April 2008

I mean it’s Kirsten Dunst’s birthday right?

Oh ya and my sister’s! Oh and Glory’s. 26 years old and 7 years old. Over the hill for both of them. So HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAT. I know I’ve only been around for 23 and a half of those years but I think I can testify that you’ve made the most of them. Here’s to conquering the rest of your twenties … and enjoying your 27th birthday when you are not in law school and can actually have fun instead of studying for finals

Glory and I plan to go on a long hike through the park and she is having a little swim party to celebrate. Well basically the swim party is me, her, and a ball but I think that’ll be good enough for her. You know when you get past 5 in dog years you don’t want to dwell too much on birthdays anyway.

Paid my first dental bill today so that basically means I am now truly an adult. My teeth are my problem from here on out. I welcome your praise on my new step into the real world.

I can’t believe it is the end of April already, which means it is almost May, which means it will almost have been a year since I graduated college and moved to California. There will no doubt be an entire post on those days detailing how it feels to be celebrating the year anniversary of college grad. and Californian, respectively. For now though I will say that it is incredible how time flies. I go back and forth between feeling like it couldn’t have been a year already and feeling like I can’t even remember what it felt like to be in college and living in Austin. I kinda feel like I have been floating in this no-man’s land for the past year (kinda like that no-man’s land between those two weird stop lights on Mission the other day TJ?). You know the feeling when you don’t feel like you belong to your past anymore but you aren’t really able to believe you are living in the present. I think I’m getting there though. I’ve stopped listening to sappy songs like Michael Buble’s “Home”.

On that same note I will add that coming the end of May I will official have my residence status for California. This is exciting because if I want to take any college courses or community college courses here it will save me a crapload of money. Honestly I applied to City College of SF the other day (I think I’m gonna take a few classes over the summer) and it is only $20 per credit hour for in-state students. Incredible. That actually makes it tempting to take something like Basket Weaving or Nutrition for Your Dog 101 without feel like I’m wasting my money. Ha – who am I kidding – I would pay way more for those. But seriously I think I’m gonna take some Spanish or something.

Saca su autobus de aqui. Jajaja.

Ciao!

Spotted A and G snuggling up in bed on a Monday night.

That’s right – Gossip Girl was on tonight! Ahh I love trashy tv. Plus tonight I had TJ to share it with me so it was less embarrassing guilty pleasure and more friend bonding over horrid CW shows. It reminded me of the good ol’ days of One Tree Hill is Kinsolving dorm. “I don’t wanna be anything other than what I’ve been trying to be lately”.

I think that my severe dependence on trash tv stems from the fact that I’m afraid I am an overly deep person mentally in real life. Sometimes I feel like I overthink and I let myself get into the mental nitty gritty of it all and I need reality television and sappy teenage dramas to help to “shallow up” a little. I mean my brain turns to such mush after something like Girls Next Door that it is easier to not think so much about what is going on in the world and how complicated life can sometimes be. Or at least that is what I tell myself to not feel pathetic after indulging in E! News, Daily Ten, Brothers and Sisters online, and Gossip Girl all in one night.

Got my new phone via FedEx today so after 12 hours of charging it will finally be ready in the morning for activation and I will finally be connected to the world again. On the flip side after a week in Costa Rica and an extra four days with no phone I think I have plenty of minutes and text messages to spare this month – and plus my Skype account – so I am going to spend the week catching up with my lovers in other zip codes.

Enough blogging; time for bed. Should I sign off Gossip Girl style?

xoxo!

Spent the day at Mt. Davidson with some of my favorite ladies and fellas in the sun so it was a pretty great last day on my vacation (I rolled it over into the weekend so that counts?) Back to work tomorrow and the real world. It is going to be a real kick in the butt so I am planning on getting to bed early tonight in order to cope.

I have been thinking a lot today about how much it sucks that I don’t get to live in the same place as everyone I love. I just wish that all my friends and family from Texas and from the East Coast and everywhere – I wish that we could all just get together and duke it out and determine where we should all live. That would so way uncomplicate my life. I think it was mainly a thought born out of watching last week’s Brother’s and Sisters, which by the way is still one of my favorite shows and I am so glad it is back on.

On that same note I am super excited to be going to Austin for Kat’s graduation soon. I have finally determined what I am getting her for the big day so now I just have to get it purchased and I am halfway there. Gonna be quite the weekend between celebrating with her, splitting time between Mom family and Dad family, and seeing my besties and playing on 6th. Ahh but I love that every time I go back to Texas I get like no sleep and I walk around with a big goofy grin on my face cause it always is fun to have a jam packed weekend with all my loves.

