can i get get get

One of the many reasons I am glad to be back on the West Coast is being so much closer to family. And being closer to my family means it's not a big deal for Emily to come visit for a long weekend. So thursday morning I picked her up at the Long Beach airport and we went to L.A. to check out E3. Emily works for a company that does packaging and POP for video games so they hooked us up with passes.
We were very excited to go in!
Right away it was pretty much mass chaos. Every video game company in the universe is there showing off their latest systems and games. There is ALOT to see.
For example, this giant screen kept us entertained for a good 20 minutes.
There were some very questionable things on display
Emily won a t-shirt playing a fishing game on the new Nokia phones
I was hoping to discover what it is about x-box that can turn even grown men into drooling teenagers but the booth provided no answers. Just new games.
The truth is that E3 is less about gaming and more about sexy video game vixens. We walked by a booth where a bunch of chubby guys were having a dance contest on a small stage. Then the announcer came out and asked if we would like to some "real" dancers. And then 10 scantily clad video game women came bounding out. All of the sudden every guy in audience whips out his digital camera and starts snapping. It was truly awesome.

We worked up a pretty healthy appetite walking around E3 so we headed over to a little italian place in Marina Del Rey and met up with Keith. The food was yummy and Keith kept us well entertained. But soon it was time to say goodbye and shoot over up to Sunset Boulevard for a show!
The lighting in the club was perfect for taking weird pictures that somehow turned out really cute.
The opening act was sort of yawn so I tried my best bored hipster look. I think all I accomplished was to look like my brother Logan.
John Vanderslice, however, was not boring at all. I would highly recommend trying to catch him if he comes to a dark club near you. We finally got back to HB around 1 that night and I think we were asleep before we actually got into my house.

The next day I was getting a haircut in Beverly Hills (it's a long story but one where a friend was using me as a student, not one where I usually get my haircut in uber-expensive salons) and Emily graciously agreed to let this eat into her vacation day.
It ended up taking us two full hours to drive from Huntington Beach to the hair salon. I can't talk about traffic like we were stuck in without getting a little violent. Even Emily was starting to feel it.

My haircut also took a really, really long time and poor Em had to keep herself busy for another two dull hours. I still think she should have taken her camera to Rodeo Drive to look for shots of Lindsey Lohan shopping that could have paid for college but hey, that's just me. We had been planning to have lunch with our friend Greg but at this point it was much, much too late so we decided to just go visit him at work.

If you know anything about friday afternoons in Los Angeles, you know that 3:00 is not a great hour to try to get anywhere. When we FINALLY got to the Promenade, we found Greg outside the Apple store and he joined us for a refreshment break at this hip new convenience store that sells candy and sushi and will even heat up your egg salad sandwich for you. When the last time anyone heated your sandwich at 7-11? We got treats for the long, long, deadly long drive home and Greg was overjoyed to discover that they carried ginger beer.

We had dinner plans with some friends in HB so we rushed back to change our clothes and meet up with them. Well, "rushed" is probably not the right word. The 45 mile drive took another two hours. Fortunately, the four boys we met for dinner must have been eating sugar all day because they were F-U-N-N-Y. So funny in fact that we were too busy laughing to take any pictures. After dinner there was a big church activity at a skating rink that we thought would be fun. But then when we got to the rink and realized we really didn't feel like roller skating.
So we went to meet up with my friend Chris at the Harbor House for shakes instead.
Emily had a tough time choosing between chocolate and oreo so she ended up with a chocolate oreo shake. May I just say that I have never seen my sister leave half a shake on the table but this thing was out of control.
Saturday morning I really needed to do a six mile run for my marathon training. So we invited my friend Sean to come along and the three of us had a great run down by the beach. Sean was a good sport to run with two fairly slow girls but I was glad to see he really did break a sweat by mile four. Then we went out for a well deserved breakfast. That may have entirely negated all the calories we ran off but hey, I've told you before about these macadamia nut pancakes.
You have to love a city where you see as many of these parked at you do cars.
Em's one requirement for the trip was to fit in some thrift store shopping. When I go to a thrift store by myself, I typically root through a couple of racks, everything looks old and faded and I just throw up my hands in despair and go to a store that sells new clothes.
However, when you go with Emily the fashionista, you spend $70 and end up with two shirts, three skirts, two dresses, a set of dishes and a candle holder.
So then we took showers and got all dressed up in our new finds.


On our way to dinner we saw a vintage store so we decided to look around. It was a great store but the best part was when we both tried on the blue hair and actually couldn't tell which one of us was which. I guess we do sorta look alike.
The food is nothing to scream about but if you are going to come to Huntington Beach on vacation, you should go out to Ruby's on the end of the pier at least once. When I was a little girl and we would come here for vacation, we always went to Ruby's and I thought it was the only one. I was a little disappointed when I came as an adult and found out they have them in malls. But this one is still fun.
Sunday morning we got up and went down to check out the best thing about my neighborhood.

We went to church for an hour and then met up with Jeanine and Nate for dinner.
Emily and Jeanine were mission companions
and Nate and I served in Switzerland together. Emily introduced them and now they are married with a baby on the way! It was really fun to see them and we only embarrassed Nate with gross girl talk a few times.

We came home and relaxed, watched a little Grey's Anatomy, figured out how to redecorate my room, talked about boys, talked more about boys, filled Tasha's iPod, looked at pictures and finally fell asleep. Em's flight left at 6:45 the next morning and I'm still not sure I was awake when I drove her there.

