THE MOST WONDERFUL PLACE ON EARTH

Yesterday, Josh took me to Disneyland for my birthday. My 25th birthday. The one that took place last February. It's been overdue but since he's either been out of town or I've been working and we didn't want to go on a weekend, this week's been the first real opportunity to go.

Yesterday was awesome. Fantastic. LEGENDARY if you will. Disney has this deal for SoCal residents for discounted tickets to both parks so we decided to jump on the bandwagon. The drive was super easy, which was a great omen for good things to come. Easy to park, and easy to get to the tram. It's been cloudy and a little rainy so i think that, combined with the fact it was a tuesday, kept a lot of the crowds away. Started in Tomorrowland - rocked out on Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters - hands down the 2 best rides we did. See how fierce we were against Emperor Zurg!

I look aprehensive, Josh is ready to kill.

Josh is taking this way to seriously...i just want to go home!

We wandered the park, acting silly and dancing to fabulous disney music. Everyone there was happy and it was infectious. Lines were super short and we waited at most of 10 minutes for any given ride. It only rained a little and the sun even came out for a bit.

The best part hands down was when we were in Storybook Land. Merlin (the wizard from the Sword and the Stone) was giving a performance around the sword in the stone in front of the carousel. He did some magic and then said he needed a volunteer from the audience to try and pull the sword out of the stone. Guess who his "volunteer" was!!! Josh! Merlin pointed at Josh, who tried to pretend he didn't see it but then Merlin called him out and Josh went up to the front. He was so great up there, totally playing along with the act, acting silly and getting a lot of laughs. He then was one-upped by a 5 year old who "could" pull the sword out of the stone and then Josh and Merlin bowed to the new "king". Josh was just excited he was named a knight of the round table and didn't let me forget it the rest of the day. Once we get the pictures developed i'll post some here.


We spent about 9 hours at the part and never were bored once. I think we rode about everything once and a couple a 2nd time. The parade was great and the floats were amazing. That should have been enough for my "unbirthday" but it didn't end there.


Josh took me to PORTILLOS!!!!! The Chicago hotdog chain has a branch down in Buena Park, the only one outside of Illinois. I was in heaven from the second i walked in. Gorged on hotdogs and french fries. Everything about it was fantastic - from the decorations to the smells. Totally brought me back home.


I am one happy girl. Yesterday was the best "birthday" i've had in years and totally erased the awfulness of my actual birthday that year (the worst day of work i've ever had out here - i get angry even thinking about it).


I think we might go back and use our other ticket on Friday!

It's been about 6 months since I blogged last on here. sad. a lot has been going on and although i love to read other people's posts, I'm pretty lazy about posting my own. so, as been said before, new year, hopefully new posts. never mind it's the last day of january - i still got it in under the first month of the year deadline. it still counts in my head.

Last night I went to the Pearl Jam concert with my friend Jason and it was awesome! I hadn't been to a concert in ages and it was the perfect one for my reintroduction to all things musical. Jason had tickets to Monday's show but had to work so he asked if I wanted to try and see them last night. Luckily Ticketmaster still had decent seats so we weren't completely raped by scalpers, which I thought would be the case.

We got to the Forum pretty early and decided to go get food at this BBQ place nearby which took forever. So we missed most of the opening set by Sonic Youth, which I wasn't overly upset by since I don't really know their music and what I heard wasn't all that up my alley. Chilled until 9, when PJ came on. It was pretty crazy - the crowd (one of the best in ages) basically screamed and clapped for the 5 minutes before they came on and once the lights dimmed it was pandamonium.

I really knew 7 or 8 of the songs that were played - my knowledge of Pearl Jam is pretty limited by what's played on the radio - but it was really hard not to get sucked into the energy of the crowd. For me the best song was "Better Man" - for the first verse it was pretty much just the crowd singing it - the Forum was quiet but for the singing and then Eddie Vedder came on during the chorus. I got goosebumps a couple of times during the show. Pretty kick ass.

It took forever to get out of the parking lot but I had good company so it wasn't so bad. All in all, a fantastic night and I'm really glad Jason asked me to go.

Off to go load the truck for my new job - should be a short day.

Three things made me very happy today:

1) Ivy called and we went to lunch down at Urth Cafe on Melrose. Had a fantastic waffle with fresh fruit and a great Spanish iced coffee. Great people watching place and I felt trendy without being over-priced.

