Homework

Hi. Who wants to help me with a work assignment?

Tell me your top three favorite female celebrities and whoever has the best list wins a pair of running shoes for themselves or their special lady friend.

I'm looking for smart, sophisticated, strong, talented women here. You throw out Lindsey or Paris and you totally LOSE.

Special points if all your suggestions are over 30.

Family Matters

When I got back from San Francisco on Saturday morning I went and picked up my brother Logan and his girlfriend Kristen who were visiting from Utah. They had been with Kristen's family for a few days and now it was time for some Clifford power.
Well, after they took advantage of the hammock in our backyard. This might be my favorite spot in our whole house...
The boys in our family are all taller than the girls. Lots taller.
Amber was visiting from Boston so she and Corey came over to say hello. Apparently I wouldn't allow them to sit on my bed which is why they look like they might spontaneously burst into family prayer at any second.
Of course we went for the obligatory walk on the beach. It never, ever gets old.
Could they be any cuter?
We went down to Main Street and spent some time in American Vintage-a second hand store that we end up in anytime siblings are in town. I fell in love with this dress but it was apparently made to fit a woman with one or two ribs fewer than me. So cute though.
Then we went to have dinner at TK Burger. Consistently voted Best Burger in Orange County. Or voted Best Burger once, painted on the door so now it's permanent. In any event, it's really yummy.
Corey and Amber caught up with us for some burgers , fries and Diet Coke. This place is right off PCH so you sit on the patio and look out over the water. It's pretty rad.
We went home and watched a little Bring it On because it rules. "At least it's just cheerleading." "Don't you get it? I AM just cheerleading!" This is the part where I typically like to tell my story about passing Jesse Bradford coming out of a SuperBowl event in San Diego a few years ago and having him look me up and down and wink at me. Proud moment.
We spent the rest of the night taking goofy pictures of ourselves. This one is cute though. Blue eyes! Green eyes! Brown eyes!
Kristen taught us this game where you shake your head back and forth really fast and snap photos of it that end up looking like you got your face smashed in. I would have posted a few of them but they really do look disgusting.
We found a Starbucks that was open until midnight and got some steamed milks and talked until it was time to get to bed. I had to take them to LAX at five the next morning-I wish they could have stayed for a week!

I miss my family.

So speaking of babies..

Work has been hectic this week and I haven't had time to knock out the posts swimming around in my head. But here's a little tidbit to tide us over.

My friend Jaime just announced that she is having a baby and we were talking last night about how tired but excited she is. But she said her husband jokingly called her "mommy" the other day and it just about stopped her heart. It's one thing to think of having a sweet little baby to dress up and take care of, and quite another to think of being entirely responsible for safely guiding another human being to adulthood.

Sometimes I lay awake and stare at the ceiling and worry about being a good mother to children it's highly likely I won't even have.

Kudos to all of you doing it.

Did I say that out loud?

My sister sent me this video today and I can't stop laughing.

Trust me it'd scare you
If you knew what was going on in my brain
Trust me it'd scare you
That I picked out the church, or the schools or the names
If you knew it was all about you
Every wish, every candle, every coin in the fountain
Trust me it'd scare you

No wonder boys are afraid of girls!

Real Simple

I read a magazine article once about how to turn mundane daily tasks into enjoyable experiences. One of the examples was ironing. To take your shoes off, open the window, turn on some music, and take advantage of time to yourself. I tried it once and I was hooked. It made something I dread something I could actually look forward to.

Well, I have always loved to take showers and I don't consider them tedious at all but I do love opportunities to add a little spice to them. So I was delighted when I checked into my hotel in San Francisco last week and found a pretty good sized window in the shower.
It was only four in the afternoon but I turned on the water as hot as I could stand, opened the window, and stood under the water for about 30 minutes. It was so fun to look out at the city and to feel the breeze blowing in.

I did get a little nervous that maybe someone in this building across the way could see in. I suppose if someone over there was so bored and sad that they were scanning our building for a glimpse of a far away showering hotel guest, maybe they sort of deserved to get it!

Today's best news

Summer: Who was that? It sounded like a girl.
Seth: Did it? Yeah. Well, sure. Because I'm listening to the radio. And This American Life is on. And so there's a girl talking.
Summer: Is that that show where those hipster know-it-alls talk about how fascinating ordinary people are? Geez.

I'm sure exactly 10 people in "The OC" audience laughed at that joke but I was one of them. I looooove This American Life and was thus completely delighted to hear that my favorite radio show is coming to television.

Summer's assessement isn't totally wrong-This American Life tells great stories about regular folks. A few weeks ago on an episode about Reruns, they had three couples who had been married for about 25 years talk about the story their spouse loves to tell over and over and over. Regular people telling stories of varying levels of interesting but it was absolutely fascinating to hear these comfortable couples interact with each other. There was an episode years ago about the word "fiasco" complete with a hilarious story about a high school play gone terribly, horribly wrong, a really inspiring segment on girls in a juvenile detention center singing an apology to their parents-stories that are infinitely more interesting and enriching than anything Paris Hilton could ever dream of contributing to the world.

