Our Lives in Transition

Well, hello again...

Sat, 18 Sep 2010 23:31:00 -0700

I just realized that it’s been months since I’ve posted anything. It’s partially out of laziness and partially because we haven’t really done anything very much exciting. For the most part, life has been work, home, sleep, work home, sleep, dog park, home, sleep…and so on and so forth.

There is one thing I’ve been meaning to post about. Last month, Alex’s sister Stephanie came to visit for a week. The only thing I managed to get any pictures of was our visit to the Los Angeles Zoo. I’ve been wanting to go for a while actually but haven’t ever had a reason to before Steph. I always really loved the Birmingham Zoo growing up, and even now, but the LA Zoo pretty much blows it out of the water. For one thing, it’s much, MUCH bigger. The LA Zoo also has animals I’ve never seen or heard of before, so that part I really liked. We got there sort of late in the day so by the time we got halfway through the place we realized they were about to start putting up the animals so we missed seeing several, but I got some good pictures of a few of the cooler ones, plus some general pics of the zoo itself:

So the sleeping kangaroo guy was my favorite of the whole day. I just wanted to wrap him up in a blanket and take him home with me.

Now that the weather is going to start getting cooler again I’m hoping to be able to get out for some more hikes and have some other new, exciting adventures that I can document.

One last picture: Our good friend Tee just came to visit and we really didn’t even get any pictures of her time here, except this one from her last night when we took her to Santa Monica before her flight. It was such a great night actually. It was cold (cold enough to see our breath!) and foggy and we watched street performers and ate ice cream on the pier then went down to LAX and watched the planes fly over us in the hazy night sky. It was a good way to send her off, I thought. Here’s the one picture we got.

Miss you already Tee. Mark Hendrix - you’re our next victim.

(PS Please ignore any misspelled words or grammar errors. I typed this up after taking my contacts out so I’m officially blind at the moment)

Lull

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:56:36 -0700

Haven’t really had much to write about lately. We haven’t had any visitors this month and we haven’t done anything that’s really terribly exciting to write about. We’re both still trying to figure out life and jobs and what have you. I call this the calm before the storm, because in August we have Stephanie visiting, then Billy Ray, then immediately after Billy Ray I head back to AL for a week, then Mark Hendrix is visiting then my friend David is visiting and so on and so forth. So - calm before the storm.

Perhaps I should be relieved to have a few weeks of rest but I’m finding downtime here harder to take than when we were in Alabama. Maybe it’s because I’m away from family & friends. Maybe it’s just because I’ve gotten accustomed to being fairly busy all the time. I’m not sure, but I’ve found that downtime, specifically downtime when I’m home alone, leads to me being down and out moreso than I think I’ve ever experienced before.

What a depressing blog entry.

The rest of our San Diego pictures

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 10:02:00 -0700

Since Alex only posted a few, I wanted to post the rest of them.

A few more pictures of the street festival/chili cook-off:

Waiting in line @ Hodad’s in Ocean Beach:

Really dreary, overcast day but the beach is always beautiful regardless:

A lot of this area reminded us of New Orleans, in a New Orleans meets surfer kind of way. The pedi-cabs made me feel like I was straight up in the French Quarter.

Horton Plaza:

We stopped off in Sam Goody (yes, a Sam Goody music still exists!) and took this photo. I think he’s team Jacob.

Walking around the Gaslamp District:

Petco Park: (To continue with our Twilight theme, we tried to get in to take a picture of the stadium but there was a Twilight double feature being held there with 100 screaming teenage girls, complete with bite marks on their neck and everything.)

A few more pictures from Mt. Soledad:

The end. I miss Paul and Jodi already :(

San Diego

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:54:49 -0700

We spent the weekend getting a short and sweet visit from Paul and Jodi as they kindly took us to San Diego.

I was enjoying the atmosphere, while Siobhan, Paul, and Jodi were enjoying their phones.

So as they all twittered and facebooked away, I decided to go on a walk, and see what crazy were afoot in Ocean Beach. Apparently, a chili cook off was at hand, “This could be interesting” I told myself. I mean, who would have thought chili on the beach would be a good idea, especially on a hot day with the sun beating down, but I thought to soon, when where-upon a giant space ship, we’re talking ID4 shit here, came from the heavens and covered the sun, causing a total gloominess. Alas, that didn’t stop the chili cook-off. Apparently, these guys take there chili serious here. So I figured I’d snap a picture of them.

