I Think Of You On Cold Winter Mornings

I don't know if it's become apparent yet but I am something of a music fiend. Pretty much from the minute I get up in the morning until I finally shut my lights off at night, I am listening to something. The sheer volume of songs I hear in a given week means that I have a new favorite approximately every 4.7 days. But lately there is a song that just won't seem to go away-it's on CD's I make for the car, it's in my iPod, I have been putting it on compilations for friends-I can't leave it alone. So I feel it my duty to share it with all of you. I present Trains to Brazil by a little band called The Guillemots.

Now a word of caution before you listen to that track. Where exactly are you? At school? At work? Lounging at home? Because this is not just an ordinary song, this is a song that you will feel with the part of your soul that wants to walk straight out the front door of your office and get on the next plane to Rio. Or the part that wants to check the kids out of school and head to Disneyland. The part that wants to just plant one right on the girl you've been "friends" with for three years. This song is joyful, it's exhilarating, it's impossible to contain. So if you are sitting in a cubicle right now, five feet away from some office drone staring at his computer and counting the minutes until the next smoke break, I just want to prepare you for the fact that you just might be compelled out of your chair and into his office space like the protagonist of some Old Navy commercial run amok in corporate america. If you are in the deadly serious computer lab at your University, you may find yourself inciting an impromptu dance-athon right there under the disapproving eye of the IT guy. And be careful there soccer mom, you'll put this on the "carpool mix" and while your teenagers might roll their eyes all the way from band practice to karate lessons, they'll try to steal it later.

And if you need further proof, my roommate just this moment came down the stairs, pricked her ears for a moment and proceeded to dance her way from the bathroom to the kitchen and back up to her room again-complete with finger snapping and a giant cheesy grin.

This song can't be stopped. Don't be left behind.

I Love That Dirty Water

One fun thing about a job that makes you travel all the time is that sometimes you get to mix two days of work with two days of visiting your friends in Boston.
I knew the trip was off to a good start when the car rental guy decided to upgrade me to a convertible.

First on the agenda was dinner at Blue Fin

Whitney and Lane couldn't believe how much sushi we were going to eat


After dinner we really needed a treat. So you know what's coming next right?

Yup. Ice cream

Amy and Whitney REALLY like ice cream

Corey enjoyed a dark tasty beverage instead. I had to work early in the morning so I headed back to the hotel. The next day I taught a tech clinic to the employees of a new women's athletic store called Paiva. Then it was back to the hotel to do my office work. Then I met up with Corey in Harvard Square for lunch at a new place called B Good. They claim to have healthy fries and hamburgers and I'm not really going to argue.

Then I decided to go visit a store I really miss

After I shopped I drove around the city a little bit and remembered what a beautiful place Boston is in the spring

and how much I love watching rowers on the Charles

I went back to my hotel and did some work and then got ready for the Opening Night reception at Paiva. The store was absolutely beautiful and our shoes looked awesome on the wall

And the staff decided to wear our shoes for the reception.

After the reception it was back to Cambridge for Matt's 28th birthday

The cake not only turned our tongues blue

but it turned everyone just a little bit silly


and later, really really goofy

My flight was at 6:40 this morning so I said goodbye and made a quick stop at Corey's to say goodbye. And got to meet Melanie's new fish.

That 6:40 flight was probably the worst idea of the last two days but hey, it's barely noon and I'm already home. And off to take a nap!

Hi Logan!!!!

It's almost Wednesday which means it's almost the day I get email from my little brother Logan. He's been on his mission for almost a year and a half now and I can't believe how I miss him exponentially more now than I did even a month ago. So in honor of Logan, who faithfully reads my blog every Wednesday from somewhere in the Phillipines...a few of my favorite Logan photos. That make me cry like a little baby when I look at them for too long.


Elizabeth, Logan, Emily and I were headed off to see The Cure. We took this photo as we were walking out the door (probably late!)and it's become one of my all time favorites.

I was 9 when Logan was born so I remember him being just a tiny baby, and then a toddler who couldn't sit still and a kid whose teacher once said "Logan makes my head want to explode." Now he's this tall, funny, good-looking,water-polo playing, guitar picking, Gospel teaching, fantastic human being that lets you fall asleep on his back.

I really, really miss you Logan.