If you have never heard This American Life, go to the
website and check it out. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes-a move that has made long plane rides infinitely more exciting for me.

I can't WAIT to see it in pictures...

Sports Center

So one of the other brands at my company is a basketball brand. These are some actual shorts worn by one of their players...

I should point out that not only does Carly's entire body fit into one of the legs, but that's a pregnant body.

Go Colts

There are a lot of things about being a grownup that it turns out are just as great as I thought they would be-I can keep chocolate chips in the cupboard and eat them all without making one single cookie, I can stay up as late as I want, I can drive whenever I want to. It's pretty awesome. But one of the biggest perks of being a grownup is that sometimes you get second chances on friendships you didn't get right the first time.



I am not sure why blogger is uploading this photo like a negative but the point is tiny little me on the front row, Wendi on the second row and Ashley in back and how sometimes you play soccer together when you are eight but it isn't until years later that you are sitting in your living room at one in the morning laughing yourselves sick.



When Bob Barker announced his retirement earlier this year, my friend Ashley-a dear friend I have known since kindergarten but didn't get close to until we were both out of college and became roommates-decided to round up a few other girls and make the trek from Utah to spend a few days by the beach and try to win the showcase showdown. She cast a wide net and ended up bringing Jennifer-another friend I grew up with, soccer Wendi and a new friend Sunny who they all play rec soccer with now. All of them are married and three of them are moms so this was going to be a nice girls weekend for everyone. Since my life is pretty much a non-stop girls weekend I was just looking forward to getting to spend some real time with these ladies. When I go home to Utah it's always a whirlwind trying to spend time with my family and see all the people I want to see and the end result is sometimes quantity over quality.

We spent most of Saturday shopping and talking. I'll admit to a moment's panic that being with four married women all weekend I wouldn't have much to contribute to discussions of pregnancy, husbands, and two year olds. But we talked about everything from what REALLY happens to your body when you have a baby (I wish I had a picture of Jennifer's face for some of that) to why we would or wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton to how to make a difference in Africa. I will also confess to a deep seeded fear that I'll have to give up parts of myself to a husband and kids. Spending so much time with these girls, and getting past the initial "how's the family/job/calling/remodeling", they are all just as strong and independent and smart and amazing as they ever were. Although I did love it when Ashley was exploring my room and turned to me and said, "whenever you are feeling lonely, I want you to open your closet and look at all your fun clothes and remember that you would never have all of them if you had a toddler."

Sunday they wanted to go up to LA and check out The Getty. The art exhibits at The Getty are great but it's really the building itself that will melt your brain with it's awesomeness. It took twelve years and over a billion dollars to build and all you have to pay for is parking (and it's less then parking for a baseball game) and you can spend the whole day there. Pretty amazing. These are just a bunch of shots from the day. I wish I had a fancier camera but it was fun to take pictures up there.













Afterwards we did a wee bit of shopping in Brentwood and I found my little dream house.

In my head this is sort of what it looks like inside

And then a really great kitchen with lots of room....

Ok sorry, sometimes my regular thoughts get completely sidetracked by daydreams about my future house...the point is aren't Jennifer and Sunny cute?


I am sometimes almost embarrassed about how blessed I have been in the friend department. I have so many dear ones I must have gotten someone else's share.

Hungover

4 out of town guests + shopping + museums + late nights + food + laughing + amazing conversations = i really don't want to got to work tomorrow

Two things

I promise that at some point this week I am going to write a real post and not just things I've collected on the internet. Also, I swear that I can talk about something besides how much I love Friday Night Lights-even though I have done a fair amount of proselyting about it lately. But I was reading a re-cap of an episode over on Television Without Pity that articulated quite nicely a point that has been rattling around in my head recently.

In the episode, one of the assistant coaches gets himself in hot water for some racist comments about the black players on the team. Coach Taylor, the new man of my dreams, drops by his class to tell him that he really needs to make a public apology because the superintendent is getting calls from all over the county. Mac doesn't seem to understand that calling the black players, "junkyard dogs," and insinuating that they can't play QB because they aren't smart enough *might* be a bad career move-and they get into it a little bit. So here's the quote I thought I was so great from the re-cap:

Mac, looking down, says "Alright, alright" but then says that what's done is done and no apology is going to change that. Coach screws up his face and leans in a bit, "I'm not making' a request," turns on a dime and leaves. Wow, that one was almost as hott as Tim's "let's go" with the added bonus of being an ethical statement. You know you're in your thirties when you can get hot and bothered about a man doing the right thing.