2) After Urth, we went down to Main Street in Santa Monica. Never been down there before but super cute boutique shops that I can't afford and more good people watching. Definitely a place I'll go back to.

3) While down on Main St, we went to Pete's Coffee where I got an iced jasmine tea. So tasty with the fresh lime juice in it.

Yay for nice summer-like days!

PERFECT CALIFORNIA DAY

Today was the kind of day that you wish every day could be. I went down to Balboa (Down near Newport Beach - of the OC fame if you will) with my friend Ivy to hang out with some of her USC friends. A bunch of ADPis mostly and their guy friends. One of the girl's parents have a house down there and brought a ton of food and set up an area around a fire pit. Hung out for a couple of hours, talking, eating and setting hotdogs and marshmallows on fire. As every good beach day should go. The skewers provided weren't quite long enough to use to roast the food so we created extension pieces using pieces of the wood pallets the host brought for firewood. We nailed the skewers to the wood and it worked remarkably well. Wish I had my camera with me...they would have been some great pictures.

We even ended up in the ocean at the end of the day...it was too cold earlier, but as the air temp dropped, the water temp remained pretty warm and it felt really good once you got over the shock of the cold. The undertow was pretty bad, so we ended up being pushed about 100 yards down the beach from where we entered and I got wrecked by some waves as I tried to get out. But it was a blast. Wish every day could be like that. But without the sunburn - no matter how hard I try, I seem to get burned somehow. Even with multiple layers of sunscreen. Oh well. :)

ONLY IN THE INDUSTRY...

Yesterday I day-played on a indie movie directed by and starring Rob Schneider ( of Deuce Bigalow, Adam Sandler-sidekick fame). It was with a great group of assistants, a couple from Boomtown, some I hadn't seen in ages. The AD team also was the same from Death Row...as Elaine and I deemed them, "the Heathers." A wonderful little reunion of sorts.

What made it really interesting was we were shooting a prison shower scene, complete with makeshift shivs and nunchucks made out of soap on a rope. Schneider plays a wanna-be karate master who ends up in prison, beating up neo-nazis and fending off other prison stereotypes. Being this a shower scene, I saw more naked men yesterday in one place than I've ever seen. Really unattractive naked men. Especially Mr. Schneider. Nice guy, just so not my type. I ended up having to wrangle cable at one point, which was fairly normal, except Rob ended up about 6 inches from me due to camera placement, his naked ass creeping into my personal bubble of space. I kept praying to myself, "please don't back up please don't back up." Can't say that I've ever been that close to a naked man I wasn't dating.

I think i'm done with the prison movies for awhile :)

PURE STUPIDITY

so last night i was really dumb and grabbed the handle of the pan i had minutes before pulled out of the oven. all i could think was PAIN and that i didn't want the super hot pan to fall on the ground and spill the super hot pork juices all over me and the kitchen. managed to save the pan, and make a decent sauce with some butter and beer. but my hand definitely stung. i think aloe took care of most of the burns but there's a nasty one on my pinky that doesn't feel too good. every day is a learning experience and i am a very special person. yeesh.

otherwise, this morning's been productive, with a trip to the doctor for a physical, made an appointment to take my car in to look at the weird clunking noise, and dropped my dress for clint and kelly's wedding this saturday at the cleaners. other than the dentist this afternoon (ick), not a bad day.

This morning I had a bit of an adventure. I went to go move my car for street cleaning and when I came back to my apartment, I realized I never put my house key back on my key ring after running yesterday. Ooops. After trying to pry open my front windows and knocking on various doors in my complex, I ended up going to the local grocery to buy a phone card in order to call Josh to get his key. This plan suceeded because 1) josh was luckily still in town (he's going to Baltimore on Saturday) and 2) I actually had my car, so I was able to drive over to where they were shooting and get his key. Unfortunately, I was in my pjs, only having intended to move my car and come home to get ready for the day. Great first impression I made on some of the people he was working with. On the bright side, the camera op, Jeff, who I know pretty well, shared his own laundry woes with me, stating he was at the bottom of the barrel laundry wise and wearing swim trunks as boxers. Pretty funny.

Now i'm clean, working on doing laundry and cleaning the apartment. Good times.

MMM...CAKE


So, tonight on The Tonight Show, Leno's featuring a chef that Josh is following for an upcoming Food Network show. Chef Duff is a crazy guy who makes the most outrageous cakes. I'm told tonight's cake is pretty cool and I'm excited to see it.

Besides, he's the guy who's going to make our wedding cake, so have to give props to him!