California - Leg 1

School started on Monday, and I'm already swamped with work. Actually, the whole time I was in California, it seemed like every day I checked my email, I had another pre-assignment. 

Therefore, the entries about my trip will be written in parts, because I'd feel really guilty if I took the time to write about the entire trip in one day. Plus, I wouldn't do it justice. 

Leg 1 - LA

I was in LA for three days to visit my Cousin Rob. He's the closest of my cousins to my age, so we've always been pretty good buds. We had a blast together.

Here we are bustin' a move. 

We went to Venice Beach to have brunch with an ex-coworker of mine. Cousin described Venice Beach as the "Times Square" of LA. When I asked why, he said, "There's a bunch of weirdos." Here's the open market, but I didn't get any pictures of the "weirdos." I did see them, though. 

I felt I had to do the touristy thing and go to Hollywood. We went to the Chinese Theater, saw the Walk of Fame, then Cousin said, "Well....that's Hollywood." Turns out Hollywood is kind of lame. 

But this was a cool picture to get. Gotta love that smog. 

 

And we got chicken & waffles. It doesn't make sense in theory, but it does make sense in your mouth. 

 

Another beach - Malibu

Cousins! 

I also visited the Unitarian Universalist church near my cousin's house, since I was there a week after the shooing at the Knoxville church. It meant a lot to be there to heal with that community, since I was unable to be at my home church. 

This concludes Leg 1. Stay tuned for Leg 2 - Route 1. (I have no idea when I'll get around to posting that. Millions of amazing pictures).  

Now to do the work I've been putting off doing all morning... 

Say no to lockjaw

In March I received a packet o' forms that needed to be sent in for my MBA program. I'm all about deadlines, so I noticed the  deadline for the medical form was August 1, and that's all my brain processed. 

I pulled out the form again sometime in July, since August was coming up, and I noticed it was a form for our immunization records. On closer examination, it was a form specifically for incoming students under the age of 26. I turn 26 in January. *shakes fist*

I contacted my undergraduate college in hopes that they still had my record, which they did. Sweet. $5 to mail them. Nuts. 

When the records came in the mail, I looked again at the form to send in, and noticed that I needed to have a tetanus shot in the last 10 years. My record said my last tetanus shot was in December '97. Hmm...maybe they won't notice...

I faxed in the form, and right away I received an email from "immunreq@__.edu" pointing out that my last tetanus shot was not in the last 10 years. 

4 months away from not needing to submit my immunizations, and 8 months away from being in the clear. Instead, I got a tetanus shot yesterday and now I'm down another $50 with a sore left shoulder.

*shakes right fist* Bring on the rusty nails.  

Margot

Yes, I just got back from a vacation in California. Yes, it was amazing. Yes, I should write an entry about it. But first...

...I must share my love for Margot & the Nuclear So and So's. I stumbled across this band when I accompanied my roommate to The Frames' show at the 9:30 Club sometime last year (they were one of the openers). Oh my goodness, what a trip they are. 

This band has 8 people in it, which is cool, because their live show sounds just as full and rich as their album. 2 guitars, a bass, drums, keyboard (the lone chick who adds lovely harmonies). Okay, that's pretty normal. Then add a guy who plays brass (either trombone or trumpet),  a guy who plays lap steel for some songs and violin for others, and the most entertaining of all, a guy who specializes in percussion (including a big bass drum & tambourine) and sweet dance moves.  

They were signed to Epic, which is interesting, because they are ultra-indie...not the type of band you'd expect to be signed to a major label. But apparently that has contributed in the delay of their next full album release (conflict and such -- I guess they convinced the label to let them release an EP, which is available now). 

Anyway, saw them tonight at 9:30 again, this time they headlined. And they were wonnnderful. Love them.  

(Clearly, I'm still on California time, as I'm still awake at 1:25am...)

COMBAT

We have declared war on the roaches. 

12 traps filled with delicious poison for them to eat and bring back to their nests to die a hopefully painful death and to spread the death around their nests. 

Mwah ahahahaha

Wunjo Onion

So umm...I'm in a band now? 

My sister is the performer, not me. That's why I save my musical endeavors for family and church. (Singing and playing in church is the best -- it's like playing in front of 50 grandmothers. They'll love anything you do!) 

My dad has recently found a guitar pickin' buddy at church, Jack, so they've started playing together pretty regularly, and I join in when I can, along with other musical folks in the congregation. Also, summertime at a UU church is pretty lax. Often the minister will take a bit of a break, and church members will do many of the services. My dad has volunteered us to do the music at several services lately. 

