boondoggle

At my job, you basically fall into one of three categories: planning, account, or creative. I'm a planner. If you're an account person or a creative, you typically get to attend video/photo shoots, cool client events, etc. Planners don't get to do anything super fun like that because we fall in this weird no-man's-land where we don't really need exposure to the client and we can't really lend any assistance on set (I know, I'm really selling what I do). SO, you can imagine my surprise when I found out that all the important creatives/account leads couldn't attend the ESPYs, and that I would get to go instead! BOONDOGGLE!

I didn't even know what the ESPYs were before my current job, so no worries if you're not up on the sports lingo :) (They're an awards show in L.A. for sports peeps, sponsored by ESPN). Because my client was also a sponsor, they gave our agency two tickets to attend, and the invite trickled down to me! (Cue disappointment on the client's face, ha!). I'd never been to L.A. before, and it seemed like going for an awards show on my company's tab was pretty much the perfect way to do it.

The trip was a whirlwind (24 hrs there and back), but filled with a bunch of highlights, surprisingly, none of which were from the actual show! The show itself was so long, relatively boring during the commercial breaks, and they didn't serve alcohol. WHAT KIND OF PLACE IS THIS.

Shaun White & Olivia Munn say "pretty great seats, huh?" 

(despite that dude's head on the left)

I will say, it was cool seeing all the celebrities present awards (Zooey Deschanel, Jessica Biel, Tim Tebow, Peyton Manning), and they aired a ton of feel-good stories during the show that made me have a couple of sports cries. I also got a lot of good QT with our clients, which is unusual for planners as I mentioned. But okay, to the really good stuff...

First class, baby

If you can believe it, I accidentally ended up in first class when my ticket was booked. Since I'd never ridden up there with the high rollers and was on a four-hour flight, I was nothing short of CRAZY EXCITED! I got real food. And free drinks. And a pillow. And a ton of leg room I didn't need. It was amazing!

this is the real deal

The Grand Canyon

I haven't set eyes on the G.C. since we stopped there on our honeymoon, and I definitely didn't think I'd ever see a view like this! Is this not the most unbelievable vantage point?!

I almost couldn't breathe! I thought it was incredible.

The best part though, was when I realized we were flying over the exact location where we'd taken our 9-mile hike almost exactly two years earlier. 

we hiked from the top of the rim all the way to the point overlooking the water 

(actually I stopped short but B did the whole thing)

Red Carpet

So the funny thing about having a ticket to the red carpet is that you actually get a ticket to the non-celebrity red carpet that runs riiiiiiiight next to the celebrity red carpet. God forbid we share the same pathway, right? My primary celeb sighting during our carpet foray was Eli Manning, not bad! Everyone else looked like Somebody I Should Know But Couldn't Quite Place / Maybe Never Knew to Begin With. 

 sunny day in L.A.! loved it!

Lauryn Hill

I had pretty high hopes for the after party, which we also had tickets for and thus I assumed would be amaze-balls. It didn't disappoint in terms of fanfare (pretty much like a gigantic wedding on crack) but I got zero opportunities to de-flower Tim Tebow, so overall it was a fail. HOWEVER, there was one redeeming moment of the night, which is when Lauryn Hill unexpectedly performed. The Fugees narrated my precarious 6th/7th grade years when I migrated from being an awkward loser to an awkward loser with friends so I was super excited to re-live that! But no really, apparently she has been sort of crazy in her recent years and doesn't show up for concerts and stuff so I felt lucky to see her perform, especially in such an intimate setting. 

She was awesome! She sang a lot of crowd favs with a twist and was pretty much a freestyling badass. Aside from her being all crazy and whatnot, I wanted to be her.

Overall, the whirlwind trip was a perfect taste of L.A. for me--getting our hair done, first class treatment, sweet hotel, and an exciting night! Not a bad way to do L.A. in a day!

it's that time again...

...it's slow cooker season!

I had the most Sunday of all Sundays this weekend, because it was filled with all the required activities:
1. Church
2. Gym
3. Laundry (sorry, no Tan, jersey shore fans)
4. Football
5. SLOW COOKER!