Carnival Kids

The last time I lived in Huntington Beach I had a friend who would make me the best mix CD's. In the days before i had a wireless connection and a downloading addiction, I was dependent on the kindness of friends with CD burners to help me find new music. And Jayd was really good at feeding my habit. So about two and a half years ago, I had one that was in pretty heavy rotation when it just disappeared. Gone without a trace. And since I had memorized all the songs but not the titles or artists, I had 15 melodies in my head but no way to find them again. Since songs to me are like diamonds or shoes to other girls, I was heartbroken to have lost them.

Fast forward to today. April, 2006. I broke the CD drive in my work laptop yesterday in an accident involved my power cord, a swivel chair, and my ankle. So I took the poor thing to our overworked IT technician to repair. I personally believe that this laptop was actually the first one ever made because it is massive and old and loud and the battery lasts for exactly 20 second after you unplug it. Don't even get me started on airport security lines. I start dreading having to pull this thing out of my backpack 45 minutes before I even get to the ticket counter. There is a reason I have a nice, sleek, lightweight iBook at home. Needless to say, the only way to replace the CD drive in this fossil is to take it from another computer also built in the early 1800's. Faraz found one in the dark recesses of the IT closet, performed a little intel surgery and I went back to my desk to test it out. I opened the drive and there, all blue and shiny with Jayd's super feminine handwriting, was "a box full o' suggestions".

Yes, somehow, somewhere, this tiny time capsule and I have been joyfully reunited. It starts off with a Bright Eyes song that never quite grew on me and apparently never will as time does not seem to have improved it. But then we jump right into "Don't Steal Our Sun" by The Thrills that used to make me tear up my first few weeks in Boston. A Futureheads tunes that, true to Jayd form, I got about six months before everyone was talking about the Futureheads. (I know the Killers are now the most overexposed band in all of indieland but he put "Mr. Brightsides" on a CD a full nine months before Hot Fuss was released in the U.S. I saw them open for another band at a tiny club in Boston in the meantime and was the only person who knew all the words. I'm rarely ahead of the curve but damn, that felt cool.) We have The Rapture from that year when we all loved The Rapture before we never heard from them again. A Tahiti 80 song that hadn't quite stuck in my head long enough for me to find it again but now has me completely enthralled. The first Goldfrapp song I ever heard and then two weeks later I actually saw her getting into a taxi outside some dive bar in NYC. "Last Day of Summer" by Magnet that convinced me to buy his CD the second it came out. Well, that and the video for his cover of "Lay Lady Lay". Clem Snide, Jay Farrar, Bonnie "Prince" Billy and British Sea Power round out the tracks I can identify. There are three or four that feel so familiar but I still can't remember the names or artists. But here they are, for me to google the lyrics and peice together a new track list.

The music is great, but so is September 2003 coming into sharp focus in my brain. I know this is going to sound weird coming from a person that just moved across the country to start a newish job but I'm thinking alot about change right now and where I want to be in another two or three years, it's fun to have a reminder of where I've been.

Box full of suggestions indeed.

...and a microphone

I finally got to spend a little quality time with my friend Keith Paugh in LA last week.



There are plenty of reasons to like Keith Paugh. Here are two:





Hi Keith.

Rollin' with the homies

I woke up this morning with a full on spring cold. Headache, sort throat, runny nose, sneezes coming six at a time..apparently my elementary schoolteacher roommate brought home a souvenir from her kindergarten class and I have caught it. So after dragging myself to church for an hour (it's Easter after all!), I have been lying on the couch subjecting myself to the wasteland that is Sunday afternoon television. My nightowl tendencies over the weekend managed to catch me up on nearly everything in the Tivo so yes, here I was, flipping back and forth between some VH1 "hottest hotties" countdown and Access Hollywood. Neither of which is helping much with my recent decision to stop paying so much attention to what's going on with brangelina and tomkat (also, my recent decision to never, never use the embarrassingly stupid nicknames thrust on us by the tabloids.) So I was maybe a little more excited than usual when I clicked across "Clueless" on Comedy Central. There are ALOT of movies from my college life that make me cringe to watch now but I still love, love, love this movie.

So here are some random thought on a true teen classic:

I wonder if this movie makes Brittany Murphy cry just a little bit. Even post makeover, the girl was a complete disaster. Even by 1995 standards, everything she wears in this movie scares me. When she showed back up on the scene all hot and anorexic I hardly recognized her. Did you know she was also one of the bad girls that Julia wanted to hang out with on the first season of "Party of Five."

When I first moved to LA and was stuck in horrific traffic one day, I thought of the conversation when Cher's dad tells her to come home from the party in the valley and he says "everywhere in LA takes 20 minutes". And how that was a total crock.

