enjoy being outside and feeling the energy you can't miss in that town, Adams played a relatively smooth show-didn't sulk or storm off stage or anything, and we got to hear "Stars Go Blue" not just once with the Cardinals, but once by himself too. I was like a 12 year old at a Backstreet Boys concert. Not to mention that fact that honestly, alt-country fan boys are the very sexiest of all music fans. We went to Cafe Mozart afterwards and ate way too much chocolate dessert and then passed out from awesome in my company sponsored digs later than night. Such a perfect night.

The next show was last spring, first stop on the Cold Roses tour. My friend Andy and I drove almost two hours each way from Boston-in driving rain and crappy traffic-to Northampton too see him play with the lovely Rachel Yamagata at The Iron Horse Music Hall. We had a delightful drive to the show-Andy introduced me to some fabulous Martin Sexton live recordings and some early Rachel Yamagata stuff I hadn't heard. My little car was only two weeks old so we were still in the honeymoon phase (which, almost a year later, is still true). Our friend Lance met us there. I may or may not have had a little crush on Lance at the time. Well, probably may more than may not. Anyway, we'll just leave it at me not being entirely disappointed in the company. The show was a little bit bizarre, Ryan had a rat that he kept bringing onstage, he would stop playing for loooooong stretches of time, Lance actually fell asleep at one point which was hilarious (and which he will deny) but I was enthralled. He's a weird, weird dude and he continues to get weirder. But I honestly feel like he almost can't write a bad song (we just won't talk about Rock and Roll)(I do own it though).

And really the only reason for this l-o-n-g and mostly self-indulgent post about Ryan Adams (although come on now, isn't a blog really a fairly self-indulgent concept anyway? look at me everyone! you should really care what i think!) is that I have been listening to the Whiskeytown cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams" on constant rotation since I picked it up off someone else's blog two days ago. Players only love you when they're playing.

Road Movie

I Don't Want Your Love

My baby sister sent me a CD a couple of weeks ago called "To Hell with Valentine's". One of the tracks was an old Duran Duran song I haven't heard in years. It's living in my ipod now and happens to be on one of the playlists I listen to the most so I'm hearing it alot. I'm a little bit fixated on some of the lyrics:

I don't want your love to bring me down.
I don't want your love so turn it around.

I've been thinking about relationships lately, trying to sort out what is the manifestation of a physical need to be with someone that I think is natural for a healthy 29 year old female, and what is the actual desire to share my life with someone else. I was joking with my sister that my ideal relationship would be one where he lived in another state, and we would talk everyday and see each other regularly, but he wouldn't actually have to upset the balance of my life. For all the complaining I did in my mid-twenties about men, it turns out that I've carved out a pretty satisfying life without one and I am alternately terrified/exhausted when I think about trying to live with one. Can't I just hang out with one, sleep with him when I want to, and go about my own life the rest of the time? As Katherine Hepburn once said, "Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then."

Just Like Honey

So twelve years after I fell in love with the internet (southern utah university, freshman year, computer lab), I'm finally making my first little foray into blogging. I just moved, I have a new job, I'm turning 30 this year, I love the sound of my own voice, I love to write, I want a place to post photos and tell stories-it seems like the right moment I guess.

High drama to come.