Thanks for coming Em. Hurry back.

stay tuned

Love all

Tonight I played tennis with some friends from church. It was the first time I'd played since last summer and um, it really showed. I spent a disastrous hour either missing the ball completely or hitting it wildly into the court next to us (where, embarassingly, another game was going on). I tried to pretend that inside I wasn't seething about the incredible level of athletic suckage I was exhibiting by reminding myself over and over of the great spelling test lesson of second grade. I was seven and brought home a great big F on my first spelling test. My mother's reaction was "I guess it means you will have to start studying". To which I replied, "what good will that do? If I don't already know it I don't see what studying will do!". My mother loves to remind me of that story everytime I'm tempted to quit something just because I haven't got the hang of it. I did in fact learn how to spell and amazingly enough, studying did help.

So after the girls left, I banished myself to the handball courts to practice hitting alone for a little while. I spent 30 frustrating minutes chasing the ball all over the place and not accomplishing much but wearing myself out. Next to me was a nice grey haired hispanic man playing handball alone who kept tossing them back to me when they would roll over to his court. A couple of times I hit a ball over the wall and he ran over to get it for me. It was very nice but you know, I was trying to practice, and I really needed to focus. So just as I was beginning to think that maybe I was doomed to be the world's worst tennis player, my friend from the court next door approached me, motioned to my racket and said "I show you?" in a heavy accent. Okay guy, show me how to play tennis in your neat handball gloves. Imagine my surprise-slash-embarrassment when he went completely Andre Agassi on me. I may be a terrible tennis player but I can recognize a powerful serve when I see it. Mr. Handball then spent the next 20 minutes working with me, showing me a better way to hold the racket, how to put more speed into my backhand, and most importantly how to bring a little control to my game. And then his son and grandson appeared and we shook hands, he wished me luck and off they went. I took all his advice for another half hour or so and was absolutely giddy with my progress by the time I finally forced myself into the car.

I know it was not really a very big deal, and there are plenty of nice people in the world and I don't need to be overly shocked about an old man giving free tennis tips to a girl in a short skirt, but it certainly made my night. So thanks Mr. Tennis Helper Guy!

The Summer of Fun

I was saving some lifestyle imagery to my pics folder here at work today and ran across this



This photo was taken over Memorial Day weekend last year, a weekend also known as the kick-off to "The Summer of Fun". Playing off a New Year's Resolution Emily and I had made that "there is no reason every night can't feel like a friday", we decided that the summer of 2005 would be one where no reasonable suggestion of f-u-n would be denied. Lane and Matt had recently rejoined the group after teetering on the brink of eternal romantic committment* and the sun had finally decided to tease New England with a bit of it's presence. This particular night we had attended a wedding reception where the groom's father quoted maybe just a little bit too much Napoleon Dynamite and we all whispered and laughed just a bit too loudly at our friends making the toasts. The party was over early and we were all dressed up with nowhere else to go and thus ended up at a dueling piano bar down by Fenway Park. The place was jammed but we managed to find a table near the back and proceeded to get about as wild as a bunch of nicely dressed, sober, mormon kids can. Which as you can see, can get relatively sketchy when you take that whole "we were stone-cold sober" into account.
I am pleased to report that the Summer of Fun was a screaming success. Plenty of afternoon tennis, picnics on the Charles, sleeping on the porch, swimming in Walden Pond, speeding tickets in upstate New York....it may have even beat out the infamous "summer of boys" from 2000 and definitely kicked the crap out of the failed "virgin no more in 2004". There is talk that this year might be the 'highly effective'. We'll see.

*to women you guys. to women.

It was nine feet high and six feet wide

One of the first photos in my baby book is of me as a tiny baby girl sitting on the floor in front of my father who is singing and playing the guitar. I am sure it was either Neil Diamond or John Denver since some of earliest memories are my brother and I begging him to sing "Kentucky Woman" or "Grandma's Feather Bed" one more time. And I realize this just makes me like pretty much every girl in America but because my daddy played the guitar, a boy who can play has always been one of my favorite things.

So I was thinking about that when I got home tonight from an evening with friends in LA and imagining how much that little girl would have enjoyed this:



(note: neither Greg nor Jed actually played anything for us. They just strummed while they talked. Which makes these photos even more awesome.)

Oops, I did it again!

Say hello to my new best friend.

What is that you ask? That, dear readers, is the entrance to the running trail that stretches from Long Beach to Newport that I will be taking almost every single day of my life for the next six months. Throwing caution and things like friday night plans and time off on the weeknights to the wind, I signed up for my second marathon. Blame goes to Corey who planted the idea when we were in Puerto Rico
She and her mom and future sister-in-law decided to make a girl's weekend out of the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco in October. It just so happens that said marathon is one week after MY somewhat scary 30th birthday. So I egged on Betsy
who had the audacity to not only say yes but actually register and all of the sudden, I've got a confirmation email in my inbox and a training log mocking me with it's weeks and weeks of unblinking mileage.

All joking aside, I'm actually pretty excited about it. I got injured right before my first marathon and didn't finish it like I had hoped so this will be a chance to redeem myself there. But the really important part, aside from having a great weekend with people I adore in a city I L-O-V-E is that I get to start my 30's on a strong and powerful note. Marathon training not only whips your body into killer shape (and hello, that will be nice for So Cal beach season!) but it does a number on your brain as well. I give my last marathon alot of credit for pulling me out of one of the toughest phases of my life and I'm pretty excited to see where this one will take me.

p.s. Tiffany necklaces for all finishers *might* have something to do with the decision as well....

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.