Let me also just say for the sake of putting the pressure on that I have passed along my copy of Pillars of the Earth to my girl TJ so I am awaiting her opinion. That is my subtle way of saying that you better hurry and get through those 1000 pages. The monks and rape and dramatic cathedral building cannot be put down. Tick tock. I mean I was so excited because my most romantic friend I know – with all her Pride and Prejudice and Lady Chattterly’s Lover – and I finally had a romantic book to share. Thanks Kat – I was able to be a productive part of the friendship.

I was thinking also today about how much I kinda miss doing artistic stuff. For a few years there in college – especially the semester of three studio classes (aka 24 hours of art in class alone per week – what was I thinking?) – I was getting to do so much all the time. Now I never do a thing! That must change. Maybe I can mooch some artistic motivation off of Anneliese’s Ashley?

Well it is time to start getting ready for bed. #1 brush teeth #2 coerce Glory into getting into bed and snuggling me. Umm the perfect Sunday night.

Well ok or for those of you who haven’t asked how my vacation was it likely has something to do with the fact that as of the moment I am unreachable, thanks to the Ticos who now have my cell phone and 7 pair of my already worn underwear, among other things. But we’ll get to that …

So Costa Rica was amazing. The country is gorgeous, as Jon and I found out as we drove through just about the entirety of one coast. Let me just warn you that if you ever try to do a quick 5 day trip to a foreign country you should not plan to drive every single day. It. Gets. Tiring. Especially if that country is Costa Rica and the roads are entirely made of gravel and potholes and occasionally the herd of cattle. Pictures to come later.

So the first day was hot springs and a cloudy volcano and the second day was driving to Monteverde, where we left off. We then did a zip line through the canopy of the rainforest which was awesome. Some of the ziplines were ridiculously long and stretched above the valley of trees so you were flying through the air. The countryside was beautiful and if that wasn’t enough there was a fantastically horrifying free fall swing that you could jump off of that was like bungee jumping but with less whiplash. We then started the long drive to Manuel Antonio.

Manuel Antonio is supposedly monkey heaven, as far as Costa Rica goes. We had our sights set a little too high I think. I mean I was expecting monkeys to be accosting me at every turn. I mean they stole stuff from Ashley Simpson (thanks Kat!). I guess the monkeys are very shallow and our stuff was not designer enough for them. Either way we went to Manuel Antonio Park and saw a whole troop of monkeys who managed to steal someone’s banana and almost jump on Jon’s head, saw some sloths, and tons of huge iguanas. The beach was superb – there was this little cove where the water was clear and there were not many waves so I could just float all day. It was perfect. Of course it also led to a nasty sunburn – nastier for Jon than me but still I think I’m losing some skin over this one.

Fabulous vacation. Oh ya – and then came Jaco. So on our last day we were driving back to San Jose to drop off our car and stay the night since our flight left at 6 am on Friday. We needed to use the internet really quick though before it got to late and so we left our hotel and started off to Cafe Milagro to grab a cup of joe and shoot off a few emails. Setback number 1: no plugs and Jon’s laptop was out of battery. No problem we will just find another internet cafe in Quepos. Setback number 2: Quepos internet place had no wireless so we decided to wait. Oh ya – and then came Jaco.

Jaco is this super touristy, South Padre-ish town that is the closest beach for the Ticos to get to from San Jaso. There’s a Best Western and tons of shops that sell little shells that say “Jaco, Costa Rica” and tons of t-shirts with Imperial beer on them. Seriously I was expecting to see Girls Gone Wild filming there and “Your Name on Rice” necklaces. Parked on the main street in the middle of the afternoon and ran in to the internet cafe to send a quick email. Came back 45 minutes later and …. we were suitcaseless. Apparently they broke in to our car – very skilled might I add since they did it without arousing suspicion and without hurting the car at all – and took our suitcases. Of course they are idiots and left my backpack which had my Ipod and charger and all. But they did get 7 pair of dirty underwear of mine and 7 pair of dirty underwear of Jon’s* and my phone and his glasses (*might be exaggerated a bit, a there were other clothes in our bags).