So I ran back to the crew to ask them if they saw the giant space ship, but they were too busy on their phones to even notice. Though, at that time, we were so hungry, it didn’t matter. Paul and Jodi took us to Hodad’s which is a classy restaurant in the area. Now, for those you who don’t know, a hodad is somewhat who hangs out on the beach pretending to be a surfer, but really isn’t a surfer. Siobhan didn’t know this, I had to teach this to her, so she was going to twitter this, but it was too many characters. While she learned this, I snapped a photo of the nifty restaurant. It was covered in licenses places. There was a plate that said Trent, it belonged to Trent Reznor. There was another one that said Camel Toe, I belonged to Gaven Rostel. Really dug the place, though ourwaiter was a d-bag.

After we ate some awesome burgers we went to a groovy outdoor mall. I really dug the artwork for the stores, it all looked like Epcot. Have I ever mentioned how much Soap Opera actors creep me the hell out? Seriously, they’re. made of my plastic then my 18 inch Army of Darkness Ash figure…groovy. God I had PC’s!

So time passed at the mall, I got a $3 Watchmen watch. Just so I could say “Who watches my watch?”

Afterwords Paul and Jodi took us down to the Gas Lite District which was pretty cool. It had a very Memphis sorta feel…so I’m told. I have been to Memphis two times in my life,and both times I saw it only through passing because one time involved me driving a giant Penski truck and the other involved Siobhan being too terrified to get out of the car…silly white girl.

SWEET JESUS! WHO DESIGNS THESE F@CING PC KEYBOARDS THAT SCREW UP MY TEXT!!?!?

We passed by the Gas Lite Strip Club, which sounded awesome until I realized it was a steak place, WHO-HA!

I can’t tell if I’m watching the Day Time Emmey’s or a Jack Hannah animal special.

We walked to Petco Park where we were going to check out the baseball field but it was taken over by teenage Twilight fans. Apparently they were screening two of the films and some of the actors were showing up, I’d be more crude about this, but I just feel like rolling my eyes.

The biggest payload of the day was this awesome view. Just beautiful.

Thanks to Paul and Jodi for their awesome visit, it was great to see them both, and their kindness was most appreciated.

So to be on the Daytime Emmy’s all you have to do is cover your face in grease?

Jonathan & Matt's visit

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 09:56:00 -0700

We had the pleasure of hosting our friends Jonathan and Matt for a few days last week. It was Jonathan’s first time in Cali, so we tried to give him the grand tour, even though that’s pretty much impossible in 3 days. Here are a few pictures from our day at the Santa Monica Pier.

Gorgeous day!

From left to right: Back: Jonathan, Brie, Jeremy. Front: Matt, LeeAnne, Me.

Operation Ferris Wheel & Ice Cream in effect. Too bad the ice cream was long gone before we got on the ferris wheel.

It was windy and COLD up there.

THIS is why I love California. Look how amazingly beautiful that is.

View from above

LeeAnne is one very classy lady.

They were having some concert on the beach that day.

When this picture was being taken, they were comparing themselves to Entourage, but I think Jason Neil said it best when he compared them to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy instead.

As proven by this photo.

(LeeAnne’s going to kill me for posting this here)

And because they’re just so disgustingly cute in this picture.

The end. This weekend: San Diego with Paul & Jodi. Pics to come!

Long time, no post.

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:35:00 -0700

I’ve been slacking big time on my blogging and I have lots to catch up on and lots of pictures to post.

Let’s start with farmer’s markets. They are quickly becoming a favorite of mine. I hate to admit that I never went to the one at Pepper Place when I was still in Birmingham. I always wanted to, but just never made it down there on Sundays when it was there. When I was a kid we’d go to the little markets on the side of the road when we’d be driving to Daytona for vacation…or even the ones on the way to Gulf Shores, but until I moved here I’d never been to a for real farmers market.

The first time Alex & I went was on my lunch break one day because our office building wasn’t very far from the one on 3^rd St in Los Angeles, but I didn’t have a lot of time so we just kind of ran through it and that was that. So, a few weeks ago we decided to make a day of it and head down there for lunch. This particular one is attached to The Grove, which is a trendy outdoor shopping center type of place. If you pay attention to paparazzi photos, lots of celebs are photographed at The Grove because, well, it’s trendy, but honestly, to me, it’s nothing to write home about. It’s got a cool theater, but otherwise…eh. It’s a little like The Summit…open outdoor shopping area, just much smaller and more condensed. Well, it’s like a cross between The Summit & Disney World. You’ll see in the pictures below.

BUT…back to the farmer’s market. The thing that I love the most are the food vendors. Why? Because I love food, as proven by the 5 pounds I’ve gained since moving to this city. Anyway, there are your typical farmer type folk selling fuits and veggies, but there are all these little restaurants with all these different kinds of food: Chinese, Sandwiches, Cajun (Alex’s favorite), Greek, Italian, bakeries, and so on and so forth. (Note to people who might ever go there: Don’t eat at Deano’s, the pizza place across from The Gumbo Pot. Their calzones were no bueno.)