"Well I remember Mel Gibson correctly and he didn't say that-that Polonius guy did." Yes! The snotty teenager roast!

"You like Billie Holiday?" "I love her!" Oh Cher. I love YOU!

Two things I wish my dad had been able to say to a date when I was 16. "What's with you kid, you think the death of Sammy Davis left an opening in the rat pack? and "Anything happens to her I got a 45 and a shovel, I doubt anyone would miss you."

Paul Rudd. Why weren't we more skeeved out by Cher having a crush on her step brother? He's an ex-step though so I guess that's what made it OK. And who knew that my favorite Radiohead song is playing when they decide to get take-out for her dad's lawyers. Awwwww.

Yeah, this movie is still just as good as it was eleven years ago. ELEVEN YEARS AGO?!?!?!?

Ouch.

9 to 5

One of the reasons I love my job is ad campaign photoshoots. Bright and early this morning I showed up at Miauhaus studio somewhere in the sprawling mess that is L.A.



The photographer and his assistants were busily setting up.



There were the requisite agency people working on macs.



The stylist and I worked together to pick an outfit for the first model and then White, our makeup artist, got her ready for the shot



The photographer, Nick, was really really cool. The night before at the pre-production meeting he got all fired up about photography and film and what an amazing time it is to be an artist. I think everyone else in the meeting was a little bit "whatever", but I was completely inspired. I've worked with several photographers on other shoots but working with Nick was a unique experience. He worked incredibly well with the models and got great work out of them. He also just had a very fresh eye which was EXACTLY what we were looking for at this shoot. I feel like we totally lucked out to get him.



We made the first model run around and around and around.



And then we stood around admiring how hot she looked and how great Nick's work is



Truth be told there is actually alot of that standing around at a photoshoot



Which is why we were goofing around with the Photobooth on the iMac in the corner of the studio



Our second model came in and Nick gave her a little coaching on her kickboxing



which is harder than it looks



so Arturro stepped in to help



Probably the best thing about models is that they are like lifesize Barbie dolls. So when we got tired of the blue, we put Carmella in a new outfit



Our third model came in to do the stretching execution. I was obsessed with the program the guys were using to capture the images. It's great to see that you got all the shots you wanted almost immediately. It means I'm relaxing tonight knowing the campaign will rock, instead of wondering what we ended up with and worrying about it for a week.



My favorite part of the day was when we thought we were pretty much done but Nick decided to have Saskia do a little bit of kickboxing. And she pretty much nailed it.



Yeah, there are worse things a person could get paid to do.

Truth in advertising

My degree is in Advertising and I currently work in Marketing. It's just been part of my brain for the last 12 years to notice commercials. So I'm pretty picky about what I think is good. I don't like advertising that was probably a blast to make but won't mean a thing to the consumer it's trying to reach. I know in the ad world especially, we all want to do something hip and cool, but the marketing side of me knows that hip and cool doesn't always move product. However. The other night I didn't get to the tivo remote in time and happened to catch the new Jaguar commercial.
It's pretty much just a montage that doesn't show the car very often with a soundtrack featuring one of my favorite Spoon songs, I Turn My Camera On. But it is dead sexy. AND, it made me think, hmmmm, Jag? Because although I did get to drive one for a few weeks when I was a nanny while the family car was in the shop, and yes it was quite a lovely ride, Jag to me says "middle-aged-old-money-overtanned-smoker's rasp-007 wannabe-luxury car". I thought Audi had corned the market on fantasy cars for my demographic. And yet, here I was-watching impossibly attractive British men (they don't ever speak, they might not be British, but if I imagine the kind of man that drives a car this hott, he has to have an accent)prance around to a song I'll bet 99% of the people in my office could never identify but spent some serious quality time in my ipod last summer-and I really, really wanted a Jag. A few weeks have gone by and I'm still thinking about that commercial. It's a good thing I don't have an extra $75K laying around...

Spanishfaster

To steal a phrase from the girls in San Francisco "unexpected visits are the new awesome".

I was driving home from work on Friday feeling a little homesick for Boston. I am so happy to be back in California and I really do love it, but I miss my friends back East. I haven't developed that circle of go-to friends yet here and I was a little bummed out that I would probably end up going to a movie or something by myself.

But then! I got an out of the blue phone call from Mandy in San Diego



saying that Kimberly was in town from D.C. and they would be Orange County later if I wanted to play.



So I met up with the two of them and Mandy's cool boyfriend Ryan at The Yardhouse and ended up talking until 1:15 in the morning.