Minus the annoyance of it all I think they did me a favor in that it gave me an excuse to go shopping. Although it was a bit embarrassing when the credit card company called me today. So I had a copy of my passport and credit cards in my bag in case someone stole my purse (good intentions, bad outcome). When the bag got stolen I had to cancel those credit cards just in case. When I got home though I needed a way to pay for things until my new cards come next week so I pulled out the trusty back up Wells Fargo credit card from college and started racking it up. Today I got a message at work that my boss forwarded to me that I needed to verify some charges on my card so I call in to Wells Fargo. The guys then proceeds to read to me the charges, which let’s just say included a hefty charge from Victoria’s Secret online at like 4 in the afternoon plus another Victoria’s Secret charge in store like 2 hours earlier. This guy totally thought I was such a skank. I mean I was just replacing the underwear, bras, swimsuit that were stolen! Ha it was so great. Then I tried to make a joke with him about it and he was not having it. So those are the perils of having your luggage stolen – not too bad right? Plus international travel is much easier when you have no bags to bring through customs.

Anyway so we came back with much less than we went with – except memories (awww cheesy). Pictures to come soon when I get the cord from Jon. Until then you’ll have to Wikipedia sloths to figure out what they look like. Seriously though I got the best picture of one – I swear he is smiling at me.

Life back in SF in the same as usual, although much quieter since I have no means of communication. I will say that I just got a small $10 account on Skype and it is awesome.
I hadn’t used it much before but on my Mac I can just talk and some microphone somewhere hears me and then the person on the phone can hear me. Incredible. Technology just mesmerizes me.

Side notes:

1. does anyone know if beezy is a legitimate lingo word for bitch? TJ?
2. congrats to my bestie Megan on joining the College Station workforce if I could put my 7 year old self back into elementary school and given myself a lisp I would totally have loved going to see you.
3. Lacey expect a letter soon. and expect it to have about 10 address return labels on the envelope. I just can’t get rid of these things faster than they are sending them. Green Peace sent some while I was in Costa Rica – how did they know I was collecting?

Well off for some sweet dreams as I am feeling lazy and really wanting to get a ton of sleep tonight. Ahh I am still living the vacation life. Monday is going to come like a slap in the face.

I know I know I still haven’t blogged. It feels almost daunting to start up again after being out for so long. BUT never fear either later tonight or tomorrow morning I’ll tell all about the adventures of Costa Rica. There’s laughter. There’s tears. There’s me with no cell phone … which I find to be kind of ominous that the title of my last post was “Aiy no cellular” and then my bag, including cell phone, were stolen a few days later. It’s like my blog can tell the future?

Estamos en Santa Elena! (We’re in Santa Elena) Can’t believe that everyone else is back working today and making it through a Monday and we’re in Costa Rica! Ha – thank you vacation.

So we made it to San Jose early early early in the morning yesterday and immediatly started driving to Arenal. Got there in the afternoon and drove around for awhile trying to find a place today. Since it was so cloudy we weren’t going to be able to hike up to the volcano anyway. Bummer. But we did go to Baldi Hot Springs, where we stayed, and played around in the amazing hot springs. Que fantastico!

This morning we started driving on basically one of the worst roads in Costa Rica. Got lost and wound up taking us about an hour longer than normal. It was pretty much like driving on a ridiculously potholed gravel road. Thank you four wheel drive Suzuki Jimmy. We did wind up see some kinkajous crossing the road on the way and a huge iguana! No monkeys yet though – although we are promised that they are everyone in Manuel Antonio we keep your fingers crossed.

We are staying at a great hostel in Santa Elena that is owned by some people from Austin. There are Longhorns everywhere! Only $27 per night for both of us too. Although with the state of the dollar things are more expensive than we expected – although still pretty damn cheap.

We went down to the San Luis waterfall today and hiked in and over rickity bridges and slippery rocks and then dipped in to the freezing cold water! It was so rainforest too with all the mist in the air and tons of rainbows!

So hanging out tonight and then off to do the ziplines in the morning and then off to Quepos/Manuel Antonio. So glad we are still in the beginning of the week!

And thanks TJ for the sweet Someecard. Yes it is extremely sketchy – although to be honest the sketchiest part was the hardcore old guy doing pilates on one of the waterfalls at the hot springs yesterday. Seriously. Jajajajaj (hahahaha).

Ciao!

Three goals for vacation in CR:

1. Get a tan. “It’s my hot body I do what I want” – South Park/TJ
2. See monkeys. Get monkeys to throw stuff at Jon. (two in one I know)
3. Drink coffee and frescos.

I am pretty sure I can accomplish those three so it looks like I am set for a good week. For all you suckers who are stuck here see the above card.

As a side note – Good luck Pennsylvania on giving your input into our Democratic nominee while I am gone. Lacey I am super excited for you to be having this opportunity! I know at the beginning of the political season you were thinking that PA wouldn’t have a voice with the primary so late but now you guys have a huge job to do so get’er done. (side note: I think watching too many episodes of Friday Night Lights is making me say things like “job to do” and “get’er done”; I haven’t decided how I feel about this.)