Here are a few pictures. This farmer’s market itself reminds me a lot of the French Quarter. It has a kind of French Quarter vibe. All it was missing was Café Du Monde and homeless people yelling at me that I’m going to hell.

The pictures of the signs are kind of dark because of the way the sun was shining…sorry.

This is The Grove and the theatre marquee.

So that was our trip to the trendier farmer’s market. Apparently the one in Santa Monica is better, but that’s on the list of to-do’s, and not the list of have-done’s.

Next on the list of things to blog about: Dunder Mifflin. We found the Dunder Mifflin building, which is in Van Nuys, and about 4 or 5 miles from our house. We’ve been dying to go by there and were out one night and decided to drive by. I definitely want to go back by there during the day after they start shooting again and take some more pictures because they had taken down all the Dunder Mifflin signage since they’re on hiatus, but we were excited nonetheless. Pictures (albeit not very good ones since they were taken at night):

By the way, this is one of the things I love most about California: Driving by places and realizing I’ve seen it in some TV show or film. Anyway, pictures:

And one of my blog posts wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t post pictures of a hike. The most recent one we’ve done is up at Griffith Park. I loved this one because you can actually hike up to the Hollywood sign (or almost to it). Alex kept pointing out the wild animal signs, and sure enough, we saw a coyote climbing up the side of the Hollywood Hills not far from us. It’s still odd to me that all these animals live so abundantly in such an urban area. At least in Alabama if there’s danger of you running into a mountain lion, then you’re probably miles and miles away from the city.

Pictures:

Note the “caution dangerous animals” sign.

There’s this cute little ranch where you can rent and ride horses along the trails.

This was the closest we got to the sign. Apparently you can go up and around to the back of the sign but we didn’t make it that day.

View of Los Angeles:

Last but not least, just a few pictures from our Memorial Day down in Santa Monica.

The beach:

This was taken from the pier…tons of people out that day, even though it wasn’t necessarily warm.

All the flags for Memorial Day.

Like a kid in a candy store.

That’s all for now. We have friends in town this weekend and next weekend is San Diego with Paul & Jodi so I’m sure I’ll have lots more pictures to post in the next couple of weeks!

Another morning....another commute.

Wed, 19 May 2010 10:28:46 -0700

I passed a school bus on fire on the way to work this morning. It had just happened and they were still unloading the kids from the bus while the smoke was billowing out of the engine. Scary!

Vending machine FAIL at my office.

Fri, 14 May 2010 17:16:12 -0700

Vending machine FAIL at my office.

Yay! Visitors!

Tue, 11 May 2010 12:16:37 -0700

We had our first visitors last week. Our friends Ben & Nadia came out for a few days. Ok, so it wasn’t so much to visit us as it was to find a place to live because they’re moving here at the beginning of July but whatever, they still count as our first visitors.

Since they were coming out, it gave me us an excuse to try to find cool things to do with them, so I called in a favor through my co-worker (thanks, Marc!) and got Tonight Show tickets. Now, if you’re reading this I’m sure you already know this because it’s not like we were quiet about it, but just in case someone has been hiding under a rock, here’s the story. We got VIP tickets…which basically only means that you don’t have to wait in the long line. Although it was a little strange because we were escorted to the studio and had to walk right in the middle of the holding area where everyone else was waiting and it felt a little like being on display because EVERYONE was staring at us, in that “why the hell are they so special” kind of way. Nevertheless, we got taken inside and they split us up into those being taken upstairs and those being taken downstairs. Alex had a theory that they took the older people upstairs and the younger people downstairs. It makes sense considering the ones downstairs are more likely to be on TV. We got taken downstairs to seats right on the floor. Jay came out about 15 minutes prior to taping and talked to the audience for a few minutes, took some pictures, etc. He explained that unlike a lot of other shows, The Tonight Show tapes as if it were live. No re-takes, no do-overs…nothing. If a mistake happens, they just move right along. So, the show started, we all ran up front to high five Jay, when he came out and then went back to our seats. Sure enough, we made it on National television.

The guests were Samuel L. Jackson, Kara Diowhatsherface from American Idol and Jason Derulo was the musical act. We missed Robert Downey, Jr by ONE DAY. Nadia and I were disappointed. Sigh.

Then later that night we had planned to do a midnight showing of Iron Man 2, but before we did that, we took Ben for his first experience at In N Out Burger.

Although he got the burger without the spread, which kind takes away from the magic of the burger. It’s like a Milo’s burger without the sauce…what’s the point?

Friday night, we took them to Fry’s Electronics in Burbank. Why? Because Fry’s is a themed electronics store. Every store has a different theme. The one in Burbank is all Sci-Fi themed. There’s also an Alice in Wonderland themed store somewhere around here that I’d like to go to. Here are some pictures:

There’s this little cafe in the back where the tables are classic cars.