The next day my newly marrieds Andy and Emily Kane showed up





They were sunburned in funny places after spending some quality honeymoon time in Mexico. So they showered carefully and I even let Em be an honorary Clifford for the night. Then we headed out to make quick work of a bunch of sushi



I like to think of sushi as very integral to my relationship with the Kanes. Emily and I were the resident sushi fiends among our friends in Boston and then the first time I thought perhaps Andy had designs on my friend was the night she helped him make approximately 10 tons of sushi for his metrosexual coming out party last summer.



We went to Cold Stone afterwards because that is what Mormons do. We eat ice cream.

And then we came home to watch whatever was still in our Tivo from the last week. And I noticed that Emily and I really are twins


I love that I moved 3000 miles away and they got married and not one thing has changed. Three cheers for dear friends!

So Long, So Wrong

So it's done. I have had my last soda for the foreseeable future. There was bacon present at my last hurrah. That should clue you in that this particular can of Diet DP was consumed at breakfast. That's right, breakfast. It's a good thing I'm not a drinker because I would clearly be the type to say "it's five o'clock somewhere!" I have given up soda twice, once when I was marathon training and once just to see if I could. Uh, apparently I can't. Although that time I lasted six whole weeks, including four days in Utah for my brother's wedding which typically means my mother starting an intravenous Dr. Pepper drip the moment I step off the plane.

I feel better, look better and run better when I don't drink the dark tasty beverages. So no matter how many caffeine headaches I get, no matter how seductively the fountain vanilla coke at Rubio's beckons, no matter how much I crave the bubbles and the sugar and the sweetness, I am serious about this.

Help me.

Caravan

This weekend I braved about seven hours of this



to get me to this place in St. George to spend the weekend at my grandparents with various siblings and friends.



I got there around 11:30 from California but the Salt Lake crowd didn't get there until about midnight. Emily looked adorable as always. Even though we were all super tired, we stayed up talking until after 2:30.



This is the view we woke up to on Friday morning. So. Freaking. Amazing.

My grandma goes to yoga at the senior citizens center on friday mornings so Tasha and Emily and I went with her. The best thing I have every seen is a room full of old women doing yoga. Since we were good girls and worked out we went over to The Bear Paw and stuffed ourselves with all manner of pancakes and french toast.



After breakfast, Tasha's grandma Bev came over from Mesquite to visit and see the house. We ended up sitting in a McDonald's in town drinking Dr. Pepper and laughing away the afternoon. We rushed back to give her a tour of the house and get ready for a concert at Dixie later that night.



I call this photo "Sea of Old".



I think this photo gives you an idea of what you missed because you weren't at this show.



My grandma's friends thought we were adorable, we thought they were hilarious. It was a good mix.



I took style lessons from Emily and Tasha all weekend.



Afterwards we went out for ice cream at The Blue Bunny. Yum. And then yet another night of staying up too late.



We got up late the next morning and Grandma had breakfast waiting when we straggled out of our rooms. We had big plans to go for a run and do some shopping but then we all started telling stories



And watching home movies (awww, emily has not changed a bit.)



I realize I'm almost 30 years old but I think I could sit like this with my grandpa all day.



We finally took showers and Grandpa took us for rides in this!



Seriously, how cute are these girls?



Tasha and I hopped in the back seat and we all headed off to Cafe Rio to get takeout for Sunday dinner the next day. I know it's the trendiest place in Utah but seriously, those burritos are the greatest things on earth.



Do grandfather's come any better than this one? I submit that they do not.



After we took the food home, we got a little tour of the development where my grandparents live. Emily took advantage of some good photo ops.



Everytime we go to St. George we go to the Pizza Factory in town. My Aunt Barb and her boyfriend Greg, my cousin Lexie and our friends Mike and Jen met up with us there for pizza



and breadsticks



Nice headband Mike.



Afterwards we stopped by Artic Circle to see our other cousin Will. He didn't recognize any of us when we walked in but it was pretty cute when he realized we were all there for him.



We headed back to the house for more staying up way too late talking.



Mike and I did a little dirty dancing



Sunday morning Christopher and Emily's friend Marc showed up after driving all night



Aunt Barb brought Lexie and Will over and we had another marathon breakfast.



Then Tasha and Christopher and I went out for a run.



And Emily and Marc went for a ride on his tandem bike.



Lexie and I tried out the bike a little later.



We were having so much fun that none of us wanted to leave. Ever. It was 10:00 before they finally managed to get us to get rid of us.



I love these people beyond all reason.