I'll be home...

I'm sitting in my mom's kitchen in her new hourse right now, staying up too late after I spent the day playing with my friends.

Someone explain to me why at 30 years old, with a job and home and life of my own, I am sitting here in a house I never lived in feeling terribly homesick. When does the place your parents live stop feeling like home?

A pretty great state

I've been in Utah for three days and so far I've eaten at Cafe Rio, driven through Red Rock Country, had an amazing run to the top of The Avenues, tried on vintage dresses at Decades, gone to parties with college and high school friends, and stayed up late with my family.

Eight days of awesome to go.

All You Can Eat

A sure fire way to make sure Monday doesn't completely suck is to have a sushi party on "all you can eat for 19.95 night" in Laguna Beach.

It was Corey's birthday this week so we rounded up some of our raw fish loveing friends to take advantage of crazy amounts of sushi for not very much moola. The boys were nice enough to sacrifice Monday Night Football for the occasion but Jimmy still managed to spend a fair amount of time facing the televsion.

But Curtis managed to tear himself away long enough to smile
Rob and Mark tried their best "Doud" faces. Mark did a pretty good job, Rob looks like he's headed for a sushi coma.
Corey has made a New Year's resolution to close her mouth in photos so she's living it up right now.
Rob tried to pretend he was too cool to be moved by my show of affection (but we had to take that photo about five times for him to get the right "bored" look so you do the math.)

We ate so much I'm pretty sure that place will be shutting down this promotion pretty much any day now, but until then-I have a new favorite FHE activity.

Barry Effin Gibb!

Saturday Night Live is not a very funny show.

However, the holiday episode Saturday night was like a little comedy treasure. Justin Timberlake hosted and was in pretty much every single skit. Between "Homelessville", The SNL Digital Short, and The Barry Gibb Talk Show I was practically in tears. You take JT, you add in a surprise visit from Jimmy Fallon, two great musical numbers, and plenty of Seth Meyers all over the news and frankly, I can't think of a better hour of television.

Thanks Santa.

Humbled

So if you happen to be planning a pity party for yourself anytime soon, I suggest you try avoid the double whammy of seeing "Pursuit of Happyness" one night and attending a church Christmas program the next. Otherwise, you might find yourself making lists of things you are thankful for and realizing that the things you were whining about lately might be relatively minor in the grand scheme of what you have.

Exhibit A

Gospel
Family
Friends
A good job (that sometimes makes me crazy but ultimately has been pretty amazing)
my car
my house
shoes
good weather
money for fun things
my ipod
my computer
my camera
email
cell phones
good parents
rock star sister's in law
a college education
the beach
salt lake
my time in boston
christmas cards
music
freedom of speech and thought
right to vote
indoor plumbing
health insurance
strong, healthy body
free time
fresh fruit and vegatables year round
logan's missionary email
opportunities to love and be loved
airplanes
tivo
stores that knock off designer clothing
raises
good bosses
coworkers i like and respect
promotions
good interviews
vacations
road trips
fish tacos
flowers
christmas songs
books
journals
blogs
google chat
boys
proactive solution
origins makeup
my amazing hair stylist
beach cruisers
The Sugar Shack
T.K. Burger
Diet Coke
new shoes
peppermint hot chocolate
long runs
babies
hot showers
the Temple
mission presidents who stay in touch
first kisses
The Olympics
spock
being able to donate blood again
photos
my eyelashes
well-cut jeans
occasions to dress up
sub-for-santa
pretty stationary
skirts
patriarchal blessings
knitting
red sox games
mix CD's
crepe parties
live music
candles
good movies
text messaging
dark chocolate
nutella
sushi
expense accounts
beds at the Westin hotels
haircolor
cheap O.C. pedicures
massages
houseguests
missions
washing machines
vaccines
hymns
PCH
New York Super Fudge Chunk

Striptease

Single Mormon Style.

Fast Car

For reasons I would rather not blab to the internet at large, it's been a particularly emotional few weeks around my house. Oftentimes it seems like a disappointment or a concern in one area of your life can spill over and affect other seemingly unrelated things. I think that's all it is but lately I find myself feeling a bit irritable, letting little things bother me that I am usually able to brush off. I am frustrated with the way I feel but I also know that sometimes you just have to ride out these moments, let your brain or your heart work out the things it needs to and wait to feel like yourself again.

It will come as no surprise that I like to use music as a way to draw out emotions I've buried or don't know what to do with. Tonight I found myself drawn to my old Tracy Chapman CD's. I realize that almost no male on earth is able to understand the allure of Ms. Chapman but I have loved her since about fifth grade when I first heard "Fast Car" and couldn't quite figure out if she was a boy or girl . I feel like I've grown up with her, from her first more political, questioning protest CD, to her quieter and more spiritual work later on-I always find truth and comfort in her lyrics. My sister and I went to see her in Salt Lake a long time ago and although I think we were some of the few straight women in the audience, the show was near perfect. Just Ms. Chapman and a small band playing pretty much everything off every record.