Saturday, Ben & Nadia took a trip down to the beach on their last day, so Alex & I planned another hiking trip. This time we were TRYING to go to Fryman Canyon Park but after being led to the wrong place by my GPS and then finding the entrance closed, we settled for Willacre Park which I believe is still a part of Fryman Canyon Park, just not where we were trying to go. I really liked this hike better than Runyon. It was much more “woodsy." Alex preferred Runyon because it’s all about the views for him, and Runyon DOES have better views, but I think I prefer to be a little more secluded in my hiking. Pictures:

If you look down far enough you can see where the trail continues waaaaaaaaaay down in front of us. It was a long, but good, hike that day.

So, our first visit from friends was a success. Who’s next?

Film crew setting up on Wilshire Blvd

Fri, 07 May 2010 12:39:37 -0700

Film crew setting up on Wilshire Blvd

Korean BBQ, Tacos and……crayons? (PS I know there...

Thu, 06 May 2010 10:48:06 -0700

Korean BBQ, Tacos and……crayons?

(PS I know there is a food called a pastel)

I love my commute

Wed, 05 May 2010 12:01:59 -0700

I love my commute

My co-worker got stopped in traffic outside where a bank robbery...

Mon, 03 May 2010 14:11:57 -0700

My co-worker got stopped in traffic outside where a bank robbery was taking place. For real. Guns drawn and everything.

Into the Wild...of Los Angeles

Mon, 03 May 2010 13:33:45 -0700

This past weekend I finally got to do something I’ve been wanting to do since we moved here: go hiking at Runyon Canyon. Friday was just gorgeous here. It wasn’t terribly hot, the sky was bright blue and cloudless. I was sitting outside at lunch and just thought, tomorrow is the day. I want to finally go on a hike at Runyon Canyon.

Runyon Canyon is a big park in the Hollywood Hills where you can hike and enjoy the view and you can even take your dogs and let them walk off leash with you. So I conned Alex into going with me and then called up LeeAnne to go with us too, so the 3 of us and the pups made an early day of it, thinking we’d miss the crowds. Wrong. It was pretty crowded even at 8:30 in the morning. There was no parking in the lot, so we had to park on the street and walk. The hike itself wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be, although my shins have hurt since. The best part was the view. Here are some pictures:

Alex & LeeAnne starting the hike

Raimi

LeeAnne & Bella

Happy pup!

One really cool thing about Runyon is that they actually have farm animals. Ok, well, they have goats and horses.

Love that you can see the city behind this guy!

And then there’s just the view itself:

So we have a great hike and we’re all exercised and ready for breakfast…and remember how I said we had to park on the street?

BAM! $58.00 parking ticket. Most expensive hike ever. Sigh.

Stick a fork in me...

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 10:54:00 -0700

It’s Spring. The time of year for flowers to bloom and birds to chirp and grass to grow and…..for national cable up-fronts. Basically, this is the time of year in advertising where national cable outlets schedule meetings (or an up-front in the advertising world) to basically pitch themselves to you so that you’ll spend money on their network. It sounds pretty boring I’m sure, but it’s actually kind of fun because you get a free lunch and presents, and a presentation where you get sneak peeks at what’s coming up on the networks before it’s released to the general public. We’ve had two up-fronts this week, both with lunch provided.

Having just moved 2,000 miles away, I’ve spent the greater part of 2010 eating. Either eating with friends who wanted to go to dinner before we left Birmingham, or eating with friends and family out here, I’ve done a lot of eating and my body has paid for it. So the last two weeks I’ve spent trying to right the wrongs that I’ve done over the last 3 months diet-wise. Lots of salad. Lots of yoga. Less pizza and pasta and ice cream. That said, yesterday I said screw it. I knew we had a breakfast meeting scheduled at work. I knew we had a lunch up-front scheduled as well. And then I knew that last night was dinner at Hugo’s for LeeAnne’s birthday so I threw in the towel and decided to document my “day of too many calories” instead of worrying about it.

Breakfast, provided by work:

Lunch, provided by Comedy Central:

(that enchilada was no bueno)

Dinner, the most yummy pasta ever, provided by my wallet via Hugo’s:

Dessert, the most yummy banana split, provided by my wallet via Hugo’s:

The end.

Now I know what Alex does when he walks the dog.

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:59:50 -0700

Now I know what Alex does when he walks the dog.

Hazy Hollywood

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:30:57 -0700

Hazy Hollywood

I move to California and THIS is what is going out in...

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:07:15 -0700

I move to California and THIS is what is going out in interoffice emails.

Language (via timjames4AL)

My drive in today. Stop and go. Stop and go. Good morning, Los...

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:54:30 -0700

My drive in today. Stop and go. Stop and go. Good morning, Los Angeles

‘sup?

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 22:26:26 -0700

‘sup?