I fell in love with our slow cooker last year and have been waiting anxiously to bust it out again, but it hadn't been appropriately chilly until now! One vat of amazing chili later, we officially stepped into fall. Which means summer is over, boo, but fall has found a soft spot in me that likes orange trees and boots and pumpkin spice lattes and crisp air and epic Sundays like this one juuuuuuust enough to look past the all lack of warmth, lack of light, etc.

So yay for chili, I will have a thousand more bowls of you before this is all done!

tales from the train II

Recently, I was standing in the aisle holding on to the back of someone's seat (common fare for rush hour). We were both facing the same direction, so I was essentially standing over his shoulder. When you're jammed all up in someone's business though, after a while there's really nowhere to look except at the person's hair, lap, book, phone, whatever. They can't see you so it doesn't really matter, and sometimes it makes your ride a lot more interesting.

Just to set the stage for you: this guy was probably 26, had a bowl cut, wore round glasses with slightly tinted frames, a plaid short-sleeved shirt, khaki shorts, socks/tennis shoes, and looks like he played one too many games of Halo when maybe he should've been at the gym.

It's 8:30 a.m. He pulls out his phone, scrolls through his texts, puts it back in his pocket. The second time this happens, I decide something must be important so I should probably watch to be sure.

Through a series of backstrokes and re-writes that go on for at least five minutes, he commits to send "Claire":

So I realized that maybe you'd never received a flirty pic before. I just got a new lamp and thought I'd show you.

Then, in the creepiest of all creepy things, he scrolls back through his phone (to where I see that he has sent the last three texts to Claire from the night before with no response), puts it back in his pocket, folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles the most lascivious tight-lipped smirk I've ever seen.

He has no idea that Claire's never gonna text him again.

tales from the train

Riding on public transportation, like anything else, has its perks and its drawbacks.

Drawbacks are the usual suspects: sweating before you get to work, alternatively waiting in the freezing cold, extremely close contact with strangers, getting stuck on the tracks when you really have to pee, and witnessing all sorts of crazy.

Perks include general reliability, multitasking, not driving drunk, no looking for parking, no concerns for rush hour, and witnessing all sorts of crazy.

I'm going to try to periodically post about some of my train encounters because sometimes you can't keep all this weirdness to yourself. I hope none of my posts ever start with anything like, "So when I got on the train, I had an iPhone..."

Let's start this series sweet and simple. Today, on the way to and from work, two guys no ehem gentlemen gave me their seats. The first got up when it was disgustingly crowded and opted to brave arm-rubbing with a bunch of very sweaty people. The second was walking toward a seat and then I turned around, saw it, and he forfeited to me. Not a huge deal except that 1) I expected him to sit because he was closer, train rules! and 2) he was reading a book, which is really annoying to do while you're standing up and trying to keep your balance...which he then did all the way to his stop.

Maybe it's sort of sad to think about how rarely this happens (or how quickly I accept), but that slice of chivalry allowed me to read an extra 40 pages in my book while commuting today. Random acts of kindness, people. They keep the world turning!

night pigs

Brian had one--count it, one--free weekend this summer, and as soon as I realized that, I slotted it for camping in Wisconsin. We went once last summer, and wanted to make a few key improvements this time around. 1) New equipment. See reference in an earlier post about drunkenly buying a tent... 2) Friends (Mark & Kim)! The more the merrier when you're killing time in the middle of nowhere.

quiet loop is the bomb

such a hot weekend, and I don't mean sexy

hammock = bliss

The weather was hot by Midwestern standards during the day (insert our friends, taking a nap in the car with the AC on...), but by nightfall it dropped a good 20 degrees and we slept in the high 60s.

Speaking of night...we enjoyed some amazing grilled food both evenings and then tied our garbage up onto a tree about 3 feet off the ground since there was no place close by to dump our trash.