And there is it is folks. Yes, Coach Taylor has a perfect smile and hair that rivals McDreamy's, but the real reason that I am now fervently praying to meet a nice Head Football Coach of sad small town where football is everything and people peak in high school is that he pretty manages to do the right thing every single time he's presented with a difficult situation.

And that my friends is not just something your mom would like in a boy you bring home. It also happens to be pretty sexy.

Math

This hit way, way too close to home.

The www

The very best thing the internet can do is to connect you to real live people that you might never have met if you didn't all belong to the same goofy message board. As much as I enjoy sharing ideas and music and photos online, I would always rather do it over dinner. So I was delighted this weekend when Caleb from Salt Lake and Johanna from Sweden, came through Orange County. We lured Greg from LA down and went out for BBQ.


Caleb and Johanna are getting married in June and Caleb is moving to Sweden so I was really glad to get to see them. A funny sidenote is that Johanna knows my friend Laura who also happens to be Corey's roommate. They walked into the house and Caleb immediately recognized her as a friend of mine from photos on my blog. Our own little cyber celeb.

After dinner we hung around for awhile. And high fived.

I love you internet.

Church Mice

I was talking to my friend Greg this week and about weekly church attendance. He made a good comparison between church and exercise-it's really good for you and you know your life if better when you are going and you are always glad afterwards that you did it but it can also be hard, boring, repititious and pretty much the last thing you want to do any given Sunday.

The last few months I have definitely been guilty of just "putting in my miles" as far as church goes. So I was pretty excited when today ended up being one of those wake up and run ten miles and enjoy every second of it kind of church meetings. While I completely believe that church not getting through to me is as much my fault as it is church's, today I came unprepared and my service really felt like it was built just for me. There were two great speakers who said exactly the things about faith and trust in God that I needed to hear. I sobbed my way through most of the meeting, which resulted in a kind member of the bishopric pulling me aside afterwards to see if I was alright. I have been living in a state of "are You even listening to me?" lately and this afternoon I felt like I got a resounding, "yes, and stop worrying!"

We had a lesson modesty in the second hour. I always cringe when we get those because they can get so Salem Witch Hunt-esque but the teacher ended up teaching doctrine instead of listing do's and don'ts so I was able to keep my itchy comment hand down. Then I spent Sunday School having a good chat with some friends I never get to see (yes, I realize that means I didn't go to class. Sue me.).

And that's why I go, that's what gets me through the iffy patches. The sure knowledge that I'll get another Sunday like this one. That things will feel as clear and full as promise as they do today. I have a little questioning and wandering heart and it's easy for me to slip over to worry and doubt, days like today make me certain that there is Someone to gently lead me back to where I belong.

Lame

To quote Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger than Fiction:

"Get bent tax man!"

I hate the IRS.

Nobody Walks in LA

Hello weekend,

You have no chance of measuring up to last weekend. Here are some photos for you to see how badly you are going to fail...







Don't feel bad. Is wasn't as fun as it looked (lie).

k8

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose

So last week went by in sort of a blur-I spent a few days in New York that included a string of late late nights and early early mornings. My weekend was a little crazy as well and the result was that Sunday I was pretty destroyed. I got home from church and all I wanted to do was lay around. Sadly, there was nothing good in our Tivo and Sunday television can be pretty abysmal. I decided to catch up on some blog stalking and wound up on a link to the NBC website where you can watch full episodes of most of their top shows. Several people have mentioned recently that I remind them of Tina Fey on 30 Rock so I watched a few of those(and while I'm going to take those comments as a compliment, there might also be a diss hidden in there somewhere...)and deemed it a worthy replacement for The OC on my Thursday nights. Then I decided to just watch the Pilot of Friday Night Lights. I keep hearing it's pretty awesome and since I liked the movie, and I like Kyle Chandler, I gave it a shot.

Cut to seven episodes later at two in the morning, eyes swollen from crying as I'm forcing myself to shut the computer down even though all I can think about is that I have to get through the other eleven before Wednesday.

I am going to make a bold statement here, I think this is the best show on network television. In the space of seven episodes I have become hopelessly attached to Coach Taylor, his family, and his players. I feel like maybe I could live in their town. At least through high school football season.

The story centers around Coach Eric Taylor in his first season as Head Coach in the "football is everything" small town of Dillon, Texas. His wife Tami is a guidance counselor at the school and his daughter Julie is a sophomore. The Taylors have the kind of marriage I daydream about. There is a scene where Coach is watching game tape in his office really late one night and Tami shows up with food and beer. She looks at his tired face and says, "the field's empty, wanna go make out?" There is a playful sexiness to this obviously well lived in relationship that thrills me to the tips of my hopeless romantic toes. They've been at this for years but it still seems fresh and alive. They definitely argue and disagree but it's the kind of confident fighting you can do when you know the other person isn't going anywhere. And they both have good relationships with their daughter. I like it when TV admits it's OK to like your parents.