I am super glad to be out of the country while everything happens here with the primaries but I do know that likely I will come back and it will still be a close race. I’m also a bit bummed to be missing out on all the late night tv that will surround this primary – I’ll have to have Katie and Aimee update me on Jon Stewart’s week.

I read an article today in US News I believe (I was in the vet office waiting for Glory to get her staples out; p.s. kudos to my vet for having magazines other than Dog Fancy) that no matter who gets the nomination it is clear that Americans are looking for a bigger and more involved government. Very interesting to learn and guess could be looked on from a positive or negative point of view. Either way – Good luck Obama! We are the change we’ve been waiting for.

Hours that is – not the show – although I suppose since I watched Rendition tonight it is related. More on that later. So yes in 24 hours we will be on a plane on the way to Costa Rica! Ah I am desperately in need of a vacation. Yikes though that we don’t have a hotel reservation for the first night. Eh what can you do – this is the side of me that is trying to play it by ear. If we wind up sleeping in the car than I will have proof for why that is a bad idea for the next vacation. Ha – I’m sure it will all work out just fine though … but seriously about the proof thing.

So on to the Rendition watching. I related it to 24 because seriously I don’t think I’m cut out to watch shows with torture. I’m thinking that’s a good thing cause if I was on here saying that I loved those scenes I would be seriously concerned. Oh and in case I forget to tell you Mom this is just your warning that if you haven’t seen this movie already then don’t rent it.

Another thing I didn’t like about the movie was that it made me really pissed off at our politics towards terrorism and our sneaky ways to get around the Constitution. I think I was heavily influenced by having just read Static and also having friends like Katie and my sister. I think that’s a good thing though. Between that and Friday Night Lights (oh ya I watched three episodes today – so pathetic) I think it was a depressing tv show/movie day.

It’s kinda weird how after watching something on tv or especially in a movie theatre you sometimes get so wrapped up in the lives of the people in the story that you forget that it is just a movie. I find myself either feeling really romantic or really sad or whatever based upon a movie I will see. I guess that’s the point but it is kinda scary how our emotions and mind work against us like that. It is the same thing with music – how you can listen to a song that you love and that is a pick me up and it will just make your whole day better. Or when I am sad I can listen to Lay Your Head Down and just let out my sadness. Or how music can make you be able to run a little further just because the song motivates you. I guess that’s good – just kinda creepy when you think about how influenced we can be by the simplest things.

Glory’s staples come out tomorrow (yay!) and I am totally ready for her to be all healed and ready to play with Josie again and not be in my hair all the time. Umm ok not really anything else interesting to add on that front – except I hope she does ok with Margaret all week- Eek!

I’m staring right now at my Story People print that I have on my dresser and thinking about how much I love this artist, Brian Andreas. I was on the website the other day and I swear I could just fill my house with these Story People. I need to get another. Kudos to my aunt for finding them and to my mom for making me love them. My favorite right now is Awakening. This is clearly a horrible picture but you get the idea. The text reads:

Absolutely exhausted this morning and trying to make it through one last work day before an entire week off (woohoo!). I am having a fight with my work computer this morning so I am cooling off by blogging before digging back in and trying to figure out what its problem is. I feel like I am better with anger management with my computer than with real life. I always count to ten and give it time before yelling. Gotta start somewhere I guess.

Jon has turned me into a monster by getting me hooked on Friday Night Lights. Thanks to Hulu I can watch all the episodes. It is so addicting. Small town Texas + high school football. It is basically College Station … with hotter guys. I will say though that I am extremely glad that they have older actors and actresses play the high school kids on the show. Number one – let’s face it most of the time in high school you just aren’t as attractive as you are in your twenties. Number two – it makes me feel way less pervy watching and thinking the guys are hot. I mean I know they are playing someone in high school so it’s still on the line – but in real life they are older than me so I think I’m in the clear.

Costa Rica tomorrow! Still am not set though – we have one hotel that is not figured out. Eh what can you do? Either way I’m packed and so incredibly ready to jet outta here and spend a week having fun in the sun. Well fun in the Costa Rican sun … I always have fun in the sun here! Oh thank you California.

Ok my computer is being nice again so I better pay it some more attention.

Screw March of the Penguins. This Texas Country video on Skidboot is what made me teary eyed. I am so pathetic … and a Texas girl at heart.

Thanks Mom for sharing.

I got Glory to take both of her pills at once this morning. Take that Skidboot.