Night 1: about 30 minutes after we got into our tent, Brian started making really soft snorting noises and then squeezing my hand, which clearly freaked me out because what sort of weirdo does that? When I hit him to STOP IT, I realized that not only was Brian not making that noise, but whatever was making it had surrounded our tent with a little rodent army. Snort...shuffle...snort...shuffle. We had a rain fly covering our tent so we had a really a limited view...meaning I couldn't exactly sketch a portrait of the invaders, BUT since they didn't do attack our trash I was sure we weren't dealing with raccoons...we were surrounded by night pigs.

And in case you're wondering, the fear of attack from mythical monsters is pretty much the best way to keep yourself COMPLETELY AWAKE in the wildnerness.

Night 2: The night pigs returned on schedule, just after we had quietly settled into our pine-needle-cushioned bed. After a quick game of "you do it - no you do it," Brian (fully armed but not at all dangerous) resorted to clanking a flashlight against a bat. Yes a bat like a wooden bat. (I've stopped asking questions.)

The night pigs were deterred for about a minute, juuuuust long enough to size up our trash bags and with a couple good swipes BAM that stinky piñata was all theirs! I wasn't as bothered by the mass destruction as I was by the fact that approximately every hour after that, a new crop of night pigs surrounded our tent, proceeded to the smorgasbord, snorted, feasted, and left. During which we woke up, Brian futilely tapped away at his flashlight-bat beatbox, and then dropped back to the ground in defeat.

Rinse. Repeat. Wake to a hot mess of disgustingness in your campsite.

Night pigs - 2 : Campers - 0

Aside from the invaders though, the weekend was exactly what it was intended to be. I had taken off of work Friday, so by the time Sunday rolled around, I was sufficiently decompressed. Maybe a little too decompressed, seeing as how the thought of leaving the hammock made me want to "cry like a titty baby," in the words of my eloquent mother. Loitering was the name of my game, so after Mark & Kim left, we lazed around the campsite, took the world's most leisurely hike, and then stopped three times on the way home. Perfecto!

a little morning game of beer die

 NBD, just carving her name into the table after sinking twice 

(from here on out, the game turned into an epic midday battle) 

this is what happens when you let the man determine the quantity of the food

making Kimmy WORK for it!

our Sunday hike, beautiful!

cats have birthdays too

And this one just turned 15!

 

It's hard for me to think about her age because I know cats can't live forever, but to maintain sanity I keep telling myself she's going to live forever!!!! She is my most precious companion, and I'm so happy she's not showing her age yet. 

I have loved Powder ever since I adopted her in 2005 (she was 8). She loved me as soon as she realized I was responsible for feeding her. But she has rarely given anyone else the time of day, thus earning her a reputation as "white Satan" in Memphis and again in Austin. However...since living in Chicago, she's become known for bigger and better things. Now sometimes those things are her lady balls*. But other times, it's that she's an elusive beauty. Or that if you just try hard enough...you too can pet her. 

Even Brian has come around to her over the years. Their relationship began with an awful lot of hissing and ignoring, but now I'm positive he's the preferred "parent." He caters to her in so many ways that I don't (I saw him put ice in her water bowl recently, what?!) and even though he wouldn't admit it, I think he would miss this little shed-ball if anything happened to her. He's even pushed to get a kitten so she'd have a friend, but in the interest of all parties staying alive, we're gonna hold out on that :)

Powder if you could do anything but sleep and poop on the rug read this, I would tell you we looooooove you - and your lady balls! Happy birthday!

*Her lady balls are really her stomach pouch, sometimes referred to as her foopah, belly, tummy sack, etc. It sort of looks like a Biggest Loser winner who now has to deal with the ramifications of having a giant pile of extra skin. For some reason, when her belly hangs down, it hangs in two parts. And when she walks away from you, they most closely resemble lady balls. Deal.

in the heat of summer

It seems like a good time to plant flowers during the apex of a heat wave, right? This way they have the least chance of survival, so I can't possibly be blamed for their failure!

giving petunias a whirl, although the name doesn't sound hearty enough for the neglect they've got coming their way