And there is the football team. Instead of a parade of stereotypes, we have a bunch of high school boys who seem like real high school boys. Some of them are that teenage boy combination of overly cocky but really insecure, some are just legitimately cocky. The sophomore that gets pushed into the starting QB role when the senior gets injured has a crush on the Coach's daughter and it takes him almost six episodes to work up the nerve to say more than about two words to her. She's smart and a little bookish and he awkwardly drops it into a conversation that he likes Jackson Pollack-apparently trying to show her he's not just some dumb football player. She lightly calls him out for the strange reference but she's clearly delighted that he's trying so hard. Maybe I love their interactions so much because I was one of those smart girls in high school and boy attention was few and far between enough that those moments always felt like out of body experiences for me. I can still get butterflies thinking about the look on a boy's face when he's doing a terrible job of impressing you but the very act of trying is melting your heart.

The Coach loves football and he's out for the State Championship the town is fervently expecting, but from day one-it's these boys he loves more. Head Coach in a small Texas town isn't a job, it's a lifestyle. And because he ends up being a father figure to half the team, he has a scene with a kid in every single episode where I end up in tears, wishing somehow I could get on his team. I don't know how his pep talks manage to sound so sincere and inspiring when they could so easily up as empty cliches but I credit Kyle Chandler with inhabiting his character so completely that you believe he believes every word he says. Whether it's the injured QB who will never play again or the whole team after a hard fought win, he has the right simple words that you just really want to believe.

Anyway, what I really want to say is that this show is tightly written, beautifully shot, tremendously acted, and uses it's fabulous soundtrack to complement-not manipulate-the stories. It's not one bit preachy but there is a definite sense of right and wrong that has really resonated with me. It's careful to make the character three-dimensional enough though that you are just as quick to forgive them as you are to condemn some of their dumb decisions.

Please watch it. I'm a little embarrassed for all of us that Grey's Anatomy-which I fully admit to watching-and all it's melodrama and morally bankrupt storylines won the Emmy for Best Drama when this little bit of perfection is being quietly strangled by it's time slot against American Idol.

All 18 episodes are available at nbc.com so get to watching!

One Year

So the day is almost over and I have a winner!

Two actually. One to celebrate the first year and one to grow on.

So if you live in Las Vegas, and you were on replikate this morning (tuesday) at around 9:50 and came to me from The New Awesome-you are a winner!

And if you are a Salt Laker, who uses Comcast and surfed for about 10 minutes this afternoon around 1:30 (although it may have been 2:30, I'm not sure what time zone it records!) on a Mac-it's you!

Email me at xxxxxxxxx (I will edit my email address out in two days so um, act fast!) and you will get your very own special birthday package in the real live mail.

Growing Pains

My little blog is going to have it's first birthday on Tuesday. I originally intended this to be a place where I could post some pictures and mp3's, write a few essays and keep up with friends and family living far away. And I've definitely enjoyed that part of it. But along the way it became something a little more dear to me than just a travelogue or excuse to post silly photos. I have been a journal keeper pretty consistently since I was eight. I have boxes and boxes of books filled with my thoughts and feelings from the last 22 years. I love to write and the process of recording the things that happen to me and the way I feel about them has been and continues to be incredibly cathartic. But as I read through those journals, I notice that I have a tendency to write more in depth when I am struggling with something and so I have volumes of information about boy troubles and work issues and church questions. I sometimes feel like my journal reflect constant stress but no resolution, no reflection-just a need to get things out of my head and onto a page. So while I love and treasure those journals, I guess I don't feel like they are a true representation of me as a whole person. As I read over the entries of the last year on my blog, I feel like this place really captures who I am. I've talked about things that worry me, lessons I've learned, things I'm trying to do better, things I love-whether it's people or music or ideas. I read this blog and I think-yep, this is me. I love having a place where I can bounce ideas around and actually get some perspective from others-something my journal never allows. And I love, love, LOVE how much writing I have done this year. It is the thing I love to do most in the whole world, a passion that links me to both of my parents.

I know that lots of people look at blogs as pretty self-indulgent. "Hey world, I have something to say and apparently I think you all need to read it." And perhaps it is. But as I have been a part of the blog-world this year, and as I have read about my friends and their friends and their friends, I feel like my real world has broadened. I have learned interesting things, gotten new perspectives, had some of my own conclusions reinforced, and managed to kill alot of time at work.

So in celebration of Replikate's first birthday, I'm copying an idea I've seen on a few other blogs and sending a present to one of YOU. On Tuesday, March 6 I will randomly select an IP address that visits my blog and you will get a real live birthday surprise in the mail.

See? Not so self-absorbed after all!