Anyway, I grabbed her self-titled album on my way out the door this evening and ended up sitting in my car and not going into the activity I had planned to attend because I was too busy sobbing through this track. It was partially the familiarity, I have listened to that song so many times in so many different times of my life so there was is definitely a comfort in hearing it. But the lyrics sunk particularly deep tonight:

"deep in my heart, safe from the guards of intellect and reason"

I catch myself wishing sometimes that feelings made more sense. That they could follow some kind of logic. That I could say to myself, "this is no longer a thing that it is good and right for you to feel so it ends now." And then I would turn it off and move and that would be that. But I guess a wise Creator knew that would not be a good way for all of our feelings to work. So He placed some of them just outside of our control.

"but with feelings this strong, i am no longer the master of my emotions"

Because if I am honest with myself, I am glad that intellect and reason have played only a peripheral role in most of the major decisions in my life. I enjoy being a person who has been led my what felt right for me, not by what looked logical to everyone else. With all of it's ups and downs, it has been a rich and fulfilling way to live. But it is also an exhausting lifestyle and one that can wear down those close to me. And on occasion, I end up a little worn down as well. I've been sick all week and although there is a bug going around my house and my office, I think perhaps it is also a little bit of me sputtering out at the end of a high octane year. It will be really nice to be in Utah for Christmas for the first time in a couple of years. It will be nice not to think about selling shoes for awhile.

I think it's time for some real rest.

10:14

I'm not sure what to make of this but for the last week, I always seem to be looking at the clock on my cell phone at 10:14, both am and pm.

10/14 is my birthday. Maybe if I try to go for an even 30 times looking at the clock night and day at that precise minute the universe will implode or something?

Bug

So two things got sick this weekend-me, and my work laptop.

I have the sniffles and a sore throat, the computer got something that made it shut down everytime I tried to use the internet. It also suffers from an ongoing case of "I don't recognize cameras, scanner, or jump drives unless you log-on as administrator and thus, have lost quite a bit of my user-friendliness". The sniffles managed to sideline me on Monday and I spent the day in bed and then turned over the computer to the IT department first thing Tuesday morning. As is often the case with computer diseases, it ended up taking longer than originally anticipated and I got very little done yesterday.

I got here this morning and my first visitor was the IT guy. Telling me that he kinda sorta maybe forgot that I am on a different exchange than the rest of the company because I came from the Boston office and well, all of my emails since September 9 are gone. Gone. Deleted.

And I'm not sure how to react. I've worked on ALOT of important projects in the last three months and I use my email as a filing system. I keep alot of attachments and things I need in there instead of in my hard drive because I trust the IT guys to back it up. I'm so angry and want to yell at someone one minute and the next minute I just feel sort of ill about everything I've lost. And I know mistakes happen and assigning blame doesn't do any good but I can't even begin to imagine how long it's going to take me to dig out of this hole. And what is going to fall through the cracks because I can't comb through my emails every night like I usually do.

That and the lingering sniffles sort of have me mad at the world right now.

Is this a sign?

You Belong in San Francisco

You crave an eclectic, urban environment. You're half California, half NYC. You're open minded, tolerant, and secretly think you're the best. People may dismiss you as a hippie, but you're also progressive and interesting

Where Does Your Inner Californian Belong?

'Tis the Season

There comes a time in every girl's life when she finally lives in a house that doesn't feel like a student apartment and thus, no longer wants Christmas decorations that look like they were all cast-offs from someone's 1987 theme party. Also, if she happens to live in Southern California, lovely decorations will probably be her only reminder that it is indeed the holiday season as every day is pretty much some variation of this:
So last weekend I talked Corey into letting me use her for her jeep and we went to Home Depot to get a Christmas tree.
Then we saw these little guys and decided, "who needs TREE, when you can have TREES!"
So we ended up buying three little trees and a whole bunch of poinsetta plants for the window seat in my living room. Live trees smell so good, don't drop needles all over, and allow for a little variety in decorating.
I decided on a monochromatic theme. Gold.
Blue
Red.
OK, so maybe this is in no danger of showing up in Martha Stewart Living anytime soon but I love my little trees.
And the new red vase I also couldn't resist!

And as an early Christmas present to all of you, here is one of my favorite holiday songs of all time,Valley Winter Song by Fountains of Wayne

Merry Merry!

The Wedding Singer

This movie gets better every single time I see it.

"Billy Idol gets it!"

Here Kitty Kitty

Ok, I know the cat was photoshopped into this picture but everything about this photo is cracking me up today. And the freaked out feline is the least of it. I have been that child on the left-one year at Lake Powell my friend Matt's dad loaded three of us onto what he called "The Death Biscuit" and proceeded to drive the boat so fast and so furiously that Vin Diesel himself couldn't have caught us. We bounced and skidded across the wake and screamed our little lungs out until he finally managed to shake the death grips we had on that thing. We flew off and I almost knocked out my tooth on the head of the girl next to me. I imagine we probably looked a lot like the kid in the middle who is going to be nearly hysterical when she tells her mom how high she bounced before she almost drown. And her father will be trying desperately not to laugh while she cries.

I seriously can't wait to have kids.

Game Over

Well our bi-yearly Sales Meetings wrapped up today with a three hour "next steps" discussion with our CEO and the management team. It started at 7:00 this morning and after a week of presentations and meetings and tons and tons of feedback on product and programs, I'm pretty drained.

Excited though. It's fun to be around the reps, to see them get excited about things we are doing, to have a GM with a great vision and the plan to get us there. But I heard myself say "win-win" today and well, I think it's probably just about time for Christmas vacation.

So Naive

The first 10 seconds of this song are my favorite 10 seconds of anything right now