This week we received an email from my dad that said the folks at this little church mess up our names in the orders of service a lot, and that we should have a name for the group instead. He suggested Wunjo, the rune for joy and harmony. Cool, until you throw in the confusing pronunciation -- Vun-yoh. 

Then Jack shot out an email suggesting the name Wunjo Onion, "using musical joyfulness in peeling back the layers of existential philosophy, looking for a meristem of truth..." Wow. That's a UU explanation for you. 

At practice on Friday, my mom pointed out that she saw the emails and refrained from commenting. :-) My sentiments exactly, mother. 

Didn't stop Papa from announcing us as Wunjo Onion today at church. Oh well. He just forwarded an email from a woman in the church, expressing her appreciation for the music this morning. (What did I say about the 50 grandmas?) 

I guess a silly name can't keep us from making purty music. 

Boring Updates

A friend gave me a stern talkin' to for not writing recently. So here are some updates on my boring life. 

The internet is fixed, thank goodness. It was the cable company's fault. They came out, after canceling at least 3 appointments because there was an "outage" (not the case) only to find out that our cable line was disconnected accidentally...when someone else's was supposed to be disconnected. Oh well. We got a credit for the month we didn't have internet. 

We are still battling the roaches. An exterminator came, but we're not sure if he did anything. Had we done our research before we moved in,  we would have learned that this apartment complex has a roach problem. I'm concerned for Roommate's sanity. He encounters them more often than I do. He stumbled across a hatching of them...he killed about 30 baby roaches. He gets in roach killing mode. I think he'll get armor soon. He told me this evening he started seeing random flies, big ones, but he doesn't know where they are coming from. "I swear, someone is injecting flies into our house." I doubt we'll be renewing our lease. 

Saw The Dark Knight. Twice. Will see it again on IMAX. 

Roommate is singing along to the theme song of So You Think You Can Dance right now. I turned it on once because a friend of mine went to one of the tapings so I saw him on TV. Then I learned that the next week, Roommate watched it on his own. I turned the results show on tonight just for something to have on in the background, so he's watching. Oh, now he's telling me about who is the most technically trained of all the guys... Believe it or not, Roommate is actually one of my few heterosexual friends.

Yesterday was my last day at Apple. I couldn't have been happier. A lot of drama went down. My best friend, the senior manager, was fired for a made up, bullshit reason. The evil people in the store (who happen to also be the people that never did their jobs didn't like being told that they weren't doing their jobs by a manager brought in to fix the problems in the store) conspired to get him fired for being "intoxicated" at work. He had one glass of wine at lunch in October. PS -- this was in October, and it was brought to HR's attention in April. Yeah. Shady. Also, the iPhone was a pain in the butt, and I'm starting school soon. So I'm finished with Apple...for now...not opposed to going back if I go broke and I go to a different store where the evil people are not. 

One more week with the "real" job. Trying to finish the last podcast, but my co-editors are making it very difficult for me. Do this, then change that, no maybe this will work better, try this instead, what if....the previous podcasts have not been this difficult. But actually, their direction is less clear than that. I said, okay, so basically you just want me to make it better. I gotta figure out what it is that isn't clicking. Quickly. I must do this quickly. 

California from August 2-11. Giddy. Plans are close to being locked down. Giddy. 

Comfort and Will were eliminated from SYTYCD. 

This is all for now. I'm sleepy. 

Apartment Living

In an email from my roomie on the 3rd:

"By the way...there was an MIB sized cockroach in our dishwasher this morning...ewwww..."

Pest control is coming on the 9th. Delicious. 

In the meantime, we haven't had cable or internet since May 19. We called on the 21st, they set up an appointment for the 23rd, then called back 15 minutes later to tell us there was an outage and our appointment was cancelled. 

They hadn't fixed it by the 27th, so Roomie called again, and they told us there was still an outage and they didn't know what was wrong. They didn't know whether they'd be able to give us a discount for the week + we had gone without cable and internet. WHAT WHAT?? Oh yes, you WILL be giving us a discount!

I was out of town this past weekend, but I got an email from Roomie saying he had set up an appointment for them to come take a look at it on the evening of the 3rd. When I got home late that night, he was sitting playing MarioKart. I got excited, hoping he was racing his brothers online, but alas, he was just racing the computer. Cox had called again, canceling the appointment again, because there was "still an outage." 

I need my internet.